Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Friday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s indictment shows his luck is running out

Donald Trump has chalked up a lot of firsts. First president to be a chum of Russian president Vladimir Putin. First president to threaten withdrawal from Nato. Now add a new one: first former president to be indicted on seven federal counts, which is a polite way of saying that a serial prevaricator has been busted for hoarding top government secrets. Now Trump faces protracted litigation that holds the threat of a prison sentence Not surprisingly, Trump is fundraising off the indictment and trumpeting a fresh hoax. ‘I have been indicated, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,’ Trump declared on his social media site Truth Social. ‘I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!’

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Prince Harry the Tyrannical

It is often said that Prince Harry is a ‘New Royal’. Emotionally literate, racially aware, eco-friendly (except when he’s flying in a private jet to hang at Elton John’s swanky pad in the south of France) – he’s nothing like the stiff royals of old. He’s the metrosexual prince. He even occasionally partakes of a cheeky Nando’s, as he revealed in his book Spare. I’m not buying it. Here’s my question: if he’s such a modern prince, a valiant escapee from the prison of aristocratic prejudice, why is he always throwing his monarchical weight around? Why is he so quick to wag a blue-blooded finger at the government, the press,

Thursday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sunak and Biden’s White House love-in

Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden’s White House press conference started late, presumably to make a point that the two had just found so much to talk about in their bilateral. Like a date that had gone really well. When the pair eventually appeared before journalists, they spent most of their opening statements banging on about how much they had in common and how they agreed on everything. Biden described the ‘depth and breadth of our relationship’, ‘our common values’ and said ‘there’s no issue of importance – none – that our nations are not leading together on’. Sunak claimed that ‘not for decades has the relationship between our two nations

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How far can the Green Party go without Caroline Lucas?

12 min listen

The Green Party’s first and only MP, Caroline Lucas, has announced today that she’ll be stepping down at the next election. On the episode, Katy Balls talks with Isabel Hardman and Fraser Nelson about Lucas’s achievements and what it’s like to be the sole MP of your party in a parliamentary system like ours. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Steerpike Steerpike

Five of the worst Ian Blackford moments

It’s the end of an era. Ian Blackford has this week announced he will be standing down as an MP at the next election. Not quite making it to a decade in the Commons, the MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber released a 659-word article about his resignation that, er, didn’t quite manage to explain the reasons for his resignation. No matter. Mr S can list a number of reasons why Blackford might have been particularly keen to leave his role… The Patrick Grady fiasco Cast your mind back to last year when Blackford ordered his MPs to lend their support to a sex pest in their own party. Back when he was

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Harry’s crusade: the Prince vs the press

31 min listen

This week:  Prince Harry has taken the stand to give evidence in the Mirror Group phone hacking trial which The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray talks about in his cover piece for the magazine. He is joined by Patrick Jephson, former private secretary to Princess Diana, to discuss whether Harry’s ‘suicide mission’ against the press is ill-advised. (01:22) Also this week:  In The Spectator professor Robert Tombs details the trouble with returning the Benin Bronzes back to Nigeria, arguing that their restitution is more complicated than some claim. He is joined by Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, executive director of the Restitution Study Group, who have recently screened a short film in Cannes, detailing why they think

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France comes under attack again

What kind of man walks into a park on a summer’s day and randomly stabs and slashes at toddlers? That is the question France is asking itself today after the latest in a long line of bloody atrocities. The scene of this morning’s attack was in Annecy in south-eastern France, a popular holiday resort. An eye-witness said that a man ‘started shouting and went straight to the pushchairs and stabbed the children repeatedly.’ At least three children were stabbed, along with a young woman believed to be a mother. The numbers of victims would have been higher had the police not arrived in just four minutes. As they entered the park, recalled another

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is AI all it’s cracked up to be?

So is Artificial intelligence (AI) to be a new engine of growth for the UK economy? That is Rishi Sunak’s hope. Ideally, he might have been using his trip to Washington to announce a trade deal between the UK and the US. Of course, that’s not going to happen: Joe Biden has made it clear that he doesn’t regard trade deals – with anyone – as a priority, not least because the crowning achievement of his administration so far, the Inflation Reduction Act, is a huge protectionist device dressed up as a fiscal and environmental measure. The Prime Minister then seems to have decided that securing something on AI is the next

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Britons be injecting their way out of obesity?

Is it right that the government is going to let more people use weight-loss jabs on the NHS? Anti-obesity jabs, such as Ozempic, are one of the hottest talking points right now. How fat we are has long been one of those problems that people think can be solved by ‘one quick trick’. But these solutions are often a complete and improbable overhaul of our entire society. People can’t eat the highly palatable, highly calorific, highly processed foods that are so easy and cheap to access. This week’s announcement is a trendy one: around £40 million to expand access to the ‘game-changer’ injections such as Semaglutide (or Ozempic). There’s also

James Heale James Heale

Johnson’s honours list spells more trouble for Sunak

Another day, another episode in the ongoing Johnson-Sunak psychodrama. Following clashes over the Stormont brake and the Covid inquiry, Rishi Sunak is now prepared to wave through his predecessor’s honours list – nine months after his resignation. The ongoing delay in the publication of the list has been a source of tension between the pair. But the Times reports today that Sunak has accepted the precedent that outgoing prime ministers should be entitled to make appointments. The list is expected to be published and approved before the summer parliamentary recess. The names on Johnson’s list have been subject to endless gossip in Westminster, with the number of appointees slashed from almost 100

Jawad Iqbal

India’s war on Charles Darwin is a step too far

What is it that India’s rulers find so objectionable about Charles Darwin and his evolutionary theory that they’ve banned his work from some school classrooms? Firstly, Darwin is not a Hindu and in India’s ruling circles that appears sufficient to cast doubt on his merits as a scientist. Secondly, his cause is not helped by the fact that he is an English scientist. This makes him part of a wider western scientific conspiracy that belittles what the Indian authorities see as the historic scientific triumphs of ancient India. These paranoid fantasies are the reason why Indian children under 16 will no longer be taught about evolution or even who Darwin

Steerpike Steerpike

Sunak’s D-Day blunder

It’s Rishi Sunak’s final day in Washington. Having ducked an invitation to throw the first pitch at a baseball game last night, he will today sit down for a formal ‘bilat’ with Joe Biden at the White House, host a joint press conference and hobnob with business bigwigs at a roundtable. What larks! But while Mr S applauds Sunak’s transatlantic travels, is there a danger perhaps that our California-lovin’ PM is getting a little too Americentric? The Tory leader yesterday shared a post to mark the anniversary of D-Day when, in his words, ‘British and American soldiers were landing on the beaches of Normandy.’ He tweeted images of himself laying a remembrance

Wednesday

James Heale James Heale

Should Rishi be worried about Covid inquiry messages?

13 min listen

It was prime ministers questions today and while Rishi Sunak is away in the US Oliver Dowden stood in. The Covid inquiry was a hot topic of debate. Rishi Sunak says he is not worried about being embarrassed by messages seen by the inquiry, but is he right to be so calm?  Also on the podcast, the OECD has forecasted that the UK will narrowly avoid recession. But with growth at only 0.3 per cent for 2023, can we consider this a good outcome? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

John Ferry John Ferry

What does the return of Kevin Pringle mean for the SNP?

Kevin Pringle, Alex Salmond’s old spin doctor, is back. Pringle was a key strategic adviser on the build up to the 2014 independence referendum and is ultimately one of the handful of people responsible for successfully – from a nationalist standpoint – moving Scottish politics off the left-right spectrum and onto one rooted in identity and sovereignty. His appointment as Humza Yousaf’s ‘official spokesperson and strategic political adviser’, which brings Pringle back into the fold after a period away from politics, has been hailed as a smart move that could turn things around for the flailing new first minister. Will Pringle’s strategic canniness halt the SNP’s decline in the polls? I wouldn’t bet on it. Although he has

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The cynical treatment of Pauline McNeill

Pauline McNeill is an impeccable left-winger. The Scottish Labour MSP is a socialist, a feminist, and a devolutionist. All her pros (rent controls, Palestine, gay rights) and antis (inequality, war, western imperialism) line up as you would expect. Yet the Scotsman reports that she has been forced to pull out of a meeting with some lawyers and feminists after Scottish Labour received a complaint.  Why would anyone object to such a thing? Come on, let’s not be coy. We all know why. The event, scheduled to take place at Holyrood next week, is titled ‘The Meaning of Sex Under the Equality Act 2010’. There is plenty to discuss. There’s the Gender Recognition Reform

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Brexiteers, calm down. Brexit has not been betrayed

Being a Brexiteer these days is like being Kenneth Williams playing Julius Caesar in Carry On Cleo. Far too often we find ourselves crashing around the place bellowing: ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.’ Last month Nigel Farage made waves by declaring that Brexit had ‘failed’ thanks to wilful Tory treachery. Prior to that, the Windsor Framework was interpreted as a conspiracy between Brussels and Rishi Sunak to bury Brexit. Let’s stop being so jumpy whenever Rejoiner fanatics seize on opinion polls showing a degree of Brexit regret The latest betrayal is said to be the decision by Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch to curtail the scope of

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs: A scrappy battle of the deputies

Throwing money away. That was the big topic at PMQs today. Rishi Sunak has flown to Washington for talks with Joe Biden, (which is probably the President’s only scheduled appointment this month.) The deputies slugged it out in the Commons. Angela Rayner brought up an admission by the Public Accounts Committee that a fortune in tax-payers’ money has flown out of the window. A total of £21 billion is missing, presumed stolen. Rishi’s understudy, Oliver Dowden, claimed that things weren’t that bad because a quarter of the lost money would be found. ‘We’re working tirelessly to recover those funds,’ he said. Tirelessly? He sound like a bored rescue-worker tackling a

Debbie Hayton

Is the rise in ‘trans visibility’ something to celebrate?

If the LGBTQIA+ community has become a church for the new millennium, it is certainly attracting adherents across the world. A survey by Ipsos of 22,500 adults across 30 countries showed that nine per cent of adults now identified as LGBT+. Among Generation Z – those born after 1997 – the figure is even higher: 14 per cent claimed to be LGB, 2 per cent said they were asexual, and 6 per cent placed themselves somewhere under the transgender umbrella. The impact on youngsters worries me The survey makes it clear that ‘the visibility of LGBT+ people has increased’ in just a few years. In Pride month, this might come

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Britain faces plenty of economic pain – even if it dodges a recession

The UK will narrowly avoid a formal recession this year. That’s the consensus that is emerging based on the current data. This morning’s Economic Outlook from the OECD – which forecasts 0.3 per cent growth in 2023 – reflects similar projections from the IMF’s latest update and the Office for Budget Responsibility, which have revised their figures upwards in recent months. But to what extent will this modest growth actually be felt by Brits? Here the picture is far less positive. Inflation – which remains stubbornly high, in Britain especially – continues to eat away at real wages. The OECD predicts that the UK will continue to suffer from some

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why Rishi Sunak fears the Covid inquiry

A former Labour spin doctor recently offered some advice for governments considering a public inquiry. Rule No. 1: Don’t. But if ‘you’re stupid enough’ to do so: don’t make the inquiry independent, don’t give it powers, know the conclusion you want, set the remit accordingly and appoint a chair who knows the brief. Unfortunately for Rishi Sunak, the inquiry he has inherited from Boris Johnson’s time in Downing Street ticks none of these boxes. ‘It’s basically going to show that everyone hated each other. The pettiness will be embarrassing’ Even before its official launch this week, there were signs of trouble. The brief is to provide a factual account of the