Politics

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

Friday

5 May 2023

How much trouble are the Tories in?

The Conservatives have suffered 1000 councillor losses – and the count is not over yet. This was the figure Tory aides used when they were attempting to manage expectations in advance. That the party is on course to exceed it shows that the result is worse than many in Tory circles had expected. Meanwhile, Labour are now the largest party in local government for the first time since 2002. The Liberal Democrats also have plenty to cheer about – gaining control of 12 councils. So, how much trouble are the Tories in? The fact that the party has been losing seats to the Liberal Democrats in traditional Tory heartlands while

Svitlana Morenets

Ukraine’s plan to rain on Putin’s Victory Day parade

The presence of drones over the Kremlin earlier this week was reported widely as the first attack on Moscow since the Napoleonic era: after an explosion, Russian officials claimed that this was an attempt on the life of a suddenly vulnerable Vladimir Putin. But it’s actually more akin to 1987, when an amateur German pilot landed on a bridge near Red Square, fooling the Soviet air defence system. Mathias Rust said he’d gone to Moscow on a mission of peace – but ended up humiliating the communist military leadership, who had to resign one after another. This – the humiliation – is what Ukrainians plan to repeat during the upcoming

Freddy Gray

What’s happening to digital media?

30 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to journalist Ben Smith, whose new book Traffic is an origins story for digital media. On the podcast they discuss how a new genre of journalism was birthed from a desire to cause trouble online, whether woke culture spawned from digital media and if we are nearing the end for the social internet.

Ross Clark

What happened to the voter ID backlash?

You might have thought that a heavy defeat for the Conservatives in the local elections would silence those claiming that the government was out to disenfranchise left-wing voters by introducing compulsory photo ID for voters at polling stations. But not a bit of it. Paul Mason was up bright and early bleating about ‘serious vote suppression’; the Mirror is reporting voters were leaving polling stations ‘in tears’ after turning up without their ID. And a professor of accounting practice at Sheffield university, who also described himself as an ‘economic justice campaigner’, tweeted that this was ‘the first reversal of the right to vote since 1832’. That is not the view

Katy Balls

Local elections: are we heading for a 1997 moment?

15 min listen

The local election results so far paint a fairly grim picture for the Conservatives, whilst Labour and the Liberal Democrats have made big gains in key areas. With Starmer in the advantage position ahead of the next general election, how will No. 10 respond? Is there a path for the Tories in 2024? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and pollster James Johnson. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

James Heale

Tory big beasts at risk in 2024

Results are still coming in fast but one of the big stories of this local election night has been the Tories’ southern discomfort. Onetime safe seats in the once-impregnable ‘Blue Wall’ have fallen overnight to the Liberal Democrats and to a lesser extent, the Greens and Labour too. The leaders of Windsor and Mid Suffolk council lost their seats to Lib Dem and Green challengers respectively; the regions where the Tory vote share has fallen most is by 5.7 per cent in the south west and 3.7 per cent in the south east. Conversely, CCHQ is keen to talk up the areas where the party performed best: this occurred in

Gavin Mortimer

Macron, not Meloni, is to blame for Europe’s migrant crisis

France and Germany have fallen out again after the French interior minister Gérald Darmanin accused Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni of incompetence in her handling of the migrant crisis. In response, Itay’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, has cancelled a meeting in Paris scheduled for today and he is demanding an apology from Darmanin for his ‘vulgar insults’. Meloni has put on hold her own visit to Paris, which was due to take place next month, according to the Italian press. It’s not the first time the interior minister has outraged a neighbour. Twelve months ago, Darmanin was accused of wrongly laying the blame for the chaos that erupted in Paris during the

Steerpike

Lib Dem paper candidate triumphs in two seats

As the results of the local elections continue to roll in, the Liberal Democrats look set to make promising gains across the country. But for one newly-elected Lib Dem councillor, yesterday’s vote has left him seeing double. Sitting Salford Liberal Democrat councillor Chris Twells has accidentally won a second seat more than 160 miles away from his first in the Gloucestershire ward of Tetbury with Upton. The double whammy win occurred after Twells agreed to be a ‘paper candidate’ to help out the local Lib Dems who were struggling to find a candidate to nominate. Twells’ two-timing first came to light in April when the Labour mayor of Salford Paul

Max Jeffery

The local elections: what’s happening?

15 min listen

Early results from the local elections are coming in. The Conservatives were expected to perform badly, and Labour to make gains, and that’s certainly happened. But, if Labour were to replicate these results in a general election, would they win? And are the Liberal Democrats the ones really doing well? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Patrick O’Flynn

The Tories haven’t reached the end of the road, yet

Everyone knew that the Conservatives were going to take a pasting in the local elections. Aside from deserving a particular kicking for the horror show of 2022, with its runaway inflation and two prime ministerial defenestrations, this is just what happens to long-serving governments deep into parliaments. So the question foremost in the minds of Conservative MPs – who naturally will be regretful about losing hundreds of conscientious councillors – is whether the English public have sent a message that they have already decided to get behind Keir Starmer and Labour at the next general election. In other words, is it over? The government’s protracted and out-of-control tailspin of last year

Fraser Nelson

Labour bounces back in Brexit-voting wards

One of the trends Keir Starmer will be looking for is the reversal of the Brexit effect, with Labour heartlands coming back to Labour. A study of 200 seats counted so far – a pretty small fragment – does seem to show a correlation with the swing away from the Tories in the places where the Leave vote was strongest. Will Jennings, a professor at Southampton University, has mapped the election results so the swing is mapped against the strength of Brexit vote. His work, for Sky News, shows a significant correlation so far: This matters because it supports one of the main hypotheses of a Labour victory: that neither

Steerpike

Sunak ends the Etonian ascendancy

It’s been a tough old time for Etonians. Having seemingly ruled the Tory party (and the country) for much of the past 15 years, the election of Rishi Sunak, a Wykehamist and proud school donor, put all that to an end. With Kwasi Kwarteng banished to the backbenches, Sunak’s cabinet became an OE-free zone: a watershed moment in Tory history. In their place though came the Wykehamists, with Sunak last month appointing fellow old boys Alex Chalk and John Whittingdale as Lord Chancellor and culture minister respectively. Poor old unloved Marcus Fysh must be expecting a call-up any day now. To add insult to injury, Sunak, as Prime Minister, has

Katy Balls

Rishi Sunak faces southern discomfort

Rishi Sunak wakes to warnings that the Tories could lose 1,000 seats in the local elections. What had been talked up as expectation management is now viewed as a possibility as the party finds itself squeezed by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Keir Starmer’s party is showing signs of progress in some so-called red wall areas while the Tories are losing support in traditonal strongholds in the south. It’s worth noting of course that it is still early days, with results due to come through well into Saturday. But the early signs are not particularly encouraging for the Conservatives. While bad results were expected, the reality of heavy losses

Theo Hobson

Britain’s ‘theocracy’ is something to be proud of

This coronation season, punditry is bristling with acute reflections on the British constitution, especially its religious aspect. Or maybe not. There is more comment on Succession (an American TV show that half-satirises, three-quarters worships capitalist excess). But is it not at least a little bit interesting that we officially remain a Protestant theocracy? The Protestantism of the coronation oath is widely seen as an embarrassing relic from a more sectarian age. The King will promise to defend Protestantism, and protect the Church of England. He won’t say anything unfriendly about Catholicism, but those in the know will know that the Act of Settlement of 1701 remains in place, excluding Catholics from the

Thursday

4 May 2023

Andrew Liddle

Humza Yousaf is right to attack handouts for the middle class

In Scotland, everything from eye tests to prescriptions to university tuition is paid for by the state, even if you can easily afford to pay for it yourself. Such is the intoxicating effect of universal benefits that the only question up for debate in the Scottish Parliament is what else can be given to everyone for free, rather than what is most effective or affordable. That was until Humza Yousaf became First Minister. In need of a political lift following the police investigation into the SNP’s finances, Yousaf has engineered a significant break – not just with his predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon, but with the Scottish political consensus that had nurtured

Lara Prendergast

A King in a hurry: what will Charles III’s reign look like?

38 min listen

This week: In his cover piece for the magazine, Daily Mail writer, author of Queen of Our Times and co-presenter of the Tea at the Palace podcast, Robert Hardman looks ahead to the reign of King Charles III. He joins the podcast alongside historian David Starkey, who is interviewed in the arts pages of The Spectator by Lynn Barber (01:10) Also this week: Sean Thomas writes about generational reparations, that is: whether families with murky pasts should pay compensation for their ancestors’ wrongdoings. He is joined by Professor Christine Kinealy, historian and author This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52, to ask whether generational reparations are simply a token gesture (20:58). And finally: Journalist Yannic Rack writes about the

Steerpike

Four-day council boss on six-figure salary

It’s local election day for most of the country – though not in South Cambridgeshire. The Lib Dem led District Council there has been in the news a lot this week but not for the right reasons. Council bosses there have just hailed the ‘overwhelmingly positive’ results of their four-day working week trial and are now set to extend it for a further twelve months. Nice life for some eh? The pilot scheme was launched in January and gives staff the chance to take either Mondays or Fridays off on the assumption that they will work ‘more productively for the remaining days.’ And this week the Daily Mail revealed that Liz Watts,

Steerpike

Rishi hails Tories’ ‘good progress’ at Reform club bash

The Tories might be trailing in the polls but there was no sign of glum faces in Westminster last night. The crème de la crème of the Conservative establishment was out in force to hail the fifth birthday of the Onward think tank. Star of the show was a beaming Rishi Sunak, displaying no indication of any pre-election nerves in his speech. The PM remarked on his shock at the SNP paying him a compliment and Nick Cave’s coronation plans before praising the quality of attendees, remarking that ‘looking around this room tonight, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many prospective Tory parliamentary candidates in one place since my own

Andrew Tettenborn

Alex Salmond’s disturbing grab for the Stone of Scone

Claims of financial skulduggery abound, Nicola Sturgeon is politically hors de combat and Humza Yousaf is quickly rebranding the SNP as a party not only of shatteringly incompetent government but also of lost causes, political irrelevance and sheer kookiness. Thinking Scots who don’t fancy the Tories might be forgiven for contemplating a switch of loyalties to Alex Salmond. His new party Alba, formed in 2021, might be a bit rough round the edges, but at least it looks principled. There is an attraction in the straight-talking face of nationalism past, with no pretence to either elegance or middle-class faddishness: witness Salmond’s bon mot on LBC a couple of days ago

William Atkinson

Is it time to ban George Osborne?

George Osborne has taken a break from his myriad jobs to give his thoughts on health policy. Orange juice should be taxed, and smoking banned, according to the ex-Chancellor. Doing so had been ‘too controversial’ while he was in government; those ‘anti-nanny state Conservatives’ who oppose it are ‘not worth listening to. Leaving aside the lack of evidence about whether sugar taxes reduce calorie intake, and whether Conservative governments should impose such draconian measures, Osborne’s intervention is oddly timed. Negotiations with Greece on the Elgin Marbles’ future are ongoing; one would have thought the chairman of the British Museum has better things to be doing than opine on orange juice.