Politics

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

Monday

John Lough

Trump can hit Putin where it hurts – if he wants to

Donald Trump’s efforts to negotiate a quick end to the war in Ukraine have run into trouble. As US negotiators meet with Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to explore possibilities for a comprehensive ceasefire, the Russian side is clearly going through the motions. Vladimir Putin’s call last week with Trump showed that he sees no need to stop fighting when he is winning. He believes that he can weaken Ukraine’s will to fight and encourage Trump to help him impose on Kyiv a Russian-designed peace settlement. So far, he has not sensed any determination on the part of the Trump administration to persuade him otherwise. Russia’s main

Stephen Webb

Are climate scientists qualified to judge net zero?

Kemi Badenoch’s announcement that the Conservatives are no longer committed to the net zero target in 2050 represents a massive breach in fifteen years of bipartisan consensus. It was greeted with predictable hostility by other parties, but also by pro-net zero forces within the Conservative party too. The Conservative Environment Network commented: ‘Abandon the science and voters will start to doubt the Conservative Party’s seriousness on the clean energy transition’. Is the power of the demand to ‘follow the science’ losing its effect after Covid, lockdowns and the growing realisation that net zero is likely to be hugely expensive? The very idea of ‘following the science’ is meaningless Of all

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is Rachel Reeves brave enough to slash the civil service?

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is seeking to trim £2 billion from the government’s £13 billion administration budget, with up to 50,000 jobs being cut in her Spring Statement. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government was ‘looking across the board’ for savings. But do Reeves and Starmer really have the courage, and the political capital, to carry out such a purge? On paper, Labour’s task looks straightforward enough. Civil service numbers over the past 15 years have performed a bungee jump. Between 2010 and 2016, the coalition, followed by David Cameron’s majority Conservative government, succeeded in trimming civil service numbers from 492,000 to 384,000. Then they began to climb again,

Andrew Tettenborn

Will Labour back ECHR withdrawal?

Amidst the U-turns, if there is one thing on which Labour has remained almost rock-solid until now, it is human rights and the UK’s continued participation in the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights). But even here things are changing. ECHRexit, like Brexit once did, looks increasingly respectable On Saturday, a group of Red Wall Labour members, led by Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash, broke ranks and publicly called for the government to do something to stop ECHR being used to stymie the removal of criminals and other undesirables from the UK. They said that ‘huge numbers’ of others in Labour supported them. Even if that is an exaggeration, this is still very

Matthew Lynn

The flaw in Labour’s plan to fix potholes

Ahead of last summer’s election, the Labour party made lots of grand promises about how it was going to fix the pothole crisis plaguing Britain’s roads. Finally, eight months on, Keir Starmer’s government has revealed its plan to woo drivers: councils will get an extra £500 million from mid-April to fill in the holes. Yes, that’s it. The extra cash falls well short of the £17 billion the Local Government Association (LGA) has estimated is needed to mend all the potholes in Britain. Expect to be dodging potholes for some time to come. Labour’s ‘plan’, if that is not too grand a word for it, is to put up a

Steerpike Steerpike

Rayner’s request for safari tour on work trip rejected

It’s a hard time to be in Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government, what with poor poll ratings and dismal economic forecasts to contend with. Perhaps that’s why Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner felt she deserved a free safari tour during a work trip to Ethiopia earlier this year. But it transpires her hopes were rather quickly dashed after civil servants told her that, no, the day out would not be possible on an official visit. Awkward… As reported by the Times, two government sources revealed to the newspaper that Starmer’s second-in-command had hoped to tie in a bit of recreational sightseeing – as part of February’s east Africa visit to

Damian Pudner

The Bank of England should stop worrying about inflation

As the government makes growth its top priority, one critical lever risks being overlooked: monetary policy. Ministers are busy wrestling with fiscal constraints and the pressures of a sluggish economy, but too much focus remains on spending pledges and supply-side fixes, and too little on the frameworks that shape demand and investment. Ahead of this week’s Spring Statement, they must ask a harder question: is the Bank of England’s inflation-targeting regime now holding back Britain’s recovery? The Bank of England remains bound to its rigid 2 per cent inflation target As I argue in my new Institute of Economic Affairs paper, Rethinking Monetary Policy, inflation targeting is no longer fit for

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Why is Keir Starmer pretending he ‘likes and respects’ Donald Trump?

Anyone who relishes the humiliation of Sir Keir Starmer – and I know that in this respect, if only this one, many Spectator readers will make common cause with the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn – was presented with a delicacy this weekend. Here was a humiliation so exquisite, so public and so unrecoverable-from, that you could use it instead of Vermouth to flavour a martini. The British Prime Minister told the New York Times, with every semblance of earnestness, that he ‘likes and respects’ Donald Trump – and saw that interview blazoned internationally. ‘On a person-to-person basis, I think we have a good relationship,’ Starmer said ‘On a person-to-person basis,

Sunday

James Heale James Heale

Carney calls Canada election for 28 April

At long last, we have a date. In just over a month’s time, Canadians will head to the polls to decide whether to end a decade of Liberal rule. Having succeeded Justin Trudeau as party leader on 9 March, Mark Carney has, predictably, opted not to play it long. By calling the election now, Carney conveniently does not have to face a hostile parliament – a showdown complicated by the fact that he does not actually have a seat in the House of Commons. Parliament had been due to return on Monday after being prorogued for two months. Instead, five weeks of campaigning now looms. Carney’s strategy is obvious. He

Steerpike Steerpike

Lord Frost floats a 2028 Reform pact

To Buckingham, for a blast of soundness at the annual Margaret Thatcher conference. Star of the show was David Frost, the guest speaker at last night’s dinner. And the Tory peer has certainly been brushing up on his political bon mots, judging by his lines to the 200 attendees. Frost compared the ‘amateurish farrago’ of Labour’s early days in office to his own attempts at ‘assembling Ikea furniture. I sort of get everything out of the box, chuck away the instructions, try and put it all together, and then when it’s all a bit of a mess, turn to my wife and say, “Well, where’s the plan?”’ Keir Starmer, he

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Can Israel take more war?

Israel No telling in Jerusalem this morning that Israel resumed war and poured hell on Gaza last night. In the Muslim Quarter of the Old City shopkeepers receive pallets of soft drinks, and spilled coke runs red-brown down the Via Dolorosa. A couple of streets away the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is very quiet. A few men chant lowly in the tomb of Christ. Thirty-three hostages and 1,900 Palestinian prisoners were freed in the ceasefire agreed in January, but the promised talks afterwards about a permanent end to the war went nowhere. Donald Trump said last December that there would be ‘hell to pay’ if Hamas did not return

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Reeves says living standards will increase

Rachel Reeves: ‘I’m confident we will see living standards increase’ A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that living standards in the UK are set to fall by 2030, news which increases pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves ahead of her Spring Statement next week. Appearing on Sky News this morning, Reeves rejected the JRF’s analysis, telling Trevor Phillips that there had been a ‘sustained increase’ in living standards since Labour came to power, and she expected that to continue. Reeves said that from April, people on the living wage would see a 6.7% increase in pay, and claimed that her government had brought ‘stability’ to the economy, although

Katy Balls Katy Balls

For Rachel Reeves the worst could be yet to come

Rachel Reeves has spent the morning touring the broadcast studios as she attempts to pitch roll for Wednesday’s Spring Statement. While this was never meant to be a big fiscal event, it has taken on a new significance as a result of the worsening public finances. The Chancellor is looking for billions in savings with the OBR expected to slash its growth forecast and for rising borrowing costs to have wiped out Reeves’s £10 billion of fiscal headroom. Speaking this morning, Reeves tried to put the unappetising options she faces down to a changing world as a result of global instability part related to Donald Trump and tariffs as well

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Is Keir Starmer a closet Tory?

Cindy Yu (CY): Slashing winter fuel allowance, keeping the two-child benefit cap, cutting foreign aid, cutting the civil service, axing NHS bureaucracy and slashing welfare spending. Rod, are we actually living under a conservative government? Rod Liddle (RL): No, because the Conservative government didn’t do any of that, because they didn’t have the appetite for it or the bravery. I’ve actually, in the last month, considered rejoining the Labour Party. It’s a blue Labour Party, it reflects pretty much everything I ever wanted from the Labour Party. There are a few problems. I think Rachel Reeves is a problem. But other than that, I think Labour is doing things which

Chas Newkey-Burden

Am I the only one who misses lockdown?

Five years ago tonight, Boris Johnson told us we were going into lockdown. In the run-up to the anniversary of that historic moment, lots of people have shuddered as they remembered the boredom, frustration and horror of that strange time when we were only allowed to leave the house once a day. Me? I’ve been looking back at it all rather wistfully. I’m hopelessly, romantically nostalgic for lockdown. I remember it fondly as a time when the sun shone nearly every day, we didn’t need to go anywhere we didn’t want to, we all cared and talked about the same thing and, just like the old days, everyone watched the

Theodore Dalrymple

Would Richard III have claimed PIP?

Looking at the list breaking down the reasons for which people are granted Personal Independence Payments (PIPSs), up to £180 a week to help them with their daily living and mobility, one cannot help but be reminded of the London Bills of Mortality of the seventeenth century, when some people died ‘frighted’, or of ‘grief’, or ‘lethargy.’ Descanting on his own deformity does nothing to reduce Richard’s unease Of course, our nosology – our classification of disease – is far more scientific than it was nearly four hundred years ago, except perhaps in one important respect: that of psychological difficulties. This is important because such difficulties are responsible for by

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The Zoom call that confirmed my fears about Just Stop Oil

Just Stop Oil are their own worst enemies. I support their aims and I do my best to minimise my carbon footprint. I haven’t flown since 1993, I don’t own a car and I have eleven solar panels on my roof, but I’m losing patience with the movement. Meeting the JSO activists who disrupted a West End play only confirmed my suspicions that the movement has gone off the rails. Weir and Walsh evidently care about the planet, yet they seem to lack ordinary human sympathy Most people think the protestors who sabotaged Sigourney Weaver’s performance as Prospero at London’s Drury Lane theatre in January are a nuisance. Not JSO. Earlier

Saturday

Nigel Jones

Oleg Gordievsky: the double agent Russia never stopped hunting

The death of Oleg Gordievsky at the age of 86 comes at a moment when relations between his native Russia and his adopted country Britain are just as fraught as they were in his heyday as the West’s most important double agent at the height of the Cold War. Gordievsky’s life story reads like the plot of a John Le Carre spy thriller, and it has indeed been written up as such by the doyen of espionage chroniclers Ben Macintyre. Gordievsky was born into the ranks of the Soviet secret state apparat. Like Vladimir Putin, his father was a member of the NKVD, the name the feared Soviet secret police

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

The Spectator reflects on Covid five years on

Five years ago this weekend, the nation was plunged into what was expected to be a three-week lockdown. Weeks turned into months and years, lives were upended, and society was reshaped. But with the Covid inquiry rumbling on and the threat of a new pandemic ever present, it is worth reflecting on what happened.  That’s what we did for today’s special episode of Spectator TV. We wanted to look back on the conversations our contributors were having at the time, so this morning’s show starts with an episode from during the pandemic, hosted by Cindy Yu. She interviews two University of Oxford bioethics professors, Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson, about why – at

Joanna Cherry

The SNP has a woman problem

John Swinney said this week the SNP doesn’t have a problem with women. I disagree. Of course, some of the unsung founders of the party were women. Some of the party’s strongest and most famous politicians have been women – from Winnie Ewing, Margo MacDonald and Nicola Sturgeon. Yet under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon, the rights of women in Scotland became conditional on their acceptance of gender identity theory. While the legislation which sought to enshrine this notion in law was struck down by a Scottish court – which agreed with the Westminster government and feminist campaigners that the bill impinged on the rights of women under the Equality