Politics

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

Saturday

Simeon Tegel

Peru’s staggeringly incompetent far-left coup

Lima, Peru For the last 17 months, Peruvians have been wondering what it would take to see the back of Pedro Castillo, their staggeringly incompetent and deeply unpopular far left president. On Wednesday, they got their answer — when Castillo made a botched attempt to metamorphise from an elected head-of-state into an even more inept version of that trope of Latin American history, the caudillo or authoritarian strongman. Cornered by anticorruption prosecutors and facing an impeachment vote that evening, the 53-year-old former rural schoolteacher and wildcat strike leader decided to take the bull by the horns. In an unannounced televised address to the nation shortly before noon, Castillo, his hands

Robert Tombs

England vs France is far more than a football match

When England play France tonight, more will be involved than just a game of football.  We all know why. Even those with an enviable indifference to history will have vague notions about Agincourt, Joan of Arc, Waterloo, Napoleon and General de Gaulle. When I first went to France decades ago I was surprised to be asked fairly regularly why we had fired on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir – an event which, despite my history degree, had largely passed me by.  From the Norman Conquest to the Tudors, England was in a formative and often abusive relationship with France. Our language was changed by the influx of French, but on the other hand

Iain Macwhirter

Is the SNP falling apart?

The SNP should be basking in its recent formidable polling success. Not only does support for independence appear to be on the rise – with 56 per cent in favour, according to the latest Ipsos Mori poll – but there is evidence too that the SNP could win an outright majority in the next Scottish parliament elections. So why does the party appear to be falling apart? Three front bench resignations in as many days doesn’t look like a party at peace with itself.   The Westminster group of SNP MPs is roiled by divisions and rancour. The palace coup by the 34-year-old Stephen Flynn against veteran Westminster leader Ian Blackford

Friday

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The two books that made me a Conservative

From time to time newspapers invite writers to describe the ‘books that changed my life’. The resulting columns too often dazzle the reader with a display of erudition or passion, rather than tell the more mundane truth. The mundane truth is that our dispositions and the courses of our lives tend to be fixed before our ages run to two digits: a time when we were unlikely to be tackling Proust, understanding Nietzsche or appreciating C.P. Cavafy. The child being father to the man, we should be looking at fairy tales, picture books and First Readers if we seek the truly formative influence of literature. Foreign and war correspondents or

Sam Leith Sam Leith

‘Loss is a thing that we become’: Nick Cave on grief, faith and why he’s a conservative

Several hundred years ago, in the 2014 film 20,000 Days On Earth, Ray Winstone asked Nick Cave: ‘Do you want to reinvent yourself?’ Cave, looking out from his sunglasses, replied: ‘I can’t reinvent myself.’ ‘Do you wanna?’ ‘I don’t want to either. I think the rock star’s gotta be someone you can see from a distance. You can draw them in one line… They’ve got to be godlike. It’s all an invention. But it happened early on for me.’ On the handful of occasions over the years that I’ve seen Cave from a distance, he has been just that sort of figure – one a deft cartoonist would draw with

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Rishi Sunak needs to get tough on strikers

We are still a long way from the Winter of Discontent, when 29.5 million worker-days were lost to strikes. Nevertheless, with today’s strike of 115,000 postal workers the number is creeping inexorably upwards. This one-day strike alone will cost 40 per cent of the 273,000 lost working days recorded across all industries over the whole of 2018. To describe Britain as being in the grip of a wave of public sector strikes isn’t quite accurate. The 115,000 Royal Mail workers who have walked out today are not public sector workers. Nor are the train drivers, guards and other train staff who have been striking, on and off, for much of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why Japan and Britain are teaming up to build a fighter jet

The UK will partner with Italy and Japan to develop a new generation of fighter aircraft with the aim of having them flying by 2035. Britain and Italy were already working together through the future combat air system, but the announcement of Japan joining them is striking.  For decades, Japan has had an informal cap on defence spending of one per cent of GDP. But attitudes are changing and the Japanese PM has announced plans to increase defence spending to two per cent of GDP by 2027. If Japan, which is still the world’s third largest economy, substantially increases its defence budget it will be a more effective counter-balance to

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Ilya Yashin is in jail, but his words will sting Vladimir Putin

Fewer than one in 100 defendants in the Russian court system get acquitted. Even in the best of circumstances then, Ilya Yashin’s chances looked poor. As the last of Russia’s high-profile opposition politicians who remains alive and isn’t in prison or in exile, there never was any question as to whether he was going to be convicted. Today, he was predictably found guilty in Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, on the deeply-questionable charge of ‘spreading false information about the Russian military’. His crime was to raise the allegations of systematic human rights abuses in the Ukrainian town of Bucha on his YouTube channel in

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will Hunt’s ‘Brexit freedoms’ kickstart Britain’s economy?

Rishi Sunak’s government is trying to strike a difficult balance when it comes to discussing economic growth. On the one hand, there is broad consensus that the Liz Truss days (literally… just days) had to be dismantled to regain trust with the markets and retain the UK’s ability to keep borrowing at a stable price. On the other hand, there is recognition among ministers that the only way out of this high-tax spiral is to spur on some economic growth. In other words: achieve Truss’s goal while avoiding the many mistakes she made in her attempts to get there. It’s in this context that we should look at today’s major

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What have the Twitter files uncovered?

Freddy Gray talks to the Spectator’s contributing editor Chadwick Moore about the release of the so-called ‘Twitter files’ and what they reveal about the extent of censorship and coverup before, during and after the 2020 election campaign.  Chadwick Moore’s book ‘So You’ve Been Sent to Diversity Training’ is available now from all good retailers. 

Steerpike Steerpike

Penny Mordaunt makes her Christmas appeal

To 2 Lord North Street, SW1, home of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Once it was the likes of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng that were feted here, but last night there was a new queen in town. Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House, swept in with all her magnificent curls, to be the star turn at this year’s IEA Christmas shindig. To much applause from her ‘pen pals’ in the audience, Mordaunt regaled the crowd with a parody of It’s a Wonderful Life. In the world envisaged by Mordaunt, Ed Miliband won the 2015 election to be succeeded by prime minister Corbyn and all the horrors that would

Steven Fielding

Can Rishi Sunak really take on the unions?

Rishi Sunak is getting tough. Goaded by Labour’s systematic painting of him as ‘weak’, the Prime Minister has threatened ‘unreasonable union leaders’ that if they do not call off their Christmas strikes, he will introduce new restrictions on their ability to take industrial action. The desire to be ‘tough’ with trade unions is one of the few issues which unites the Tory party – apart from cutting taxes and reducing the size of the state, which Sunak feels unable to deliver at the moment. This is a Conservatism shaped by Margaret Thatcher as she destroyed the post-war consensus, one of the central features of which was the incorporation of the unions

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

What Rowan Williams gets wrong about democracy

Rowan Williams used his Reith lecture on religious liberty to make a plea to religious believers: don’t be afraid of being an awkward misfit. The former Archbishop of Canterbury called on believers to challenge the social consensus – even on contentious issues like gay marriage. His view is that religion is not a private affair, but impinges on public life. It does so, he said this week, in ways that the liberal order will find annoying, even disruptive. Believers appeal to transcendent truths beyond the ‘prevailing social consensus’, according to Williams. As a result, he said, they are rightly wary of an order whose only basis is human law, which

Thursday

William Moore William Moore

War of the Windsors

46 min listen

This week: For his cover piece in The Spectator Freddy Gray asks who will win in the battle between the Waleses and the Sussexes. He is joined by historian Amanda Foreman to discuss the fallout Harry and Meghan’s new Netflix documentary (01:00). Also this week: Should the House of Lords be reformed or even abolished? This is the question James Heale considers in the magazine. He is joined by Baroness Fox of Buckley to unpack Gordon Brown’s recommendation to do away with the second chamber of Parliament (13:14).  And finally: In the books section of The Spectator Chloë Ashby reviews Con/Artist, the memoir of notorious art forger Tony Tetro. She is joined by Tony and

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Are Harry and Meghan bad for Global Britain?

11 min listen

A number of measures are under discussion as Christmas looks like it will be dominated by strike action. What measures will the government put in place to limit the disruption? Also on the podcast, after the first episodes of Netflix’s new series Harry and Meghan were released, could the documentary be bad for Global Britain?  Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.  Produced by Natasha Feroze. 

James Snell

Iran steps up the war against its people

Iran has announced the first execution of the current crop of protestors. Mohsen Shekari, who was just 23, was hanged earlier today after having been found guilty by a revolutionary tribunal of moharebeh, a crime which means ‘enmity against God’.  Other protestors have been charged and convicted of crimes like fasad-fel-arz (‘corruption on Earth’) and baghy, which means ‘armed rebellion’. Both of those carry the death penalty, so it seems likely that more executions will soon follow. Shekari’s killing is intended to frighten those who face these charges and to dissuade demonstrators from taking to the streets at all. But will it work, as the tide of anti-government feeling continues to swell in Iran? Shekari was

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Britain should embrace new coal mining

For those of us who remember the miners’ strike in the 1980s it takes some getting used to the journey made by coal miners over the past 40 years: from working class heroes to climate ‘criminals’. To hear today’s reaction to the news that Michael Gove has granted permission to build Britain’s first deep coal mine for a generation is to step through the looking glass into a bizarre world where a Conservative government is considered evil for helping to create mining jobs in a de-industrialised region – and the ‘enlightened’ position is to eradicate the very last traces of the coal industry. Lord Deben, chair of the government’s Climate

Steerpike Steerpike

Five lowlights from Harry and Meghan’s Netflix flop

Is that it? For months now much ink has been spilled about the ‘explosive’ revelations promised in Harry and Meghan’s multi-million pound Netflix bonanza, a ‘tell all’ sensationalist documentary replete with truth bombs to tear the curtain back on the whole squalid royal cabal. And yet, having digested all three soporific hours of the first edition this morning, Mr S was left rubbing his eyelids and wondering what all the fuss was really about. Of course, there was innuendo aplenty; the ritual breast-beating and eyes watering. There was the full English of Hollywood tricks: dramatic music, sympathetic lighting, dramatic cuts and a smorgasbord of stylistic shenanigans. But in terms of

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Pete Wishart’s resignation letter is damning for the SNP

No matter how heavily it snows today nothing will be as frosty as Pete Wishart’s resignation letter. The senior SNP MP has exited the front bench following the coup that replaced Ian Blackford with relative newcomer Stephen Flynn.  Blackford is an ally of Nicola Sturgeon and discontent had grown in the party’s Westminster group of MPs about his perceived lack of independence from the leadership in Scotland. Flynn, who at 34 only entered Parliament in 2019, is expected to put distance between his Westminster group and the SNP government in Edinburgh. As MP for Aberdeen South he is seen as less hostile to the North Sea oil and gas industry than Sturgeon,