Politics

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

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith joins the benefits rebels

Iain Duncan Smith is the latest senior Tory to speak out against cutting benefits by not uprating them in line with inflation. The former work and pensions secretary and party leader told a ConservativeHome fringe on Universal Credit this morning that he thought it was a ‘peculiar debate’ to be having, adding:  Almost certainly there would have to be a vote [on changing the benefits calculations] because it’s automatic. And therefore if you freeze it or change it, then that will be changing the system. My personal view is I don’t see what will be gained by it. But I do see what will be gained by making sure that they

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Is Truss facing another rebellion?

11 min listen

Liz Truss is coming under pressure over another of her policies. Should she increase benefits payments in line with inflation, or in line with earnings, as she would prefer? Will the PM change her mind again? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Penny Mordaunt’s pre-rebellion matters

Another day, another Tory rebellion. Liz Truss needs to think of ways to constrain spending and tough decisions lie ahead. One option is to increase benefits in line with average salaries (6.2 per cent), rather than CPI inflation (9.9 per cent). Her aides are preparing the argument. Why should someone on welfare see their income rise faster than someone in work? And with public sector wages rising at just 2 per cent, can government really give a near-10 per cent rise to those on benefits – while saying that there’s not enough money to do the same for nurses, teachers etc? Those around the PM think that, unlike the 45p

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Liz Truss walks into another row

With a wearying inevitability, Liz Truss has gone from one row to another. One of her own cabinet ministers, Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt, has warned her against cutting benefits. She told Times Radio:  ‘I’ve always supported – whether it’s pensions, whether it’s our welfare system – keeping pace with inflation. It makes sense to do so. That’s what I voted for before.’  In the parties and bars in Birmingham last night, the 45p reversal hadn’t really calmed Tory nerves This is the kind of cabinet indiscipline that you’d expect in the weakest and latter days of a premiership, not the first few weeks. Mordaunt joins a growing list of

Steerpike Steerpike

Full list: Tories against the PM’s benefits plan

Another day, another backbench rebellion brewing for Liz Truss. Having U-turned over the 45p tax rate cut following a revolt from Tory MPs, the Prime Minister is once again facing trouble. This time it’s her plan to raise benefits in line with earnings rather than inflation that is going down badly. Below is The Spectator’s running tally of the Tory MPs who have voiced their concerns: 1. Penny Mordaunt: it ‘makes sense’ that welfare should rise in line with inflation (4 Oct, Times Radio interview) 2. Michael Gove: ‘my basic position, my starting position is, yes, Boris was right (that benefits should rise in line with inflation)’ (4 Oct, Times Radio) 3. Damian Green: to

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Why can’t MPs let Truss be Truss?

Our common culture – the huge audiences that tv, film and pop music used to attract – has evaporated. Politics is about the only thing remaining where we are all on the same page. It’s perhaps inevitable then that public reaction has become ever more febrile and volatile. Poll percentages now go crashing and soaring with a regularity that’s disturbing to those of us who can remember the prelapsarian age when we were the only people who gave a stuff about politics and that we were considered odd because of it. The marked outlandishness of British party politics has been evident since that day in September 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn became

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What does Michael Gove want?

Tory conference has long been more stage-managed than other party meetings, but this year the official speeches from ministers have also been condensed into a very strange late afternoon slot lasting just two hours. The rest of the time is free for fringe meetings and plotting. Ministers and their aides have been told they have to keep their addresses to the hall announcement-lite, which makes those two hours feel largely pointless. Kwasi Kwarteng didn’t announce very much at all, even though his two U-turns have dominated the day’s agenda. This morning, the Chancellor dropped the plan to abolish the 45p rate of tax, and this evening it has emerged that

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

It’s no surprise eco zealots targeted Captain Tom

What drives someone to do something as morally depraved as throw human faeces on a monument to Captain Sir Tom Moore? The video allegedly showing a climate-change campaigner dousing a likeness of Sir Tom, in what was reportedly a mixture of urine and excrement, is deeply chilling.  The person in the video is part of a pressure group called End UK Private Jets. The woman allegedly executed the vile stunt in order to raise awareness about the polluting impact of private jets. Quite how defiling a monument to a national treasure in such an appalling way is going to raise the public’s eco-awareness is anyone’s guess. It’s far more likely

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Are the Tories in the business of managing decline?

11 min listen

Kwasi Kwarteng has just spoken at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham defending his mini-Budget, despite having u-turned on the cut to the 45p tax rate this morning. Will his speech have calmed his fellow Tories and, more importantly, the markets?  Katy Balls speaks with James Forsyth, Kate Andrews and Isabel Hardman.  Produced by Max Jeffery and Oscar Edmondson.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Are the Tories in the business of managing decline?

Kwasi Kwarteng’s speech to Tory conference was an attempt to get his party back behind him after his U-turn on the 45p rate. He acknowledged it a number of times in his address, opening by saying it had been a ‘tough’ day, but insisted that the government needed to keep going. The members in the hall laughed as he referred to ‘a little turbulence’ and insisted that ‘we are listening’. After the U-turn, it was quite audacious to insist the government had an ‘iron commitment’ to anything After the U-turn, it was quite audacious to insist the government had an ‘iron commitment’ to anything, but his commitment today was to

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Everything’s under control, says Kwasi

You could tell Kwasi Kwarteng was aware of his words and tone as he delivered his Conservative party conference speech to a hall full of Tory members this afternoon. It was a delicate set of circumstances, with him having had to U-turn on his plan to abolish the 45p tax rate only this morning. But perhaps more importantly he learned a lesson after the mini-Budget: his words can move markets. And he’d be loathe to push them into freefall again. Kwarteng worked hard to compensate for the total lack of lip-service he had paid to fiscal discipline in his mini-Budget. He praised the UK’s status of having the ‘second lowest

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

74 Years of the NHS: Can its crisis be cured?

30 min listen

As the NHS turns 74, the service has never been under so much strain. The pandemic has created record waiting lists of almost seven million in England alone. Every month, tens of thousands of accident and emergency patients are left to wait for more than 12 hours with ambulances queuing up outside. Other long-term challenges such as an ageing population are coming to a head.  On this podcast, Isabel Hardman, The Spectator’s, assistant editor and her guests take a look back at the history of the NHS to talk about what the service was founded for, and why it is in crisis now. Isabel is joined by a panel of specialists; Alan

Andrew Downie

Bolsonaro isn’t finished yet

São Paulo The polls got it wrong again. In the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) got 48.4 per cent of the vote, 5.2 points ahead of the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. Polls had predicted a possible first-round win for the insurgent. But – with neither candidate gaining a majority – they will now face a run-off election on 30 October. Bolsonaro hasn’t just flirted with the idea of a coup, he’s wined and dined it Lula has the lead and remains sanguine about victory. But the momentum is with Bolsonaro, the populist former army captain whose chaotic administration has polarised Brazil. Under

James Snell

Isis is wreaking havoc in Afghanistan

The bomb tore through an examination hall in Kabul on Friday, where students – mostly minority Hazara, mostly young women – were sitting a practice test in preparation for university. Thirty-five were killed, dozens more injured. An unspeakable human tragedy. We don’t formally know who did it, but we can guess. Under the Taliban’s leadership, Afghanistan is a haven for terrorists. And the terrorists compete. The Taliban is, in my judgement, indistinguishable from al-Qaeda. Its eyes are still firmly placed on international terrorism: a campaign of domestic terror within Afghanistan against ‘enemies within’ – be they former members of the internationally-recognised Afghan government, or religious minorities, or campaigners for liberty

Ross Clark Ross Clark

How to stop a blackout

Will the lights go out this winter? A letter from the energy regulator Ofgem reveals just how seriously it is taking the prospect, and lays out what would happen if the UK can’t get sufficient gas to meet demand. Ofgem declared that ‘here is a possibility that GB entering into a gas supply emergency’ this winter and lays out what would happen in the event of this happening i.e. when insufficient gas is available to supply the gas network at any wholesale price. It turns out that Ofgem would seek to reduce demand by telling the largest gas users to switch off their plant. These, it adds, ‘will likely be large gas-fired power

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Why has Truss u-turned?

13 min listen

The Prime Minister has abandoned her plan to scrap the top 45 per cent rate of income tax. Why? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Max Jeffery.

Steerpike Steerpike

Nadine goes for Truss (again)

To inspire one Nadine Dorries tweet may be regarded as a misfortune, to inspire two looks like carelessness. Less than 24 hours after the former Culture Secretary criticised Truss for appearing to blame her Chancellor for the 45p tax debacle, she’s back at it again. Frustrated by Truss’s decision to junk much of the Johnson agenda from 2019, the high priestess of online harms took to her favourite medium of Twitter to write: Widespread dismay at the fact that 3 years of work has effectively been put on hold. No one asked for this. C4 sale, online safety, BBC licence feee review – all signed off by cabinet all ready

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Truss defends 45p tax cut… after U-turn

Oh dear. It’s bad enough that Liz Truss has had to U turn on her 45p tax cut plan. But because she did it so late last night – at an emergency summit with Kwasi Kwarteng – it meant that Truss only did it after doing a round of ITV regional interviews, but before the embargo on the interviews. That means we now get to watch a series of TV clips of the Prime Minister defending a policy she has now abandoned. Naturally the ITV journalists have only been too happy to share today clips of these exchanges in which Truss, in full Maggie mode, confidently declares there will be

Andrew Tettenborn

How Liz Truss can wrongfoot Labour over human rights

Liz Truss’s government has taken a deserved pasting in the polls for its slapdash economics, but all is not lost for the Tories: the party is doing a good job of holding the line on some of its more enlightened social policies – not least on ensuring freedom of speech. Justice Secretary Brandon Lewis’s appearance at a fringe event yesterday was understandably overshadowed by other events. But his comments are too important to go unnoticed. Lewis told a Policy Exchange meeting he intended to fashion free speech laws to make clear there was a right to say what one thought, even if it offended others. The Justice Secretary also said that even

John Keiger John Keiger

France and Britain are brothers in despair

Since Brexit, Britain and France appear to have drifted apart. Leaders from both countries have engaged in an on-off war of words. But despite these political fractures, Britain and France have actually come to resemble each other more closely than ever. It is now difficult to differentiate the economic, financial, social and political conditions that exist on both sides of the Channel.  France and Britain face a wave of strikes over the coming months. After a lull over the summer, Gallic workers are once again walking out: public sector and railway worker unions staged a national strike for wage increases last week. Even moderate unions are now threatening mass stoppages if Macron continues his labour reforms. Meanwhile,