Politics

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

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Penny attacks Truss over China

Dividing lines and clear blue water –  in any election it’s crucial for candidates to find and exploits the distinctions between themselves and their rivals. Could China perhaps be one? It was the subject which Liz Truss chose to quiz Rishi Sunak about on Sunday and is seen by allies of the former as a weakness for the latter. The Foreign Secretary is keen to appear more hawkish than her rival; under Sunak’s Chancellorship the Treasury tried to restart multiple high-level financial dialogues with Beijing. And it’s not just Truss pushing this line, for Penny Mordaunt has now decided to jump on board the China train. She declared last night

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Kemi Badenoch’s role in the Tory leadership race isn’t over yet

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leadership contest’s Emma Raducanu, finally lost momentum. She put on just one vote to secure 59 backers, and is out. But that’s not the end of her story in this battle to find Britain’s next prime minister. Where she and her supporters now place their votes will determine which two Tory MPs are whittled to one by the votes of 160,000 ordinary members of the Conservative party. It would be extraordinary if Badenoch threw her weight behind Penny Mordaunt, given her highly personal charge that Mordaunt as equalities minister was too liberal in her policy towards trans people. It’s a charge that Mordaunt has rejected, but there’s

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Online Safety Bill won’t survive the Tory contest

At yesterday’s Spectator hustings for the final three Tory leadership candidates, each one of them ended up committing to overhauling the controversial Online Safety Bill. The Spectator and many Conservative MPs have expressed serious concerns about the impact of this legislation, drawn up with the best of intentions, on free speech. Each acknowledged that there was a real problem with the current drafting, which creates a new definition of ‘legal but harmful’. Kemi Badenoch, who was knocked out yesterday, had described this as cracking down on free speech to prevent ‘hurt feelings’, which is something none of them fully accepted. But they all saw that ‘legal but harmful’ as it

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The Union is in trouble whoever wins the Tory leadership race

It’s not a question that has enjoyed much play in the Tory leadership election but it’s a pretty important one: Should the United Kingdom continue to exist? That is essentially what Isabel Hardman tried to tease out of the three remaining candidates in The Spectator hustings, which comprised separate head-to-head interviews. Penny Mordaunt and Liz Truss were interviewed in person at The Spectator offices while Rishi Sunak spoke to Isabel down the line. None of the candidates had any great insight into how to preserve the UK. None broached fundamental questions, such as the inherent flaws of a devolved settlement that allows the Scottish government to use taxpayers’ money to

Tuesday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The Conservative party has ceased to be serious

I’m not sure that the Conservative party wants to win elections. Tom Tugendhat was knocked out of the leadership contest on Monday, and Liz Truss is now the bookies’ favourite to be the next Prime Minister. Any party that thinks the latter beats the former cannot say it is serious. There are several reasons for Conservatives to ignore me on this topic. First, I’m not a Conservative. Second, Tugendhat and I are friends. Third, I take a view of party politics that seems to be utterly out of fashion these days. That view is that politics works better when parties try to win the other side’s votes. When Conservatives pursue

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Kemi out – are Tory MPs lending votes?

11 min listen

There has been another elimination in the Tory leadership race. Break-out star Kemi Badenoch is out, with three remaining candidates left until tomorrow’s vote. Who will be the final two in the race? And are there signs of Tory MPs lending votes to manipulate the results?James Forsyth is joined by Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu and Natasha Feroze.

Coffee House

Kemi Badenoch eliminated

Kemi Badenoch has been eliminated from the Tory leadership contest. Rishi Sunak came first with 118 Tory MPs backing him; Penny Mordaunt was second on 92; Liz Truss came third on 86. Badenoch was supported by 59 MPs. Refresh this page to read the latest: 5.15 p.m. Where will Kemi’s supporters go now? Now that Kemi Badenoch has been eliminated from the Tory leadership race, the big question is who will her supporters back? Leo Docherty’s endorsement of Liz Truss suggests that at least some of Kemi’s supporters will opt for Truss over the other leadership contenders: 4.20 p.m. Kemi says thanks 4.20 p.m. Kemi out. What now? With Kemi Badenoch eliminated, who will make the final cut?

Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Germany is at Russia’s mercy

While Britain bakes in a heatwave, politicians in Germany are worrying about the winter. The Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom has notified its European customers that it can no longer guarantee the supply of fuel due to ‘extraordinary’ circumstances. In Berlin, politicians and regulators are preparing for an ice-cold Christmas, drawing up lists for rationing priorities and emergency plans to stop the population freezing. Entertainment and frivolities will be the first things to go, while newspapers and medical production will be prioritised alongside households and hospitals. Mothballed coal power plants are being prepared for reactivation. Some local governments are planning to turn public buildings into ‘warming halls’ for those unable

Robert Tombs

What Netflix’s RRR gets wrong about the British Raj

Netflix is promoting a new pseudo-historical blockbuster. RRR, which stands for Rise, Roar, Revolt, is an Indian film which has been playing to packed houses at home. Those expecting the usual Indian crowd-pleaser featuring magic, romance, stiff-upper-lip male heroism, and improbably gory violence will not be disappointed. RRR is set in the 1920s, when India was still in the British empire. The villains are British. No surprises there. But the portrayal of the two main British characters, ‘Governor Scott’ and his wife, is unusually nasty and at the same time amazingly silly. Among other incidents, the Scotts kidnap an Indian child and try to murder the mother. Hapless Indians are brutally

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tory leadership race is at its most unpredictable

The fast pace of this Tory leadership contest means that MPs are voting again in just a couple of hours. Today is the most unpredictable day of this contest so far. There are all sorts of cross-currents swirling around Westminster: some Tugendhat supporters’ primary objective is to block Truss now their candidate is out of the contest. But there are also those who aren’t fans of Penny Mordaunt – like Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who ran on Tugendhat’s ticket as his deputy, who yesterday said Mordaunt ‘left other ministers to pick up the pieces’ to plan her leadership bid. How this all balances out is hard to judge. At the same time, Kemi Badenoch is

Steerpike Steerpike

Tobias Ellwood stripped of the whip

Oh dear. It seems that not all Tory MPs got the memo about last night’s no-confidence vote. Tobias Ellwood, a longtime Johnson critic, skipped out on the vote – despite a three-line whip for all Conservatives to stay and support the government. The opposition parties ended up losing by 349 votes to 238 but Tory whips aren’t happy with the Defence Select Committee chairman. Ellwood was on a trip abroad to Moldova on committee business, a decision he made despite being warned of the consequences last Wednesday, according to Tory party sources. One told Henry Zeffman of the Times: ‘Other Conservative MPs cancelled foreign trips, left poorly relatives and one

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is Kemi Badenoch on the way out?

It’s the day of the penultimate ballot in the parliamentary stage of the Tory leadership contest. The four candidates left in the contest are Rishi Sunak, 115 votes, Penny Mordaunt, 82 votes, Liz Truss, 71 votes, and Kemi Badenoch, 58 votes. Voting to whittle the four to three begins this afternoon with the result announced at 3 p.m. But as last night’s results showed, the race is wide open. The only certainty right now is that if Badenoch is knocked out tonight, she won’t be out of the spotlight for long The general consensus among MPs is that Sunak is on course to reach the final two – but when

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Kemi flip-flopping on net zero?

Ah Kemi Badenoch: the Saffron Walden slayer of shibboleths who has electrified the Tory leadership race. The former equalities minister has gone from near-unknown to standard-bearer of the right during the past fortnight. She is now seeking to pull off a shock upset and overhaul Liz Truss in the MPs’ ballot today. Much of Badenoch’s appeal comes from her perceived ability to say home truths and communicate her views clearly and coherently. So it’s all the more of a shame then that Badenoch appears to lack such candour when it comes to the thorny issue of the current government target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. When she launched

Daniel McCarthy

The brave new world of artificial wombs

Sometime this century, or early in the next, women will no longer have to give birth. Already conception can take place within a test tube, and incubators have pushed back the earliest time when prematurely born infants can survive outside of the womb. We can edit genes and modify animal organs for successful implantation into human beings. We can grow meat from cell cultures, and we can clone vertebrates. For all the talk one hears about a dearth of innovation, the pace of biotechnological innovation has only accelerated since the end of the twentieth century. It will not soon stop. Artificial wombs are a feature of science fiction dating back

Coffee House

Who’s backing whom? Sunak still ahead

Only two Tory MPs will make it to the membership for a final election – which is why the number of endorsements matters. On the first round, Rishi Sunak got the support of 88 MPs, followed by Penny Mordaunt on 67, Liz Truss on 50, Kemi Badenoch on 40, Tom Tugendhat on 37 and Suella Braverman on 32. On the second round, Braverman was eliminated as Sunak came top again with 101 MPs then Mordaunt and Truss on 83 and 64 each, followed by Badenoch on 49 and Tugendhat on 32. On the third round, Tugendhat was eliminated as Sunak got 115 votes, followed by Mordaunt on 82, Truss on

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Kemi Badenoch’s last chance

Kemi Badenoch has one last chance. With Tom Tugendhat out on Monday evening, the MP for Saffron Walden is now bringing up the rear in the contest to replace Boris Johnson. With 58 votes from MPs, Badenoch is still substantially behind the third-placed Liz Truss on 71, with Penny Mordaunt coming second on 82 and Rishi Sunak far in the lead on 115. This would seem to confirm that Tory MPs want to offer their members a choice between A New Boris (Sunak) and either The Maybot Strikes Back (Mordaunt) or Return of the Maggie (Truss). Sunak and Mordaunt are continuity candidates and a victory for either would signal that

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

It’s impossible to know which crisis to take seriously

As I write this, the first day of the heatwave has just dawned. FEAR COMES THE SUN is the Daily Mail headline, while the Mirror has plumped for BLOWTORCH BRITAIN. The Telegraph maybe laments that its house style eschews the use of capital letters for ‘Heatwave meltdown brings Britain to a halt’. At the same time, there is a counterwave of people scoffing sceptically at all this heated alarm. The meme of a cheerful-looking sun with ‘I survived the summer of 1976’ is doing the rounds across social media, and there are a few contrary souls in public life saying that a spot of sun never did them any harm,

Amber Athey

Prince Harry should stop lecturing Americans

Washington, DC Prince Harry is once again mouthing off about American politics despite a rudimentary understanding – at best – of our founding principles. The pampered Brit delivered a speech at the United Nations on Monday insisting that we are witnessing a ‘rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States’. Prince Harry, who only lives here because his wife dreams of doing animated voiceovers for Netflix, routinely opines on our constitution with all of the British pomposity that led to the Revolutionary War. Newsflash: Americans do not like it when foreigners tell us what to do or how we should feel, and yet Prince Harry (do I even have to

Nigel Jones

Boris Johnson is irreplaceable

It has been less than a fortnight since Boris Johnson’s premiership exploded so spectacularly just three short years after his triumphant election victory, and he became the latest Tory PM to perish at the hands of his own party. Yet two weeks on, the people who brought him down are already wondering if they hit the right man and what, or who, on Earth will follow him. This outbreak of assassins’ remorse is scarcely surprising given the parade of political pygmies and snake oil salespeople who have been demonstrating their dubious wares on our TV screens in recent days. The sad truth is that for all his manifold faults and