Politics

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

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Are Labour’s sleaze attacks working?

The one crumb of comfort the Tories are trying to take from the North Shropshire result is that Labour didn’t win the seat. Keir Starmer’s party came third with just under 10 per cent of the vote, a fall of 12 per cent from the 2019 result. Tory party chairman Oliver Dowden has been touring the broadcast studios today saying ‘there is no love lost for the Labour party — they should have been surging ahead and in fact they were sinking’. Is this really true? The fear in progressive circles was that voters switching from the Tories would end up being split between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, thus meaning

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Year in Review – 2021

42 min listen

Douglas Murray joins Freddy Gray for a look back at yet another tumultuous year in American politics. They discuss the irreconcilable divide between left and right, the origins of Covid-19, the war in Afghanistan, the fallout from the 2020 election and much more, including the temptations of a bottle of Glenmorangie whiskey.

Francis Elliott

How Boris Johnson survives

When the Conservative party looks in the mirror what does it see? Beyond the bruising, what face peers back from the glass? The problem for the party is that no two MPs can agree – and that just might be Boris Johnson’s best chance of survival. Contradictions shatter a unified surface that might once have offered the chance of self-reflection for the Conservative party. Some of the cracks are obvious, such as the one running through Downing Street over the proper size and limits of the state, for example, or that which separates No. 10 from many of its backbenches over Covid public health measures and liberty. It has been obvious

Steerpike Steerpike

How bad is North Shropshire by historic standards?

So, how bad is the North Shropshire by-election result? All across the country, that is the question which Tory members, both in Parliament and out are now asking themselves. Winner Helen Morgan took the seat by nearly 6,000 votes, overturning a Conservative majority of almost 23,000 on a 34 per cent swing. Turnout was 46.3 per cent. The seat voted Leave in 2016 by 60 per cent and had been held by the party since 1832, with the exception of a few years during the Edwardian period. The seat had a 40.6 per cent Conservative majority in 2019 – the equivalent of Labour losing Leeds Central, Cardiff Central, or Islington South, home to Hilary

Steerpike Steerpike

Sleaze scandal scuppers second jobs

So Owen Paterson managed in a month what 100 years of opposition efforts couldn’t: turn his true blue seat to yellow for the first time since the aftermath of the Boer War. Mr S wonders if his newly elected successor Helen Morgan will show her appreciation in her maiden speech – ‘thanks Owen, couldn’t have done it without you.’  But even though he’s gone, Paterson’s influence still seems to be felt on the green benches. For it seems that the sleaze scandal which his downfall triggered has spooked older MPs into quitting lucrative second jobs, judging by the newly-updated register of members’ interests. A number of senior Tories have shed many of these

Steerpike Steerpike

Boris snapped maskless on train

Oh no! Is this another highly unfortunate snap of the Prime Minister caught in flagrante — this time sat maskless on a South Eastern train yesterday? It certainly looks that way.  But closer inspection reveals that Boris Johnson is in fact wearing a mask under his chins, the sort of sloppy face-not-covering that could have us common citizens fined or even arrested if we dared to do the same.  The more beady eyed of Steerpike’s readers might have spotted (another) great Prime Ministerial excuse, however. There appears to be a Greggs bag in the foreground of the image and Boris might be holding a sandwich. Munching on a bit of

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The joy of Boris’s bungled by-election

By any reasonable standard the result in the North Shropshire by-election must be reckoned the funniest in years. Perhaps even decades. All governments need checking from time to time and desserts are always served justly. So this is a welcome result and not just because it is, viewed objectively, hilarious. Nevertheless, it is quite an achievement to lose a seat held by the Conservatives, in one shape of another, for 120 years. To do so just two years after winning more than 60 per cent of the vote and a majority of almost 23,000 votes is quite something. To do so to the Liberal Democrats, who took just ten per

Steerpike Steerpike

Bookies turn on Boris

Betting markets are famously more reliable than pundit prognostications or political polls. Steerpike was intrigued, therefore, to note this morning that bookmakers are now saying that Boris will not be party leader by Tory conference next autumn. On the Betfair exchange overnight, the price has moved towards Boris Johnson being gone by autumn as the favourite outcome. At the same time, 2022 is now evens to be the year in which Boris is replaced in No. 10. The more interesting market, though, is who will replace Johnson as Conservative leader. On Betfair’s Sportsbook, the favourite is Chancellor Rishi Sunak at 2/1. He’s followed by Liz Truss at 7/2 and then the perennially ambitious

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Boris Johnson is now in political purgatory

We have just witnessed one of the most dramatic defeats in the history of British by-elections. A 38 per cent swing against the governing party has happened only a handful of times in postwar politics and tends to be a sign of bad things to come. The last time the Tories lost a safe seat to the Lib Dems was Christchurch 1993, presaging the great Conservative collapse of 1997. So losing North Shropshire is devastating for the Conservatives: they haven’t just lost a stronghold but have seen the all-but-dead Liberal Democrats take it with a huge majority. This happened because so many of voters there — one of the most pro-Brexit, pro-Tory parts

James Forsyth James Forsyth

If the Tories can lose in Shropshire, they can lose anywhere

The Tory defeat in North Shropshire is a far worse result for the party and Boris Johnson than their loss in Chesham and Amersham. Chesham and Amersham could be put down to local anger about HS2 and disquiet over planning reform. It was also a seat ripe for tactical voting given it had voted Remain and the Lib Dems were a clear second. North Shropshire, by contrast, is a heavily voting Leave seat where the Liberal Democrats were in third place. There was also no single policy driving voters away from the Tories in the way that planning reform did in Chesham and Amersham. If the Tories can lose this

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

It’s time to take the Lib Dems seriously again

As far as seismic by-election results go, North Shropshire is one for the ages. The Tories had held onto the seat for 200 years before they lost to the Liberal Democrats last night. And their majority at the last general election was over 22,000. The Lib Dems managed to increase their share of the vote from 10 to 47 per cent, leapfrogging Labour in the process. But is North Shropshire the beginning of a Lib Dems resurgence? And, more importantly, how worried should the Conservative party be about the party’s rise? For starters, this is an even worse result for the Tories than their Chesham and Amersham by-election loss to

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How did the Tories lose North Shropshire?

11 min listen

The Conservative majority of 23,000 was wiped out overnight in North Shropshire, with Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan winning the by-election by nearly 6,000 votes. Tory MPs are already making their frustrations known, with Roger Gale saying Boris Johnson has ‘one more strike and he’s out’, and John Redwood saying it’s ‘Time to listen to Conservatives.’ Is Boris Johnson’s leadership in danger? Isabel Hardman speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. On the podcast, Isabel asks: ‘You can change your staff, you can change your policies, but if the common denominator in all of these crises is Boris Johnson, what are you going to do?’

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Tzipi Hotovely Edition

30 min listen

Tzipi Hotovely is the current Israeli Ambassador to the UK. She was formerly a politician in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, having climbed the ranks to become deputy foreign minister. On the episode, she talks to Katy about her 2,500 strong wedding reception, campaigning for mother’s rights in Israel and what modern-day anti-Semitism look like. They also discuss the time when she had to be escorted out of the LSE for her own safety, in the face of an aggressive student protest. She reflects:  ‘Think about it. Does it make sense? I’m the only foreign ambassador that needs to have such heavy protection when I go on campus. Aren’t campuses all about freedom

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Tory defeat in North Shropshire as Lib Dems take former safe seat

Ministers are waking up this morning to a big Tory upset in North Shropshire. In the by-election sparked by the Owen Paterson sleaze row, the Liberal Democrats have won the seat from the Conservatives overturning a majority of 22,949. In what has long been regarded as a safe seat for the Tories (they have come out on top in the area for almost 200 years), the Liberal Democrats won 17,957 votes with the Conservatives managing just 12,032 votes. This gives the Lib Dems a majority of 5,925. Labour came third with 3,686 votes. This result clearly will be tied to Boris Johnson’s leadership and the difficult time the Prime Minister

Thursday

William Moore William Moore

Christmas Special

90 min listen

Welcome to the special Christmas episode of The Edition! In this episode, we look at five major topics that dominated the news this year and the pages of The Spectator. First up a review of the year in politics with our resident Coffee House Shots’ team James Forsyth, Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. We discuss how Boris seemed to make such a strong start to the year through the vaccine rollout, but squandered this goodwill with several own goals. We also touch on some of the big political moments of the year: Partygate, the Owen Paterson affair and of course Matt Hancock. (00:39) Next, we go global and look at

Steerpike Steerpike

John Cleese’s cancel culture hypocrisy

‘Always look on the bright side of life’ sang Monty Python. But it seems that for at least one of the legendary sextet, such sentiments are now a thing of the past. For the octogenarian John Cleese has today announced he will complain to the BBC over an interview conducted with one of their reporters. What heinous crime did the journalist in question commit? Which unfortunate anchor is to blame? How much trouble is the Corporation in this time? Well, judging from the footage in question, the answer to Mr S seems, er, not a lot. Cleese was riled earlier by an interview with BBC World News presenter Karishma Vaswani who chose to ask him about his

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Is this lockdown by stealth?

12 min listen

Today saw record numbers of Covid cases with infections higher than the January 2021 lockdown. In reaction to soaring cases, Boris Johnson held a press conference yesterday. Although nothing new was announced, he pushed further on the booster program and encouraged the public to rethink their socialising ahead of Christmas.Many people believe the PM is encouraging a lockdown by stealth, with hospitality venues struggling to cope under staff shortages coupled with vast cancellations. But should financial support be put in place for them throughout this tricky time?Also today, the Bank of England has increased interest rates to 0.25% in reaction to inflationary pressures.‘We have to consider, does changing interest rates

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ben Wallace takes aim at the misuse of the military

On this week’s Spectator TV, Andrew Neil interviews the Defence Secretary Ben Wallace. The pair discuss Ukraine, Taiwan, Iran and the fallout from the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But, perhaps, the most striking part of the interview came when Wallace talked about his concern that politicians are turning to the military as a first resort not a last resort. He said that once the Covid crisis has passed, the Ministry of Defence will need to ‘reassert that we are the last resort, not the first’. Wallace was critical of both Whitehall and the devolved administrations for the speed with which they have turned to the military to help in recent times.

Steerpike Steerpike

Revealed: Durham students’ chilling demands over ‘Rod gate’

The spirit of the Stepford students is back with a vengeance at our top universities, judging by the hysteria which greeted Rod Liddle’s remarks at Durham. Having organised both a walk out and a protest in response to Rod’s after-dinner speech, angry undergraduates have now organised an open letter, which Mr S has just received. As Professor Tim Luckhurst, the college principal who invited Rod, fights for his job amidst a furious backlash, the militant mob smell blood and are now using the incident to demand further concessions from the university. Co-signed by the university’s junior common presidents – the student satraps of each Durham college – it claims that

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why Omicron may not lead to a surge in hospitalisations

There were two takeaways from last night’s press conference: firstly, the hard data showing that the number of recorded cases of Covid had surged by 19,000 – or 28 per cent – in a single day. Second was the assertion that, as a result, the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed. What was lacking was the hard data on hospitalisations and the number of people in hospital. Although you would never have guessed from the tone of the conference, these both fell. The number of people admitted to hospital – a figure which runs a few days in arrears owing to a delay in the four constituent nations of