Politics

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

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Liz sets up propaganda unit

With her many Instagram snaps, personal videographer and army of special advisers, Liz Truss knows a thing or two about spin. But now it seems the Foreign Secretary has applied her love of brand management to the department she runs too. The invasion of Ukraine last month was preceded and met with a bombardment of pro-Moscow propaganda on traditional and new media from the Kremlin’s useful idiots, excusing and justifying Putin’s actions. And now it seems Truss and her department have decided to fight fire with fire, turning back to the Cold War playbook to counter an old enemy in new forms. For the Foreign Office has, in recent weeks, set up

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Boris Johnson is operating in a new political reality

Boris Johnson is attempting to carve out a role for himself as the figure who can lead the West in its response to the invasion of Ukraine. Over the weekend, the Prime Minister penned an article for the New York Times – in which he set out his ‘six-point plan’ to defeat Putin. The points are closer to general principles than firm action. They include forming an ‘international humanitarian coalition’ for Ukraine and resisting Russia’s ‘creeping normalisation’ of its actions.  Russia’s decision to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine has certainly stopped all talk of an imminent confidence vote in the Prime Minister over partygate Today Johnson will attempt to

Richard Ekins

How Britain can speed up sanctions against the oligarchs

In contrast to its leadership in relation to economic sanctions against the Russian state, the UK has been much too slow in imposing sanctions on named Russian oligarchs and officials. The problem is not a lack of political will. Ministers have found it very difficult to swiftly impose sanctions on Russian nationals because of the terms of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 and the legal risks to which they give rise. Time then to change the law. The government is moving to address the problem. The Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill has been brought forward and is set today to have its second reading and to complete

Sunday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Why did Boris prioritise Lebedev’s peerage during the pandemic?

Like me, you probably remember the third week of March 2020 as though it were yesterday. Covid-19 was on these shores in scale. Hospitals were filling up with acutely sick people. On 16 March 2020, we’d been told by the Prime Minister to isolate at home for 14 days if we had Covid symptoms, to work from home where possible and to avoid unnecessary contact with anyone. On 23 March, Boris Johnson would announce full lockdown. It felt like the worst crisis since the second world war. It was the worst crisis since the second world war.  So perhaps the most interesting revelation in today’s Sunday Times story about the peerage

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Raab calls for Putin to be ‘held to account’

Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab joined Sophie Raworth this morning to address the continuing developments in Ukraine. It is widely believed that the Russian army has failed to meet most of its key objectives since the invasion began on the 24 February. Within the first few days, Russian president Vladimir Putin had already given the command to place Russia’s vast nuclear deterrence forces on ‘high alert’. Raab suggested that Putin was just sabre-rattling: Raab: Putin should be ‘held to account’ at the Hague Boris Johnson has already described Putin’s actions in Ukraine as a war crime, comparing his behaviour to ‘the last years of Slobodan Milosevic’, the Serbian leader who became

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory power couple’s TV love-in

It appears David Lammy isn’t the only MP building a lucrative media career. Turning on GB News yesterday, Mr S enjoyed seeing not one but two Tory backbenchers presenting a show together: Esther McVey and her husband Philip Davies. The pair are very much the Beyonce and Jay Z of the Commons, having enjoyed parliamentary freebies together for a number of years.  And now the couple seem to be making the most publicly out of their private lives by hosting a programme on which they regularly invite their fellow Conservative MPs. Yesterday’s offering for instance boasted not one but two of McVey’s colleagues, with both Treasury minister John Glen and veteran

Brian Wilson

Island communities are being devastated by the SNP’s ferries fiasco

On a recent television tour of Britain’s coast, Michael Portillo found himself in awe of the Outer Hebrides. Why would more people not live and work in this ‘paradise’, he wondered from a vast sun-kissed beach near where I live on Lewis. It was a fair question on such a day but the intrepid traveller had struck it lucky. Living on an island involves a high degree of dependency on ferries. And the reliability of the service provided by the state owned Caledonian MacBrayne, known as CalMac, on Scotland’s west coast is at an-time low for reasons that go far beyond the uncertainties of weather. This week alone brought news

Peter Apps

The state failures that led to the Grenfell Tower fire

This month, five years after the Grenfell Tower fire and four years after the inquiry began, ministers will finally be called to account for the government’s failure to prevent the awful fire. Four former Conservative ministers and one Liberal Democrat will be cross examined – with the inquiry focusing on the years following the Lakanal House fire, which killed six in south London in 2009. But the evidence heard in recent weeks – from former civil servants and representatives of organisations which advise government on fire safety – has already exposed what looks and sounds like a monstrous abdication of the state’s duty to protect the lives of its citizens.

Saturday

Sam Holmes

Freddy Gray, Lionel Shriver and Philip Patrick

21 min listen

On this week’s episode, we’ll hear from Freddy Gray on his time spent on the Poland–Ukraine border. (00:52) Next, Lionel Shriver on the return of actual badness. (06:28) And finally, Philip Patrick on the strange east Asian practice of hiring a ‘White Monkey’. (15:13) Produced and presented by Sam Holmes Subscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher.

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will Europe remain united against Putin?

18 min listen

Kate Andrews talks to James Forsyth and the historian Orlando Figes about whether Europe’s united response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine will hold, and the effect of sanctions on Russia’s economy and its oligarchs.

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Sage admits its models were ‘at variance to reality’. But why?

The Sage committee was set up as a pool of experts on tap to advise government. During the pandemic, it mutated into something different: a group whose advice ended up advocating long lockdowns. Its regular meetings have now been discontinued, with questions being asked in No. 10 about whether it’s time to disband Sage and set up a new structure – in the same way that Public Health England was reformed and became the UK Health Security Agency. There will be plenty of lessons to learn. But we might not have much time to learn them: a new variant or (given the growth of genomic sequencing) a new pathogen could come along at any

Friday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Russia’s invasion: one week on

12 min listen

It’s been just over a week since Vladimir Putin began his invasion of Ukraine and in that time we have seen some truly unprecedented events: A former comedian leading an extremely effective homeland resistance against one of the world’s largest armies, an estimated million people fleeing over the borders and a more unified Western response than we have seen in decades. Kate Andrews talks with The Spectator’s Editor Fraser Nelson and its Deputy Editor Freddy Gray to assess the shocking events we have seen this week.

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Is Russia Today finished?

As the British authorities debate whether to ban the propaganda channel of a savage imperialist power, Russia Today is making a decent first of banning itself. Workers have been walking out for a week. The invasion was too much even for staffers who had spent years demeaning themselves by licking the boots of a dictatorship. Even if Sky and YouTube had not effectively closed the channel by pulling it from their platforms, RT would have faced extreme difficulty in continuing to broadcast from London, one ex-staffer told me. About half his former colleagues had quit, including large numbers of production staff the Russians needed to keep the channel on air. One had

Steerpike Steerpike

Sadiq’s strikes shambles

Oh Sadiq Khan. The mayor of London was swept to office back in 2016 on a wave of Labour optimism about their plans for the great metropolis. One of his main pledges was for ‘zero days of strikes’ as ‘every day there’s a strike, it causes huge misery and inconvenience to Londoners.’ Khan claimed, prior to his election, that walkouts were ‘a sign of failure’ and that ‘as mayor, what I’d do is roll up my sleeves and make sure that I’m talking to everyone who runs public transport to make sure there are zero days of strikes.’ Fast forward to 2022 and a very different picture emerges. For this week’s industrial action by

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Britain should spend more on defence

Britain must spend more on defence. As I say in the Times today the defence budget is already being increased but it is hard to argue that it is sufficient given how changed the security landscape now looks with Putin’s Russia launching an all-out invasion of a sovereign, European state. Until this week, the UK could argue that it would only increase defence spending still further when other European members of Nato had pulled their weight and were hitting the 2 per cent of GDP target. But now Olaf Scholz has announced that Germany will be spending 2 per cent – or more – by 2024, which poses another dilemma for London: does it

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

A wave of anti-Russian hysteria is sweeping across the West

McCarthyism is an overused word, I know. But really, what other word will do to describe the sacking of a conductor for refusing to publicly denounce the leader of Russia? This is the case of Valery Gergiev, who was sacked by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra this week for failing to condemn Putin. Mr Gergiev was literally given an ultimatum. As the Guardian’s headline put it: ‘Denounce Putin or lose your job: Russian conductor Valery Gergiev given public ultimatum.’ Gergiev refused to denounce Putin and so he lost his job. His management team dumped him too, while acknowledging that he is ‘the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with

Thursday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

In Ukraine and China, a power-obsessed Vatican is betraying heroic Catholics

24 min listen

Four million Christians in western Ukraine belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which since the end of the 16th century has adhered to a Byzantine rite while recognising the authority of the Pope. For this reason these Ukrainian Catholics are despised by the Russian Orthodox and its political masters: Stalin tried to force them to become Orthodox again and threw their leader, Cardinal Slipyi, into jail, where he remained from 1945 until 1963.  And how was his heroism rewarded? Pope Paul VI denied him the title of Patriarch and, after Vatican II, the Catholic Church set about Westernising their traditions – for example, discouraging them from having married priests.

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

Why is the UK so slow in sanctioning oligarchs?

10 min listen

Though Britain has been sending weapons to Ukraine, and led Europe’s push to get Russia taken out of the Swift banking system, the government has been criticised for being slow in sanctioning Russian oligarchs. What more should we be doing? Max Jeffery talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory pro-Russia lobbying group disbands

The Ukraine crisis has claimed another victim. The Westminster Russia Forum – previously called the Conservative Friends of Russia – has just announced it will be winding up its lobbying operation here in London. As recently as last week, the group were reported to be going ahead with a ‘multilateral relations conference’, scheduled for tomorrow. But now, following a wave of cancellations, boycotts and sanctions across London and the rest of the western world, the WRF has announced it will close. In a statement to his supporters on Tuesday, chairman Nicholas Cobb announced his resignation and that of the entire board. He said that his group had aimed ‘to promote the equitable, neutral and

John Ferry John Ferry

The SNP’s flagship economic strategy is pure window dressing

It was an odd launch event for what had previously been a much-touted initiative. While all eyes were on the war in Ukraine, Scotland’s finance minister, Kate Forbes, took to Dundee to set out Scotland’s new ten year National Strategy for Economic Transformation. Such events usually involve a room full of press, lots of questions, photographs, one-on-one interviews and then widescale coverage in the Scottish media. This event however was characterised by complaints from print journalists that they were excluded on spurious grounds of ‘ongoing Covid restrictions’, despite the finance minister speaking to a room full of business people and some select journalists to which this rule seemed not to