Politics

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

Tuesday

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Parliamentarians plot to ruin China’s G20

It’s a big week for fans of high politics and hobnobbing. Prior to the launch of Sunday’s COP26 shindig there is first the small matter of the G20 summit in Rome. And while the attention of many attendees – chief among them Britain’s Boris Johnson – will no doubt be on green gambits and climate diplomacy, there are fears that other crucial issues risk being overlooked in the dash towards Net Zero. Chief among these are the various abuses committed by President Xi’s China towards the Uyghur Muslims and the effective destruction of Hong Kong. Xi himself is not expected to physically attend the summit, not having left China since

Monday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will education be the big Budget loser?

Which departments will fare the worst from this week’s Budget? It won’t be the Department for Health and Social Care. Over the past few days, new funding announcements have appeared in the papers meaning the NHS will be handed another £5.9 billion. That’s in addition to the £12 billion a year investment it will receive as a result of the health and social care levy. Meanwhile, Whitehall sources suggest that Michael Gove has had some luck in his push for more funds for the levelling up agenda. Where the mood music is less positive is education. When Sir Kevan Collins stepped down from his role as Boris Johnson’s education catch-up tsar over the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How serious is the government about Net Zero?

The green agenda is leading the news, with Boris Johnson on a PR mission to sell his environmental plans to the country (and sceptical Tory MPs) ahead of Cop26. Several documents were published last week, including the much-delayed Heat and Building strategy, the Net Zero strategy and the Net Zero review which is meant to offer some idea of how much exactly the whole agenda will cost. Downing Street is pushing their environmental policies as a gradual transition rather than something that could drastically impact household finances. But how might this work in practice? Tomorrow, The Spectator is hosting its own virtual Cop26 summit (you can get tickets — free and open to

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: SNP councillor insists ‘all cities have rats’

Mr S had not intended to provide a rolling blog of COP26. But with the UN’s green games less than a week ago, things in host city Glasgow go from bad to worse as the world’s leaders prepare to jet in to tell the rest of us how to save the planet. Unite and GMB today confirmed their bin men, school cleaners and janitorial staff will be the latest workers out on strike during the eco-summit, joining the RMT’s train drivers and the GBA’s lawyers on the picket lines. At what does point does industrial action become a general strike…? And it’s that decision by the refuse collectors to walk out which will compound

Christopher Snowdon

Do we want the nanny state tracking our every step?

The best thing that can be said about the government’s latest anti-obesity scheme is that it’s cheap. For now. The new HeadsUp app, which will track people’s diet and exercise regimes and reward them with cinema tickets, clothes vouchers and the like, has a price tag of £3 million. This is peanuts in public health terms. The NHS burns through £3 million every eight minutes. It amounts to 4p for every man, woman and child in the UK. The bad news is that it is only a pilot scheme. If bribing people with their own money is seen to ‘improve rates of physical activity and inspire healthier eating’, as the Office

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Saint Jacinda backs a two-tier society

For many so-called liberals, Jacinda Ardern seemed to be the perfect premier. Warm, empathetic, progressive, above all – moderate – the New Zealand Prime Minister was lionised by the London intelligentsia as the ideal model of a liberal, centrist leader who saved her country by locking down during the pandemic.  But now the shine is coming off the blessed Jacinda as some in the West start to see her all-too human failings. Having managed to irritate both right and left with her clamp down on immigration and complacency on China, Ardern has now admitted what many others have been scared to admit: that her Covid restrictions will mean the emergence of a de-facto

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What can we expect from Budget Week?

13 min listen

It’s Budget Week and Rishi Sunak has already telegraphed a lot of what we can expect from it, branding it as a good news affair including NHS spending and minimum wage reform…but who stands to feel the pinch? Katy Balls sits down with James Forsyth and Kate Andrews to discuss the Budget as well as the rising Covid numbers and the chances of the implementation of the government’s Plan B.

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Baroness Hale’s post-judicial jaunts

Baroness Hale has evidently been enjoying life since retiring as President of the Supreme Court in January last year. Hale, once dubbed the ‘Beyoncé of the legal profession,’ became the toast of Remainers everywhere after her withering slap-down to Boris Johnson’s prorogation bid in 2019.  Now ensconced on the lecture circuit, the former academic has spent the past eighteen months being showered with those baubles beloved of the establishment: academic honours galore, an Oxford fellowship, a gushing interview in the New Statesman, the obligatory slot on Desert Island Discs and, of course, a book deal with a leading London publisher. Hale’s memoirs – Spider Woman – is a nod to the brooch she wore when delivering

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Why did we decide that Covid was over?

Look, I don’t know much epidemiology. Can’t pretend to. So what follows is, necessarily, a personal finger to the wind. But perhaps it chimes with your experience.  First time round — back in the days when we were all huddled indoors, leaving the house only to stand on the doorstep of a Thursday night to bang pans with a wooden spoon, or making solo expeditions to a denuded supermarket where we do-si-dohed around each-other in the aisles… yes, back in those days, I didn’t know very many people who got Covid. Acquaintances, the odd friend. Some scary stories. Some scarier statistics. But not so many ‘rona stricken friends. Could we inch

Sunday

Steven Barrett

Is the European Court of Justice about to unravel?

For the European Union to work, its law must be supreme. All member states have courts, but those courts submit to the EU’s own court, the European Court of Justice (the ECJ). The UK knew and accepted this. By the time the Lisbon Treaty was signed, everybody knew this. That is why Poland and Germany are both legally wrong to have denied that EU law is supreme and declared that their national courts have the final say. Legally speaking, both have done a unilateral declaration of independence: taken back control. An important article examining the crisis has laid this bare. While it’s quite technical (the EU’s power lies in these boring-but-powerful

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Covid Plan B will not involve furlough

Rishi Sunak – Plan B will not involve furlough This Wednesday will see the Chancellor’s second budget of the year. As always, the contents are hotly anticipated, but Rishi Sunak was reluctant to give too much away this morning. It has been reported that the new Health Security Agency is sounding out local authorities about the implementation of the government’s ‘Plan B’ for trying to control the coronavirus over the winter months. Andrew Marr asked Sunak if Plan B meant a return to a scenario very much like the one experienced this time last year: RS: The Plan B that we’ve set out does not involve the same type of

Thomas Lorman

How to beat Orbán? Copy him

Opposing Viktor Orbán is a formidable task. Support for his coalition hovers at around the 40 per cent mark while the parliamentary system makes it harder for opposition parties to break through. By 2018, all of the opposition parties, most of which are firmly on the left, realised they were individually incapable of breaking through. They began fielding joint candidates and had some early success when Gergely Karácsony won the mayoralty of Budapest. So they agreed late last year to select a common candidate for the prime ministership at next spring’s elections. Last weekend, a political outsider, Péter Márki-Zay, became the candidate. Márki-Zay’s appeal comes from the idea that he

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Will Sajid Javid really fire 106,000 unvaccinated NHS workers?

When Sajid Javid was interviewed at Tory party conference recently, he was asked if he’s going to start firing unvaccinated NHS staff, given that care workers are about to lose their jobs under ‘no jab, no job’ rules. He said he was considering it, which would be quite a move. The unjabbed may make up a small percentage of the NHS workforce of 1.6 million people. Today’s Sunday Times says that he has decided to press ahead by introducing legislation that will make vaccinations ‘a condition of employment’ for health workers. This would follow what Joe Biden has done in America — where all medical employees face vaccine mandates and companies with more

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Is Rishi ready to splurge?

Is Rishi Sunak losing his battle within the Cabinet to promote fiscal responsibility? We’ll find out this week, when he unveils his Budget and three-year Spending Review on Wednesday, but there were hints this morning that more spending is coming down the track. Speaking to Andrew Marr on BBC One, Sunak laid out the principles that guided his Budget process this time round: ‘Strong investment in public services, driving economic growth by investing in infrastructure, innovation and skills, giving businesses confidence and then supporting working families. Those are the ingredients of what makes a stronger Budget and that’s what we will deliver next week.’ This is not the language of

Simon Clarke

It’s time to prepare for winter Covid restrictions

Earlier this week, the health secretary Sajid Javid said in a Downing Street press conference that the government was not yet ready or willing to activate its Covid ‘Plan B’. His announcement came after the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) argued last week that Plan B measures – such as mandatory masks, working from home and vaccine passports – should be prepared for now to reduce the need for tougher restrictions in the winter. Both Sage and the health secretary will have been keeping a close eye on the number of Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths, all of which have been rising steadily this month. The worry, of course, is

Peter Apps

The dark side of ‘insulating Britain’

Let me start with some statements of fact. The planet is heating up dangerously fast with devastating consequences for everyone that lives on it and if we don’t stop pumping carbon into the atmosphere we have no future as a species. In the UK, a major source of our carbon emissions comes from homes and a large part of that is because we burn gas whenever we put the radiators on. Each UK household emits around 2.7 tonnes of carbon every year heating their home. That’s utterly unsustainable and must stop. To some the answer is to insulate our homes so tightly that we no longer need to use much

Saturday

Annabel Denham

Boris Johnson should trust the market to solve climate change

In a 368-page document published this week, the government announced its strategy to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 and confirmed its target for all electricity to come from low carbon sources by 2035.  It’s difficult to imagine worse timing for the release. An energy crisis is exposing the failures of decades of massive state meddling in the market. Insulate Britain have been picnicking on the M4 and M25. And on Wednesday a leak of documents showed Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels. None of this has weakened the Prime Minister’s resolve, though that’s

Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray, Owen Matthews, Lionel Shriver

29 min listen

On this week’s episode, we’ll hear Douglas Murray on how the Prevent scheme has lost sight of its founding intention. (00:43) Then Owen Matthews on Rome’s rubbish. (12:35) And finally, Lionel Shriver gives her review of Dave Chappelle’s transgressive new Netflix Special. (19:20) Produced and presented by Sam Holmes

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LSE takes £1.5 million from China

Boris Johnson might insist that the UK will not ‘pitchfork’ Chinese investment but it seems not everyone in government agrees. Liz Truss, the new Foreign Secretary, has made headlines today for saying what many on her back benches believe — that Britain cannot be dependent on China and allow it a role in our nuclear plants or the G7.  That fundamental divide on how to approach Beijing is not merely confined to Westminster, but rather something that extends across industry, civil society and of course, academia. One of the ways the Chinese Communist Party has sought to extend its overseas cultural influence is by Confucius Institutes. They run educational and cultural