Politics

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

Friday

2 Jul 2021

Boris bids to reset Anglo-German relations

Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel have just held a joint press conference following their meeting at Chequers. The usual contrast in styles was on display; Merkel picked her words very cautiously while Johnson made sausages jokes—quipping that the ‘wurst was behind us’ when it came to chilled meats and the Northern Ireland protocol. On a more substantive level, Merkel expressed concerns about the size of the crowds at the Euro 2020 games; and remember they’ll be even bigger for the semi-final and final at Wembley. But Johnson argued that the vaccines and pre-match testing made these pretty safe events. The Johnson-Merkel relationship has been defined by Brexit. But today’s visit was

Katy Balls

What went wrong for the Tories in Batley and Spen?

What went wrong for the Tories in Batley and Spen? That’s the question Conservative MPs are asking after the party failed to win the seat from Labour in yesterday’s by-election. In a way, it’s a strange question to ask. The seat has been Labour since 1997 and wasn’t seen as a key target by Conservative Campaign Headquarters ahead of the 2019 election. It isn’t an obvious potential Tory gain. Yet after George Galloway decided to stand, the general consensus among pollsters, pundits and Conservative MPs was that the Tory party was on course to win it. Tory MPs were tripping over themselves to reference Batley and Spen at Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions As a

Douglas Murray

The case against Soldier F

The case against ‘Soldier F’, a veteran charged with the murders of two men and attempted murders of four others on Bloody Sunday, has today collapsed. In March 2019, Douglas Murray wrote for The Spectator about the 1972 massacre and the subsequent Saville Inquiry into what happened. It is more than 15 years since the Bloody Sunday soldiers last appeared in public. For months I sat in the room with them to watch their evidence at Lord Saville’s inquiry. And while Lionel Shriver is right that the sight of terrorists benefiting from an immunity denied to our soldiers is grotesque, there are competing qualms. Not only because British soldiers should

Patrick O’Flynn

How Keir Starmer can rescue his leadership

In January 1990 things looked truly bleak for Alex Ferguson as Manchester United manager. He had not won a trophy in his first two seasons in charge and the third was going badly wrong. With a long injury list and an eight-game streak without a win, fan discontent was reaching fever pitch and media speculation suggested Ferguson was soon for the chop when his team took the field in an FA Cup third round match against Nottingham Forest. Get knocked out of that and all hope of silverware would be gone for yet another year. Fortunately for him, a young lad called Mark Robins popped up to score the crucial

Peter Lampl

The impact of Covid school closures is now painfully clear

If the UK government retains any doubts about the scale of the educational challenge it faces after Covid-19, they can now be swiftly swept aside. The challenge is mountainous. New evidence published today by the Education Endowment Foundation, which I chair, starkly reveals the size of it. The study conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research contrasts the performance of 10,000 Year 1 and Year 2 students (six and seven-year-olds) at the end of the most recent lockdown with the performance of those year groups over the same period in 2019. The findings ought to concentrate minds. Year 1 pupils made on average three months’ less progress for both reading and

Katy Balls

What should Keir Starmer do with the Batley and Spen win?

12 min listen

In an extremely close race Labour candidate and sister to the late Jo Cox Kim Leadbeater has won her by-election with a majority of just 323. What will the opposition do with this narrow but note worthy win? And is it time to for the tories to admit they aren’t as invincible as they first thought? To discuss Katy Balls is joined by James Forsyth and Isobel Hardman.

Rakib Ehsan

Can Labour afford to continue its culture war?

After being soundly beaten by the Tories in Hartlepool and winning a paltry 1.6 per cent of the vote share in Chesham and Amersham, Labour have managed to cling on in the Batley and Spen by-election by 323 votes. While the result gives the party’s under-pressure leader Sir Keir Starmer some breathing space – and will give his party some confidence – holding on to a seat in a by-election with a significantly reduced majority should not be cause for major celebration either. The fact that the left-wing, ‘anti-woke’ firebrand George Galloway won an impressive 22 per cent of the vote in this election should concern Labour’s campaigns team as

Steerpike

A complete history of Galloway’s electoral defeats

Labour’s Kim Leadbeater may be celebrating her triumph in Batley and Spen (though not as much as her leader Keir Starmer) but the by-election was another setback for George Galloway’s efforts to get back into parliament — any parliament. The serial candidate hasn’t been an MP since 2015 and Batley was the 15th time he has stood for elected office, and his ninth defeat. What Steerpike admires most about Galloway is his geographical flexibility: he’s never let attachment to a particular constituency hold him back. From Bradford to Bromwich, Glasgow to Gorton, Comrade Galloway has always gone where the workers needed him. Some call him ‘Gorgeous George’, Mr S prefers ‘GPS

Nick Tyrone

The Tories overplayed their hand in Batley and Spen

Over the course of the past two months, we’ve had three by-elections in England. One of them was a huge Tory gain in a previously safe Labour seat. Another was a Lib Dem by-election victory over the Conservatives in the London commuter belt. Then, yesterday, Labour held Batley and Spen, a seat that has been theirs since 1997. On paper, this wasn’t a bad run of results for Boris Johnson, as head of a party that has been in government for 11 years. Except, no one is going to be talking about it in those terms after Number 10 allowed the narrative to spin away from them completely. Instead of

Steerpike

Watch: George Galloway hits out at Batley result

After a long and often unpleasant campaign, the Batley and Spen by-election is over, with Labour managing to cling on to the seat. Labour’s candidate, Kim Leadbeater, won a paper-thin majority of 323 votes over the Tory candidate, with George Galloway trailing around 5,000 votes behind Labour. Galloway was certainly not happy with the result this morning and gave an impromptu speech outside Huddersfield’s Cathedral House after the count was finalised. The candidate said that the returning officer had refused his request for a re-count, despite the margin of victory being less than 1 per cent and claimed a re-count was necessary, given the fact that there were not enough

David Goodhart

Can we stop migrants crossing the Channel?

How do we stop those pesky boats from crossing the English Channel? How about yet another reorganisation of the Home Office, that most reorganised of all Whitehall departments, as the government announced this week? This is not actually as silly as it sounds. Since the last round of reorganisations, and reorganisations to the reorganisations, the immigration side of the Home Office has been divided into three ‘directorates’: UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), Immigration Enforcement and Border Force. It is now proposed that UKVI and the passport office will form a Services Directorate, that directly interacts with the public, and that the Enforcement and Border Force directorates will be re-merged. This

Stephen Daisley

The price Labour paid for victory in Batley

While Labour’s narrow victory in Batley and Spen will mostly be analysed through the prism of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, a more compelling fault line is the apparent estrangement of some Muslim voters from a party that has until now been able to rely on their support. Labour may have held on but it also showed its hand. During the campaign, Labour’s candidate Kim Leadbeater posed for a photograph with local campaigners sporting T-shirts that depicted Israel as ‘Palestine’, issued both a leaflet and a letter touting her pro-Palestinian credentials (by heaping scorn on Israel, naturally), and defended a grim leaflet clearly geared towards tapping into anti-Hindu and anti-Indian prejudices.

James Forsyth

Labour hold Batley and Spen

Labour have held on to Batley and Spen. In a result that will win some breathing space for Keir Starmer’s leadership, Labour won with a majority of 323 votes. Now, holding on to a seat in a by-election with a substantially reduced majority isn’t a spectacular result for an opposition. But expectations were so low for Labour in this contest, that Starmer will take comfort from this result. If Labour had lost the seat, following their recent defeat in Hartlepool, it would have plunged his leadership into fresh crisis. It would have led to more speculation about a challenge to him. The Tories will be disappointed not to take the

Thursday

1 Jul 2021

Steerpike

Starmer’s critics in pre-Batley booze up

At long last, the bloody, bruising and bitter Batley and Spen by-election is at an end. After eight weeks of campaigning, replete with controversy and allegations of harassment, the results will be finally declared at 5am on Friday morning in this Labour held-seat facing a stiff Tory challenge. If Keir Starmer’s party loses tomorrow it will be their third by-election loss in the same number of months. Today’s Times carries a front page story that Starmer’s deputy Angela Rayner is preparing a leadership challenge, with MPs close to the latter allegedly canvassing support among parliamentary colleagues and trade unions. Rayner herself has come out and publicly tried to distance herself

William Moore

Staged: a handful of VIP events is no substitute for normality

37 min listen

19 July is approaching but what will life after ‘freedom day’ will look like? (01:19) Also on the podcast: what will Angela Merkel’s departure mean for the EU? (14:12) And as many people fled the cities to the countryside during the pandemic, can a case still be made for urban life? (27:26) With The Spectator’s sketch writer and theatre critic Lloyd Evens; playwright James Graham; director of Eurointelligence Wolfgang Munchau; Independent columnist Mary Dejevsky; writer Ysenda Graham and Rory Sutherland, The Spectator’s Wiki Man columnist. Presented by William Moore. Produced by Sam Holmes, Natasha Feroze and Max Jeffery.

James Forsyth

What happens if Starmer loses Batley and Spen?

12 min listen

Reports emerged overnight that Angela Rayner’s allies are ready to mount a leadership challenge if Keir Starmer loses Batley and Spen tomorrow. What will happen if the Tories win another Labour heartland seat? James Forsyth speaks to Katy Balls. On the podcast, Katy says there are similarities between Starmer and former prime minister Theresa May after the 2017 election. Katy says: ‘Authority is slowly draining away from them. They cannot move the top team in the way they wanted to – Angela Rayner is someone who has more authority as a result of Starmer’s reshuffle rather than less.’ James says the problem could’ve been avoided if Labour chose not to let

Kate Andrews

Winding down furlough will reveal the post-pandemic economy

The furlough scheme begins to wind down today, as employers will now pay 10 per cent of their staff’s salaries, while the government continues to stump up 70 per cent of their wages. Employees won’t notice a change to their income, which will still be 80 per cent of their monthly wage, with a cap of £2,500. The question, however, is to what extent employers feel the financial sting, and whether it leads them to scale back their workforce. The numbers on furlough have been coming down steadily since economic activity liberalised in April. According to official government estimates, May alone saw one million people come off the scheme, as

James Forsyth

How Boris Johnson plans to reopen the country

Next week, the government will set out what the reopening will look like. I understand that the current plan is for a comprehensive reopening; though the formal decision on whether to proceed with the 19 July unlocking will only be taken the week before. As I say in the magazine this week, the one-metre rule will be ditched, masks will no longer be compulsory and venues will be allowed to operate at full capacity again. The aim is that all legal restrictions will be removed apart from the requirement to isolate for people who test positive for Covid. Test and Trace will continue to ping those who have been in

Lionel Shriver

The UK’s immigration figures are a fantasy

Journalists filing to deadline are apt to dig only so deep when googling for statistics, which in themselves are sometimes derided as worse than damned lies. Thus we’re often suckers for ‘known facts’. Besides, if the UK’s Office for National Statistics doesn’t produce reliable data, where’s a poor scribbler to turn? Nevertheless, the current uptake of Britain’s offer of settlement status to resident EU citizens exposes even this upright organisation’s immigration statistics as, well, worse than damned lies. Far more generous than the begrudging bureaucratic bramble of reciprocal packages on offer to Brits resident on the Continent post-Brexit, the UK’s settlement scheme for resident EU citizens had, by the end

Isabel Oakeshott

How I missed the Matt Hancock story

I want to apologise: I have let myself down. I let others down too, and I’m sorry. Not because, Matt Hancock-style, I breached social distancing guidelines with a steamy office affair — but because I missed the scoop. I was sent a compromising picture of the then health secretary and his mistress almost a week before the Sun newspaper sensationally revealed their relationship — and I did not believe it was him. Having never knowingly undersold my ability to break big stories, this is embarrassing to say the least. Over the years, my scoops have led variously to the jailing of a cabinet minister (Chris Huhne); the resignation of the

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