Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
11 min listen
David Cameron finally issued a statement over the weekend on the ongoing Greensill scandal. Gordon Brown also waded in this morning, telling the Today programme that there should be a five-year cooling-off period before former PMs can lobby. Will this but the issue to bed? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman.
It was just a fortnight ago that the BBC’s grumpiest new presenter Simon McCoy announced he was off to join GB News after 17 years at the Beeb. It has not taken long for the onetime viral iPad star to fire his first salvo at the Corporation’s editorial choices, taking aim on Friday to criticise Auntie for running blackout tributes to the late Duke of Edinburgh. McCoy, who is renowned for his apathetic reportage on a generation of royal births, took to Twitter to complain about the saturation coverage, prompting a stand off with current BBC presenter Martine Croxall. Several commenters took issue with the news anchor’s apparent willingness to take a pop at
Following the sad news on Friday of the Duke of Edinburgh’s death, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey tweeted out his condolences writing that ‘As a mark of respect to the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen and the Royal Family, the Liberal Democrats are suspending the national election campaign today.’ A civil gesture of commemoration, one might think. But while the party’s leading MPs like Layla Moran and Alistair Carmichael are following the example of ministers in respecting a media blackout until after the funeral, no such restraints are on local activists out campaigning across the country throughout this weekend. Mr S was sent a number of leaflets on Saturday which showed members out in Tower
At The Spectator’s data hub, updated daily, we keep track of the situation here and around the world. There have been several milestones recently: antibody levels hitting 55 per cent amongst the general population and above 85 per cent for pensioner-aged (who account for the vast majority Covid deaths). Vaccination is paying off: the below graph shows a breakdown by age group. The under-65s are in red. The UK vaccine rollout has been in the world’s top five. And for all its recent troubles, AstraZeneca has shown in real-world tests to be every bit as effective as suggested in trials — as evidenced by antibody growth. This morning we added another table, seeing where
In February Mr S reported that onetime Labour power broker Jon Lansman was set to stand for Cornwall County Council in May’s local elections. Lansman, the founder of leftwing campaign group Momentum, left his party’s national executive committee in December, swearing that ‘My legacy isn’t complete’ with an afterlife in the politics of potholes appearing to be a fitting end to 40 years of leftwing activism. But now the onetime Bennite’s bid for power appears to have collapsed after Lansman was left off the list of nominated candidates for the Mousehole, Newlyn and St Buryan electoral district. Residents there now only have three candidates to choose from – William Bolitho of the Conservatives, Ian Flindall for the Greens and
At the start of the pandemic, we talked a lot about herd (or community) immunity. But talking about the journey to herd immunity became toxic as it was variously linked to high infection rates, sacrificing the elderly, and the NHS becoming overwhelmed. The debate on herd immunity was restarted last week by Professor Karl Friston, of University College London, who told the Daily Telegraph that the 73.4 per cent vaccinated reached on Monday meant that ‘based upon contact rates at the beginning of the pandemic and estimated transmission risk, this is nearly at the herd immunity threshold.’ This is an outlying view: other academics questioned this analysis. Matt Hancock said
‘Suppose a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a room where there is a person he longs to see and speak with; and be there locked fast in … he awakes, and is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which he stays willingly in … I ask, is not this stay voluntary? I think nobody will doubt it: and yet, being locked fast in, it is evident … he has not freedom to be gone.’ Happy in a room he cannot leave, the man John Locke imagined during his musings on free will might almost be a metaphor for contemporary Spain in the European Union. Awakening from
Momentum, the Labour campaign group dedicated to keeping Corbynism alive, this week demanded that Keir Starmer commit to introducing a proportional voting system should he win election, replacing the current first past the post model for electing MPs. ‘A popular consensus is building across the labour movement for a change to our first past the post electoral system, which has consistently delivered Tory majorities on a minority of the vote and hands disproportionate power to swing voters in marginal constituencies,’ said Gaya Sriskanthan, Momentum’s co-chair. ‘Momentum will join the charge for PR, as part of a broader commitment to deep democratic change and alongside our strategy of building popular support
14 min listen
The government’s vaccination plan is clearly to achieve herd immunity. So why won’t anyone say that? Katy Balls talks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth about the disparity between the strategy and the messaging on the government’s current Covid strategy.
Russian heavy armour is on the move, and Moscow is making no move to hide it. Is this the prelude to a new upsurge in fighting in south-eastern Ukraine, or especially brutal sabre-rattling? The problem is that we don’t know – and this challenges our usual responses. The war in the Donbas – neither civil war nor straightforward foreign intervention, but a messy and toxic mix of the two – has tended to flare up at the end of winter. As thick spring thaw mud begins to dry, campaign season begins. Politically, it already has. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, both on its own merits and also, presumably, because his poll
Last month there occurred an event so culturally seismic that it made, well, a barely perceptible dent on the news headlines. Not just one but two actual women were nominated for the Best Director Award at the Oscars, a category that has for many years now been open to five nominees. It was the first time that two women have ever made it into contention in the same year and, by their audacious presence at the top table, Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) have at a stroke increased the number of women the Oscars have ever nominated for this prize from five to seven. (Only one,
Political parties like to think of themselves as being a ‘broad church’ when tackled about conflicting views among members. It makes it all the more ironic then that it was a visit to a church which exposed a challenging split in the Labour party. Keir Starmer’s trip to Jesus House last week resulted in him apologising for associating with people who believe homosexuality to be a sin. The Labour party can ill-afford to keep excluding groups of voters. The difficulty for Starmer (and for many who wish there to be a viable alternative government) is that left-wing politics is increasingly an ‘AND’ movement. This means that to be welcome on the
What have the Conservatives got against left-wing lawyers like me? Boris Johnson told the Commons recently that the government was ‘protect[ing] veterans from vexatious litigation pursued by lefty lawyers‘. It was far from the first time lawyers had been targeted. The Home Office’s most senior civil servant conceded last summer that officials should not have used the phrase ‘activist lawyers’ in a video blaming them for disrupting the asylum system. But it seemed that the Home Secretary didn’t get the message. A few weeks later, Priti Patel claimed that ‘removals (of illegal migrants) continue to be frustrated by activist lawyers’. At the Conservatives’ virtual party conference, Patel then vowed to stop ‘endless legal claims’ from
On the 23rd anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement, it’s safe to say celebrations here in Northern Ireland will be muted at best. Over the past ten days, hundreds of rioters wielding bricks, bottles, stones and petrol bombs in Belfast have injured more than 70 police officers, most notably in the west of the city, where working-class loyalists and republicans live cheek by jowl. In terrifying scenes, a bus driver narrowly escaped injury when his vehicle was petrol bombed and left to coast down a street. The trigger for the violence was the decision by Northern Ireland’s public prosecution service not to bring charges against 24 Sinn Féin
13 min listen
The Treasury has released text messages that the Chancellor sent to David Cameron, in response to the latter’s repeated lobbying. While Labour is trying to land a blow on Rishi Sunak as a result of this, can they succeed? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and James Kirkup, Spectator contributor and Director of the Social Markets Foundation.
Calls to abolish the Welsh parliament are nothing new: Wales rejected devolution in 1979 and voted only by the smallest of margins for partial self-government almost 20 years later. In spite of this, the Welsh political establishment have embraced the potential of devolved politics over the last two decades. And so the devo-sceptics have never had a way to deliver their mission. But they didn’t go away. Quite the opposite: abolitionists have been given a new lease of life throughout the last 12 months. They have latched on to the backward perception that the Welsh cannot govern themselves, and have attacked Mark Drakeford and Labour throughout the pandemic for making
If you think public health authorities in England are overbearing, spare a thought for the Czechs. Parents who fail to have children vaccinated face being fined or having their offspring excluded from nurseries. Now, in a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights, has backed that policy. But even critics aghast at the thought of compulsory vaccinations should welcome the court’s verdict. Why? Because human rights judges should not be butting in here. The Czech law bends over backwards to accommodate welfare concerns: vaccinations are free; there are exceptions for good medical reasons; and any vaccine-generated injury is automatically compensated. Yet it was still an obvious target for human rights challenge on
Oh dear. Britain’s most read newspaper Metro caused something of an overnight storm with the first edition of its front page. Splashing on the easing of lockdown restrictions on Monday, its headline read ‘The Glorious Twelfth’ underneath a dramatic shot of projectiles being thrown at the peace wall in Belfast titled ‘Bad Old Days are Back’ ‘The twelfth’ of course has some powerful resonance in Northern Ireland, to celebrate the triumph of the Glorious Revolution and victory of the Protestants of King William III over the Catholic King James II at the subsequent Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Every 12 July the Orange Order marches its members through streets across the country
Why does Keir Starmer seem set on following the example of the French Socialist party, and leading Labour into electoral oblivion? The sad truth is that it could all have been so different. Back in September 2019, at the height of the Brexit saga, it was obvious that Corbyn’s Labour was increasingly contemptuous of Britain’s white working-classes. But instead of reaching out to Red Wall voters, Starmer has doubled down on this misguided approach. The miserable state of the French left should serve as a warning to Labour that you betray your traditional voters at your peril. In the last few years, France’s Socialist party has imploded, reduced to such penury that they
Washington, D.C. is universally known as a town divided, a place where compromise and dialogue are often sacrificed at the altar of competing agendas. But on one issue, at least, there is consensus: the 764-mile Nord Stream 2 pipeline that will pump Russian natural gas into Germany is a project that must be stopped. And the United States needs to use all of the economic and diplomatic tools at its disposal to do it. In both congressional testimony and in meetings with Nato allies, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reiterated the official U.S. view that Nord Stream 2 is ‘a bad deal’ for Europe, a potential cash windfall