All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
With two years to go until the next election, constituency battles are well underway across the country. Labour candidates are scrapping it out with one another for selection in winnable seats, with one such case being Chingford and Woodford Green. This London seat was just 1,263 votes off going red last time, with the added
It’s day one of the national campaign of the Tory leadership campaign – and Rishi Sunak has a mountain to climb. The former chancellor has already admitted that he is the underdog in the race, with the majority of membership polling indicating Liz Truss will be selected as the next prime minister. A YouGov poll released today
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So far, most polls of Tory members show that they’d prefer Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak when it comes to the next Conservative party leader. With ballots for the membership phase going out at the beginning of August, it’s vitally important for Sunak to break through to members as soon as possible. Can he catch
The One Nation brigade were out in force last night and Tom Tugendhat was the talk of the town. He may not have not made it into the final two but the former leadership contender received a hero’s welcome at summer receptions for both the Tory Reform Group and Conservatives in Communications. Flanked by a
Soon after Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February a rash of stories appeared in the western media speculating that the Russian president was dying, or at least very seriously ill. The evidence offered was circumstantial but superficially compelling. This ranged from the absurdly long tables the dictator uses to keep his distance
It’s been a bit of a bad week for the British Museum. High temperatures forced staff to close the site early on Monday and Tuesday, damaging revenue flow and prompting renewed criticism of its BP sponsorship deal. Then today Sadiq Khan – the museum’s own local mayor – called on the government to find a way of
Mario Draghi has resigned as Italian prime minister – for the second time in a week. But this time his resignation was accepted by President Sergio Mattarella, with a snap election expected in September or October. The resignation came after a fiery debate in parliament yesterday in which the populist Five Star Movement joined the
Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have only a few weeks to make their case before postal voting begins on 1 August. Sunak has vowed to be ‘the heir to Margaret Thatcher’ in a comment piece in the Daily Telegraph today, in which he promises to deliver a ‘radical’ set of reform, without expanding much on what that
Comedian Dave Chappelle was due to perform a sell-out stand-up show last night. But just hours before he took to the stage, the show was called off. We don’t know why Chappelle’s show was axed at the last minute. But we can read between the lines of the statement put out by First Avenue, the
The prospect of Liz Truss becoming the United Kingdom’s third female prime minister is antagonising all the right people. Almost the entire Remainer establishment – including state-sponsored leftist comedians, professors of European studies, AC Grayling, senior figures at the Times newspaper, Irish government insiders – is recoiling at the thought. It is only partly as
It’s been a bruising week for Penny Mordaunt. Six days ago she was the favourite to be Prime Minister; now she’s out of the running after a series of searing criticisms from colleagues and the press. A repeated line of attack she faced was the suggestion that she wasn’t entirely across her brief, with Lord
A reforming prime minister has been ousted by a fractious, divided parliament. The central bank is raising interest rates to try and stem inflation that is running out of control. Everyone is being urged to use as little electricity as possible as officials scramble around to secure enough energy, and the currency is crumbling as
So, another unelected Italian government is collapsing, and the putatively pro-democratic media are all calling it a ‘dark day.’ In many ways, it is. Mario Draghi’s resignation (his second in the space of a week and this time for real) is bad news for Brussels and the Eurozone. The war in Ukraine was the catalyst
Over a 20 year period, former German chancellors Gerhard Schroder and Angela Merkel, handed Russian President Vladimir Putin a vice-like grip on Europe’s energy security. Schroder, who enjoyed a well-publicised bromance with Putin, oversaw the start of Gazprom’s Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. With unseemly haste, soon after he stepped down as chancellor, Schroder became
You’re the American president on a visit to former coal plant in Massachusetts. You’re ostensibly there to deliver remarks about climate change. You’re facing criticisms for being out-of-touch, rambling and gaffe-prone. So what do you decide to do? Start suggesting you’ve got cancer in front of the world’s press! An implausible-sounding scenario perhaps but that’s exactly
And then there were two. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss now go to the membership. There’s much talk today about how brutal this contest will be. Penny Mordaunt’s supporters were arguing this morning that people should vote for her to avoid pitting these two against each other. But that would be false comfort. The argument between
After all that, Sunak entered the final members’ round to be Tory leader and UK PM with a comfortable 24 vote margin of advantage over the runner-up Liz Truss. But her 113 votes are enough of a mandate from MPs to present Sunak with a serious challenge during the summer contest. What is striking is
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Conservative MPs have chosen the final two candidates to be presented to the Tory membership in the final round of this leadership contest. Over the rest of the summer, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will be travelling around the country to attend dozens of hustings with Tory members. Will this phase be less rancorous? Or
The Tory grassroots have got themselves a real economic debate this summer: Rishi Sunak’s ‘Thatcherite’ economic philosophy vs Liz Truss’s ‘Reaganite’ plans to boost growth. It’s not the most obvious distinction, given the former prime minister and president were great free-market allies. Both also cut tax. But it’s about the order of priorities: like the
Will global warming condemn Britain to more fires? Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, has been widely quoted this morning comparing recent fires around the capital to the Blitz. ‘Yesterday was the busiest day for the fire service in London since the second world war,’ he said – climate change caused the heatwave which ‘led to
Today Boris gave his last performance at Prime Minister’s Questions. But was it his last? He left the House hanging at the end. Speaker Hoyle began the historic session with a soggy little homily praising Boris for seeing us through ‘dark times during the pandemic’. Then, laughably, he told MPs to adopt a ‘respectful manner’
Britain’s next Prime Minister will be either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss. Refresh this page for the latest developments. 4.45 p.m. – Truss vs Sunak will be a philosophical war Kate Andrews writes… The Tory grassroots have got themselves a real economic debate this summer: Rishi Sunak’s ‘Thatcherite’ economic philosophy vs Liz Truss’s ‘Reaganite’ plans
Boris Johnson has vacated the office of Prime Minister for Liz Truss. Spectator readers may recall his handover notes from the last time he stepped down from one of the best jobs in the world. Read his final piece as The Spectator’s editor here (published 17 December 2005). It is an eternal and reassuring fact of human nature that
After a summit in Tehran yesterday, Putin spoke about the massive Russia to Germany Nord Stream 1 pipeline – currently closed for its annual maintenance period and due to reopen tomorrow. There’s a big question as to whether it will and at what capacity, given that Germany is at Russia’s mercy. Putin said that everything
Penny Mordaunt’s flip-flopping over gender self-ID makes it difficult to know where she stands. But on another issue she has made things abundantly clear: Mordaunt doesn’t understand how the internet works. If she makes it to the final round of the leadership contest this afternoon – and indeed to No. 10 – Mordaunt has vowed
Boris Johnson’s farewell Prime Minister’s Questions was rather like his premiership: full of the unexpected, rather chaotic and a bit of a let down. Westminster has already visibly moved on from Johnson, even though he remains in office until early September, and so Keir Starmer devoted his questions to asking Johnson about the candidates to
Oh dear. It seems that the Mordaunt camp has done it again. Just hours after suggesting that Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss would ‘murder’ the Tory party if they were elected, another suspect #PM4PM tweet has been doing the rounds. It’s about the Trade minister’s ability to win a general election, citing a YouGov poll
It was Boris Johnson’s final time at the despatch box today but there was little sign of it from some of the contributions. Scratchy, verbose, partisan: and that was just the Labour MPs. Still, that didn’t faze the outgoing PM who, to rapturous applause and cheers from his benches, told the House about ‘some words
Westminster is understandably obsessed with the question of who makes the final two of the Tory leadership race, but today has also brought a reminder of the crises that the new Prime Minister will have to deal with from day one. The European Commission is calling on all EU member states to cut gas use
The last stage of the parliamentary rounds of the leadership contest is here. This afternoon, MPs will vote to decide which two out of Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak progresses to the final round, in which they are whittled down to one by the party membership. The new leader will be announced at
There was an unmistakable whiff of an Addams Family portrait about the cabinet photocall that marked the final gathering of Boris Johnson’s top team. Surrounding the departing Prime Minister were many ministers who will have suspected that they are not going to be in the same ministerial positions, or perhaps any ministerial position, when 10
Throughout the leadership race, Penny Mordaunt has sought to portray herself as the cleanest candidate of them all. She has bemoaned the ‘toxic politics’ and ‘smears’ of others and bewailed how ‘this contest is in danger of slipping into something else’. She, by contrast, has pledged to run a ‘truly clean campaign’ and ‘committed to
Wages are rising. The economy is growing. The stock market is on the way up, and exports are booming. As he prepares for a long summer trying to persuade the membership of the Conservative party to make him prime minister, Rishi Sunak probably wishes he could be transported to some parallel universe where he could