All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Home Secretary Priti Patel downgraded our national terrorism threat assessment last week from ‘severe’, where it has sat for the last four years to ‘substantial’. Attacks have now been reduced from ‘highly likely’ to ‘likely’. We’re never given the full analysis of the reasons for the changes in alert levels, which is independently assessed by
Wales has not been the source of good electoral tidings for the Conservatives for a very long time. The party last won a general election here in ’59 – that’s 1859. Since then, Wales has had successive lengthy eras of Liberal and then Labour dominance, with the Conservatives rarely able to mount a serious challenge.
Every election campaign has a wobble. But the Tories broke new ground in managing to wobble before they’d even launched their campaign. However, the formal start of the Tory campaign on Wednesday night does appear to have stabilised things, I say in The Sun this morning. I understand that the Tories own polling still shows
The first official week of the Conservatives’ election campaign did not go as many inside CCHQ had hoped. A cabinet minister resigned, a row erupted over insensitive Tory comments on the Grenfell fire and a candidate stepped down over previous comments on rape. Despite this, the Conservatives end the week with a sense of cautious
Thirty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, socialism is back in fashion. The anniversary is a good occasion to reflect on some of the lessons that we have collectively un-learned, or perhaps never learned properly in the first place from the fall of Communism. The division of Germany into a broadly capitalist
It should be a national scandal, but it isn’t. Downing Street’s decision not to release the intelligence and security committee’s report on Russia ahead of the election has generated predictable and understandable anger and confusion. Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Emily Thornberry asked the government what it had “to hide” by not releasing the
If you’re a regular podcast listener, you might have noticed a slight rebranding – we’ve rolled out a fresh look across our podcasts, plus, what was known as The Spectator Podcast is now The Edition. But fear not: underneath the fresh lick of paint, they’re the same podcasts that you know and love. So can
Nicola Sturgeon says she wants to form a “progressive alliance” after the election to evict Boris Johnson from 10 Downing Street – which in practice means an arrangement with Labour to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister (this could be a formal coalition though Sturgeon told me she would prefer a less constraining arrangement). And she
It will be a sight for sore eyes on Sunday when leaders of the two main parties lay their wreaths at the cenotaph. Prime Minister Boris Johnson leads a government that last month failed to include legislation in the Queen’s Speech to protect military veterans from prosecution; Jeremy Corbyn’s close and long associations with the IRA
Should rabbis dabble in politics? Should they use their influence to persuade their congregation to follow a certain political path? Should this authority extend to interventions in parliamentary elections and other matters of national debate? I pose these questions because in recent days British Jews has been confronted with some dramatic instances of very public
The below is an edited transcript of Ian Austin’s remarks on BBC Radio 4 Today. I only wanted to be a Labour MP. And I only ever really want to be the Labour MP for Dudley. It’s been such a huge privilege to do this job – a job I’ve loved, a place I love.
The two most important speeches to date of the election campaign have been made by the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor, Sajid Javid and John McDonnell, and not by their respective leaders. And it is just possible these will still be the most important speeches in five weeks time, on polling day. Because they set out
When it was revealed this week that the Labour parliamentary candidate in Coventry South, Zarah Sultana, had previously said she would celebrate the deaths of Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu, few would have thought to defend her comments. In fact the candidate herself apologised this week for the remarks she made in 2015. One person
How long should we remember the MPs’ expenses scandal? Should someone who used taxpayers’ money to kit out their home and renovate their swimming pool be allowed a second chance at being an MP? The imminent selection of a Conservative candidate in Sevenoaks raises such questions. Selections are politics in its most raw and spiteful
Will former Labour MPs help the Tories break the red wall? A key plank of the Tory path to a majority consists of winning seats in the Midlands and the North which have been Labour for generations. Many of these areas voted to leave in the EU referendum. The Tory hope is that a well-executed campaign in
The Labour party are not in high spirits today after their election campaign was derailed by the ex-Labour MP, Ian Austin, who this morning urged ‘decent, patriotic’ Labour voters to back Boris Johnson at the election because of Labour’s continued problems with anti-Semitism. Deeply unhappy with the news was Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott,
This is the explosive moment former Labour MP Ian Austin urges voters to back Boris Johnson. Austin, who announced that he was standing down as MP for Dudley North, told the Today programme that Corbyn is ‘completely unfit to lead our country’. He said that despite being a Labour party member since he was a
Anyone who doubts that the far left is more interested in winning the faction fight within the Labour party than a general election, should look at how it has treated Sally Gimson, the Labour candidate in Bassetlaw. At least she was the Labour candidate until yesterday when Jon Lansman, a director of Momentum (it is
On election night on 10 October 1974, the BBC broadcast a special episode of The Clangers, a children’s animated television series. The episode, ‘Vote for Froglet’, satirised the politics of the day, showing the gentle mouse-like Clangers rejecting a divisive two-party politics, essentially saying: ‘Sod off! The whole thing is a waste of everybody’s time!’ No two historical
The murder of Russian defector and fierce Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko was a radioactive wake-up call to many in the West about the nature of the Russian regime. Eight years later, the annexation of Crimea and subsequent invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 were also rightly condemned around the world. It’s safe to say these events
When you ask those at CCHQ why this election isn’t going to be like 2017, one of the answers they give is that Boris Johnson is a better campaigner than Theresa May. Tonight’s Tory launch was meant to show that off. The Tories held it in the evening so that they could have a crowd
In the past few minutes, Tom Watson has announced that he is stepping down at this election. In a surprise letter, the Labour deputy leader says his decision is ‘personal, not political’ and that he is ‘not leaving politics altogether’. In the meantime, he wants to spend more time campaigning on public health. After 35
Oh dear. It’s safe to say the Conservative party’s election campaign has not got off to the best start. On the day of the official launch, the Tories have had a cabinet minister resign and a row over who is to blame for the Grenfell fire drag on. Now, they can add to that list:
This election is going to be particularly discombobulating for the ex-Tory MPs who are now independents. Even though all three of them – David Gauke, Anne Milton and Dominic Grieve – have been through at least four elections each (Grieve has been an MP since 1997, while Gauke and Milton were elected in 2005), this
When John Bercow was House of Commons Speaker, there was a sense on both sides that he was a politician who did not think much of Brexit. Despite the role of Speaker being a supposedly neutral job, Bercow’s decisions regarding Commons procedure led many to suspect that he held strong views on the issue. Now
Will the Scottish Conservatives face near extinction in the snap election? In recent months, talk in the Tory party has turned to what seats the party can pick up in the Midlands, North and Wales to make up for the seats they will lose north of the border. The thinking goes that a combination of
After a torrid 36 hours for the Tory party which has seen one Cabinet Minister resign and another have to apologise, Boris Johnson spoke from the steps of Downing Street before heading out on to the campaign trail. He argued that he didn’t want this election but it had to happen because Parliament was frustrating
Boris Johnson’s election campaign has got off to a dismal start but it seems Labour is determined to catch up. Diane Abbott appeared on the Today programme this morning to discuss her party’s anti-Semitism problem. But Mr S isn’t convinced her defence will convince many voters that things are all OK: Nick Robinson: Do you
Alun Cairns has resigned as Wales Secretary following claims he knew about a former aide’s role in the collapse of a rape trial. Cairns said he made the decision to quit ‘in light of continued speculation’ over what he called a ‘sensitive matter’. Cairns’ former advisor Ross England was condemned by a judge after making
The cliche, from my memory already creaking under the political strain, is that oppositions never win elections, governments lose them. Well this election is only a few hours old and Boris Johnson and his team – who let’s not forget – have been gagging for this election for months are doing a spectacular job of mucking it
James Cleverly was never going to have the easiest time this morning. The Tory party chairman, considered a safe pair of hands, had been sent out to do the broadcast round, after the party became embroiled in an row about Jacob Rees-Mogg’s comments on Grenfell yesterday, which were unhelpfully amplified by the Tory MP Andrew
Armistice day this year marks one hundred and one years since the guns were silenced on the western front. Four years of commemorations of the ‘seminal catastrophe’ of modern times, the calamity from which other calamities sprang, has also meant a wave of ‘new’ accounts of varying quality, none more so than for the causes
Oh dear. Andrew Bridgen is a friend of Jacob Rees-Mogg, but it’s unlikely the Tory MP will be thanking his colleague for his latest intervention. Bridgen attempted to defend his chum on BBC’s PM programme just now following a furious reaction to Rees-Mogg’s comments about the Grenfell fire tragedy. Bridgen said that Rees-Mogg’s remarks were