Keir starmer

Thursday

James Heale

The left’s fightback against Labour has begun

If there is a hallmark of Keir Starmer’s leadership, it is a willingness to bash the left. For five years, he has repeatedly sided with his moderate factions to make Labour electable. Corbynites have been purged from parliament and the party machine. Principles and policies have been changed to meet the electorate’s approval. Last summer’s election result appeared to vindicate the Prime Minister’s strategy. But with Starmer’s authority crumbling, the British left is aiming to reassert itself and wreak its revenge from outside, rather than inside, the Labour party. ‘This Labour government is here to appease Reform. We are here to defeat Reform’ Three groups pose a threat to Starmer.

Thursday

Charles Moore

Who still supports Keir Starmer?

Successful political leaders hold in their minds some idea of what Mrs Thatcher called ‘Our People’. In this context, I do not mean the whole population of the country they seek to lead, or the core of the party they belong to. I mean that group of people with whose aspirations they most wish to identify. In making that identification, they combine direct self-interest – getting their floating vote – with a wider view about who are most important for the nation’s future prosperity and good order. In the Thatcher era, such people were the famous C2s, first-generation home-buyers, millions who could expect not only to earn but also to

Thursday

Andrew Gimson

Varun Chandra: the most important adviser you’ve never heard of

The porousness of the Establishment, and its reluctance to advertise its activities, are illustrated by the career of Varun Chandra. At the age of 40, he sits as business adviser at the right hand of the Prime Minister, accompanied him to the meeting on Monday with Donald Trump at Turnberry, and is credited with playing an invaluable role in the recent trade talks in Washington. Before the general election, he used his innumerable high-level contacts to persuade business that Labour would be a better bet than the Conservatives. About himself he has preserved an almost immaculate discretion. He has no Wikipedia entry and is not in Who’s Who. Almost everyone

Toby Young Toby Young

Make Trump Britain’s prime minister

When I was a young man, the claim that Britain was in danger of becoming the 51st state was a political slur mainly thrown about by the left, particularly those who objected to the presence of US military bases. But there was some anti-American sentiment on the right, too – Enoch Powell, for instance, had a dislike of America’s hostility to the Empire that dated back to his service in the second world war. I’m even guilty of some anti–American prejudice myself and wrote a memoir in which I tried to convey that my failure to take Manhattan in the mid-1990s was because I wasn’t willing to sell my soul

Thursday

Tim Shipman

Can anything stop Reform?

A close associate of Nigel Farage received phone calls from three civil servants in the past week, asking how they might help Reform UK prepare for government. Officially, mandarins won’t begin talks with the opposition until six months before a general election, which might be nearly four years away. And Reform currently has just four MPs. But behind the scenes, the source reveals: ‘I’m personally getting middle-ranking civil servants in various departments asking if they can help – people who actually understand how to get things done. They don’t want to lose their jobs, but they want to tell us what’s going on.’ MPs may have departed Westminster for recess,

Thursday

Douglas Murray

The pointlessness of ‘smashing the gangs’

‘Smash the gangs’ is the fascinating slogan that Keir Starmer’s government has settled on for tackling illegal migration. What is the government going to do to stop the hundreds – sometimes thousands – of people sailing across the Channel and coming into England each day? ‘We will smash the gangs,’ they say. The slogan is interesting for reasons beyond the tough-guy rhetoric. For it suggests, of course, that it is people-smuggling gangs that are the main problem. Perhaps our government sees them as being like press gangs back in the day, roaming around northern France, waylaying passing migrants and forcing them on to rubber dinghies to begin a new life

Dot Wordsworth

Where did ‘husband’ come from?

‘Am I housebound?’ asked my husband as I was discussing with him the complicated history of the name for his role in life. ‘No, darling,’ I said. ‘You’re the one in the house who just is or lives there.’ Only later did I tell him that the word bond, behind the -band of husband, sank in worth with the years, following the same path as boor, churl and peasant. Whereas I as a housewife enjoy a comparatively transparent label, any husband’s title is obscure. It is simply a house-bond, but the first element of husband, hus-, no longer seems like house, and the -bond element is often mistaken for a

Tim Shipman

‘Let Keir be Keir’: inside the cabinet’s away day

Labour ministers face a range of terrible political choices, but when the cabinet met for an away day at Chequers last Friday, the first dilemma was what to wear. ‘There was panic beforehand about what “smart-casual” meant,’ one ministerial aide says. Both Hilary Benn and John Healey turned up in dark suits and red ties. ‘To be fair to the Defence Secretary, he hadn’t seen that bit of the invite,’ a No. 10 official explains. ‘Whereas in Hilary’s case, that is what his smart-casual looks like.’ By contrast, Peter Kyle, the Science Secretary, turned up in what one observer describes as a ‘tech bro AI T-shirt’. Finding an economic policy

Thursday

Laurie Penny

Corbyn’s new party is Starmer’s creation

Have you ever been to an activist meeting? A proper one, not a cocktail party for potential donors. If Keir Starmer has been to one lately, I suspect he didn’t stay past the minutes or he would have been better prepared for what happens when you try to get a roomful of lefties to point in the same direction. Starmer’s team have been so busy admiring their enormous majority that it has taken them a while to realise that they are trapped with 400 left-wingers in every shade of red from post-Soviet carmine to the most delicate salmon pink, all of them high on victory and spoiling for a fight.

Tim Shipman

The reign of Rayner

Angela Rayner declined an invitation to a hen do last weekend where the entertainment included axe-throwing. ‘She was worried about photos,’ says one attendee. The Deputy Prime Minister had to see a family member instead, but a close ally admits: ‘She is more careful about attracting that sort of publicity than she used to be.’ Robbed as we are of the sight of Rayner waving an axe around when the Prime Minister is suffering his worst weeks in Downing Street, it is tempting to ask, as Metternich didn’t quite say of Talleyrand: ‘What did she mean by that?’ It’s a far cry from the days when she screamed that the

Saturday

Tim Shipman

Labour’s first year (in review) with Tim Shipman & Quentin Letts

22 min listen

Cast your mind back a year. Labour had just won a storming majority, promising ‘change’ to a stale Tory party that was struggling to govern. But have things got any better? In the magazine this week, Tim Shipman writes the cover piece to mark the occasion of Labour’s first year in government. He takes readers through three chapters: from Sue Gray (freebies scandal and winter fuel cut) to Morgan McSweeney (a degree of professionalisation and dealing with the Donald) to the point at which ‘things fall apart’ (assisted dying, the welfare vote and Reeves’s tears). On the podcast, Tim is joined by The Spectator’s James Heale as well as sketchwriter

Thursday

William Moore

Claws out for Keir, Mamdani’s poisoned apple & are most wedding toasts awful?

46 min listen

This week: one year of Labour – the verdict In the magazine this week Tim Shipman declares his verdict on Keir Starmer’s Labour government as we approach the first anniversary of their election victory. One year on, some of Labour’s most notable policies have been completely changed – from the u-turn over winter fuel allowance to the embarrassing climb-down over welfare this week. Starmer has appeared more confident on the world stage but, for domestic audiences, this is small consolation when the public has perceived little change on the problems that have faced Britain for years. Can Starmer turn it around? Tim joined the podcast alongside the Spectator’s editor Michael

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

How Labour governments always end

Couldn’t we just skip to the end? I’m old enough to have seen this so often: must I sit through each dreary succeeding scene again? Parties in government are animals: they have natures; their natures do not change; they are incapable of being different animals; and what follows, follows. A Labour government finally runs out of money and enters a period of slow-motion disintegration, ending in a chaos of finger-pointing and blame-shifting, still whimpering about social justice as the bailiffs move in. Already the suspense has gone. There will be many twists and turns, probably over years rather than months, before this government pulls apart at the seams; but, honestly,

Dot Wordsworth

The politics of pips

‘What larks!’ exclaimed my husband archly, assuming that a connection between personal independence payments and Pip in Great Expectations would be amusing. But it is true that the political wrangle over personal independence payments would have been harder to popularise without the cheery abbreviation. Some of us remember Denis Healey’s promise to ‘squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak’. He might also have made similar promises about the rich in general. His inspiration was Sir Eric Campbell Geddes, First Lord of the Admiralty from 1917. ‘We will get everything out of her that you can squeeze out of a lemon,’ he said of Germany in December 1918. ‘I will squeeze

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Welfare rebellions, Glastonbury chants and Lucy Letby arrests

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, in the face of a rebellion by 120 backbenchers over the welfare bill, undertook to limit to new claimants restrictions on personal independence payments (Pip). Modelling by the Department for Work and Pensions predicted that 150,000 people might be pushed into ‘relative poverty’ by the revised welfare cuts, compared with 250,000 before. Still fearing defeat, the government made more last-minute concessions, postponing changes to Pip rules until after a review by Sir Stephen Timms, the disability minister. The government then won the second reading by 335 to 260, with 49 Labour MPs voting against. It was not clear that the eviscerated bill would

Monday

Tim Shipman

Does Starmer still want to be PM?

13 min listen

There have been a number of navel-gazing interviews with the Prime Minister over the weekend. Across thousands and thousands of words, he seems to be saying – if you read between the lines – that he doesn’t particularly enjoy being PM. In better news, Labour seems to have quelled the welfare rebellion. Liz Kendall is making a statement in the Commons this afternoon, in which she will outline the concessions that Labour has made on its controversial welfare bill. All in, the cost has spiralled by £3 billion per calendar year – which an already put-upon Chancellor will have to find. Whilst it remains the largest rebellion of this government,

Friday

Oscar Edmondson

Welfare U-turn: is Keir in control?

15 min listen

Keir Starmer has performed a screeching about-turn on his flagship welfare reforms, all in the hope of quelling the rebellion from more than 120 MPs who have been promised ‘massive concessions’ over concerns about disability benefits. These include moderating the bill to make it easier for people with multiple impairments to claim disability benefits, and offering to protect Personal Independence Payments (PIP) for all existing claimants for ever – to ensure there would be no detriment from the reforms for existing claimants, a key concern of the welfare rebels. But new claimants will be affected, as ministers desperately try to stop ever-spiralling disability and sickness welfare spending climbing to £100

Thursday

Michael Gove

Who’s having a worse week: Keir or Kemi?

20 min listen

It’s bad news all round for Labour and the Tories. An MRP poll out today forecasts that if an election were held tomorrow, Labour would not only lose its majority, but fall behind Reform to become the second-largest party. The Conservatives would be reduced to a mere 46 seats, placing them fourth behind the Lib Dems. But that’s just the beginning of their collective woes. On the Labour side – despite Keir Starmer’s charm offensive and ongoing talks with Labour MPs about potential changes to welfare policy – the number of rebels appears to be growing. The feeling increasingly is that someone might have to go, and calls for ‘regime

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Starmer at sea, Iran on the brink & the importance of shame

46 min listen

Starmer’s war zone: the Prime Minister’s perilous position This week, our new political editor Tim Shipman takes the helm and, in his cover piece, examines how Keir Starmer can no longer find political refuge in foreign affairs. After a period of globe-trotting in which the Prime Minister was dubbed ‘never-here Keir’, Starmer’s handling of international matters had largely been seen as a strength. But as tensions escalate in the Iran–Israel conflict, global events are beginning to create serious challenges. They threaten not only to derail the government’s economic plans but also to deepen divisions within the Labour party, particularly between the leadership and much of the parliamentary party. Tim joined

Dot Wordsworth

The politics of ‘rocket boosters’

Sir Keir Starmer said the other day that he wanted to put rocket boosters under AI. It’s not the only thing he wants to put rocket boosters under. In September he said that ‘new planning passports will put rocket boosters under housebuilding’. He wasn’t the only one. When it was his turn to be prime minister, Rishi Sunak promised to ‘put rocket boosters’ under construction in areas that were already built up. Usually rocket boosters are put under things, but Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, was more anatomical in his thoughts, praising a youth mobility scheme that would ‘put rocket boosters up businesses in London’. Even so, in