Madeline Grant is The Spectator’s assistant editor and parliamentary sketch writer.
48 min listen
This week on Quite right! Michael and Maddie turn their sights to Westminster’s latest espionage scandal – and the collapse of the case to prosecute two men accused of spying for China. Was the case dropped out of incompetence, or out of fear of offending Beijing? As Michael puts it, ‘Either we’re not being told
Yvette Cooper managed to say ‘let me be clear’ twice, in a couple of minutes during her interview with Nick Robinson on the Today Programme this morning. For seasoned Labour-watchers, the phrase ‘let me be clear’ was one inherited from the grand panjandrum of political deceit – Tony Blair himself – and is almost always an
40 min listen
Recorded live in Manchester, during the Conservative Party conference, Michael Gove sits down with Tim Shipman, Madeline Grant and Tim Montgomerie to discuss how the Tories can turn their fortunes around. Do the Tories need to show contrition for their record in government? Has the party basically been split ever since the Coalition years? And
Prior to Kemi Badenoch’s arrival the Conservative party played us recordings of her voice piped over dramatic lift muzak. Conference seasons are always bizarre – gatherings as they are of remarkable sub-species of people who look at British politics and think ‘wow, that’s exciting’ rather than ‘oh God, what now’ (and I include myself in
42 min listen
This week, Michael and Maddie record Quite right! in front of a live audience at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester – with attendance down, the big question is whether Kemi Badenoch can survive as leader of the opposition. There is the unmistakable air of fatalism among MPs staring down electoral annihilation – but would
Robert Jenrick has been walking a tightrope. Over the course of the Conservative party conference he has been having to navigate the tricky situation of playing both the prince over the water and the loyal lieutenant to Kemi Badenoch. Mr Jenrick so far has played his cards very well. He is successfully channelling both Bonnie
What is the purpose of Mel Stride? I don’t ask this to be personal I just genuinely don’t know. In some ways it’s a problem for all shadow chancellors: the Treasury is the most practical of departments, the opposition can only theorise about it. The economy ought to be the only trump card the Tories
The voice of Keir Starmer echoed round the Conservative party’s conference hall. ‘Free of charge digital ID’ chanted the disembodied Dalek. If people had come hoping to escape the Grand Adenoid then hard luck. Kemi Badenoch’s welcome address to the Tory faithful began with a dystopian video compilation of some of the Labour government’s ‘greatest
48 min listen
This week, Michael and Maddie report from the Labour party conference in Liverpool and unpick Keir Starmer’s big speech. Was his attempt to reclaim patriotism for Labour a genuine statement of values – or a clumsy exercise in stereotypes about steelworkers, chip shops and football nostalgia? And why does Labour’s attack line on Nigel Farage
‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’. So wrote Dr Johnson. Sadly for the good Doctor he was an avowed Tory and so, according to the rules of Labour conference, a de facto evil and probably racist monster. Alas, if only the Labour party had heeded the great moralist’s words, we might have avoided the
In German they have a concept whose equivalent is sorely needed in discussion of British politics: ‘anti-talent’. It means exactly what it sounds like – the opposite of talent, something any given person is uniquely ill-suited to doing. The Chancellor criticised ‘the nagging voices of decline’, which, when you’re standing a matter of inches away
Day one of the Labour conference – oh frabjous day! The annual gathering of people who hate each other just a little bit more than they hate themselves was underway. You really do wonder where they find some of these characters. Sir Keir arrives in Liverpool as the least popular PM in history. Worse than
‘The Global Progress Action Summit’ is exactly the sort of event Keir Starmer loves. It’s a sort of Blairite seance, where all the ghouls of a dead liberal order are summoned and live again to spend 24 hours doing their favourite thing: bloviating. It’s a pretty cast-iron rule that an organisation with two words for
48 min listen
This week, Michael and Maddie lift the lid on the strange rituals of party conference season and why the ‘goldfish bowl’ reality of a week in Birmingham (or Manchester, or Liverpool) often leaves politicians with ‘PTSD’. They then turn to the government’s revived enthusiasm for digital ID cards. Is this a sensible fix for illegal
Ed Davey’s speech at the Lib Dem conference began with a darkened stage on which you could just about make out outlines of people and quotes by and about him booming over the sound system. Like most things the Lib Dems do, it felt a bit like a self-consciously modern re-interpretation of Shakespeare by a
How do you solve a problem like B Johnson? It has troubled the Conservative party since his departure, not least as they presumably do not relish the idea of him going down in history as the last person ever to win them a majority. Interestingly, Labour rarely mentions him, preferring to resurrect Liz Truss again and
We’re back again in the House of Peers this week as they once again give a leaden beating to Leadbeater’s suicide bill. Even when discussing matters of life and death, there is something very reminiscent of Gilbert and Sullivan about the place. The most famous G&S operetta set in the House of Lords is, of
There is just something innately funny about seeing Keir Starmer and Donald Trump together. Two men so obviously different; in character, interests, ability and shape, forced together by circumstance. Watching them at the press conference today was no exception. They put me in mind of Bialystock and Bloom from The Producers: the bombastic Broadway shyster
A middle-aged woman wearing what looks like Princess Diana’s infamous ‘revenge dress’ and a balaclava from an IRA funeral approaches the hole in the floor. The raccoon that lives there, clearly used to her presence, looks up expectantly. Sure enough, the woman empties a bag of dry food into the hole. The scene is framed
54 min listen
This week Michael and Madeline unpick the shock defection of Danny Kruger to Reform UK’s ‘pirate ship’ – as described by Michael – and ask whether this coup could mark the beginning of the end for the Conservative party. They also dive into Westminster’s most charged moral debates: the assisted dying bill in the Lords
