Michael Gove is editor of The Spectator.
Shabana Mahmood may be the only Labour politician to have persuaded Rishi Sunak to vote for her. The former prime minister was in the year above Mahmood when they both studied at Lincoln College, Oxford, in the 1990s. When she ran for JCR president, Sunak pledged his support. Meeting Mahmood in her ministerial office this
The post-mortem has begun on a historic set of local elections – but where does each party go from here? Is Reform unstoppable? Is Kemi the one to lead the Conservative rebuild? Do Labour really ‘get it’? Michael Gove, James Heale and Lucy Dunn are joined by special guests Zia Yusuf and Jacob Rees-Mogg to
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Voters have gone to the polls today for a historic set of local elections. The polling indicates a rough night for the two main parties and a good showing for Reform, the Lib Dems and the Greens. So be prepared for a lot of election-night spin from both Labour and the Tories. To talk through
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This week: the left-wing radicalism of Garden Court Garden Court Chambers has a ‘reassuringly traditional’ facade befitting the historic Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the heart of London’s legal district. Yet, writes Ross Clark in the cover article this week, ‘the facade is just that. For behind the pedimented Georgian windows there operates the most radically
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Michael Gove and Katy Balls join James Heale to discuss their interview with the Health Secretary Wes Streeting included in this week’s special Easter edition of The Spectator. Michael identifies three key reasons why Streeting’s fate is key to the success of the government: immigration, the cost-of-living crisis and faith in the NHS. Seen as the
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This week: Starmerism’s moral vacuum‘Governments need a mission, or they descend into reactive incoherence’ writes Michael Gove in this week’s cover piece. A Labour government, he argues, ‘cannot survive’ without a sense of purpose. The ‘failure of this government to make social justice its mission’ has led to a Spring Statement ‘that was at once
Clement Attlee, in the words of Winston Churchill, was a modest man with much to be modest about. Labour’s postwar premier has been invoked as a role model by Keir Starmer recently, in the context of Attlee’s support for Nato and robustness on defence. Starmer’s allies also argue that, like Attlee, he is an unshowy
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Join Katy Balls, Michael Gove, Lord Glasman, Lord Frost and pollster James Kanagasooriam as they unpack the highly anticipated Spring Statement and its implications for national policy and global security. Listen for: Michael’s plan for how to deal with the Donald, and why the Treasury is not fit for purpose; Maurice on his influence in
Airport security was much on my mind last Friday afternoon. I had been due to fly from Heathrow to Zurich that morning, but the substation fire meant a switch to an afternoon departure from London City Airport. City is a business-oriented operation in every respect and one of its many efficient features is a baggage-checking
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This afternoon, Rachel Reeves made good on her promise to deliver only one fiscal set piece per calendar year by announcing what is widely being considered a Budget… this precedes a spending review in the summer and an actual Budget in the autumn. The headline is that the Chancellor had to find £15 billion in
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On 23 March 2020, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the unprecedented decision to put the UK into lockdown. To mark the 5th anniversary of that announcement this weekend, we have brought together our editor Michael Gove – then a cabinet minister under Boris – and our associate editor Toby Young – an ardent critic of
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Bridget Phillipson’s schools bill is back in the Commons today. The scope of the legislation is twofold: firstly, looking at the welfare of children in schools and secondly at fundamentally changing the landscape of secondary education by doing away with academies (and with it the legacy of the previous Conservative government on education). The plan
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On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Colin Freeman explains how Islamic State tightened its grip on the Congo (1:23); Harry Ritchie draws attention to the thousands of languages facing extinction this century, as he reviews Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages by Lorna Gibb (8:00); Max Jeffery highlights the boxing academy changing young lives (13:20); Michael
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Slashing the winter fuel allowance, maintaining the two child benefit cap, cutting international aid, cutting the civil service, axing NHS bureaucracy, possibly slashing welfare expenditure… you’d be forgiven for thinking the Conservatives were in power. But no, these are all policies pursued by the current Labour government. So on today’s Saturday Shots Cindy Yu asks
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It was widely briefed that the main focus of Sir Keir Starmer’s speech in Yorkshire today was his plan to do away with Whitehall red tape. What was kept under wraps was the Prime Minister’s plans for the NHS – specifically to scrap NHS England. In a bid to tackle bureaucracy in the health service,
Education secretary really is the best job in government, though sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Lives can be transformed – hopefully for the better – as a direct consequence of the decisions you make. But you are also firmly in the firing line. There’s no other area of public policy in which everyone is
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It’s a special (and emotional) edition of Coffee House Shots this Saturday because it is the last with Kate Andrews on this side of the Atlantic. She joins our editor Michael Gove and political correspondent James Heale for a debate on ideology. Kate – a liberal, in the classical British sense – explains exactly why she is
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With reports of ‘billions’ of spending cuts earmarked for the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, taking place later this month, Michael Gove and Kate Andrews join Katy Balls to discuss what exactly Rachel Reeves could cut. With little fiscal headroom and sluggish forecasts of growth, Reeves doesn’t appear to have many options. It’s likely that welfare will
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The Spectator’s Katy Balls, Michael Gove and Kate Andrews were joined by special guests Robert Jenrick and Jonathan Ashworth for a live podcast, recorded at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. The main topic of discussion was, of course, Donald Trump, whose inauguration has ushered in a new world disorder. His ‘shock and awe’ foreign policy
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Kemi Badenoch has today given a major speech outlining the Conservatives’ commitment to ‘realism’ in their foreign policy. She said, ‘You cannot help others if you cannot help yourself’, and that the sovereignty and strength of Britain matters ‘above all’. She also pressed Keir Starmer to push defence spending north of the 2.5 per cent
