Tim Shipman is political editor of The Spectator.
13 min listen
Yesterday Yvette Cooper announced a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal after the Casey Review found that a disproportionate number of Asian men were responsible and that governments and authorities had failed to step in over fears of racism. Anxious to press Labour on their U-turn – memorably, Starmer accused the Tories of ‘jumping
10 min listen
There were few surprises in Rachel Reeves’s spending review today. Health was the big winner, with a £29bn increase in day-to-day spending and £39bn was announced to build social and affordable housing. The main eyebrow-raiser was the announcement that the Home Office will end the use of hotels for asylum seekers within this parliament; this
15 min listen
The word ‘unprecedented’ is often overused in politics, but these local elections have proved to be just that. The headline is: sweeping success for Reform. Nigel Farage’s ‘teal tsunami’ comes at the expense of the main parties – turning the two-party consensus on its head. The recriminations for Labour and the Tories have already begun.
17 min listen
Tim Shipman, chief political commentator at The Sunday Times, joins Katy Balls to discuss his new book, Out: How Brexit Got Done and the Tories Were Undone. The final instalment in Shipman’s Brexit quartet, the book goes behind the scenes in Westminster to reveal the warring factions at the heart of Boris Johnson’s government. Considering
38 min listen
This week: The Xi files: China’s global spy network. A Tory parliamentary aide and an academic were arrested this week for allegedly passing ‘prejudicial information’ to China. In his cover piece Nigel Inkster, MI6’s former director of operations and intelligence, explains the nature of this global spy network: hacking, bribery, manhunts for targets and more.
On the day Theresa May signed her Brexit withdrawal agreement with Brussels, Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, resigned. She tried to dragoon Michael Gove, a leader of the Brexit campaign, into taking the job. Dominic Cummings, the erstwhile campaign director of Vote Leave, persuaded Gove to resign rather than take the job. It was mayhem.
13 min listen
I spent a bit of time last week on the set of the new Brexit film, which James Graham has written for Channel 4. My book on the referendum has been plundered by the new production, so it was fascinating seeing real events given life again, in several pitch-perfect performances. The subject of conversation on
Trying to write the first draft of history on the EU referendum and the leadership mess that followed had both its dramatic and its comic elements. My phone never stopped ringing with Eurosceptics keen to tell me why their contribution to a meeting that had previously escaped my notice was the decisive factor in securing
Trying to write the first draft of history on the EU referendum and the leader-ship mess that followed had both its dramatic and its comic elements. My phone never stopped ringing with Eurosceptics keen to tell me why their contribution to a meeting that had previously escaped my notice was the decisive factor in securing
Sir John Sawers is not the Downing Street stooge some of the old guard say he is, writes Tim Shipman. And the new head of MI6 may focus the spooks’ gaze on the real enemy The man who brought us The Meaning of Tingo is at it again, closer to home. Adam Jacot de Boinod’s
On the night of the Mumbai attacks I spoke to an old security source of mine, who has friends in SIS, MI5 and defence intelligence. There was only one thought on the minds of our security chiefs that night: ‘Are they British?’ In the bar of the Travellers Club and the pubs and tapas restaurants