Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Steerpike

Can MPs stomach their food and drink?

The end of Covid has brought with it the long-overdue restoration of liberties. And few know that better than thirsty MPs and their staff on the parliamentary estate, with the reopening last week of the famous parliament's Sports and Social bar. On the night in question, Mr S was one of those piling into the legislative watering holes and was the first to report Labour backbencher Neil Coyle's 'expletive-laiden tirade' at Tory MP Craig Williams. It now transpires that following a complaint, Coyle has now been temporarily banned from the estate's bars – quite the feat to achieve on the first night of normalcy. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has now been dragged into the debate about MPs' drinking habits, having been forced to defend Strangers on Radio 5 Live this morning.

Steerpike

New No. 10 press chief: Boris is ‘not a complete clown’

If Boris Johnson thought his new No. 10 hires would be less high-profile than their predecessors, he might want to think again. Not content with taking a side-swipe at Dominic Cummings on Twitter, it appears that Guto Harri decided to do an interview with the Welsh media prior to taking up his post as Downing Street director of communications. Ignoring the convention that advisers stay out of the limelight, Harri regaled Golwg 360 with anecdotes about his appointment.

Sam Leith

Politics isn’t a branch of the entertainment industry

Rudy Giuliani has had quite the trajectory in public life. Those of us who remember the days after 9/11 will still have a picture of a man who emerged from that disaster as a credit to his city and a credit to his office. If you only picked up the Rudy Show midway through season three, however, you’d have met the wild-eyed oddbod with hair dye running down his temples, spouting conspiracy theories outside a porn shop in a down-at-heel strip mall and — who even knew this was possible? - being suspended as a lawyer in Washington for dishonesty. His story arc was a mash-up of Breaking Bad and My Cousin Vinnie. The latest plot twist came last week when he was unmasked as a departing contestant at the taping of a forthcoming episode of The Masked Singer.

Sunday

Robert Peston

Has Rishi Sunak blocked Boris’s NHS recovery plan?

The Treasury on Saturday prevented an announcement pencilled in for tomorrow of the so-called 'elective recovery plan', the multi-billion pound initiative to reduce the NHS's record backlog of treatments. Treasury sources insist the plan wasn’t ready and this was a joint decision with the NHS. 'The NHS wanted to pause too,' said one. But this is disputed by those working for the Department of Health and the NHS. They believe the delay to its launch stems from mounting tensions between the Chancellor and Prime Minister, and a reluctance on the part of the Treasury to help a PM it views as a lame duck and living on borrowed time.

Matthew Lynn

Kirstie Allsopp is wrong about house prices

They could cancel their Netflix subscriptions, stop drinking chai tea or go a little easier on the avocados and the smoothies. And perhaps most of all they could get on their bikes and start searching for some cheaper places to live. Kirstie Allsopp, the presenter of popular TV shows such as Location, Location, Location, probably always knew she was going to stir things up with her comments this weekend. Allsopp said that if young people simply cut back on some self-indulgent luxuries, and explored some alternative areas to live, then they would be able to get on the property ladder in their twenties just the way she did:  'I don’t want to belittle those people who can’t do it. But there are loads of people who can do it and don’t. It is hard.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Kwasi Kwarteng defends Boris over Jimmy Savile slur

Boris Johnson’s decision to accuse Keir Starmer of ‘prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile’ while he was director of public prosecutions continues to divide the Tory party. The comment has gone down badly with his own MPs, and the Chancellor Rishi Sunak notably refused to defend the remark. It also led to the resignation of Munira Mirza, the director of the No. 10 policy unit. However, the Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng told Trevor Phillips that although Starmer did not bear any personal blame, Johnson was well within his rights to make the remark: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1490248267111841797?

Steerpike

Johnson’s new hire goes for Cummings

Well, that didn't take long. Scarcely had Boris Johnson announced two new hires to join his depleted Downing Street team, then Dominic Cummings began attacking one of them on Twitter. The Svengali of special advisers reacted badly to the news that Guto Hari, a former Johnson aide during his mayoralty, was to be brought back into the fold as director of communications. Cummings claimed that the 'message from No. 10' is that 'Our new boss is a pro-Remain lobbyist who's said the PM is 'sexually incontinent', 'hugely divisive', 'destructive', 'dragging the country down', & picked 'wrong side' in referendum' GREAT'. https://twitter.com/Guto_Harri/status/1490095267668017162?

Hilal Kaplan

Boris’s Turkish fan club isn’t fazed by partygate

If Brits are falling out of love with Boris Johnson over partygate, there is still hope for him in Turkey. If you were to quiz my fellow Turks on a list of ‘foreign leaders whom Turks find favourable’, there is no doubt Boris would be somewhere at the top of the list. Despite his hand in the Brexit campaign – when the prospect of a possible Turkish invasion was weaponised to convince people not to back remain – Boris remains popular over here.  Boris's Turkish roots going back to his great-grandfather’s hometown, Orta in Cankiri (a central Anatolian town) are one of the reasons he remains loved. Us Cankiris, at least, are proud of Boris. When he first became PM he was hailed as 'Boris the Turk'.

Debbie Hayton

The Cabinet Office’s transgender toilet muddle

Transgender people need to be treated with dignity and respect at work. But our rights should not be allowed to ride roughshod over the rights of others. Yet it's an unfortunate reality that, in the quest for inclusion, some workplace policies do just that – even in the heart of Whitehall. The Cabinet Office's 'Toolkit' to support transitioning at work is astonishingly forthright when it addresses the issue of staff toilets: 'It is assumed that the transitioning employee knows which facilities are the best match for their gender identity. Therefore, the employee should use the facilities closest aligned to their affirmed gender from their first day presenting in it.' Everyone else, it seems, is expected to like it, lump it, or go somewhere else.

John Ferry

The book that shatters the SNP’s economic myths

There aren't many whose name becomes part of the mythology of a nation while they are still alive. Gavin McCrone, author of After Brexit: The Economics of Scottish Independence, has inadvertently achieved this status. McCrone is an academic and a former chief economist to the Scottish Office. In 1974, he wrote an internal briefing paper for Scottish ministers outlining the economic potential of North Sea oil. McCrone thought ministers were underestimating the value of the resource and the positive impact it could have on the economy if extraction were managed successfully. His paper was designed to remedy that ignorance and was framed from a Scottish perspective and in the context of nationalist arguments for independence.

Saturday

Katy Balls

Boris announces a new look No. 10 team

Boris Johnson has this evening unveiled the second stage of his Downing Street shake-up. After the Prime Minister rushed forward the departure of his chief of staff Dan Rosenfield and director of communications Jack Doyle when his policy chief Munira Mirza quit on Thursday, replacements have been announced. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Steve Barclay is Johnson’s new chief of staff – and will be in charge of integrating the new Office of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office. Meanwhile, Guto Harri has been appointed director of communications – he served as Johnson’s spokesman during his first term as London mayor.

Steerpike

Five times Boris’s new press chief attacked him

After the night of the long hangovers, what next for Boris Johnson's No. 10 team? Following the departure of five top advisers on Thursday, the PM has tonight announced two replacements to try and rescue his sinking premiership. Cabinet minister Steve Barclay has taken up the reins as Johnson's chief of staff while Guto Harri joins as director of communications. Barclay's appointment will certainly raise eyebrows, given that he is already an elected MP serving as a constituency and will now be expected to work 16-18 hour days in Downing Street. But Mr S is more intrigued by the hire of Harri, who previously worked as Johnson's director of external affairs between 2008 and 2012 when he was mayor of London.

Steerpike

Steve Baker plots his next move

When Steve Baker is on maneouvers, you know No. 10 is in trouble. The lockdown-skeptic and 'Brexit hardman' has had a hand in defenestrating two successive Tory premiers and could soon make it a hat-trick. For Baker, whose criticisms of the Johnson government have reached a crescendo in recent months, has recently taken over the running of Conservative Way Forward, the Thatcherite pressure group which acts as standard bearers for the Iron Lady's legacy.  And it seems the Wycombe MP has wasted no time in his efforts to turn the CWF into a campaigning powerhouse, according to a recently released update to the register of members' interests.

Ross Clark

Make capitalism real again

The emergence of Covid provoked a worldwide economic crash. That lasted a mere four weeks. By the time western countries were locking down, a bull market had begun afresh. Through months of lockdowns, soaring case rates and death rates, shares were not just rebounding but marking new highs – firstly involving tech shares and online retailers which had done well from social distancing, but then pretty much anything. The arrival of the first vaccine phase 3 trial results in November 2020 sent shares spinning upwards, yet the emergence of the Alpha and Delta strains didn’t seem to do any harm. And now that economies seem finally to be putting Covid behind them? In Britain, plan B has ended. Denmark has ditched its Covid restrictions entirely.

Peter Apps

London also needs ‘levelling up’

‘The further a person is from one of our great capitals—whether it is London, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast – the tougher life can be,’ Michael Gove told the House of Commons on Wednesday. It is his mission, as the first holder of the ludicrous title of secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, to fix this situation. But is it true? It may come as some surprise to the people of Barking and Dagenham in east London, where 48 per cent of children live in households considered to be experiencing poverty, that they are among the most privileged in the UK. It may also be surprising to the occupants of, for example, the Shankill Road in Belfast that their postcode offers them privileges not available to the market towns of northern England.

Sam Holmes

James Heale, Leah McLaren, Nicholas Farrell

22 min listen

On this week's episode, we’ll hear from James Heale on the Zac Goldsmiths’ secret shadow cabinet. (00:49)Next, Leah McLaren on Covid in Canada. (07:20)And finally, Nicholas Farrell on the march of the Italian Wolves. (13:58)Produced and presented by Sam HolmesSubscribe to The Spectator today and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher:spectator.

Nigel Jones

Are Tory MPs too ‘frit’ to bin Boris?

Boris Johnson is in the midst of the bleakest period of his premiership, but he can at least nibble on a crumb of comfort from history. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Tory party is not at all ruthless in dispatching their prime ministers when they have fallen out of favour with voters, or appear to have passed their sell by dates. If Boris is on his way out, he might still be able to look forward to one of the very long goodbyes experienced by his Conservative predecessors in No. 10, thanks to the marked reluctance of Tory MPs to wield the fatal knife. Let’s start with Johnson’s hero, biographical subject, and the man he is said to have modelled his political career upon: Winston Churchill.

Friday

James Forsyth

Another letter goes in — how close is Boris to 54?

Nick Gibb has become the latest Tory MP to declare that he has submitted a letter of no confidence in the Prime Minister to Graham Brady. The former schools minister writes in the Telegraph that ‘to restore trust, we need to change the Prime Minister’. Gibb’s letter will worry the Johnson operation because he is not a usual suspect. Yes, he left government in last September’s reshuffle. But he has hardly been a serial critic since then. If parliamentarians like him are coming out publicly, No. 10 will worry about how many more are submitting letters behind the scenes. The whole question of how many letters are actually in, as opposed to being publicly declared, is shrouded in mystery.

Freddy Gray

Is Facebook in a ‘death spiral’?

12 min listen

Freddy Gray talks to Guy Clapperton, the tech journalist and host of the Near-Futurist podcast about the recent collapse in Facebook’s share price, and the social media giant's prospects long-term.