Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Steerpike

Liz parks her tanks on Chevening’s lawn

The biggest row in Westminster rumbles on. No, it's not Rishi against the spending ministers; nor Keir Starmer's uneasy truce with Angela Rayner. Like a Jane Austen novel, the question centres on a grand country house, where passions have been aroused by a question of succession. The issue is of course Chevening: the 115-room grace-and-favour residence traditionally been used as the Foreign Secretary's country house which the demoted Dominic Raab refuses to relinquish. It's not been a happy month for Raab; shifted in the reshuffle to the Ministry of Justice, he is reported to have demanded the post of Deputy Prime Minister as a consolation prize – a title which apparently now irritates him so much that he snaps at anyone who addresses him that way.

Owen Matthews

The mystery of Vladimir Putin’s mistresses

There’s an odd thing about 18-year old Luiza Rozova’s instagram feed. You can see photos of her breakfasts (sliced exotic fruit on heart shaped plates); her bikini selfies and her smart Paris apartment; her new shoes and her trips to the Louvre (heavily masked). But you never see her face. Take a look at screen-grabs of her insta feed before it was purged of all recognisable images and you realise why. Luiza – born Elizaveta Vladimirovna Krivonogykh – bears a striking resemblance to Vladimir Putin. It’s the same story with her mother, Svetlana Krivonogykh. The blonde 46-year-old’s social media pages were once full of photos of Svetlana in a helicopter and of charming views over the Vieux Port of Monaco taken from the balcony of a waterfront apartment.

Damian Thompson

How Christians can fight the menace of university ‘cancel culture’

30 min listen

The University of Nottingham has been forced to abandon its sinister attempt to ban Fr David Palmer from becoming its Catholic chaplain because his defence of unborn life might upset snowflakes. In this episode of Holy Smoke, I talk to one of Fr Palmer's key allies, Ryan Christopher, UK director of Alliance Defending Freedom, about that appalling episode and its backdrop: a sneaky culture of below-the-radar censorship driven in large part by student unions. Needless to say, the latter are furious that this government is passing legislation to protect free speech on campuses. Ryan has the details.

Isabel Hardman

Will manufacturing shut down due to the energy crisis?

10 min listen

With the energy crisis showing no signs of improving, many industries warned over the weekend that they may have to shut down some manufacturing points due to the rising costs. This has lead to tensions between the Treasury and the Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng about how to proceed. Isabel Hardman is joined by Katy Balls and James Forsyth to discuss.

Steerpike

Watch: Ben & Jerry’s excruciating Israel interview

Ben & Jerry's have never been shy about making politics part of their brand. The ice cream makers have made social activism a mainstay of their company's brand in recent years, with stunts including the refusal to serve two scoops of the same ice cream flavour in Australia (in support of same-sex marriage) and unveiling an anti-Trump batch flavour called 'Pecan Resist' to 'lick injustice.' They've even found time to become involved in Britain's little local difficulties, berating Priti Patel last year for trying to stop migrants crossing the English Channel in boats. Now though one of the company's stunts appears to have backfired spectacularly.

Debbie Hayton

Dave Chappelle isn’t ‘transphobic’

Transphobia is defined as the fear or hatred of trans people. But all too often, it is applied much more widely than that. Disagree with a trans person, and you could well be labelled as transphobic; look at us a 'bit funny' and we may report you for hate crime. Poke fun at us, and heaven help you. Comedian Dave Chappelle pulls no punches when it comes to the transgender community. In The Closer – his latest Netflix special – he is direct and uncompromising. But – and this is important – he plays the ball rather than the man. His target is not us but the ideology that has sprung up around us: a pseudo-religious doctrine that demands everyone believe that a man can become a woman just because he says so.

Steerpike

Nick Clegg’s Facebook nightmare

There have been many ironic fates for the lead actors in the Coalition government. For David Cameron, the premier who pledged to 'clean up' the 'culture of excessive lobbying' there was the Greensill scandal. For George Osborne, the austerity Chancellor who decimated the culture sector, there was a smorgasbord of jobs and the chairmanship of the British Museum.  Chris Huhne was jailed, Oliver Letwin lost the whip while Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, now works at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank – an institution used to front China's 'Belt and Road Initiative.' But none of these have been as both paradoxically high-profile and humiliating as Sir Nick Clegg's strange parliamentary after-life as vice-president of Facebook.

Katy Balls

Why the Treasury shot down Kwasi Kwarteng’s energy crisis response

As Boris Johnson's holiday in Marbella gets underway, back home his ministers are making headlines for infighting following a hostile briefing from the Treasury. The stark rise in energy prices has led industry leaders to warn that some UK factories are at risk of closure within days unless the government steps in to help with spiralling fuel costs. But there appears to be little unity among ministers as to the right response.  In a Sunday media round, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng spoke of the steps he was taking to try to ease the pressure on businesses.

Sunday

Steerpike

Hong Kong lawmaker’s jibe at Britain backfires

China's lamentably poor 'wolf warriors' have given Mr S many laughs in recent months. Diplomats and functionaries within President Xi's regime are seeking to use Twitter to act as propaganda outriders by amplifying the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s belligerent messages to the outside world – a task at which they currently fail miserably. It's not just mainland apparatchiks who try to prove their fealty to the CCP via shrill posts on social media. In Hong Kong, craven legislators have only been too keen to do the bidding of Beijing and jump on the Twitter band wagon. One such example was provided this week by Regina Ip, chair of the pro-Beijing New People's Party (NPP).

Sam Leith

No, the term ‘white privilege’ is not extremist

A Tory MP last week raised the delightful possibility that the big family of what we might call the terrorism community should be expanded yet further. Speaking to a group of activists at party conference, Jonathan Gullis declared: “The term 'white privilege' is an extremist term. It should be reported to Prevent, because it is an extremist ideology. It’s racist to actually suggest everyone who’s white somehow is riddled with privilege.” Goodness. Even now I see it: online social studies graduates and right-on corporate HR functionaries hauling on the old orange PJs and trooping glumly into their cells in some British equivalent of Guantanamo Bay, alongside the murderous jihadists of IS, pipe-bomb prone neo-Nazis, incel spree-killers and armalite-toting provos.

Matthew Taylor

Energy price cap ‘will not be moved’ this winter, says Business Secretary

The Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng joined Trevor Phillips this morning amid a time of turmoil in the energy markets. Wholesale gas prices have risen by 250 per cent since January, and by as much as 70 per cent since August, when the market regulator Ofgem announced its latest price cap for consumers. With 12 energy companies already having gone bust since the start of the year, the government is facing calls within the industry to increase the price cap so that pressure can be eased on smaller firms. However, Kwarteng told Phillips that the current cap was here to stay until April of next year: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1447108552355684353?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw KK: The price cap is the biggest shield in terms of consumer prices, and… it will not be moved.

Steerpike

What is wrong with Kamala Harris?

The concerns about Joe Biden’s age and cognitive faculties are well established. And if Biden has to step down, we all know what comes next: his vice-president Kamala Harris will become Commander-in-Chief. But is Harris all there herself? Some clips from this week of her trying to excite children about science suggest the answer is no. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s78Wy65BteQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OcRKBHKwbU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec7wSeguYRg Yikes. What is going on there? Is Kamala Harris, er, high? Harris was speaking to the children as part of her role as Chair of the National Space Council. She certainly sounds spaced. The full video is even more jarring to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Henry Hill

Will the National Insurance hike weaken the Union?

Given the enormous power that Conservative leaders wield within the party, it is not surprising that the party should come to take on the character of its leaders. In the case of Boris Johnson, it is his protean quality that seems to have rubbed off. Where a previous leader might have had a policy agenda or ideology, today’s Tories have cheery slogans which can mean almost anything. Thus in the course of half a dozen recent Tory conference events one will have heard at least that many different definitions of ‘levelling up’, while the big corporate lobbies and third sector groups insist that whatever they normally talk about is absolutely essential to whatever ‘levelling up’ is.

Saturday

Kate Andrews

A global corporation tax is a terrible mistake

International cooperation is alive and well – at least when it comes to raising taxes. One hundred and thirty six countries have now signed up to a global minimum corporation tax of 15 per cent, proposed by G7 countries in June and pushed heavily by the UK Treasury. This is another step forward for what is thought to be the biggest overhaul to the international tax system in a century. The installation of a corporate tax floor is part of a comprehensive effort to reform how multinational companies are taxed: that is, to more precisely target where profits are being made (instead of where products are being created).

Steerpike

Hartlepool MP’s parting gift for taxpayers

The name of Mike Hill doesn't count for much in Labour circles these days. The former MP for Hartlepool was forced to quit the Commons in March after breaching Parliament’s sexual misconduct policy, triggering a by-election which saw the Tories take the seat for the first time since 1959.  Then four months later he was reported to be facing a possible criminal inquiry after an employment tribunal ruled that he repeatedly sexually assaulted and harassed a parliamentary staff member before victimising her when she refused his advances. Now there's one final sting in the tail for Hill's long-suffering constituents.

Fraser Nelson

A matter of Truss: the unlikely rise of Lizmania

If Boris Johnson were to vanish tomorrow, who should replace him? The American pollster Frank Luntz asked this of about 200 people at The Spectator’s live podcast last week, and the answer was Liz Truss. This took me by surprise – I’d have said Rishi Sunak – but there’s no doubting the Lizmania that was in the air in Manchester.  The new Foreign Secretary was pulling in the crowds, flirting with the right-wing think tanks (it’s time for her to be ‘reinfected with sound ideas’ she told them) posing for selfies and – later, in the nightclubs – dancing with her army of admirers. Her events were the ones with the biggest queues on the way in and the biggest smiles on the way out.

Friday

James Forsyth

The Tories will pay a price for Boris’s housing strategy

One of the themes of Conservative conference was that the government has dropped plans for a radical reform of the planning system, which was designed to get more houses built in the south east. Both Boris Johnson and the new party chairman Oliver Dowden were keen to stress this point. But, I say in the Times today, this is a mistake. The Tories are the party of the property-owning democracy, and live and die by this The Tories have been spooked by the Chesham and Amersham by-election where the Liberal Democrats ran hard against planning reform and took the seat on a 25 per cent swing from the Tories. Boris Johnson will pay little immediate electoral price for this U-turn. Indeed, at the next general election he’ll probably benefit from it.

Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn, Tanya Gold, James Innes-Smith

13 min listen

On this week's episode, we’ll hear Matthew Lynn’s thoughts on how the gas shortages could lead to a very cold winter. (00:51) Then, Tanya Gold with a critical take on critics. (04:41)And finally, James Innes-Smith bigs up the bungalow.