Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

The Spectator

The Spectator’s events at Tory party conference

The Spectator is back at Conservative party conference, where we’re delighted to be hosting a packed schedule of entertaining fringe events. We’ll be discussing the biggest topics of the day with a range of exciting guests, hosted by our top team of political journalists. Every event includes a free G&T – make sure to arrive 15 minutes early to claim it and join our team for a drink (ticket for event required). Our full schedule is below: Monday 1 - 2 p.m.  Can green growth really supercharge the north? Katy Balls with Jake Berry and Ben Houchen. Purchase tickets here. 2.45 - 3.45 p.m. Coffee House Shots Live: Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Purchase tickets here. 4.30 – 5.30 p.m.

Tuesday

Jonathan Miller

Eric Zemmour is eating Marine Le Pen alive

French opinion polls are best taken with a generous bucket of sel de Guérande but this evening’s drop of a Harris Interactive survey of intentions to vote in the 2022 presidential election might genuinely be described as explosive. This poll contains the crucial assumption that Xavier Bertrand will emerge as the candidate of the centre-right Les Républicains, but it nevertheless suggests that trends are moving in unpredicted directions. Bertrand is currently only marginally ahead of Eric Zemmour, whose insurgent campaign from the right is starting to profoundly unsettle the conventional wisdom. If Zemmour, who still hasn’t officially announced his candidacy, continues to climb and Marine Le Pen to decline, something extraordinary might happen.

Isabel Hardman

Why is Labour ignoring the fuel crisis?

12 min listen

With petrol and gas supply issues still continuing Labour doesn't seem to be focusing on this important issue gripping the nation. Instead, though Starmer had a victory in pushing through his changes in regards to Labour leadership voting, his parade was rained on by the resignation of Andy McDonald over disputes about the minimum wage.Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls join us from the conference in Brighton along with James Forsyth in London.

Katy Balls

Starmer tries to show his winning streak

It’s been a bruising few days for Keir Starmer at Labour conference. The Labour leader has had to deal with internal warfare and in the process lost a member of his shadow cabinet. Tomorrow, Starmer will attempt to move past the turbulence of the last 48 hours and set out his vision to the public. Given that this will be Starmer’s first conference speech in front of the membership (the last conference was remote due to Covid restrictions), it is a test for his authority and his ability to connect both with his party and the public.

Brendan O’Neill

The trouble with ‘Angiemania’

The most annoying thing about Angela Rayner’s branding of the Tories as ‘scum’ was not that it offended some Tories, though no doubt it did. It wasn’t even the sad story it told us about the calibre of left-wing politicians in the 21st century, who seem more adept at reaching for playground insults than at making a cool, rational case against their opponents. No, it was the implication made by some that Rayner speaks like this because she is working class. That’s what working-class people do, right? They bark the word 'scum' at everyone. Such larks! When they aren’t gathered around a piano belting out hilarious songs they’re hanging around on street corners yelling the S-word at passers-by. Gawd bless ’em.

Isabel Hardman

Is the Labour party capable of being tough on crime?

One of the most contested grounds in politics at the moment is law and order. It’s not just the high-profile cases of Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard, but a growing sentiment among all voters that they don’t feel as safe as they once did. The Tories know this, which is why they’ve brought forward their controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Labour opposes that legislation largely on the basis that it includes an illiberal crackdown on the right to protest, though I understand that the shadow home affairs team were concerned that the party’s opposition to the Bill would undermine Labour’s claims to be tough on crime.

Nick Cohen

How the far left killed itself

The Labour right is as happy as I have seen it in a decade. It thinks it has its party back, and the far left has rolled itself into a ball and tossed itself into the dustbin of history. This week’s media coverage of the fights and back stabbings at the conference is missing a fundamental shift in power. By making it impossible for a minority of party members to trigger a deselection, Labour has freed its MPs from the need to spend a large part of their careers talking to their comrades (friendly or not), rather than persuading the public that at some point it might make a refreshing change to elect a Labour government. By lifting the threshold of MPs needed to endorse a candidate, they have made it impossible for another Jeremy Corbyn to become leader – or so they think.

Ian Acheson

The problem with having a happy clappy prison service

The new Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has said in the past that he wants prison to be ‘unpleasant.’ To that extent he should be pleasantly surprised. Our prisons are indeed engines of despair, indolence, violence and incivility. Our Prison and Probation Service, notoriously allergic to transparency and accountability, has been able to camouflage this to some extent during the pandemic. It’s harder for prisoners to be unpleasant when they’re locked down in a space hardly bigger than a disabled toilet for 23 hours a day. In the meantime, the department Raab has now inherited – with an ever-growing army of HQ bureaucrats – has not been idle.

Steerpike

Labour in terf war as Rayner slaps down Duffield

Whether it's scum-gate, party democracy, membership expulsions or the minimum wage you'd think Labour had had enough splits this conference. But to add to that (growing) list of disputes is the issue of transgender rights in the wake of Rosie Duffield's decision not to attend conference, as first reported by Mr S.  Tensions have played out within the Parliamentary Labour Party and in the wider conference too, between those supporters of transgender rights and gender critics whom the former label TERFs – or trans-exclusionary radical feminists. A transgender woman was stopped on Sunday trying to enter a ladies' toilet, leading to an ugly and distressing stand-off. On the conference floor this afternoon one Labour delegate received shouts of 'shame!

Isabel Hardman

Starmer is missing a major trick

Labour's party conference slogan is 'stronger future together'. It's sufficiently anodyne that despite it being emblazoned all over a massive set in the hall, no one mentions it at all. Instead, the slogan the party's senior figures seem to have adopted is 'why didn't the government have a plan for this?' Call for parliament to be recalled: something the government would struggle to do, thereby making Boris Johnson look weak It's the refrain you hear over and over again on everything, from Covid cases to school exams to the current fuel crisis. In fact, on that last one, it's really the only thing you will have heard at all from Labour's frontbench, who seem only mildly aware of what's going on in the world outside the conference bubble.

Steerpike

Corbynites rally at Zarah Sultana’s pub quiz

While all eyes in Brighton yesterday were on the shenanigans in the conference hall, Jeremy Corbyn’s loyal band of followers were meeting to discuss how to rid themselves of his successor. At The World Transformed, the rival socialist festival set up in 2016, the great and the not-so-good of the millennial left met for a panel titled: ’Starmer out? And if so, how?' Billed as a ‘debate’ there didn’t seem to be much in the way of disagreement here as Novara founder Aaron Bastani, Momentum chief Gaya Sriskanthan and former Jezza speech writer Alex Nunns all competed to rubbish Sir Keir’s leadership.

Steerpike

Labour conference 2021 in pictures

As day four of Labour conference begins here in Brighton, Mr S has been touring the conference centre and World Transformed festival to see how Keir Starmer's party is preparing for government. It's the first time the party has had an in-person jamboree for two years and thus far the occasion has lived up to expectations.  Whether it's Sadiq Khan on the decks at Dawn Butler's Jamaica night, Seumas Milne plotting with Len McCluskey in the bar of the Grand or Piers and Jeremy Corbyn facing off, all sorts of exotic creatures have been spotted among the clubs, pubs, fringes and forums of Brighton. Below is Steerpike's guide for all those unlucky enough not to have got a ticket...

Steerpike

Comrade Bercow hails his new leader

It's been a tough few days for Keir Starmer. Unloved by his party's activists and outmaneuvered by his union barons, his conference season has had more rows than Hollyoaks. Still, the under-fire leader will no doubt be delighted to discover one Labour member is still happy to uncritically sing his praises – new recruit John Bercow, the former Commons speaker. Last night Bercow took to the stage at an SMEs for Labour Q&A to an ecstatic welcome by fawning Remainers in the crowd. The onetime Monday Club member made sure to brush up on his verbal cues for the night, peppering his half-an-hour appearance with frequent references to his new found 'comrades' and declaring 'I'm very proud belatedly to be a member of the Labour party'.

Stephen Daisley

Labour is still overrun with anti-Israel cranks

As unhinged Labour conference motions go, the party’s anti-Aukus resolution will likely capture the headlines. The text describes the new defence pact between Australia, the UK and the US as a ‘dangerous move that will undermine world peace’. Sir Keir Starmer is on record backing the alliance but the Labour leader can at least take comfort in how close the card vote was: a mere 70.35 per cent of delegates voted for the motion. For a classic Labour conference motion, though, the prize has to go to the composite on… the NHS? Covid? Fuel shortages? No, silly: Palestine.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Andy McDonald’s resignation spells trouble for Starmer

Andy McDonald has resigned from Labour's shadow cabinet after Keir Starmer refused to back raising the Minimum Wage to £15 an hour. In his resignation letter, he writes:  'Yesterday, your office instructed me to go into a meeting to argue against a National Minimum Wage of £15 an hour and against Statutory Sick Pay at the Living Wage. This is something I could not do.' More damagingly, he adds:  Starmer has set great store by trying to keep the Labour party together. 'I joined your frontbench team on the basis of the pledges that you made in the leadership campaign to bring about unity within the party and maintainability our commitment to socialist policies.

Katy Balls

Does Labour have a message?

-7 min listen

With images of long queues at the petrol station dominating social media this weekend, not due to lack of petrol but lack of drivers, the Labour party conference continues in Brighton. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves made more of an impact with her speech than some others, but Labour's real problem at this conference seems to be finding a distinct message to rally the party loyal. Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Kate Andrews

The flaw in Labour’s economic attacks

Labour avidly disagrees with the Tories’ plan to fill budget gaps by hiking National Insurance. So what would they do differently? This was one of the many tasks Rachel Reeves had today as the shadow chancellor delivered her speech at Labour party conference. Reeves not only had to set out an alternative tax-and-spend policy but also take aim at the financial decisions made by Boris Johnson’s government. Did Reeves succeed? No doubt her job was made much easier over the weekend as an energy crisis, which the government should have seen coming, continued to splash across the front pages, exacerbated by fuel shortages at the pumps brought on by a lack of truck drivers.

Steerpike

Labour’s mask hypocrisy

It’s day three of Labour conference and proceedings are in full swing. Whether it’s one of Andy Burnham’s 11 fringe events or yet another interminable motion in the conference hall, the rooms of Brighton have been packed to the rafters with Labour’s long-suffering members.  Clearly Covid spreads in teaching settings but has the grace to stop at the doors of conference jollies Yet walking around various venues Mr S was surprised to see just how few attendees were wearing their masks in poorly ventilated rooms, with no windows or open doors. With Covid cases still low, normally such a state of affairs would pass without comment.

Joanna Rossiter

Sabina Nessa and the truth about stranger danger

The brutal murder of primary school teacher Sabina Nessa in Kidbrooke, South London this month has prompted more anger about female safety on British streets. It’s reminiscent of the aftermath of the horrible case of Sarah Everard, another instance of a killer targeting a female victim – seemingly out of the blue – in a public space assumed to be safe. Such incidents understandably heighten fears among women of predatory attacks by men, and lead to calls for greater protection – more police patrols or rape alarms, for instance. Campaigners have praised men for crossing over to the other side of the road rather than walking behind women in order to help them feel safe: ‘it’s small actions like that that make a huge difference,’ said one.

Katy Balls

What is Andy Burnham up to?

Who is the busiest politician at Labour conference? One could be forgiven for assuming it would be Keir Starmer. But Andy Burnham is giving the Labour leader a run for his money.  The mayor for Greater Manchester is down to speak at 11 fringe events in total – after missing out on a slot on the main stage. On Sunday, he kicked off his busy conference schedule with a BBC interview in which he said it was the wrong time for Starmer to try to change party rules. Burnham urged the Labour leadership to finally set out a compelling vision to the public.