Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Rakib Ehsan

Can Labour afford to continue its culture war?

After being soundly beaten by the Tories in Hartlepool and winning a paltry 1.6 per cent of the vote share in Chesham and Amersham, Labour have managed to cling on in the Batley and Spen by-election by 323 votes. While the result gives the party’s under-pressure leader Sir Keir Starmer some breathing space – and will give his party some confidence – holding on to a seat in a by-election with a significantly reduced majority should not be cause for major celebration either. The fact that the left-wing, ‘anti-woke’ firebrand George Galloway won an impressive 22 per cent of the vote in this election should concern Labour’s campaigns team as well. The party still finds itself at the very heart of the British left’s own culture war.

Steerpike

A complete history of Galloway’s electoral defeats

Labour’s Kim Leadbeater may be celebrating her triumph in Batley and Spen (though not as much as her leader Keir Starmer) but the by-election was another setback for George Galloway’s efforts to get back into parliament — any parliament. The serial candidate hasn’t been an MP since 2015 and Batley was the 15th time he has stood for elected office, and his ninth defeat. What Steerpike admires most about Galloway is his geographical flexibility: he’s never let attachment to a particular constituency hold him back. From Bradford to Bromwich, Glasgow to Gorton, Comrade Galloway has always gone where the workers needed him. Some call him ‘Gorgeous George’, Mr S prefers ‘GPS George’.

Nick Tyrone

The Tories overplayed their hand in Batley and Spen

Over the course of the past two months, we’ve had three by-elections in England. One of them was a huge Tory gain in a previously safe Labour seat. Another was a Lib Dem by-election victory over the Conservatives in the London commuter belt. Then, yesterday, Labour held Batley and Spen, a seat that has been theirs since 1997. On paper, this wasn’t a bad run of results for Boris Johnson, as head of a party that has been in government for 11 years. Except, no one is going to be talking about it in those terms after Number 10 allowed the narrative to spin away from them completely.

Steerpike

Watch: George Galloway hits out at Batley result

After a long and often unpleasant campaign, the Batley and Spen by-election is over, with Labour managing to cling on to the seat. Labour’s candidate, Kim Leadbeater, won a paper-thin majority of 323 votes over the Tory candidate, with George Galloway trailing around 5,000 votes behind Labour. Galloway was certainly not happy with the result this morning and gave an impromptu speech outside Huddersfield’s Cathedral House after the count was finalised.

David Goodhart

Can we stop migrants crossing the Channel?

How do we stop those pesky boats from crossing the English Channel? How about yet another reorganisation of the Home Office, that most reorganised of all Whitehall departments, as the government announced this week? This is not actually as silly as it sounds. Since the last round of reorganisations, and reorganisations to the reorganisations, the immigration side of the Home Office has been divided into three ‘directorates’: UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), Immigration Enforcement and Border Force. It is now proposed that UKVI and the passport office will form a Services Directorate, that directly interacts with the public, and that the Enforcement and Border Force directorates will be re-merged.

Stephen Daisley

The price Labour paid for victory in Batley

While Labour’s narrow victory in Batley and Spen will mostly be analysed through the prism of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, a more compelling fault line is the apparent estrangement of some Muslim voters from a party that has until now been able to rely on their support. Labour may have held on but it also showed its hand. During the campaign, Labour’s candidate Kim Leadbeater posed for a photograph with local campaigners sporting T-shirts that depicted Israel as ‘Palestine’, issued both a leaflet and a letter touting her pro-Palestinian credentials (by heaping scorn on Israel, naturally), and defended a grim leaflet clearly geared towards tapping into anti-Hindu and anti-Indian prejudices.

James Forsyth

Labour hold Batley and Spen

Labour have held on to Batley and Spen. In a result that will win some breathing space for Keir Starmer’s leadership, Labour won with a majority of 323 votes. Now, holding on to a seat in a by-election with a substantially reduced majority isn’t a spectacular result for an opposition. But expectations were so low for Labour in this contest, that Starmer will take comfort from this result. If Labour had lost the seat, following their recent defeat in Hartlepool, it would have plunged his leadership into fresh crisis. It would have led to more speculation about a challenge to him. The Tories will be disappointed not to take the seat. The number of times that the Tories brought the contest up at PMQs this week suggested that they thought that they would take it.

Thursday

Steerpike

Starmer’s critics in pre-Batley booze up

At long last, the bloody, bruising and bitter Batley and Spen by-election is at an end. After eight weeks of campaigning, replete with controversy and allegations of harassment, the results will be finally declared at 5am on Friday morning in this Labour held-seat facing a stiff Tory challenge.  If Keir Starmer's party loses tomorrow it will be their third by-election loss in the same number of months. Today's Times carries a front page story that Starmer's deputy Angela Rayner is preparing a leadership challenge, with MPs close to the latter allegedly canvassing support among parliamentary colleagues and trade unions.

William Moore

Staged: a handful of VIP events is no substitute for normality

37 min listen

19 July is approaching but what will life after ‘freedom day’ will look like? (01:19) Also on the podcast: what will Angela Merkel's departure mean for the EU? (14:12) And as many people fled the cities to the countryside during the pandemic, can a case still be made for urban life? (27:26)With The Spectator’s sketch writer and theatre critic Lloyd Evens; playwright James Graham; director of Eurointelligence Wolfgang Munchau; Independent columnist Mary Dejevsky; writer Ysenda Graham and Rory Sutherland, The Spectator’s Wiki Man columnist.Presented by William Moore.Produced by Sam Holmes, Natasha Feroze and Max Jeffery.

James Forsyth

What happens if Starmer loses Batley and Spen?

12 min listen

Reports emerged overnight that Angela Rayner's allies are ready to mount a leadership challenge if Keir Starmer loses Batley and Spen tomorrow. What will happen if the Tories win another Labour heartland seat? James Forsyth speaks to Katy Balls.On the podcast, Katy says there are similarities between Starmer and former prime minister Theresa May after the 2017 election. Katy says: 'Authority is slowly draining away from them. They cannot move the top team in the way they wanted to - Angela Rayner is someone who has more authority as a result of Starmer's reshuffle rather than less.'James says the problem could've been avoided if Labour chose not to let Tracey Brabin stand to be West Yorkshire mayor.

Kate Andrews

Winding down furlough will reveal the post-pandemic economy

The furlough scheme begins to wind down today, as employers will now pay 10 per cent of their staff’s salaries, while the government continues to stump up 70 per cent of their wages. Employees won’t notice a change to their income, which will still be 80 per cent of their monthly wage, with a cap of £2,500. The question, however, is to what extent employers feel the financial sting, and whether it leads them to scale back their workforce. The numbers on furlough have been coming down steadily since economic activity liberalised in April. According to official government estimates, May alone saw one million people come off the scheme, as indoor hospitality and more of the services industries were allowed to reopen. But around 2.

James Forsyth

How Boris Johnson plans to reopen the country

Next week, the government will set out what the reopening will look like. I understand that the current plan is for a comprehensive reopening; though the formal decision on whether to proceed with the 19 July unlocking will only be taken the week before. As I say in the magazine this week, the one-metre rule will be ditched, masks will no longer be compulsory and venues will be allowed to operate at full capacity again. The aim is that all legal restrictions will be removed apart from the requirement to isolate for people who test positive for Covid. Test and Trace will continue to ping those who have been in contact with the infected, but for most people tests should be sufficient to allow them to continue their daily business.

Lionel Shriver

The UK’s immigration figures are a fantasy

Journalists filing to deadline are apt to dig only so deep when googling for statistics, which in themselves are sometimes derided as worse than damned lies. Thus we’re often suckers for ‘known facts’. Besides, if the UK’s Office for National Statistics doesn’t produce reliable data, where’s a poor scribbler to turn? Nevertheless, the current uptake of Britain’s offer of settlement status to resident EU citizens exposes even this upright organisation’s immigration statistics as, well, worse than damned lies.

Isabel Oakeshott

How I missed the Matt Hancock story

I want to apologise: I have let myself down. I let others down too, and I’m sorry. Not because, Matt Hancock-style, I breached social distancing guidelines with a steamy office affair — but because I missed the scoop. I was sent a compromising picture of the then health secretary and his mistress almost a week before the Sun newspaper sensationally revealed their relationship — and I did not believe it was him. Having never knowingly undersold my ability to break big stories, this is embarrassing to say the least.

The Spectator

It’s time to repair the damage done to the Covid generation’s education

Aswitch of personnel at the Department of Health this week has brought a welcome change in the government’s tone. No longer, it seems, are ministers looking for reasons to delay the final stage of lifting lockdown restrictions. After 16 months of curtailments on liberty, 19 July is inked in as the day when society and the economy will finally throw off the shackles of Covid restrictions. The vaccines mean that the virus has been downgraded to the status of flu and pneumonia: nasty bugs, sometimes fatal, but not enough to warrant locking down society with all the immense collateral damage that entails. Yet as pubs, theatres and concert halls are allowed to fill again, it is important to remember that recovering from the pandemic is about more than just reopening society.

Rod Liddle

The political baggage of moving house

We are currently house-hunting — please let me know if you have one going spare. We are looking for a home in the north-east of England in any constituency which was once solidly Labour and is now in the talons of a brutally right-wing Conservative MP — this is my wife’s stipulation and I find it fair enough. However, we do not want to live too near the poor people. In truth we had been casually looking across a vast swath of Northumberland, Durham and North Yorkshire for a good half-dozen or more years, but until now there had been little urgency to the business. We marvelled at the property market up there: houses, grossly overpriced, would remain on sale for quite literally years.

Steerpike

Fox reds are top dogs for true blues

Dilyn may be top dog in Number 10 but these days there's only breed of choice for the aspiring Tory: a fox red Labrador. Chancellor Rishi Sunak is photographed in today's newspapers clutching his new eight week old puppy Nova. And while his next door neighbour Boris Johnson has an (appropriately) badly-behaved, chaotic and randy Jack Russell rescue mutt, his photogenic Treasury minister prefers a sleek, pedigree type of labrador which has become increasingly popular in recent years. Sunak's daughters are cited as the reason for the new arrival, with a Number 11 source quoted in the Sun as saying 'Rishi was fighting it but finally gave in, and the whole building is cooing over him.

Wolfgang Münchau

Angela’s ashes: Merkel is leaving the EU in chaos

Perhaps the most absurd thing ever said about Angela Merkel is that she was the de facto leader of the western world. She has certainly been one of Europe’s most successful politicians, if you define success as political survival. But as she comes to the end of her 16 years in office, her luck is deserting her and the mess she has created is becoming horribly apparent. She leaves behind a split EU that is not just unled but might now be unleadable. Humiliating reminders of Merkel’s imploded authority come regularly. Take her latest idea to keep British tourists out of the EU this summer. Germany is imposing a mandatory 14-day quarantine for UK arrivals, whether they are vaccinated or not, and Merkel wanted other EU states to do the same.

Julian Jessop

Ignore the gloomsters, the economy is roaring back

The horror! Yesterday we discovered that UK economic output — as measured by GDP — fell by 1.6 per cent in the first quarter of the year, 0.1 per cent worse than the 1.5 per cent originally reported. This is practically a rounding error. To put it in context, as recently as March the Office for Budget Responsibility, which crunches the numbers for the Chancellor, was forecasting that GDP would fall by 3.8 per cent in Q1. As well as still beating these gloomy expectations, the latest figures are also old news. But if anything, the detail is encouraging. The downward revision to headline GDP was largely due to a bigger decline in consumer spending than first thought, mirrored by an upward revision to household saving.

Wednesday