Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
17 min listen
Downing Street insiders have accused Dominic Cummings of being behind a series of lobbying leaks. But why is the Prime Minister's team turning on the former adviser, and will he hit back? Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson.
Count Binface, a man who claims to be a 6,000-year-old ‘independent space warrior’, is running to be London mayor. In the normal run of things, this sort of joke candidate would get little to no attention – but the 2021 London mayoral contest is not your average election. In fact, it is potentially the worst election of any kind ever witnessed in a liberal democracy. Londoners, desperate for something that has been utterly lacking from all the major candidates, have scoured Binface’s manifesto and found that amongst the joke policies, there are some not half-bad ones in there. ‘No shop to be allowed to sell a croissant for more than £1,’ has been pounced upon as particularly noteworthy.
As Disraeli’s famous maxim goes: England does not love coalitions. In Wales, by contrast, we can’t get enough of them. Throughout the devolved era deal-making has created and sustained governments, including the current Labour-led administration – backed by the sole remaining Senedd member for the Liberal Democrats, Kirsty Williams, and the independent statesman Lord Elis-Thomas. After the votes are counted in next month’s Welsh election, history looks likely to repeat itself. A slurry of recent opinion polls project various outcomes on May 7 but none suggest an outright majority for any party.
Covid is far more fatal for the old than the young. But it is the young who have borne the economic and social brunt of the pandemic. It is, as I say in The Times today, a basic matter of fairness that the government now tries to help them. The government does have schemes such as Kickstart and the bonus for taking on apprentices designed to prevent mass youth unemployment. But if there are limits on how many people firms can have in offices or factories even after 21 June, they will be reluctant to take on apprentices, even if the government is offering them thousands of pounds to do so. The biggest challenge for our leaders, though, is ending the generational bias in politics.
It’s Saint George’s Day, which means it's that time of year when Unionists must once again don their armour, saddle their horses, and ride out to slay that most terrible of dragons: an English parliament. This proposal rears its head every so often as a possible solution to the increasingly undeniable strain that two decades of devolution has put on the constitution of the United Kingdom. It is in fact one of the surest means of guaranteeing the dissolution of the Union. Unfortunately, the reasons for this are pretty much exactly the same reasons that the creation of the other devolved legislatures was a bad idea. That means that there is some political danger in accepting its logic.
After yet another week of government leaks of private correspondence sent by the Prime Minister, Downing Street has hit back. But it's not to deny the contents of any of the messages – which range from WhatsApps with Saudi Arabia's crown prince over football to discussions with UK entrepreneur James Dyson about ventilators – it's to blame Dominic Cummings for the messages being made public in the first place. Late last night multiple papers (though notably not the Boris-sceptic Daily Mail) published briefings by a Downing Street source that Johnson's former senior aide was likely behind the stories.
On the day that senior Treasury officials and the Bank of England revealed quite how much David Cameron lobbied them last spring on behalf of Greensill for access to emergency loan schemes, I want to share important disclosures made in recent weeks that suggest Greensill was heading for collapse over many months. These represent the financial – as opposed to the political – side of this debacle, which has largely been ignored because of widespread outrage at the way David Cameron exploited his connections in government and the civil service to lobby for Greensill's cause.
30 min listen
Joe Biden is approaching his first 100 days in office. How has he fared, and has he delivered on his promise to bring about a return to normalcy? (1:15) Plus, the proposed European Super League wasn’t super after all. The six English teams invited to join the league pulled out earlier this week, and the plans have now been shelved. But will it still happen eventually? (10:30) And finally, what’s it really like to live in a listed building? (19:30)With the Spectator's US editor Freddy Gray; our economics correspondent Kate Andrews; journalist Damian Reilly; veteran football reporter Julie Welch; Spectator contributor Hamish Scott; and Liz Fuller, a buildings at risk officer for Save Britain’s Heritage. Presented by Lara Prendergast.Produced by Max Jeffery and Sam Russell.
13 min listen
Joe Biden is hosting world leaders for a virtual summit on climate change today. In attendance was Boris Johnson, who was keen to impress the President with his own green credentials. Will he succeed? Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.
COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference due to be held in Glasgow, isn't until November, but work is already underway in Downing Street to put the government's green agenda front and centre. After confirming earlier this week that the government will seek to cut carbon emissions by 78 per cent by 2035, Boris Johnson has this afternoon spoken at Joe Biden's Leader's Summit on Climate. The Prime Minister praised the US president's commitment to cut greenhouse gases by 50 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 as a 'game changing announcement'. He also said it is 'vital for all of us to show that this is not all about some expensive politically correct, green act of bunny hugging'.
It was once my job to brief Boris on football. Then he was very much a free marketeer, now it is amazing to see that he wants to play the socialist sports lord, a task that defeated Tony Blair. The briefing took place on a Sunday afternoon in September 1998 when news emerged that Manchester United’s directors were planning to sell the club to Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB. Boris had decided to devote his column to it. His problem was he did not know anything about the deal, or for that matter much about English football, and as the chief sports news correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, he rang me to be sure of his facts. He was intrigued as to why the Manchester United fans were so hostile to the bid. Would it not, he asked me, bring in a lot of money for the club?
In the eighties, we were warned to beware an easily spread, deadly virus. The government’s ominous HIV adverts told us not to 'die of ignorance'. Thus a generation was educated through fear how to avoid infection by practicing safer sex and avoiding contact with the blood of those who are positive. While those messages are still important today, HIV no longer represents the death sentence it once did. Still a life-altering and permanent disease, it can now be managed in a way that means people often live full lives with HIV, rather than die early because of it. No successful vaccination has been developed for HIV, but other medical developments helped to change the prognosis for those who contract it.
‘What follows plague?’ I asked a medieval historian at the start of the pandemic. ‘War,’ he replied. In recent days, this remark has seemed worryingly prescient: 120,000 Russian troops are massing on the border with Ukraine, China is aggressively increasing military activity across the Taiwan Strait and Iran has responded to Israel’s successful sabotage of its nuclear facility by declaring it will enrich uranium to close to the level required for a nuclear bomb. The West — and specifically the new US President — is being tested. Those who want an end to the western-led rules-based system are pushing to see what they can get away with.
What's the problem with the Runnymede Trust? More than a dozen Tory MPs have written to the Charity Commission demanding an investigation into the charity. They claim that the self-described 'UK's leading independent race equality think tank' criticised the recent Downing Street-backed report into race relations 'in bad faith'. The MPs, including Edward Leigh, Sally-Ann Hart and Imran Ahmad Khan, claim that the Trust was 'pursuing a political agenda'. Runnymede has hit back hard. 'The Trust regrets the recent trend for politicians to forsake dialogue and simply file complaints against charities whose efforts to address and challenge racism they contest,' the charity said in a statement.
The axing of televised lobby briefings on Tuesday has meant a new role for Boris Johnson's press secretary Allegra Stratton. Now recast as the government's spokeswoman for the forthcoming COP26 summit in Glasgow, it will be her job to front communications both strategically and publicly in the lead up to the event in November. The climate change eco-jamboree is seen as Johnson's moment on the world stage, with insiders suggesting it will be 'bigger than the Olympics' replete even with its own mascot. But new figures seen by Steerpike suggests Stratton will have her work cut out in efforts to enthuse the public.
16 min listen
Michael Gove is on a fact-finding mission in Israel this week, studying the country's vaccine passports scheme. But are the plans not already set for the UK to adopt them? Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth.
When Boris Johnson announced he was running to be Tory leader in July 2019, few were more vociferous in their support than Johnny Mercer. The former Royal Artillery captain claimed at the time that 'Boris is the man of the moment' and 'a much deeper thinker than people assess him to be', being rewarded with a post as a junior defence minister. Fast forward nearly two years and Mercer has now left his post over the treatment of veterans who served in Northern Ireland after they were excluded from the amnesty in the Overseas Operations Bill. In a Times Radio interview this afternoon, Mercer let rip his frustrations, claiming that his spell in Whitehall was 'the most distrustful, awful environment I've ever worked in' – quite a statement from a Helmand veteran.
Oh dear. Those texts. A bit awkward isn’t it? At PMQs, Sir Keir quizzed Boris about the exchanges between James Dyson and the PM which have been leaked by a saboteur. Boris was rattled. The texts reveal a side of his nature that he wants kept secret. The smug and rather puerile grandee luxuriating in his power and status. Look at me. Marvel at my cleverness. Watch as I solve your problems with my fingertips. See how ministers leap at my command. This will permanently damage a man who likes to pose as the people’s servant, toiling night and day to restore the fortunes of a once mighty kingdom. Sir Keir did well. Not brilliantly. ‘Favours, privileged access, tax breaks for mates,’ he said, ‘This is the main currency in this Conservative government.
Michael Gove's trip to Israel to study the country's 'green pass' system isn't diminishing the impression among Conservative MPs that the UK government has already made up its mind on vaccine passports. A number who I have spoken to are taking the lack of communication from their party whips as a sign that the policy will be going ahead, as there is no point in canvassing opinion on a matter if the Prime Minister is going ahead with it regardless of the feedback he gets. Some MPs who are opposed to the domestic use of what ministers are currently calling 'vaccine certification' are concerned that the way No. 10 plans to get the vote through the Commons is by making it about both international and UK use.
In the midst of the David Cameron-Greensill lobbying scandal — a gift to the Labour party if ever there was one — Keir Starmer’s frontbench have managed to overshoot the mark. Talking up what she clearly hoped will be another storm for the government to weather, shadow business minister Lucy Powell had some strong words: It stinks, really, that a billionaire businessman can text the Prime Minister and get an immediate response and apparently an immediate change in policy. It seems like the country only works for people who are rich enough or influential enough and, frankly, donors to the Tory party, who have the personal mobile number of the Prime Minister and Chancellor.