Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Macron alone: where are France’s allies in the fight against Islamism?

36 min listen

First, France has been shaken by a series of gruesome terror attack – yet western leaders seem remarkably reluctant to support President Emannuel Macron. (01:04) Lara speaks to The Spectator's associate editor Douglas Murray and writer Ed Husain. Next, this year's US election was truly remarkable – but what was it like to report on it? Lara is joined by the editor of The Spectator's US edition Freddy Gray and Washington editor Amber Athey. (17:31) And finally, the British pub has historically been remarkably adept at circumventing restrictions on drinking – but how has it dealt with lockdown? Lara talks to journalist John Sturgis and Spectator writer Mark Mason. (27:21) Presented by Lara Prendergast. Produced by Gus Carter and Matthew Taylor.

Steerpike

A guide to the warring factions of No. 10

There may be a pandemic on but that's not going to stop Downing Street staff briefing against one another. Tensions came to a head this week after Boris Johnson’s director of communications, Lee Cain, announced his resignation. The row began after it was reported in the Times and Daily Mail that Cain – a former Vote Leave staffer and Daily Mirror chicken – had been offered the new Chief of Staff position in Downing Street. Opposition was raised – through the media – and he quit.  That move has sparked a wider discussion about the power struggle in 10 Downing Street. While Cain may be on the way out, the battle for power is far from over. So who are the main players? Here's Mr S's guide of the various Downing Street factions.

Isabel Hardman

Clinically vulnerable MPs are still being excluded from parliament

Why is the government refusing to allow clinically vulnerable MPs to take part in debates on legislation? This row has been rumbling on for months, with no apparent enthusiasm from ministers to change the current situation. Today, senior MPs have told Coffee House they believe the government's actions would be in breach of the Equality Act were this taking place outside parliament. Currently MPs who are shielding at home can ask questions and vote remotely, but they cannot give speeches or intervene in debates on legislation, as well as backbench business and Westminster Hall debates.

Fraser Nelson

Has Vote Leave lost control?

14 min listen

Downing Street has seen a day of backstabbing and counter-briefings after Dominic Cummings ally Lee Cain resigned as Boris Johnson's director of communications. John Connolly talks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.

James Forsyth

Why No. 10 is cautious about the Covid vaccine

The news about the Pfizer vaccine has persuaded Tory MPs that there is now a route out of this crisis, and that this country can avoid being dragged into a cycle of lockdowns, I say in the magazine this week. No. 10 is being deliberately cautious about the vaccine. There are huge logistical obstacles to overcome before the vaccine can be rolled out. It needs to win approval from the regulators (although if it passes the safety test, that should happen quickly). It must also be kept colder than the North Pole until it is sent out to be delivered to patients.  But in Whitehall the view is that Pfizer’s vaccine breakthrough will be followed by others, because the apparent success shows that a mRNA vaccine (rather than one using a weakened or dead form of the virus) can work.

James Kirkup

Why this Downing Street debacle doesn’t matter

Do you know who Lee Cain is? If your answer is yes, you are unusual, an aberrant departure from the norm. If you know who he is and care a jot about him and his career, you’re a freak. Wall-to-wall coverage of Cain’s departure from Downing Street reminds me why I’m so glad I stopped being a Lobby reporter, and demonstrates everything that’s wrong with our political-media culture. It’s part of the national sickness that means so many people ignore or disdain politics as something distant and irrelevant to their lives. And actually, as far as this story is concerned, they’re right, because goings-on in No. 10 really are irrelevant.

Kate Andrews

Britain’s economy has been bouncing back – but there’s a major caveat

Britain's economy rebounded by a record 15.5 per cent between July and September, reflecting the relaxation of lockdown measures and increased consumer activity over the summer. This is the largest quarterly growth in the UK economy the Office for National Statistics has reported since records began in 1955. Services, manufacturing, production and construction saw big uplifts across the board in Q3, but all remain below their Q4 levels in 2019, reflecting that the economy as a whole has not recovered to its pre-Covid levels: it is still 8.2 per cent smaller than it was at the start of the year.

Melanie McDonagh

Carrie Symonds and the rise of petticoat government

The phrase ‘petticoat government’ has, for reasons that escape me, gone out of currency lately. But it came to mind this morning when the BBC reported that the Prime Minister’s communications chief, Lee Cain, had resigned, even though he’d only just reportedly been appointed as Downing Street Chief of Staff. One reason, the BBC explained matter-of-factly, was that the PM’s fiancée, Carrie Symonds, was opposed to his appointment. I can’t have been alone in thinking: what? Come again? Carrie Symonds running the show in Downing Street? I thought we’d moved on a bit since the days when you had the king's ear because you were close to him; back then the personal really was the political.

Nick Tyrone

The Lee Cain debacle is a key moment in Boris’s leadership

Lee Cain's departure raises an important question: what is the point of Boris Johnson's legion of Spads? The government has never been so stuffed with advisors, and yet it has also rarely been so chaotic.  We live in an era in which the special advisor has more control over events than ever before; no Spad in Downing Street has ever had the power of Dominic Cummings. The Barnard Castle debacle – which surely would have resulted in the dismissal of anyone else – showed this all too clearly. But this rival power base has hindered, rather than helped, Boris Johnson. There is, of course, nothing new about the Downing Street advisor. Thatcher had Oliver Letwin and David Willets in her policy unit.

Patrick O’Flynn

Dominic Cummings should follow Lee Cain out the door of No. 10

What we are seeing with the imminent departure of Lee Cain from Downing Street surely signals the beginning of the end for the notion that the creative vision of a single person can utterly dominate the output of a government. That single person, by the way, is not Communications Director Cain, nor even Boris Johnson, but Dominic Cummings. For this is largely a proxy war. The proposed elevation of Cain to the post of the PM’s Chief of Staff was only partly opposed because he was widely seen as lacking the authority and weight required for that position.

Katy Balls

Inside the Downing Street power struggle

Downing Street is a divided place this morning after the resignation of Lee Cain. No. 10's Director of Communications handed in his resignation last night after a day of briefings and counter briefings between the various factions in Downing Street. The drama began after the Times ran a story on Tuesday evening suggesting the Vote Leave alumnus was in line for a promotion to Chief of Staff. That kicked off a furious briefing war with the Prime Minister's fiancee Carrie Symonds among those to voice concerns over the move. 'It's like a Mexican firing squad in there,' says a government aide.

Fraser Nelson

Will Lee Cain’s departure spark a Downing Street exodus?

A day of explosive disclosures from No. 10 has ended in the resignation of Lee Cain as Boris Johnson’s communications chief. Only 24 hours ago, it was reported he’d be promoted to Chief of Staff, after having threatened to quit last week. Now, he's gone. Depending on which rumours you believe, Cain had fallen out with Carrie Symonds, the Prime Minister’s fiancee and a former Tory party spin chief with her own views on how the job should be done. Cain, it's said, felt undermined to the extent of being unable to fulfil his role - all the more so when Allegra Stratton was appointed the PM's on-screen spokesman. So he offered to quit on Friday, but the PM instead offered to promote him to Chief of Staff.

Freddy Gray

My post-election drink with Nigel Farage

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is a useful stop for journalists looking for some rust-belt Americana not too far from New York. The city feels a bit like a museum. Not so long ago, Bethlehem Steel was one of the biggest steel and ship-building companies in the world. Today the vast mill, which shut down in 1995, is a cultural events centre. Next to the mill is a replacement economic hub for Bethlehem — the Wind Creek mega-casino. My colleague Matt and I spent a couple of days in and around west Bethlehem, Northampton County. Northampton voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016. Last week, by less than 1 per cent at last count, it chose Joe Biden. It is a ‘bellwether’ county. It rained for most our stay.

Charles Moore

The strangeness of voting in the Lords from my bed

Having only recently entered the House of Lords, I must tread with caution, but I had always understood that it is chiefly a revising chamber. By strong convention, it does not reject legislation arising from the election manifesto of the party victorious in the House of Commons. Yet on Monday night, faced with the Internal Market Bill (which helps provide for a full Brexit), it attempted no revision at all. The House was sitting in committee, whose very purpose is revision, but the anti-government majority was on such a high horse that it happily let an amendment from critics of the government fall. It refused to engage. A key feature of the Bill is to ensure that Northern Ireland should maintain ‘unfettered access’ to trade with the rest of the United Kingdom.

The Spectator

Boris won’t be forgiven if his No. 10 chaos makes him cave on Brexit

Mayhem has once again engulfed 10 Downing Street with the dramatic resignation of Lee Cain, Boris Johnson's communications chief. He was with the Prime Minister on the Vote Leave campaign — as had Dominic Cummings, Oliver Lewis and others who have formed a band of brothers in No. 10. Cain's departure put a question mark over the future of the others, which comes at an odd time because the Brexit they all campaigned for is weeks away from a conclusion. There are huge issues facing the government: a second lockdown, due to end on 2 December. The procurement and rollout of a potential vaccine. But another deadline, just weeks away, is Brexit. This is the mission Johnson was elected to accomplish, this is the drama that has defined British politics for the past five years.

James Forsyth

Will the government be left suffering from ‘long Covid’?

The first full week of the new national lockdown had the potential to be very difficult for Boris Johnson. Although just 34 Tory MPs voted against this England-wide measure, many more are unhappy about it. They have, as Tory MPs now do when they come across things they dislike, set up a group with a three-letter abbreviation: in this case, the CRG (Covid Recovery Group), which will oppose further lockdowns. Adding to the discontent among backbenchers, No. 10 had just U-turned on extending free school meals into the holidays. Tory MPs were left wondering why — as with exam result appeals — they had bothered taking so much flak from the media and the public if the government was going to give way in the end.

Martin Vander Weyer

China’s rockstar-of-tech has fallen foul of Xi

FTSE indices soared as the Biden Bounce met vaccine euphoria, underpinned by the Bank of England’s announcement of another £150 billion injection of quantitative easing. It was heartening to see shares in airlines, hotels and Rolls-Royce, the aero engine maker, perking up — and hardly surprising to see lockdown winners such as Ocado and Just Eat among the fallers. Across the Atlantic, even mighty Amazon shed 5 per cent on Monday. But stock markets are one thing and real life is another. What matters in the short term is whether Boris Johnson can get us out of the lockdown he clearly didn’t want before the tide of redundancies, heading towards 150,000 a month, crushes the prospects for a consumer-led recovery, even after vaccine distribution has begun.

Kate Andrews

Treasury reveals it didn’t forecast economic impact of second lockdown

Lockdowns are designed to temporarily delay the spread of the virus – but at what cost? This was the line of questioning that kicked off yesterday’s evidence session for the Treasury Select Committee, scrutinising the work HM Treasury has conducted in relation to lockdown. Chair of the committee Mel Stride asked Clare Lombardelli, Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury, to comment on specific economic analyses conducted around lockdown restrictions, ranging from the closure of pubs, gyms and restaurants to ‘circuit breakers’ and working from home directives. It was quickly revealed that no analysis has been done.

James Kirkup

Florida’s minimum wage fight has a key lesson for the Tories

Ever since I covered the end of the Bush-Gore presidential election in 2000, I have been wary of drawing lessons from US elections about UK politics: America is much less like Britain than too many British journalists tend to assume. But there’s one bit of the US voting last week that intrigues me in the context of British politics and policy, and which might just be a signpost to one of the big issues here in the next couple of years: the politics of the minimum wage. Florida last week voted for Trump: he got 51 per cent. It also voted, 60:40, for a proposal to increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 (£11.35) an hour.

Wednesday

Katy Balls

What the latest Downing Street row is about

The clock may be ticking when it comes to the Brexit talks but the news dominating Westminster today relates not to legal texts but personnel changes in Downing Street. Overnight the Times and Daily Mail both ran reports suggesting Number 10's Director of Communications Lee Cain was in line for a promotion to Chief of Staff. However, shortly after the news broke, briefings against Cain (a Vote Leave alumnus who has worked with Boris Johnson in government since his Foreign Office days) began – and government sources suggested no final decision had been made.  The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg has alleged that Johnson's partner Carrie Symonds is thought to be deeply opposed to the move and made this clear privately.