Politics Archives

Saturday

16 August 2025

What's wrong with charging a fat tax?

At a time when quarterly economic growth in the UK is flatlining at 0.3 per cent, it’s good to learn that not every industry in Britain is in mortal peril. While their customers have seen better days, coffin makers report that the average casket width has grown from 18-20 inches to a girthy 20-24 inches. As a 15.8 per cent increase, it’s the definition of an upsell and the kind of growth that only countries that have fired their chief statistician can hope to achieve. You’d think it would be a boom time for the National Association of Funeral Directors, who, given their trade, must rarely be in the mood

Antony Beevor

Is the world safer than in 1945?

11 min listen

80 years ago this week Japan surrendered to the allies, ushering in the end of the Second World War. To mark the anniversary of VJ day, historians Sir Antony Beevor and Peter Frankopan join James Heale to discuss its significance. As collective memory of the war fades, are we in danger of forgetting its lessons? And, with rising state-on-state violence and geopolitical flashpoints, is the world really safer today than in 1945? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Friday

15 August 2025

Freddy Gray

How dangerous is Washington, D.C.?

US President Donald Trump claims Washington, D.C. has been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals”. There are lots of stories about crime, including one very bizarre incident involving a sandwich. Just how unsafe is D.C.? Freddy Gray is joined by US managing editor Matt McDonald and Isaac Schorr, staff writer at Mediaite, who has written a piece on his experience in Washington for Spectator World.

Owen Matthews

Trump and Putin fundamentally misunderstand each other

Let the trolling begin. Chicken Kiev was the airline meal served to the first planeload of Russian diplomats, government officials and journalists as they flew to Anchorage, Alaska. Russia’s veteran foreign minister Sergei Lavrov arrived dressed in a white sweatshirt bearing the logo ‘CCCP’ – or USSR in Cyrillic. Russian State TV viewers have been treated to video montages of the greatest moments of US-Russian cooperation, from astronauts meeting in the Mir space station to soldiers embracing on the Elbe river in 1945. The US side, by contrast, has done their bit to make the visiting Russians feel unwelcome by billeting the Kremlin press corps in a sports stadium equipped

Philip Patrick

What J.K. Rowling misses about Sturgeon’s memoir

When someone one day writes a true history of Scotland during the baleful tenure of Nicola Sturgeon and reflects on what brought about her downfall as first minister, ‘Isla’ Bryson might be worth a footnote but J.K. Rowling surely merits a chapter. No one has managed to articulate the opposition case to Sturgeon with the verve, intelligence and penetrating wit of the Harry Potter author. Rowling’s review of Frankly, Sturgeon’s recently published memoir, is in many ways as brilliant as her other mainly tweeted thrusts. It is incisive and damming, outclassing her adversary and doing so with courage humour and originality. In other ways though it misses the mark, failing, as many

Patrick West

What’s wrong with a St George’s Cross flag?

Flags have become a contentious and defining issue of this year. You only have to witness the furore that has surrounded the increasing proliferation of the Progress Pride and Palestinian flags in this country to recognise this. So it was only a matter of time before that other increasingly common sight, flags denoting pride in Englishness and Britishness, should have been drawn into the fray. As reported in the Daily Telegraph this morning, Birmingham Council has ordered the removal of Union and St George’s flags from lamp posts. In response to initiatives made by residents in the fortnight approaching VJ Day to install hundreds of the flags in the predominantly

James Heale

Farage goes for the Lords

15 min listen

The big news today is of course the bilateral between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska. We should know by around 8 p.m. whether they have successfully negotiated an end to the war in Ukraine – and at what cost – but in the meantime Westminster is abuzz with the news that Nigel Farage is going for the Lords. This morning the Times splashes on a letter from Nigel Farage to the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, in which he demands that Starmer allow him to nominate Reform peers to the House of Lords. It is not a totally unreasonable request either, with the Greens and the DUP represented in

Steerpike

Tories accuse Sturgeon of breaking ministerial code over indyref2

The SNP’s former Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon released her memoir this week – but it has not quite had the reception she anticipated. The trailed excerpts prompted Alex Salmond’s allies to accuse Sturgeon of besmirching her former mentor’s name, brought her failed gender reform bill to the fore and confused pro-independence supporters after the Queen of the Nats hinted she was considering a move to, er, London. Now another admission in the 450-page tome has led the Scottish Tories to write to the Scottish Permanent Secretary to examine whether Sturgeon broke the ministerial code. Craig Hoy posted his letter to Joe Griffin on Twitter today, fuming that Sturgeon’s memoir had

Ross Clark

Britain has a wind problem

Climate change is giving Britain more violent weather, with ever-increasing storms tearing down our trees and whipping up waves which erode our coastlines. No one ever seems to get into trouble for saying the above – as many did yet again during Storm Floris last week – in spite of it being the inverse of the truth. Actually, Britain has been experiencing a downwards trend in average and extreme wind speeds for the past four decades. There is little sign it has entered Ed Miliband’s head that he is trying to tap into a declining resource One place where they won’t be making that mistake, though, is the boardroom at German energy

Matthew Lynn

Mounjaro won't be the last drug company to bow to Trump

If you need to lose a few pounds after enjoying the French or Italian food a little too much on your summer holiday, there might soon be a problem. The cost of one of the new weight loss drugs that has become so popular in recent months is about to get a lot more expensive. The American drugs giant Eli Lilly doubling the price of Mounjaro in the UK. The price of one diet pill does not make a great deal of difference. The trouble is, the decision was prompted by President Trump’s determination to make the cost of medicines a lot fairer between the United States and the rest

Gawain Towler

Farage should be allowed to appoint peers to the Lords

In Westminster, tradition often trumps innovation, and Nigel Farage’s latest demand has stirred the pot with characteristic vigour. The Reform UK leader has called on the Prime Minister to grant his party the right to nominate peers to the House of Lords, framing it as a correction to a glaring ‘democratic disparity.’ Far from a personal vanity project, this is a plea for proportionality in our unelected upper chamber, where Reform, with its four MPs, control of ten councils, and a commanding lead in national polls, remains conspicuously absent. As reported in the Times, Farage points to the Greens, who boast four MPs yet two peers, and the DUP with

Alexander Kolyandr

Can Putin extract an economic victory from Trump?

The Alaska summit taking place today isn’t just about war – economics looms equally large. Vladimir Putin, with his forces pressing forward in Ukraine, faces neither military urgency nor economic desperation to halt the fighting. For him, this has never been a territorial grab but an existential struggle against Western hegemony. His challenge is to decouple the war from bilateral cooperation with America: the former proceeds too favourably to abandon, while the latter promises diplomatic triumph and relief from mounting economic pressures. Putin’s delegation tells the story. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy for international investment, signal that sanctions and economic cooperation will be discussed. Putin

Steerpike

Defence Secretary blasts Farage as 'Putin apologist'

Ding ding ding! John Healey was pulling no punches this morning as he took aim at Reform UK on the airwaves. Nigel Farage’s party has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer for presiding over a ‘democratic disparity’ because despite having four MPs and managing ten councils, the party has no representation in the House of Lords. But when quizzed on the accusation today on LBC, the Defence Secretary was having none of it. ‘I’m not sure that parliament’s going to benefit from more Putin apologists like Nigel Farage, to be honest.’ Shots fired! When pushed on whether this description may be a little strong, Healey refused to back down. He added:

Ike Ijeh

Make council houses beautiful again

When Tony Blair and his team were deciding which venue should host his first speech as Prime Minister after his landslide 1997 election victory, they did not choose Downing Street or Whitehall or Parliament. They instead chose a much more unlikely setting, the notorious Aylesbury council estate in south-east London. Why? Because New Labour presentational dark arts aside, it brutally epitomised the deprivation, devastation and despair of those Blair went on to refer to in his speech as ‘the forgotten people’, a dispossessed social diaspora with whom Britain’s failed council estates had become hopelessly synonymous. It is these people we desperately need to invigorate. This is why Policy Exchange are

Michael Simmons

GDP growth proves the Bank of England’s mistakes

Yesterday’s stronger-than-expected GDP growth raises questions for the Bank of England. Second quarter growth came in at 0.3 per cent (0.2 per cent per Brit) propped up by a strong 0.7 per cent in June alone. The rest of the national accounts however, paint a worrying picture when it comes to inflation. The GDP deflator – which is a measure of the overall level of prices in the whole economy – came in at 4.1 per cent year-on-year growth. That’s down slightly from the last reading but still more than double the Bank’s 2 per cent target. Nominal domestic demand was growing too, at more than 5 per cent –

Edward Howell

Kim Jong-un will be watching the Trump-Putin summit closely

When Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet in Alaska today, it will mark their first encounter since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Although the talks are likely to be dominated by questions of a ceasefire, possible division of territory, and how the three-year war will conclude, North Korea will likely be more than a small elephant in the room. Amidst amplifying ties between Moscow and Pyongyang, neither Putin nor Kim Jong-un looks likely to abandon the other in the short term, irrespective of whether any piece of paper – however preliminary – emerges from the Last Frontier. On Tuesday, Russian and North Korean state media announced that

Iain MacGregor

VJ Day taught us the fragility of peace

Victory over Japan Day – VJ Day – falls today, 15 August being the day in 1945 that Emperor Hirohito spoke to his people for the very first time to inform them of the country’s submission to the allies’ Potsdam declaration of unconditional surrender. Eighty years on, it will be an occasion shrouded in both relief and reflection. It’s a day that marks not just the end of the Pacific theatre’s tumult but also a profound turning point that reshaped the entire landscape of international affairs, collective memory, and national identities. The echoes of those tumultuous years still reverberate through the corridors of history, shaping our understanding of what peace

Max Jeffery

Bournemouth police are losing control

Who is Ritchie Wellman? He is a father, a boyfriend, an assistant operations manager at a local business and a part-time paedophile hunter. Right now, however, at 7 p.m. in a dusty car park down the road from Bournemouth pier, Ritchie is the commander of his own private policing unit, briefing his officers before their first patrol. He tells them not to assault anybody, not to be provoked, not to drink or smoke on the job, and to reassure the public if they are concerned by this new authority on their streets: ‘This is not a takeover.’ Ritchie is a normal guy, and he and his officers and others in

Patrick Kidd

Patrick Kidd, Madeline Grant, Simon Heffer, Lloyd Evans & Toby Young

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Patrick Kidd asks why is sport so obsessed with Goats; Madeline Grant wonders why the government doesn’t show J.D. Vance the real Britain; Simon Heffer reviews Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea; Lloyd Evans provides a round-up of Edinburgh Fringe; and, Toby Young writes in praise of Wormwood Scrubs – the common, not the prison. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

14 August 2025

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The hypocrisy of Tulip Siddiq

The corruption trial of Tulip Siddiq formally commenced in Bangladesh on Wednesday. Among other allegations linked to £3.9 billion worth of embezzlement, the Bangladeshi-origin Labour MP has been accused by the Anti-Corruption Commission of securing luxury property for her family in Dhaka, using her relationship with the country’s former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted and fled the country last August following mass protests against her rule. Prior to her election as the Labour MP for Hampstead in 2015, Siddiq, the granddaughter of Bangladesh’s founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, had been a spokesperson of her aunt Hasina’s Awami League in the UK even joining the former Bangladeshi prime minister