Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Katy Balls

Could Boris Johnson command the confidence of the Commons?

Could Boris Johnson command the confidence of the Commons? That's the question being asked in Westminster this week as various 'Stop Boris' factions emerge. The Standard reports that Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill has told Theresa May that she ought to only advise the Queen to appoint Johnson or Jeremy Hunt as her successor if she is confident that they can command a majority in the Commons. With hostility growing over Johnson's Brexit plan – which could lead to no deal – it's BoJo who this appears to be aimed at. Over the weekend, the Sunday Times reported that the Johnson campaign had been warned by the Chief Whip that there was a high likelihood Boris would lose a vote of no confidence within 24 hours of taking the job.

Isabel Hardman

Is the Tory party trying to tear itself apart?

The Conservative party seems to have viewed the demise of the Jeremy Kyle Show as a gap in the market which it needs to fill, with a series of bizarre stories about the behaviour of some of its leading figures over the past few days. Just to top off Mark Field grabbing a female protester at a dinner by the neck and Boris Johnson's relationship troubles, there is also the start of a by-election triggered by a Conservative MP being convicted of expenses fraud. In keeping with its apparently constant need for drama and attention, the party has decided that the best way to deal with Chris Davies being booted out of his seat by his angry constituents, more than 10,000 of whom signed a recall petition following his conviction, is to select, er, Chris Davies to fight the seat.

James Forsyth

Hunt preys on Boris’s wobble

Jeremy Hunt is proving to be a more aggressive rival than many in the Boris Johnson campaign expected. Shortly before the last round of parliamentary voting, Hunt talked about putting ‘Boris through his paces’ which made him sound more like a personal trainer than a political opponent. But since making the final two, Hunt has been far punchier. His attacks on Boris Johnson this morning for ducking various TV debates are properly aggressive. Hunt’s attacks are garnering more attention because, after a relatively smooth parliamentary stage, Boris Johnson is having a wobble. The fallout from the Thursday night incident at his partner’s flat isn’t helping and his Brexit answer is still far too woolly.

Steerpike

Boris Johnson’s other woman

There are few stranger relationships in Westminster than the close alliance of Boris Johnson and the campaigner, author, and self-described 'Chief Fanny defender' Nimco Ali. According to Ali, she first met Boris Johnson in Putney eight years ago when they bumped into each other on the high street, as she was campaigning about FGM. She asked him for a meeting and the rest, as they say, is history. The pair went on to take part in several anti-FGM campaigns and, as Ali put it: 'he and his team at City Hall went on to work with me over several years.' Johnson and Ali seem to have become particularly close since he officially declared that he was running to become the next leader of the Conservative party.

Robert Peston

Why Tory members don’t care about the Carrie Symonds row

This is what a senior member of the cabinet told me this morning about whether Boris Johnson’s prospects of becoming Tory leader and our PM have been seriously harmed by the disclosure that neighbours summoned police to his home after they heard his girlfriend Carrie Symonds shouting at him to 'get off me'. Minister: 'It will take a really gross transgression for Boris Johnson to deflect the faithful, but it’s not beyond him.' And another minister said: 'I don’t think it [the leadership contest] has changed one inch.' For the avoidance of doubt, neither minister is invested in a Johnson victory, and one of them would passionately prefer him to lose.

Brendan O’Neill

The shameful hounding of Carrie Symonds

Who’s really harassing Carrie Symonds? We have no proof that her boyfriend Boris Johnson is. One surreptitiously recorded late-night row does not add up to evidence of an abusive relationship. But we have plenty of proof that leftists are. That’s the great irony of the Boris-tape controversy: Boris-bashers claim merely to be concerned for Ms Symonds’ welfare but in truth many of them seem hell-bent on making her life a misery. Ask yourself what kind of person puts up posters outside a young woman’s flat mocking her lover. That’s what some of Ms Symonds’ neighbours have done. They attached posters to metal railings showing Boris looking ridiculous, alongside the words: ‘We’d rather endure him as our neighbour than our Prime Minister.

Steerpike

Snap election? Brexit party interviews parliamentary candidates

The current competition to become leader of the Conservative party and prime minister may be dominating the papers at the moment, but it's clear that some parties are already thinking about the next race to Number 10. Mr S understands that the Brexit party are stepping up their preparations for a general election this week, and are interviewing potential parliamentary candidates today. The party plans to pick 650 candidates to contest every single seat in the next UK election, to capitalise on its recent success in the European elections (which saw it win the most seats in the UK) and current polling, which puts it close behind or ahead of the Conservative party.

Katy Balls

Jeremy Hunt capitalises on Boris Johnson’s troubles

When Jeremy Hunt was announced as the candidate who would join Boris Johnson in the final two for the Tory leadership contest members' vote, there were cheers amongst members of the Johnson camp. The view was that, unlike Gove, Hunt would prove a gentle opponent who Boris would have little bother shrugging off. However, after a weekend of bad headlines for the former mayor of London involving a late night incident with his girlfriend Carrie Symonds, that theory can now be called into question. Johnson refused at the first membership hustings to say why police were called to Symonds's flat in the early hours of Friday. While that refusal went down fine with the members assembled, it has since been criticised by various MPs.

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday Shows Roundup: Nicola Sturgeon – Boris Johnson would be ‘disastrous’ for the Tories

Nicola Sturgeon - Boris Johnson will be 'disastrous' for Conservatives This morning Sophy Ridge interviewed the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and the discussion soon turned to the race for who will be the UK's next Prime Minister. True to form, Sturgeon did not hold back when giving her estimation of frontrunner Boris Johnson: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1142715819736145920 NS: I think he will be devastating, disastrous for the Conservatives UK wide, but particularly in Scotland. He's seen in Scotland I think as one of the principle politicians who are responsible for the mess we're in over Brexit.

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: ‘The hour is come: Now, Gods, stand up for Boris!’ (Shakespearean soliloquies from would-be prime ministers)

For the latest literary challenge you were invited to submit a Shakespearean soliloquy delivered by one of the contenders for the Tory leadership in which they consider their pitch for the top job. During the 2016 leadership contest, Shakespearean references were flying round. Alex Salmond likened Michael Gove to ‘Lord Macbeth’, and when Boris Johnson announced his withdrawal from the scrum he paraphrased the words of Brutus, saying that now was ‘a time not to fight against the tide of history but to take that tide at the flood and sail on to fortune’. This time round, Boris has — so far, at least — been publicly reticent and most of you chose to plug that gap.

Saturday

Stephen Daisley

Holyrood’s trans rights pause is a good thing

A revolution stopped in its tracks is an uncanny sight. After impatiently pursuing reforms to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), the Scottish Government has suddenly hit the brakes. Shirley-Anne Somerville, SNP social security minister, announced the halt in a statement to the Scottish Parliament on Thursday. Although Nicola Sturgeon, at her minister’s side for support, remains committed to ditching medical diagnosis in favour of self-identification, she has made substantial concessions to feminist dissenters.  The proposed three-month wait for a gender recognition certificate will be extended by a ‘mandatory three-month reflection period’.

Ross Clark

There’s no denying the Boris tape was politically motivated

A neighbour records a domestic row through the wall of their flat, takes the recording to a newspaper which then publishes details of the conversation. I wonder what The Guardian would have made of that in 2011 when it was on its crusade against press intrusion which led to the Leveson Inquiry – especially had the newspaper been a red-top. Eight years ago, it was hacking into the messages on mobile phones which caused the controversy – a practice which led to criminal trials and a comprehensive, judge-led inquiry into the ethics of the press.

James Kirkup

This tape will always threaten Boris Johnson

It’s not hard to work out the 'lines to take' that are being handed out from Boris Johnson’s team to his surrogates in politics and the media after the police were called to the flat he’s been living in. 'It’s a private matter. It’s an invasion of privacy. The neighbour who taped the incident, called the cops and tipped The Guardian (yes, The Guardian) clearly has an agenda. This is the same sort of smear they’ve tried against poor old Mark Field. All couples have rows. It was just a domestic. Besides, women commit at least as much domestic violence as men.

Melanie McDonagh

Boris has to get out of Camberwell

Well! Just when it looked like the only political question anyone would be talking about is the start of the leadership hustings, what do you know? All anyone can think about is Boris Johnson’s row with his girlfriend on Thursday night. The one police were called to. Just after he’d seen off Michael Gove and the leadership contest seemed pretty well sewn up, now this: a proper row a plate-throwing, loud enough for the neighbours to hear every word sort of row. For anyone who hasn’t actually read the details, here’s the Mail’s account: 'Neighbours told last night how they heard plates and glasses smashing during a "proper tear-up" at the London flat Boris Johnson shares with girlfriend Carrie Symonds in the early hours of Friday morning.

Max Hastings

History will wonder how we trusted Boris with Britain

I am besieged by media folk asking when I shall make good on a four-year-old threat to flee to Buenos Aires should Boris Johnson become prime minister. How can I get on to a flight, I ask, when so many other voters are already waitlisted? In truth, however, we are being served successive courses in a national banquet of self-harm, too grisly to merit jokes. Nobody should blame Johnson for wanting to be prime minister: many unsuitable people do. But there will be infinite historical curiosity about how the Tory parliamentary party could scramble to deliver Britain into the custody of a man whom few of its members would entrust with their wallet, handbag or spouse, save to secure a cabinet seat.

Friday

Gabriel Radonich

The Spectator Podcast: who is Boris Johnson, really?

This week has seen the continually bizarre spectacle of the Tory leadership contest grind on. Earlier this week Sajid Javid pitched himself as the candidate best placed to 'make a better Boris', reflecting the strange reality of a contest in which only one of the candidates really believes they can win. But who is Boris Johnson, really? The man who looks almost certain to be our next prime minister seems to divide opinion like no one else in British politics. Is he a charismatic man of the people, or a phoney demagogue? A progressive liberal or a Brexit extremist covering for the far right? In this week’s magazine, Toby Young argues that Boris’ opponents are so blinded by their dislike of him, they’ve completely lost sight of who he actually is.

John Connolly

The Brecon by-election could be the first real test for Boris Johnson

The incoming prime minister will have a lot on his plate when he finally strolls into Number 10 in July – with a looming Brexit deadline on the horizon and only a threadbare majority in the Commons to deliver a deal or no-deal Brexit. But he will have even less time to relax than first thought, now that a by-election has been triggered in Brecon and Radnoshire. The Welsh Tory MP representing the area, Chris Davies, has been ousted today from his seat after almost 20 per cent of his constituents signed a recall petition to remove him (only 10 per cent of voters needed to sign the petition for him to be ousted). The petition was called after the MP was found guilty in March 2019 of submitting a false expense claim.

Brendan O’Neill

The moral arrogance of the Mansion House climate protestors

In last night’s scuffle between Conservative MP Mark Field and a Greenpeace protester, which of them was really behaving in an entitled manner? The story is that it was Field, there in his black tie, drinking and chortling with bankers at a fancy dinner as the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave a speech on the state of British politics. The way Field grabbed the protester by the neck before marching her out of the opulent room is being held up as symbolic of Tory arrogance and privilege. Labour MPs are calling for him to resign. Some even want the police involved, to teach these cocksure men of the entitled Tory party a lesson. But in truth, it wasn’t Field who displayed colossal levels of entitlement last night — it was the protesters.

Robert Peston

Mark Field’s behaviour was inexcusable

The video of Mark Field pushing a Greenpeace activist by the neck is so upsetting. https://twitter.com/itvnews/status/1141820588090114049 The climate-change protestors were, according to the police and friends who were there, wholly peaceful. Why on earth does Field react with such ferocity? The violence of his intervention is quite wrong. Some people are saying Mark Field was justified in shoving the protestor against the wall and then pushing her by the neck. But I don’t think you can have watched the longer clip. Because it shows Field is not being interfered with in any way and simply lashes out. Surely that is inexcusable. I am not engaging in virtue signalling by saying this, or engaging in culture wars or making any kind of political point.

Thursday

Peter Jones

The perils of popularity

So: Boris triumphans, ready to deliver a 140-seat majority for the Tories and lead the UK out of Europe and on to greater triumphs? The shade of an Athenian statesman might offer a warning. Themistocles (c. 524-459 bc) came from an obscure family, but early on conceived a passion for politics. His father ‘pointing out some ancient triremes, mere hulks abandoned on the seashore, said that was what happened to leaders when the people decided they were irrelevant’. This merely spurred him on. Themistocles flourished in the direct democracy invented in Athens in 508 bc. He built up a following among the poor, was said to know every citizen by name, and helped many with difficult court cases. The elites regarded him with great suspicion.