Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
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Freddy Gray speaks to Spectator writer Paul Wood about his piece this the latest edition of Spectator World on AI and whether it will soon have rights. This first came about when Paul went to live in Rome and discovered some of the work the Vatican has been doing in AI.
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First up: how the Bank of England wrecked the economy Britain’s economy is teetering on the brink of a deep fiscal hole, created by billions of pounds of unfunded spending – never-ending health promises, a spiralling welfare bill and a triple lock on the state pension, which will cost three times as much as originally estimated. Although politicians ‘deserve much of the blame for the economic state we’re in’, it’s Andrew Bailey – Michael Simmons argues in the magazine this week – who ‘has enabled their recklessness’. He joined the podcast to discuss who really broke Britain with Kate Andrews, Deputy Editor of The Spectator’s world edition and former Economics
Our economy is on the rocks, legal and illegal immigration remains out of control, public services are creaking, and a looming debt crisis is on the horizon. But fear not. Labour has announced its big idea for turning around Britain’s fortunes: votes for children. It is naive to assume that 16-year-olds will be more attracted to Starmer’s technocratic government than Reform’s radicalism Around 1.5 million 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to vote at the next general election, under government plans to lower the voting age. Keir Starmer says older teenagers are ‘old enough to go out to work, they are old enough to pay taxes’ and, so, they are old
Well, well, well. It transpires that a number of left-wing MPs enjoyed some time away from their constituencies at this year’s Glastonbury festival, soaking up the sun, music and, of course, the pleasure of being there for free. Former Labour MP Zarah Sultana – who may or may not have patched things up with Jeremy Corbyn following a rather botched party launch announcement – was gifted two tickets by Glastonbury Festival Events Ltd worth £630 after attending as a guest speaker. Green MP Ellie Chowns also registered a single ticket for speaking at the festival, costing £390, while Labour’s Clive Lewis accepted a ticket, after being invited to speak, at
Gerrymandering is as old as the hills, and neither of what have been Britain’s two main political parties for the past century has a clean nose. Why did the Conservatives extend the franchise to long-term expats who are not even paying taxes in Britain? And why has the present government just announced that 16- and 17-year-olds will be granted the vote in UK general elections for the first time? Forget any high-mindedness about fairness, encouraging responsibility and so on – these are raw attempts to swing the political arithmetic in the governing party’s favour. The big losers from votes for 16- and 17-year-olds look like being the Conservatives and also
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Keir Starmer has struck again. Compounding his reputation as a ruthless operator – like Michael Corleone – he is settling all family business by removing the whip from a number of troublemaking MPs, including Neil Duncan Jordan, Chris Hinchcliff, Brian Leishman and Rachel Maskell. This comes after each led respective revolts on winter fuel, planning reform, Grangemouth and the welfare changes. Rosena Allin-Khan, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Mohammed Yasin have all lost their trade envoy roles too. Many of the MPs who have been cast adrift are from the new intake, and so today we are joined on the podcast by Mike Tapp, MP for Dover and Deal, to give his
Most elections are fought and won on the economy. So it is no surprise that the Tory leadership have identified this as the strongest issue on which to attack Keir Starmer. At the 1922 committee last night, Kemi Badenoch told her troops that the economy would be the ‘number one issue’ going forward. Alex Burghart, her policy chief, did the same this morning at the Onward think tank, in a thoughtful speech reflecting on the first year of this government. Burghart’s speech stressed three main points. The first, the primacy of economic policy in political debate, as the contractions under Labour become increasingly evident. The second, the underpriced possibility of
The Sandie Peggie case against NHS Fife is only getting stranger. The tribunal resumed on Wednesday morning, after first being heard in February after nurse Peggie lodged a complaint of harassment related to a protected belief under the 2010 Equality Act after being suspended for complaining about sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor. Just weeks after the case adjourned, the Supreme Court backed the biological definition of a woman – and just this week Peggie’s lawyer announced NHS Fife had cleared Peggie of all gross misconduct allegations. Now those present have witnessed another baffling twist –the senior diversity officer who gave advice that allowed a transgender medic into
Unemployment has hit 4.7 per cent – its highest level for four years after the Chancellor’s taxes on business caused jobs to slump. The figures, published this morning by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), also show payroll jobs down by 178,000 in the 12 months to June and by 41,000 between May and June. The line that Rachel Reeves’ decision – namely her £25 billion employer national insurance tax raid – is hampering the job market is becoming a strong one. Andrew Griffith, shadow business secretary, said: ‘Unemployment is the only thing growing under Labour.’ As Reeves weighs up tax rises likely to fall heavily on businesses to plug
Friedrich Merz has managed something truly remarkable: he’s simultaneously the most internationally successful German chancellor in decades and quite possibly the most domestically incompetent. While foreign leaders sing his praises and credit him with everything from Ukraine’s weapons supply to Nato’s renewed backbone, German conservatives are discovering they’ve elected a man who can charm Trump but can’t outwit a Social Democratic Party that barely scraped 16 per cent of the vote. The damage extends far beyond one failed nomination The man who promised to clean up the catastrophic legacies of both his predecessors, Scholz and Merkel, has indeed delivered on the international front. In London today, Merz will sign the
Controlled immigration was once a left-wing cause. It was a basic tenet of trade unionism – not to mention economics – that the number of workers in a labour market dictates the rate of pay. When more and more people compete for the same jobs, employers can cut wages. Those who care about profits rather than wages tend to be in favour of more migration. The capitalist will always dream of importing huge numbers of workers from countries with much lower wages, knowing they can be used to drive down rates of pay and improve profits. The rules of labour supply and demand remain just as true today, but it
In February 2020, a few weeks before Britain was thrown into lockdown, Sajid Javid resigned as chancellor of the exchequer over a bust-up with the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. The fight was thought to be over Cummings’s attempts to dictate who could and could not work in No. 11. In fact, it was just one skirmish in a long-running and bitter power struggle between the two men. Two months before his resignation, Javid had claimed victory in a different battle against Cummings – one over who would occupy the governor’s office at the Bank of England. Cummings wanted Andy Haldane, then the Bank’s chief economist, who he believed
Labour ministers face a range of terrible political choices, but when the cabinet met for an away day at Chequers last Friday, the first dilemma was what to wear. ‘There was panic beforehand about what “smart-casual” meant,’ one ministerial aide says. Both Hilary Benn and John Healey turned up in dark suits and red ties. ‘To be fair to the Defence Secretary, he hadn’t seen that bit of the invite,’ a No. 10 official explains. ‘Whereas in Hilary’s case, that is what his smart-casual looks like.’ By contrast, Peter Kyle, the Science Secretary, turned up in what one observer describes as a ‘tech bro AI T-shirt’. Finding an economic policy
Labour woes mean Tory smiles. The Conservatives have ended the parliamentary session on a (reasonable) high, after last week’s benefits debacle. At the shadow cabinet yesterday, frontbenchers were treated to a presentation by Mark McInnes, the new chief executive, and Paul Bristow – the only real success story from May’s local elections. This evening, it was the turn of Kemi Badenoch to address the 1922 Committee for their final meeting before the summer recess. Badenoch’s speech was an upbeat affair. She pointed to the U-turns secured on welfare, grooming gangs and winter fuel. Progress was highlighted in a number of key areas, after the shambles of the last election. Following
After a week of brooding, Keir Starmer has decided to strike. Like Michael Corleone, today he is settling all family business. A series of Labour recalcitrants have been summoned to the Whips’ Office this afternoon. So far four MPs – Neil Duncan Jordan, Chris Hinchcliff, Brian Leishman and Rachel Maskell – have lost the whip. All have reputations of being ‘troublemakers’, having led respective revolts on winter fuel, planning reform, Grangemouth and the welfare changes. Rosena Allin Khan, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Mohammed Yasin have all lost their trade envoy roles too. What is behind today’s bolt from the blue? Among Labour MPs, there is some surprise at the timing of
The Prime Minister of France announced his plan on Tuesday to balance the country’s books: his most eye-catching intention is to scrap two public holidays. In addressing the nation, Francois Bayrou warned that France’s out-of-control public spending has left the country in ‘mortal danger’. It was imperative to reduce the public deficit by 43.8 billion euros by 2026, explained Bayrou. ‘It’s the last stop before the cliff, before we are crushed by the debt. It’s late, but there is still time.’ The holidays Bayrou wants to jettison are Easter Monday and 8 May (VE Day), two of the eleven annual public holidays in France. Britain has eight. Bayrou has taken
It was clearly hot in the House of Commons today. The Lib Dem benches were a sea of pastel colours, light pinks and summer suits. They looked like the LGBTQIA+ sub-committee of the Friends of Glyndebourne. Which, in many ways, they are. Rachel Reeves, in contrast, was wearing severe black, as if she were going to a funeral. Presumably for the economy. The picture painted by the PM is of an unrecognisable nation Members on the Labour backbenches fanned themselves with order papers and squirmed. Given that these are people who give the impression that they are kept in tanks needing only a coco fibre brick, a heat lamp and
Keir Starmer joked at Prime Minister’s Questions today that Tory MPs seemed to be on recess already. But he wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders either, giving automated answers to Kemi Badenoch’s questions about tax and the economy. Having complained volubly about prime ministers not answering the questions he asked as leader of the opposition, he now has a stock set of his own personal flannels with which to dodge giving real answers as Prime Minister. Starmer has a stock set of personal flannels with which to dodge giving real answers as Prime Minister Starmer started the session with a line on the Afghan data leak, telling the Chamber: ‘Yesterday,
Well, well, well. It was only a fortnight ago that the government was forced to gut its own welfare reform in the face of a full-blown backbench rebellion, leaving Rachel Reeves with a £5bn black hole to cover up. And now, fresh from their self-inflicted bloody nose, the Department for Work and Pensions revealed on Tuesday that the number of people receiving Universal Credit has soared within Labour’s first year by, um, over a million. The DWP also acknowledged that over a million recipients are foreign nationals – in the first time the immigration status of benefit claimants has been published. 7.9 million people are currently on the dole. That’s
Over the last 24 hours, southern Syria has seen a sharp escalation in violence involving Syrian government forces, local Druze militias, and Israeli airpower. The developments centre on the city of As-Suwayda and the surrounding region, home to much of Syria’s Druze population, and have drawn renewed attention to the complex relationship between the Druze community, the Syrian regime, and Israel. Prospects for normalising relations between Israel and Syria have significantly worsened The Syrian army has begun heavily shelling areas in and around As-Suwayda. Israeli aircraft launched strikes against regime positions in Suwayda and Daraa, and reportedly targeted a military convoy belonging to Abu Amsha, a Turkish-backed militia commander. Then,