Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Stephen Daisley

Why Ross Greer would be good for the Scottish Green party

Ross Greer is for Palestine, trans rights and riling up the Daily Express, making him the ideal candidate to lead the Scottish Greens. At an event in Glasgow today, the West Scotland MSP put himself forward as a successor to Patrick Harvie, who is standing down after 17 years at the helm of the environmentalist party that occasionally takes an interest in the environment. Under Harvie’s leadership, the Greens have prioritised cultural and identity politics over economics and ecology, helping to push the Gender Recognition Reform Bill through Holyrood and press for free bus travel for asylum seekers (an idea pinched by the SNP-run Scottish government).  The pragmatic radicalism on offer

Lucy Dunn

Starmer announces ‘one in, one out’ migrant deal

After days of intense discussions and slightly-less-intense boozy dinners, Keir Starmer has struck a ‘one in, one out’ migration deal with France’s President Emmanuel Macron. The returns deal will allow up to 50 small boat migrants to be sent back to France each week, with the pilot to begin in the coming weeks. At a press conference this afternoon, the Prime Minister defended letting any migrants into Britain at all, telling reporters: ‘We accept genuine asylum seekers because it is right that we offer a haven to those in most dire need. We simply cannot solve a challenge like stopping the boats by acting alone and telling our allies that

Gavin Mortimer

Starmer and Macron won't fix the Channel migrant crisis

There was a sense of déjà vu to today’s announcement by Keir Starmer that he intends to ‘secure’ Britain’s borders. Standing alongside Emmanuel Macron, the Prime Minister pledged ‘hard-headed aggressive action on all fronts’ to crack the migrant crisis but warned that there is ‘no silver bullet’. The sceptic might argue that the real problem in cracking the migrant crisis isn’t the criminal gangs but the human rights industry Rishi Sunak deployed the same phrase in March 2023 when, as Premier, he stood alongside the French president, and promised to take back control of Britain’s borders. He failed, and few have faith in this new ‘one-in one-out’ scheme. ‘Migrants arriving

William Moore

Keir's peer purge, how to pick an archbishop & is AI ruining sport?

44 min listen

This week: Peerless – the purge of the hereditary peers For this week’s cover, Charles Moore declares that the hereditary principle in Parliament is dead. Even though he lacks ‘a New Model Army’ to enforce the chamber’s full abolition, Keir Starmer is removing the hereditary peers. In doing so, he creates more room, reduces the Conservatives’ numerical advantage, and improves ‘the sex and ethnic balance’. But 86 hard-working and dutiful peers ‘lacking worldly ambition or partisan passions’ will be lost. Also in the magazine, Sophia Falkner, researcher at The Spectator, sets out exactly what we stand to lose by profiling some of the most capable hereditary peers in the House.

Michael Simmons

Badenoch is right: the benefits bill could cripple Britain

‘We are becoming a welfare state with an economy attached,’ said Kemi Badenoch in a speech on sickness benefits today. She’s right, though anyone who read the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) dire report this week knows we’re past becoming: we already are. The figures are staggering. The bill for sickness benefits is heading towards £100 billion a year. Soon, one in every four income tax pounds will go just to cover these payments. Meanwhile, a million young people are doing nothing at all –not in work, not in education, not in training. Badenoch called this not only ‘unaffordable and unjustifiable, but immoral’. Again, she’s right. In a fiery speech hosted

James Heale

It's crunch time for Starmer's 'one in, one out' migrant deal

The entente is still very much cordiale. Talks between Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are ongoing on the third day of the Anglo-French summit. The key issue is migration: how best to stop the constant flow of Channel crossings that have seen 20,000 arrive here this year already? Like Rwanda, this deal faces numerous practical and political hurdles Both, publicly, are singing from the same hymn sheet, with lashings of Gallic sweetness. In remarks this morning, the French President praised the relationship between London and Paris. Both nations, he insisted, share ‘the same resolve to fight’ people smugglers. The Prime Minister spoke, again, of ‘new tactics’ and a ‘new intent

Oscar Edmondson

The unstoppable Angela Rayner

14 min listen

There is the small matter of the Macron–Starmer press conference today, at which the Prime Minister will hope to announce a new migration deal with France. But we thought we would dedicate today’s podcast to Angela Rayner, with some MPs thinking that the answer to Labour’s woes could be to ‘give it Ange until the end of the season’. As Tim Shipman reports in the magazine, she has undergone quite the political transformation – keeping her head down and away from incoming fire. Downing Street is taking her increasingly seriously. Is she the new John Prescott – or even the next Labour leader? Also on the podcast today: Jake Berry,

Steerpike

Lammy appoints campaign donor to Foreign Office board

Well, well, well. There has been a rather interesting appointment made to the Foreign Office board by David Lammy, as Karen Blackett joins as a non-executive director. This is not the advertising executive’s first brush with the now-Foreign Secretary however – as it transpires that Blackett is actually a Lammy donor, putting a whopping £5,000 towards the Labour MP’s campaign in the run-up to the general election last summer. How very interesting… Blackett has joined the board to help provide ‘strategic direction, oversight, support and challenge for the department with a view to the long-term health, reputation and success of the FCDO’ – and will be paid up to £15,000 a

Freddy Gray

Is Ghislaine Maxwell serving time for Epstein's crimes?

35 min listen

The FBI has declared there is no client list linked to Jeffrey Epstein—an announcement that pours cold water on years of speculation about a secret roster of powerful figures tied to his sex trafficking crimes. But what does this mean for Ghislaine Maxwell, who remains behind bars for her role in Epstein’s network? Ian Maxwell, British businessman and brother of Ghislaine Maxwell, responds to the FBI’s statement and argues that his sister’s conviction was the result of a deeply flawed trial. Ian describes Ghislaine’s harsh prison conditions, her ongoing legal battles—including a possible Supreme Court appeal—and maintains that she is innocent, determined to clear her name, and still paying the

Steerpike

Watch: Nigel Farage's bizarre fishing interview

As Sir Keir Starmer’s migration talks with French president Emmanuel Macron drag on, the TV segments on the subject are getting progressively weirder. Take this morning’s GB News piece aboard Nigel Farage’s boat. The Reform UK leader was supposed to be getting quizzed on the noises coming out of the Anglo-French borders deal – which he suggested could look a ‘complete insult’ and a ‘total humiliation’ – but Mr S considered it may have been rather difficult for viewers to follow Farage’s remarks given he spent a portion of the interview, er, catching fish and chucking them back in the sea again. While the presenter attempts to question Farage on

Steerpike

Poll: The Spectator is decision-makers' favoured read

Like Forrest Gump, The Spectator has an amusing habit of turning up at the right moments in history. Boris during Partygate? There was a copy of our mag in one of the No. 10 snaps. The latest season of Industry? There was a fake front cover proudly on display. And now it seems that this august institution is turning up on the right peoples’ desks in Westminster, Whitehall and beyond… A new report out by Portland Communications polls what 529 decision-makers from the public and private sectors are reading every day. It reports that: Although our panel skewed to the left politically, one interesting finding is how much more influential

Mark Nayler

Keep Palestine out of Pamplona

At this time of year, I’m usually immersed in Pamplona’s San Fermin festival, which burst into life on Sunday and runs until next Monday. The fiesta is famous for its daily bull runs through the narrow streets of the old town – an anarchic, life-affirming tradition in which I have participated six times. Unable to attend this year, I watched Sunday afternoon’s opening celebration on TV from southern Spain, feeling envious of each and every one of the 13,000 people present. But I was angered and saddened by what I saw. One of their members yelled: ‘Stop genocide, free Palestine!’ before lighting the rocket. Pamplona’s mayor chooses who lights the

James Heale

What Jake Berry's defection to Reform means

Reform UK have today unveiled their latest defector from the Tories. Sir Jake Berry is, arguably, the most senior name to switch parties to date. A Conservative MP from 2010 to 2024, he served as Party Chairman under Liz Truss and was a lead proponent of levelling up as chair of the Northern Research Group. A year after losing his Lancashire constituency, it looks as though he has concluded his future now lies outside the Conservatives. Writing in the Sun, he says Labour and the Tories ‘abandoned the British people’ and share equal responsibility for the state of the country. Berry is the fifth former Tory MP to come across

Eliot Wilson

Grey zone warfare is here. Britain must catch up

The ‘grey zone’ is the kind of ominous jargon beloved of the military, but for once it is well named: a wide range of hostile activities between states which stops short of the threshold of full-scale conflict, including espionage, cyber disruption and disinformation. It is a state which is neither peace nor war, and it is expanding all the time. The House of Commons Defence Committee has just published a report on the subject, Defence in the Grey Zone. It emphasises that, while the vast majority of the population has become insulated from conflict, this kind of activity brings the reality of disruption and violence to our everyday lives and

Sam Olsen

France can't solve Britain's reliance on America and China

When President Emmanuel Macron of France addressed the British parliament this week, he emphasised the need for both countries to reduce the risk from their ‘excessive dependencies on both the US and China’. This reliance on the Great Powers, Macron suggested, was a threat for Europe to be able ‘to invest in key technologies of the future’ and ‘avoid strategic dependencies and disengagement that would put us at risk of a slow death’. In many ways President Macron is right. The UK and Europe are absolutely dependent on America and China for critical technologies and industrial inputs. As noted by the EU in various recent reports, China dominates in rare

Ross Clark

Did 260 Londoners really die in the heatwave?

So, 260 Londoners died as a result of last week’s heatwave, of which 170 can be attributed to climate change. So claims Imperial College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Hot weather does kill people, or at least it does older people There’s just the one problem with this: the researchers haven’t actually counted any deaths at all. The study rushed out this week is nothing more than a piece of modelling, which estimates the number of deaths which might be expected to have been caused by the hot weather, as well as trying to guess how much hotter last week’s weather was than it would have

Gavin Mortimer

Can Ursula von der Leyen survive 'Pfizergate'?

Ursula von der Leyen faces the biggest test of her European Commission leadership as MEPs gather to vote on a motion of no-confidence. Today’s vote, the first of its kind in 11 years, has been brought by right-wing MEPs in relation to von der Leyen’s secretive negotiations with a pharmaceuticals boss during the pandemic. But while the European Commission president has tried to spin the no-confidence motion in her as ‘fuelled by conspiracy theorists’ – and seems set to win the vote – make no mistake: her leadership is badly damaged by this debacle, perhaps irreparably so. Economically, militarily and diplomatically, the bloc is floundering The chief complaint against von der Leyen

Laurie Penny

Corbyn’s new party is Starmer’s creation

Have you ever been to an activist meeting? A proper one, not a cocktail party for potential donors. If Keir Starmer has been to one lately, I suspect he didn’t stay past the minutes or he would have been better prepared for what happens when you try to get a roomful of lefties to point in the same direction. Starmer’s team have been so busy admiring their enormous majority that it has taken them a while to realise that they are trapped with 400 left-wingers in every shade of red from post-Soviet carmine to the most delicate salmon pink, all of them high on victory and spoiling for a fight.

Rachel Johnson

My night at the Spectator summer party

The first rule of the summer party is do not hold your summer party on the same night as The Spectator. It’s social fight club. You can only lose. This is a rule, however, that our Prime Minister, among others on ‘the left’, ignored to offer competing attractions. Zarah Sultana MP went to the most extreme lengths. She chose the same evening (3 July) to launch a new political party with Jeremy Corbyn, by posting something on X at 8.11 p.m. before her party even had a name, or indeed, Jeremy Corbyn. It was Jezbollah minus Magic Grandpa. Total success, as my father says whenever something goes badly wrong. The

Charles Moore

Peerless: the purge of the hereditaries

The House of Lords is very old, but not quite continuous. In 1649, shortly after the execution of King Charles I, the Cromwellian House of Commons passed an act which said: The Commons of England assembled in parliament, finding by too long experience, that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the People of England… have thought fit to Ordain and Enact… That from henceforth the House of Lords in parliament, shall be and is hereby wholly abolished and taken away. This measure was nullified, however, by the Restoration in 1660. The parliaments of King Charles II, and all parliaments since, have included the House of Lords. The