Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Steerpike

Hague brings the house down at Oxford

To Oxford, where William Hague was today admitted as the university’s 160th chancellor. In an hour-long ceremony, the onetime Tory leader was welcomed by Jonathan Katz, Oxford’s Public Orator. He reflected on Chris Patten’s decision to retire as Chancellor, noting that ‘there are precedents’ – indeed, to use ‘academic terminology’, ‘the great Creator himself took a sabbatical – the first, indeed, after a busy week one of his term.’ Reflecting on how political office had prepared Hague, Katz wondered whether he would find the role to be more of a ‘poisoned chalice’ or a ‘holy grail’ – ‘I predict more confidently that many will be those among us who wish

Jenny Lindsay

Women won’t easily forget Scottish Labour’s gender turnaround

For the last fortnight, the employment tribunal brought by nurse Sandie Peggie against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton has gripped the nation. Nurse Peggie lodged a claim against both Dr Upton and the health board for sexual harassment, harassment relating to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation after she was suspended for questioning the presence of the transgender doctor in the female changing room. There is much more that could – and will – be said about the case, which will resume in July, but it is the response of Scottish politicians that has fuelled much ire over the past week in particular. In an interview with the Holyrood Sources podcast, Scottish Labour leader

Owen Matthews

Could Zelensky have made a deal to stop the war?

Is there any truth to Donald Trump’s extraordinary and, to many, highly offensive comments apparently blaming Volodymir Zelensky for starting the war? Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said he was ‘disappointed’ that the Ukrainian leader complained about being left out of talks between the US and Russia in Riyad and claimed that Zelensky ‘could have made a deal’ to avert war. A ‘half baked’ negotiator could have secured a settlement years ago ‘without the loss of much land,’ claimed Trump. Trump is factually wrong – but not for the reason most commentators have assumed. Zelensky could indeed have averted the war back in October 2019, and came very close to

Steerpike

Climate groups wage war on ARC

Dear oh dear. The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference almost got through its entire meet-up without much interference from lefty activists. But as it threatened to come to a peaceful close this afternoon, the eco-zealots stepped in. Environmental justice group Fossil Free London has taken to Twitter to rally fellow climate comrades in a bid to ‘shut down the far right’s party’. Posting a series of garish clips on social media, Fossil Free London has warned its supporters that the ‘world’s worst climate deniers and far right goons’ are planning – wait for it – a ‘luxury party’ in celebration of this year’s conference. How scandalous! The lefty group

David Shipley

Labour has until Easter to stop prisons running out of space

There are just over a thousand men’s prison places left in the UK out of a total of 88,618 total. Where does the government go from here? Are our prisons about to run out of space? If they do, will we see even earlier releases? To put these figures from the start of the week in context, in August 2024 there were only around 700 spaces available. In the aftermath of the Summer riots there were concerns that courts might have to stop jailing people. Disaster was only averted by the government’s early release scheme, SDS40, under which thousands of additional prisoners were released in September and October. Meanwhile, David

Oliver Anthony

Read: Oliver Anthony’s speech at ARC

The below is an edited version of Oliver Anthony’s speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) on Wednesday, 19 February. Since August of 2023, I have received a flood of messages social media, email, handwritten letters. I’ve had I don’t know how many conversations with people face to face. Probably thousands at this point. And I realise now that we don’t have any clue as to how many around us are really broken. How many are silently suffering and barely hanging on. More often than not, they start the message with ‘hey, I’m a nobody, but’, followed by horrors of addiction, mental illness, financial and household struggles, oftentimes incredibly complicated stories

Matthew Lynn

Is X still worth £38 billion? Elon Musk thinks so

When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, his many critics gleefully predicted a catastrophe. We were told that everyone would quit the site for its rivals, such as Bluesky and Mastodon. The rebranding to X made Musk the object of ridicule. Musk was warned that he was unlikely to see a return on the $44 billion (£38.1billion) he had splashed out on the site. But hold on: today brings news that Musk is attempting to raise extra cash for his site at the same valuation as what he bought it for. Musk’s critics will no doubt say he is deluded. But his business acumen speaks for itself: this is a

Steerpike

Which female minister did Sunak call ‘effing useless’?

There’s only one book which all of Westminster is talking about. Traditionally, the post of Chief Whip has been filled by various men in grey suits, the very embodiment of discretion and anonymity. But today Simon Hart has begun serialising his tell-all diaries. From 2022 to 2024, he served as Rishi’s enforcer, desperately trying to keep the Tory party together as it tore itself apart. Talk about a thankless task… There is plenty to digest in the first extract in today’s Times. There’s the tale of a hapless backbencher calling Hart to stump up £500 for a prostitute. There’s the story of Suella’s sacking on a voice call in No. 10.

Patrick West

Why is Tom Hanks mocking Trump supporters?

We have long become accustomed to actors holding and sharing their progressive political views. So when David Tennant opened the Bafta awards on Sunday with a dig at Donald Trump, repeating the line that the American President is a dangerous moron, many people were annoyed, but few were surprised. Mechanically reciting fashionable mantras is what actors do, and Tennant, hitherto known for his vocal support for the trans movement, is no exception. The entire film Team America: World Police (2004) was founded on this reality about thespians.  When his counterpart on the other side of the Atlantic, Tom Hanks, did similarly at the weekend, there was, however, genuine shock. Appearing on

Steerpike

Reform makes more gains in Scotland

Well, well, well. As Nigel Farage’s Reform party continues to poll well across the UK, north of the border the right-wing group is making yet more gains in Scotland. Now yet another Scottish Tory councillor has defected to join Reform UK, with the party announcing this morning that Alec Leishman had switched sides – as Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay was delivering a keynote speech – before dubbing the move as a ‘bitter blow’ to the Conservatives. Another one bites the dust… The Renfrewshire councillor remarked today that he is ‘delighted’ to have joined Reform. Quick to blast his former party, Leishman proclaimed: Scotland badly needs change. The SNP have

Max Booth

Why is Birmingham council spending £14.5 million on taxis?

We’re less than a week into the Spectator Project Against Frivolous Funding, and Spaff has already shone a light on hundreds of examples of government waste. So far, we’ve mostly focused on central government – and, no doubt, council officers throughout Britain have rejoiced at being left untouched by our watchful eye.  But no more. I’ve been looking at how some of Britain’s biggest councils have been spending their constituents’ cash. Here are some of my findings. The first thing that shocked me is the sheer amount of money spent by local authorities on taxis – in large part for ferrying children to and from school each day. I’ll start

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The BBC’s Gaza documentary omitted something astonishing

The BBC’s documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone at first glance seemed to offer a raw and intimate portrayal of life in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict. However, the programme, which aired on BBC Two on Monday, was deeply flawed. The documentary, narrated by a Palestinian child, Abdullah Ayman Eliyazouri, presented a personal account of the suffering endured by Gaza’s residents. But the investigative journalist David Collier has reported that the BBC seems to have omitted something astonishing. Eliyazouri is not just a random child caught in the crossfire, but the son of Ayman Eliyazouri, the Hamas-run Gazan government’s deputy agricultural minister. Collier’s investigation cross-referenced social media profiles and other publicly available

Svitlana Morenets

Trump is making sure that Zelensky is re-elected

Ukrainians don’t like it when foreign leaders tell them what to do – whether they are Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump. Last night, Trump blamed president Volodymyr Zelensky for ‘starting’ the war with Russia and demanded that elections take place in Ukraine if it wants to be involved in the peace negotiations. Trump also expressed his disappointment that Zelensky hadn’t struck a deal with Russia before now, and said that Zelensky only had a ‘4 per cent’ approval rating in Ukraine. Trump may have been trying to put pressure on Ukraine to make peace faster, but his comments are actually only helping Zelensky secure a second presidential term.  Zelensky’s approval

Freddy Gray

Was ‘free trade’ really working?

29 min listen

Oren Cass, founder and chief economist of think-tank American Compass, sits down with Freddy Gray at the ARC conference in London. They react to the announcement by President Trump over the weekend of reciprocal tariffs: the decision by the US to match import duties levied by other countries.  What’s the strategy behind Trump’s decision? And what could the consequences be for American companies and for global trade? They also discuss the broad political consensus behind free trade in the US since the 1990s. Given the ‘lived reality’ that faced many American investors and companies – for example competing with Chinese Electric Vehicles – was the free trade really working anyway?

Steerpike

Could Jeff Bezos face jail under Labour’s knife reforms?

It’s a gaffe day with Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot and now the spotlight is on policing minister Diana Johnson. The Labour MP took to the airwaves this morning to sell Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s announcement that the maximum prison sentence for people selling knives to children under 18 will be increased in light of the Southport murders – from six months to two years in prison. Golly. But there’s more to it than that. Not only will those directly making the sales be punished, company CEOs are in the firing line too. If, for example, under-18s are found to have purchased knives from online shopping sites like Amazon, the

Kate Andrews

Inflation rises to 3% – should we panic?

Prices are rising. Inflation rose to 3 per cent in the twelve months leading up to January, up from 2.5 per cent in December. It’s a bigger jump than expected, with markets and the Bank of England expecting a rise to 2.8 per cent, driven largely by higher transport costs, as well as higher costs for food and non-alcoholic drinks. Is there reason to panic? While the CPI figures are higher than expected for January, they are not far out of line with the Bank’s latest forecast, which expects inflation to peak closer to 4 per cent this summer, due to rising energy costs. As Capital Economics notes this morning,

Ross Clark

Are 3.1 million Brits really too sick to work?

Is it any wonder that the economy is struggling in spite of an apparently booming jobs market, with employers finding it difficult to hire recruits and average earnings rising by 5.9 per cent in the past year? Here is a shocking statistic which goes a long way to explaining the apparent paradox: there are now 3.1 million people claiming Universal Credit with no requirement to seek work – a number which has doubled in just three years. We have to be careful with the absolute numbers, because as benefit claimants are gradually moved onto Universal Credit the figures are bound to grow. But as the chart from the Department for

Ian Williams

Trump’s support for Taiwan has infuriated Beijing

They were only six words on a website, but they helped maintain Beijing’s fiction that Taiwan is part of its territory. Their disappearance has infuriated China’s communist leaders. ‘It gravely contravenes international law and the basic norms of international relations,’ raged Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, on Monday. The website in question was that of the US State Department. The words – ‘we do not support Taiwan independence’ – have been removed from its ‘fact sheet’ along with a tweak to another section that implies stronger support for Taiwan’s right to join international organisations, which Beijing has consistently blocked. The changes were welcomed by the

Monica Porter

What Labour can learn from the glory days of British Rail

The Department for Transport has just launched an eight-week consultation to determine the shape of its much-vaunted Great British Railways – our renationalised railway system. Will it, I wonder, be anything like the earlier nationalised incarnation, British Rail (BR)? I do hope so. Because, although BR was disparaged for being old-fashioned and a bit creaky, inefficient and loss-making, I was very fond of those trains of yesteryear. John Major’s privatisation of the railways in the 1990s was meant to introduce competition, improve services and reduce costs. It didn’t work out that way though, did it? Trains today have never been so unreliable or so expensive. Not to mention overcrowded. So,

Eliot Wilson

Can the British army stretch to peace-keeping in Ukraine?

It has been a traumatic week for Europe’s political and military leaders. Last Wednesday, without warning, US President Donald Trump announced that he had spoken to Vladimir Putin by telephone for 90 minutes. During a ‘highly productive call’, he and the Russian leader had ‘agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately’ to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had not been informed of the conversation beforehand, much less involved. The transactional high-handedness of Trump’s approach, ignoring the injured party in the conflict and making direct and friendly overtures to the aggressor, should not have come as a surprise. But it left