Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Patrick West

Forgive Stephen Fry for supporting Stonewall

There has been much indignation at the roll-call of those ennobled in the New Year Honours. There’s been bewilderment that Gareth Southgate, England’s failed football coach, has been given a knighthood. There’s been anger that Sadiq Khan, who has presided over an escalation of knife crime in the capital, has been similarly honoured. There’s been puzzlement that Emily Thornberry, whose foremost distinction has been sneering at working-class displays of patriotism, has been made a dame. And there’s been gnashing of teeth that Stephen Fry, that ubiquitous and often grating luvvie, has been given the title ‘Sir’. Much of the vehemence directed towards Fry has focused on his longstanding support for

Wednesday

Mark Galeotti

Where have Russia’s Zs gone?

A social media post on 30 December: photographs of admittedly-splendid new year decorations in Moscow, archly captioned ‘back to 2021.’ The poster is alluding to the fact that obscene and extravagant references to Putin’s war in Ukraine – notably the letter Z, which has come to symbolise it – were notably absent from city decorations this new year. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has never seemed especially enthused about the war. He has done what the Kremlin required – diverted resources to help raise ‘volunteer regiments’; wallpapered the city with recruitment adverts; renamed Europe Square Eurasia Square – but he has avoiding too close an identification with the war, unlike so

Tuesday

Steerpike

Which political party leader had the best year?

It’s been an eventful year in British politics, with a snap general election and multiple leadership contests keeping political journalists across the country busy. And how have political party leaders fared? With the help of the Spectator’s data hub, Mr S has examined which party leaders, both north and south of the border, have had the best (and worst) 2024. At the start of the year, hapless Humza Yousaf was forced to step down as First Minister after he rather abruptly ended his government’s coalition agreement with Patrick Harvie’s barmy army. The SNP establishment became rather concerned about the prospect of yet another leadership race – given just how unedifying

Freddy Gray

What will Jimmy Carter be remembered for?

22 min listen

The former US President died has died age 100 surrounded by his family in Plains. Known as the longest-lived US President in history, The Spectator’s political correspondent James Heale and Freddy Gray discuss Jimmy Carter’s legacy both in and out of office, how he compares to Joe Biden as one-term Presidents, and the way Jimmy Carter’s Christianity shaped his politics. 

Ian Williams

China’s hacking frenzy has reached the US Treasury

When Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves visits Beijing in January on a mission to improve ‘economic and financial cooperation’ she could well find her hosts surprisingly well informed about the global financial system and Donald Trump’s plans for it – thanks to China’s hyperactive and increasingly aggressive army of hackers. Chinese hackers are becoming far more Russian in that they are looking increasingly at undermining their adversaries and not just stealing from them The US Treasury on Monday revealed that it had become the victim of what it called a ‘major cybersecurity incident’, which it blamed on state-sponsored Chinese hackers who accessed workstations and viewed documents. The Treasury said

Ross Clark

Why has ‘decolonising’ Sadiq Khan accepted a knighthood?

If you are going to give gongs for public service, I guess a three-times elected London mayor ought to be a candidate. True, it is hard to see what particular achievements have earned Sadiq Khan his knighthood. Violent crime has risen inexorably on his watch, while his efforts to clean up London’s air have been clumsy at best, making life next-to-impossible for low-wage shift workers in outer London who really don’t have any option but to commute to work in their 20 year-old cars. Cars, in should be noted, which are not a lot less clean than the newer Chelsea Tractors which wealthy Londoners – Khan included – use to

Brendan O’Neill

Why is Israel being blamed for the battle of Kamal Adwan Hospital?

Every good reporter knows you never bury the lede. You never smother the key point of a story with fluff and verbiage. And yet that’s exactly what much of the media is doing in its coverage of the Battle of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza. They’re burying, if not outright hiding, the most vital, most unsettling part of this tale – namely, that a neo-fascist militia is using a hospital as a base from which to plot the murder of Israel’s soldiers and citizens. When I watch news coverage of the clashes in and around Kamal Adawn, I feel like I’m losing my marbles. This is very clearly a fight

Gareth Roberts

The joy of Kemi and Farage’s Christmas feud

A feud can be very tedious and tiring if you’re one of the combatants. But let’s be honest: for onlookers, feuds are fun. Videos of spats in which one or other party is ‘schooled, owned, destroyed’ ratchet up millions of views. It’s even more fun when both sides don’t lose their temper and civility is maintained. There is glorious entertainment in watching people ‘throwing shade’ at one another without it ever quite coming to the boil.  The smaller the differences, the funnier the feud Now we have a new one to enjoy, in the classic mould. Ding ding, in the blue corner is Kemi Badenoch. While in the slightly different shade

Robin Ashenden

Vodka and the Beatles on a New Year’s Eve in Narva

Narva, the northern Estonian city right on the border with Russia, has been much in the news of late. Not only is it where the Estonians expect any Russian invasion to take place – most of the rest of the frontier passes straight through the middle of Lake Peipus – but it has also become the scene of constant provocations from the Kremlin. There have been border-demarcation symbols snatched by night, local sat-nav jamming, and a host of psychological wind-ups. In the past month reports have come of a clunky Russian surveillance-zeppelin flying over Narva, sporting the letter ‘Z’. This city – in which an estimated 96 per cent of

Justin Brierley

Most-read 2024: A Christian revival is under way in Britain

We’re closing 2024 by republishing our five most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 1: Justin Brierley’s article from our Easter issue on the revival of Christianity. Tom Holland recently invited me to attend a service of Evensong with him at London’s oldest church, St Bartholomew the Great. Holland, who co-hosts the phenomenally popular The Rest is History podcast, has been a regular congregant for a few years. He began attending while researching Dominion, his bestselling book which outlined the way the 1st-century Christian revolution has irrevocably shaped the 21st-century West’s moral imagination. It also recounts how Holland, a secular liberal westerner who had lost any vestige of faith by

Monday

Steerpike

Sadiq Khan gets a knighthood

Farewell to 2024, the year in which no incumbent was safe. Whether it was the Democrats in the White House or the Tories in Downing Street, the tide of change carried all before it, from the LDP in Japan to the BDP in Botswana. But one man successfully bucked the trend: Sadiq Khan was re-elected for an historic third term as mayor of London. Who says democracy doesn’t work, eh? And now Khan has added reason to celebrate: he has been given a knighthood in the New Year Honours List. Yes, that’s right, Sir Sadiq has been handed a ‘K’ by King Charles for ‘Political and Public Service.’ One wonders

Ross Clark

Elon Musk is the real leader of the opposition

No wonder the left hates X so much. Elon Musk is using it to carve himself a role as Britain’s unofficial opposition – a role at which he is proving rather more effective than the official opposition. His latest interjection into UK politics is deadly. Responding to Scottish politicians who would like him to set up a Tesla factory in Scotland he replied simply: ‘very few companies will be willing to invest in the UK with the current administration.’ Ouch! It is so damaging to the Keir Starmer and his ministers because Musk is exactly the person whom they should want to be investing in Britain. He makes all the

Rod Liddle

Is Reform unstoppable?

Lying in bed pissed on Boxing Day night, I was visited by the ghost of Christmas Future, dressed in a grey jacket with a velvet collar, hovering over my pit cackling and in a similar state, alcohol-wise, to myself. It seemed very happy, this ghost. It led me to a graveyard where it pointed, in jubilation, at a headstone which had the words ‘Kemi Badenoch 2024-2026’ on it. ‘You shouldn’t joke about people passing away, Nigel,’ I told this phantom a little sententiously. ‘She’s not actually dead, you idiot,’ replied the wraith, lighting a fag. ‘It’s a metaphor.’ When I awoke 12 hours later, my mobile phone flashed a message

James Kanagasooriam and Patrick Flynn

Right move: will Britain benefit from the global conservative turn?

The world appears to be turning on its axis – and moving hard to the right. The New World is tilting hardest. In Argentina, Javier Milei is taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy. In the US, Donald Trump is poised to deport migrants, deregulate the economy and drill, baby, drill. Canada’s tendresse for the maple-syrupy liberal Justin Trudeau has chilled into a bitter determination to oust him in favour of the anti-woke, pro-growth ‘true conservative’ Pierre Poilievre.  And where the New World has led, the Old is following. Giorgia Meloni is now Europe’s most consequential leader – upholder of some pretty traditional values with a strikingly hard policy on migration. Germany goes to the polls next

James Heale

Rachel Reeves’s new year’s resolution

On Christmas Day, 12 million people watched the will-they-won’t-they couple Smithy and Nessa finally marry after 17 years in the finale of the hit BBC comedy series Gavin and Stacey. Yet for all the cheery sentiment, it’s a depressing thought that – statistically – in the real world the characters would be earning roughly the same amount at the series’ end in 2024 as they were at its beginning in 2007. Rachel Reeves’s task this year is to spring Britain from its low-growth trap. The early signs are not encouraging. Those captains of industry whom she once so assiduously courted are turning hostile. The Confederation of British Industry says private

Patrick O’Flynn

When will Keir Starmer ‘smash the gangs’?

It’s been a busy Christmas in the English Channel. The small boat arrivals have continued at a startling pace through the start of winter. Nigel Farage is nonetheless a credible champion for the wronged masses There were 451 arrivals on Christmas Day, 407 on Boxing Day, 305 on Friday and 322 on Saturday. Yesterday we know at least three more people drowned in the Channel near the coast of France, taking the number of migrants who have died or gone missing attempting the crossing this year to at least 77. As the Mayor of Sangatte, Guy Allemend, told the French news agency AFP: ‘It’s crossing after crossing, without any let-up.’

Daniel DePetris

Jimmy Carter was a master of conflict resolution

On 29 December, former US president Jimmy Carter died peacefully at his ranch house in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 100. Over the last few years, most people knew him as the old head of state in the rocking chair, surrounded by family and friends, whose sense of morality and numerous good works were the stuff of legends. Whether it was building houses for the poor or establishing an institution that monitored elections around the world, nobody could accuse Carter of living an unproductive life after the presidency. The former peanut farmer from Georgia, however, was also given a bad wrap. He is frequently remembered as the bumbler whose one-term

Andrew Tettenborn

Angela Rayner’s devolution plans encourage petty authoritarianism

Hidden in the hot air of Angela Rayner’s devolution white paper published just before Christmas – there are promises, for example, to empower councillors to ‘convene local people to engage in their community as respected leaders’ – there lurk some proposals which need careful investigation. By-laws currently passed by local authorities are subject to confirmation by central government. But in Rayner’s white paper this rather prudent requirement is pooh-poohed as ‘hundreds of years old and outdated.’ Local leaders, the proposed legislation says, should have the final say over what they want to ban. Furthermore, it continues, authorities should probably get powers to enforce prohibitions by using on-the-spot fines rather than criminal prosecution.

James Heale

Why 2025 could redefine politics

22 min listen

Santa will have had a tricky time this year fulfilling all the Christmas wish lists in Westminster. Keir Starmer is desperately hoping for a change in the political weather, and Kemi Badenoch would like an in with Donald Trump. Ed Davey dreams that Labour’s electoral troubles will get so bad that proportional representation starts to look appealing. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, wants to avoid what usually happens with him and keep his party from falling out – or perhaps Elon Musk will give him a Christmas bonus in the form of a generous donation. What’s certain is that 2025 will prove to be one of the most defining in recent political

Freddy Gray

Jimmy Carter’s mistake was telling America it was wrong

It’s hard to think of a political oration that has backfired as famously as Jimmy Carter’s ‘crisis of confidence’ speech, delivered from the White House on 15 July, 1979.  The fact that it is still today called the ‘malaise’ speech, despite the fact he never used the word, speaks to the scale of its failure.  Amid an energy and inflationary crisis, Carter, who died yesterday, wanted to redefine the political moment by addressing America’s tendency ‘to worship self-indulgence and consumption’.  He aimed to inspire Americans to rediscover their self-sufficiency and lose their dependence on foreign oil. His poll numbers did in fact improve in the days after the speech, but the message was