Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

James Heale

Can Morgan McSweeney reboot the government machine?

The Queen is dead: long live the King. This week brought an end to Downing Street’s unhappy experiment in dyarchy. Out goes Sue Gray, banished to the regions. In her place stands the Irishman who won the No. 10 power struggle: Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s first chief of staff in opposition, is back on top. McSweeney’s allies believe that the new government will flourish into maturity after a troubled start. ‘We’re back to being political,’ one crows. As another minister prefers to put it: ‘He needs to go around and crack some heads – and quick’ The new chief’s strengths are threefold. First, he is familiar with how the PM

Katy Balls

Labour’s new approach to China 

The Foreign Secretary David Lammy will touch down in Beijing next week to pay his respects. Next year, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, is expected to do the same. We haven’t seen this level of deference to the Chinese Communist party since 2019. Back then, Philip Hammond heaped praise on his hosts. He endorsed their Belt and Road initiative – of Chinese-funded infrastructure spanning the globe – and promised British co-operation ‘as we harness the “Golden Era” of UK-China relations’. The calls from Tory China hawks to label Xi’s empire ‘a systemic threat’ hold little sway with the new regime That was the high-water mark of Anglo-Chinese collaboration. George Osborne and

Wednesday

Cindy Yu

Tory leadership: what on earth just happened?

13 min listen

Westminster is reeling from the shock result that James Cleverly has been knocked out of the Conservative Party leadership race, only a day after coming first in the previous round. Kemi Badenoch topped the poll, with Robert Jenrick second and only one vote behind her; Cleverly lost two votes. What on earth happened? To try and make sense of it all, Cindy Yu is joined by Katy Balls and new Spectator editor Michael Gove. Having worked with them all, what’s his assessment of the candidates? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy. 

Stephen Daisley

The SNP is in a donations row of its own

The thing about being holier than thou is that you actually have to be holier. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, has made much of Sir Keir Starmer’s freebie woes. The SNP called for an investigation into Lord Alli’s donations to the Prime Minister and Flynn used a newspaper column to observe: ‘Of course, it’s important to say that such clothing gifts come with no attachments. No, none at all. They are all just from the kindness of a filthy-rich donor’s heart. I mean, who doesn’t have friends like that?’ Fortunately – and unfortunately – for him, Labour donors aren’t the only generous contributors in politics. Questions are mounting

Steerpike

Sir Keir’s curious Falklands claim

While Sir Keir Starmer and outgoing Tory leader Rishi Sunak went tête-à-tête in today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr S is rather more intrigued by the Prime Minister’s response to a question from the Lib Dems. Sir Ed Davey quizzed Starmer today on the British overseas territories – asking the PM whether he could ‘ensure that British citizens, fishing off the Falklands, can sail proudly under the Union Jack’. Fast on his feet, Sir Keir told the Commons solemnly: ‘My uncle nearly lost his life when his ship was torpedoed defending the Falklands.’ Going on he insisted: ‘They are British and they will remain British.’ Strong stuff. But grave though Starmer’s

Patrick O’Flynn

The Tory heirs to Blair are no more

So the Conservative party is not going to try to become ‘more normal’ in the eyes of establishment centrists after all, but will instead chart a course towards becoming more conservative. After the astonishing elimination of James Cleverly from the Tory leadership contest this afternoon, Tory grassroots members are to be presented with a right-of-centre head-to-head between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick. Badenoch will be favourite. But Jenrick could easily win off the back of his commitments on immigration policy and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and its supervisory court. The result of this round of the contest is not what Reform leader Nigel Farage would have wanted

Lloyd Evans

Rishi Sunak is the most effective opposition leader since Tony Blair

Rishi Sunak’s fleet-footed performance at Prime Minister’s Questions exposed many of Keir Starmer’s shortcomings as Prime Minister. Sunak is the most effective opposition leader since Tony Blair and he mauled Sir Keir today with a blend of decent gags and wily tactics. The Tory leader has the advantage of resembling a human being, while Sir Keir seems as cold and lifeless as an oil drum. Starmer has only three debating tactics. Blame the Tories, blame the Tories, blame the Tories.  The Tory leader has the advantage of resembling a human being Sunak opened with a joke about Sue Gray in relation to Labour’s new deal for workers. When, he asked,

Katy Balls

James Cleverly knocked out of Tory leadership race in shock result

What is going on in the Tory leadership contest? On Tuesday evening, it looked as though James Cleverly was on the up. Following an impressive outing at Conservative party conference, the former foreign secretary had become the bookies’ favourite and in Tuesday’s knockout round secured the highest number of MP backers at 39 votes. However, in a move that has led to shock in the Tory party, he has just been knocked out of the race. In the final knock-out round of the contest, Cleverly only managed 37 votes to Kemi Badenoch on 42 votes and Robert Jenrick on 41. It’s worth noting that the vote is anonymous It means

Matthew Lynn

The break-up of Google is long overdue

It’s innovative, it generates huge wealth, and it offers great products for completely nothing. The lobbyists for Alphabet, the parent company of Google, will make plenty of familiar arguments about why the internet giant should be left intact. And yet, as the US Department of Justice pushes for it to be broken up, it is going to be hard to convince anyone it can carry on as it is. In reality, breaking up Google may be the best thing that has happened to the tech industry in years – and it is long overdue. It promises to be a long and bitter fight, and Google certainly has the resources to

Michael Evans

Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden are on a collision course

Benjamin Netanyahu is set on a path which brooks no deviation. He wants victory against Hamas, victory against Hezbollah and, ultimately, victory against Iran. Over the year since the 7 October massacre, Netanyahu has played the diplomatic game with the United States: receiving constant visits from American officials from the State Department and Pentagon, listening to entreaties by President Biden for limited military action and appeals to protect civilians, and making encouraging noises about ceasefires. When trust breaks down between two such important allies, the winners can only be Israel’s opponents However, all along, the Israeli leader has been relentless in focusing, and then expanding on, his principal objectives. He

Steerpike

Bookies back Badenoch in final two crunch

The countdown for the two Tory leadership finalists is on – and in just over an hour the Conservative party membership will know who their ultimate choice will be between. Tuesday’s knock-out round saw Tom Tugendhat drop back to a distant fourth place, with a ten-point gap separating him from his competitors. Staggeringly James Cleverly – who had not initially been viewed as a leadership frontrunner – cut in front of the rest, with the backing of 37 MPs. And now, as Katy Balls wrote this morning, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch are fighting it out in the race for second place. Yet despite Badenoch’s third position result yesterday, the bookmakers are

Andrew Tettenborn

Labour’s worrying creep back towards the EU

In Labour’s manifesto this year, Keir Starmer cannily sought to reassure any Brexiteers out there by ruling out a return to the EU single market. But, being a lawyer, he carefully inserted a small-print proviso. The Labour leader said that he did not rule out doing much the same thing by realigning Britain piecemeal with EU standards as opportunity presented itself. This process he has now started. As the eagle-eyed Lord Frost pointed out yesterday in the House of Lords, the government’s boring-sounding Product Regulation and Metrology Bill is something of a Trojan horse. While it generally covers product safety and weights and measures, a sneakily-inserted Clause 1(2) also expressly allows the government

David Shipley

Why are high-risk offenders set to be released early?

High-risk offenders could reportedly be released early from secure government-approved hostels. Shortly before before the election in July, the Ministry of Justice reduced the typical period people spend in an ‘Approved Premises’ from 12 weeks to eight. But what are Approved Premises, and does this matter? ‘Approved Premises’ – or ‘APs’ – are a little-known part of the justice system. We should be more aware of them, since they’re badly, badly damaged. They exist to house people who have been released from prison but are considered to be ‘high-risk ex-offenders’. APs are also used when prisoners approaching release are granted ‘home leave’, but either don’t have a home to go

Kate Andrews

Is Labour about to go on a borrowing spree?

At Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon, Rishi Sunak took a technical turn. Why is Rachel Reeves considering changing the fiscal rules, he asked the Prime Minister, when just last year she said doing so would be ‘tantamount to fiddling the figures.’ No clear answer followed.  The wisdom during the general election was that borrowing more money – to finance Labour or Tory spending promises – was simply not an option. No one dared to propose anything resembling Liz Truss’s mini-budget saga, which saw her attempt to borrow £100 billion to limit energy price rises for consumers.  Instead, the parties said they would make good on their spending promises by going

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer’s reset comes unstuck at PMQs

Keir Starmer’s reset isn’t going very well. He turned up at Prime Minister’s Questions today clearly hoping to talk about the vision he had for the country, but ended up doing something he always complained about others doing when he was in opposition: dodging the question.  A planted question from a Labour backbencher allowed Starmer to kick off PMQs with some words about changing Britain: ‘We were elected to change the country, and that means getting the NHS back on its feet. The Chancellor will have much more to say about that in the budget, about fixing the foundations for our economy so we put money in people’s pockets, fix

James Snell

MI5 must stop Russia

The semi-regular speeches given by the heads of Britain’s intelligence services are always described as a ‘rare intervention’, and yesterday it was the turn of Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, to issue one of these periodic warnings about the safety of the nation. McCallum noted that although his favourite subjects (terrorism, Russia, Iran and China) have featured in prior ‘rare interventions’, some things have changed. The ‘shifts underneath present the most complex and interconnected threat environment we’ve ever seen’, he said. We are living in a more dangerous world and our enemies are working together. They share the same goal: bringing more murder and mayhem to Britain. We must not forget the spectre of Islamist terrorism

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak’s ‘fire and rehire’ Sue Gray jibe

It’s the first Prime Minister’s Questions since conference season and Labour’s recent woes have given the leader of the opposition a rather lot of material. An energetic Rishi Sunak was fast to mock Sir Keir Starmer over tensions in his top team – in a dig at Starmer’s swapping out of chief of staff Sue Gray for Labour election guru Morgan McSweeney at the weekend. ‘Mr Speaker,’ Sunak began, ‘tomorrow the government will publish their anticipated changes to employment law. Given the weekend’s events, when did the Prime Minister first become a convert to “fire and rehire”?’ Ouch. It’s a touchy subject for the PM, not least because Gray’s allies

Lionel Shriver

My friend, Amy Wax, the pariah

Spectator TV viewers may recall that in last week’s Americano podcast, Freddy Gray interviewed the University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, whose wrist had just been smartly rapped by the administration for her unfashionable generalisations about race and sex. While Professor Wax spoke ably on her own behalf, Amy, as I know her, has been a friend of mine for several years. These scolding financial and reputational sanctions have been in the works for almost as long, so now seems an apt juncture at which to lay down my own marker. Unlike so many of her half-hearted defenders, I’ll put myself firmly in her corner without holding my nose.

Fiona Bruce

How I keep Question Time audiences under control

Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love – or it’s supposed to be. William Penn, good Quaker that he was, wanted his city to be a place of religious and political tolerance; a haven for those who’d been persecuted for their beliefs. There are quotations inscribed on walls everywhere about the power of love, selflessness and charity. Given how vicious and divisive this presidential election is, the message seems lost on both parties. I flew out to Philly this week for a special Question Time episode, the first time the programme has been to the US since 2008. One of our panellists has had to pull out at the last

Steerpike

Cleverly slams Home Secretary over Taylor Swift’s special escort

Well, well well. The Labour lot are under the spotlight once again. It transpires, after the Sun newspaper’s splash this morning, that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper personally intervened to ensure that Taylor Swift received a police convoy to her Wembley shows. Priorities, priorities… Cooper has come under fire after reporting revealed that London’s Metropolitan police were pressed by politicians over Swift’s security measures. Three of the US singer-songwriter’s Vienna shows were cancelled this year after a suicide bomb attempt was foiled by forces – and it has been claimed that the American pop icon’s mother and manager was threatening to cut the singer’s London shows unless top level police support