Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Steerpike

Watch: Just Stop Oil tries – and fails – to cause chaos at Gatwick

Just Stop Oil eco-activists took to Gatwick Airport this morning – but their attempt to disrupt summer holiday travellers appears to have failed dismally. Eight people were arrested after environmental protestors with ‘lock-on’ suitcases tried – and failed – to block departure gates. An airport spokesperson insisted Gatwick is ‘open and operating normally’. The protest is part of an international attempt to force governments to establish a ‘fossil fuel treaty’ – but the eco-zealots appear to have achieved nothing more than, um, infuriating a few harried travellers. For the few not the many, eh? Extinction Rebellion protestors also gathered outside Policy Exchange in Westminster this morning to call for the

Sam Leith

What we didn’t learn from the Manchester Airport police ‘attack’

There’s a famous 1986 TV advert for the Guardian (remember when newspapers had TV adverts?) which shows you footage of a rough-looking skinhead pelting down the street and appearing to grab at the briefcase of a startled-looking city gent. Just as the viewer is digesting this scene and drawing the conclusion that suits his or her prejudices, the screen cut away to another, wider shot: the young man, as we discover, wasn’t trying to mug the older man, but was wrestling him out of the way of a pallet of bricks collapsing overhead. Despite the improbable, Wile E. Coyote quality of the imagined peril, it was a cute idea for

Katy Balls

Will Rachel Reeves get away with a ‘doctors’ mandate’ to hike taxes?

It’s ‘blame the Tories’ day in Westminster as Rachel Reeves prepares to take centre stage. The new Chancellor will this afternoon publish a ‘spending audit’ of the financial challenges Labour has ‘discovered’ on entering government. Reeves will address the Commons chamber detailing these spending pressures before giving a press conference at the Treasury early this evening. It comes after Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden wrote to colleagues ordering them to ‘bring out the dead’ and identify looming crises in their departments. Expect high doses of political theatre throughout the day from Labour as they attempt to hammer their point home. What tax rises is Reeves planning and will Labour face

Niko Vorobyov

Trump’s crackdown on Mexico’s narco-cartels won’t work

Donald Trump has said he would not rule out military action against Mexico’s narco-cartels which he blames for the opioid crisis killing astronomical numbers of Americans. ‘Mexico’s gonna have to straighten it out really fast, or the answer is absolutely. They’re killing 300,000 people a year with fentanyl coming in,’ he told Fox News host. The narcos are invisible, deeply embedded within their communities This isn’t the first time Trump has talked tough when it comes to drugs. The former and possible future president has mulled deploying commando teams to take out the narco godfathers bin Laden-style. He has also weighed up putting Mexico under naval embargo.  Trump also isn’t the the only Republican to

Eliot Wilson

Is Robert Jenrick fit to lead the Tories?

As the Conservative leadership contest gets underway, the various candidates are busy talking up their differences. But most of the candidates – from Kemi Badenoch to Robert Jenrick – hold one thing in common: they realise that the Tory party needs to change if it is to recover from its electoral wipeout. A key part of its catastrophic defeat was a fundamental failure of effectiveness and probity in government. But the party is already in danger of making the same mistake in its choice of next leader. Jenrick achieved the extraordinary distinction of being dropped from the cabinet before he turned 40 We all know that trust in politics and

Sunday

Steerpike

Suella Braverman bows out with a blast

The Tory leadership race is hotting up and there’s lots of familiar faces featuring this time around. Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel, Tom Tugendhat – it’s like the 2022 contest never ended! But one candidate who sadly isn’t running is Suella Braverman, the onetime standard-bearer of the Brexiteer right. She has penned a piece for Monday’s Telegraph, declaring that she will not throw her hat in the ring – even though she claims to have had the backing to hit the necessary threshold before the 2.30 p.m deadline. ‘Although I’m grateful to the 10 MPs who wanted to nominate me for the leadership, getting on to the ballot is not enough,’

Katy Balls

Can anyone stop Kemi Badenoch?

Kemi Badenoch has become the sixth – and potentially last – candidate to enter the Conservative leadership race. In an op-ed for the Times published in the last hour, the Tory frontrunner launched her campaign with a promise to ‘renew by starting from first principles’. ‘We can’t control immigration until we re-confirm our belief in the nation state and the sovereign duty it has, above all else, to serve its own citizens,’ she writes. She also suggests hers will be a small state approach – arguing ‘our public services will never fully recover from the pandemic until we remember that government should do some things well, not everything badly’. Badenoch

Fraser Nelson

Is Rachel Reeves about to make the same mistake as Liz Truss?

How much can Rachel Reeves be trusted? A Chancellor’s credibility counts for a lot with the markets, who are asked to lend HM Government tens of billions a year. Reeves claims to be serious, straight and candid in a way her Tory predecessors were not. But now she seems to be channeling Liz Truss and coming up with her own assessment of the public finances while dispensing with the service of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). She intends to declare a £20 billion hole, we’re told, and say she is shocked – shocked! – at what a mess the finances are in. Cue an excuse for tax rises, more

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Labour accuse Tories of finance ‘cover up’

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is this week expected to announce a £20 billion black hole in the country’s finances. Many believe Labour are setting the ground for inevitable tax hikes and spending cuts in the autumn, blaming unexpected levels of Tory mismanagement for their decisions. On Sky News this morning, Environment Secretary Steve Reed said Labour would be ‘open and transparent’ about what they’ve learned since coming into government. Trevor Phillips suggested it wasn’t credible that Labour had only just realised the extent of the UK’s economic woes, and showed a statement from Reeves made last month in which she said on the subject: ‘You don’t need to win an election

Robert Tombs

The Olympics can’t mask Macron’s troubles

Politics and sport have always been cynical and self-interested bedfellows. Rulers since the Caesars have been eager to spend vast sums of taxpayers’ money on circuses to distract the plebs. In more recent times, Louis XIV (a ghostly presence in Friday’s Paris Olympics ceremony) made self-glorification through spectacle a pillar of his reign. Emmanuel Macron made no secret of his desire to follow in the Sun King’s footsteps. Friday night was to be his apotheosis. It would have been absurdly optimistic to think this could rebuild his popularity at home, but he must have relished cutting a great global figure.  Emmanuel Macron made no secret of his desire to follow in the Sun King’s footsteps

Alexander Larman

What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?

Rishi Sunak’s political journey over the past few years was summed up by him well in a joke he made responding to the King’s speech earlier this month: ‘On the government benches, life comes at you fast…before you know it, you have a bright future behind you, and you are left wondering if you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44’. It was a good gag – witty, self-deprecating and with a kernel of truth in its reference to his meteoric rise and equally stratospheric fall. As someone who was at school with Sunak in the Nineties, it brought back memories of the Rishi I knew

Saturday

James Heale

Can Priti Patel become Tory leader?

Priti Patel has tonight entered the race to be the next Tory leader. The former home secretary sets out her pitch in the Daily Telegraph on why she is best placed to succeed Rishi Sunak. It is framed by the newspaper as being an appeal to the party’s grassroots, with Patel suggesting that she would give party members ‘a much greater voice’ in formulating policies. She writes that the ‘heroic grassroots of the party did ‘nothing wrong’ in this month’s election campaign but were let down by MPs who ‘fell out and fell short.’ Patel becomes the fifth candidate to say she is standing following James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Robert Jenrick and Mel

Katy Balls

Who might replace Simon Case as Cabinet Secretary?

13 min listen

The rumour swirling around Westminster is that there will soon be a new Cabinet Secretary, the most senior civil servant position. Politico reported that current Cab-Sec Simon Case is being advised to step down for health reasons at the end of the year, providing an opportunity for Keir Starmer to fill the position with his person. But who might that be? Who are the runners and riders to become one of the most powerful people in government? Katy Balls speaks to Henry Newman, former advisor to Boris Johnson and editor of the Whitehall Project substack.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Gareth Roberts

Has the Olympics opening ceremony finished yet?

The 2012 British opening ceremony has sadly become a shorthand for nostalgic Remainy twee. But la grande débâcle in Paris last night brought back with a jolt how magnificent it was.  The creators of Paris’s opening ceremony were faced with a challenge: how to convey, in capsule form, the history and culture of France, a comparatively small nation that has provided such riches over the centuries – transcendent beauty, epoch-defining philosophy, a motor of  artistic innovation and sophistication. They decided to go for something else entirely.  A peculiar introduction to the BBC coverage from actor Tom Hiddleston was an early warning sign that something was askew. Hiddleston breathlessly told us, in that very specific

Damian Thompson

Damian Thompson, Paola Romero, Stuart Jeffries, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, and Nicholas Farrell

35 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Damian Thompson argues that Papal succession plotting is a case of life mirroring art (1:26); Paola Romero reports on Venezuela’s mix of Evita and Thatcher, Maria Corina Machado, and her chances of bringing down Nicolas Maduro (11:39); reviewing Richard Overy’s book ‘Why war?’, Stuart Jeffries reflects that war has as long a future as it has a past (17:38); Ysenda Maxtone Graham provides her notes on party bags (24:30); and, Nicholas Farrell ponders on the challenges of familial split-loyalties when watching the football in Italy (27:25).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Anthony Browne

What journalists don’t understand about being an MP

At the end of the last Parliament, I was the only MP who had previously been in the Lobby – the elite cartel of political journalists, who rejoice in having a parliamentary pass (I was once the chief political correspondent of the Times). I used to be in the Press Gallery looking down at the Chamber, but as an MP I was in the Chamber looking up at the Press Gallery. Famously, journalists have power without responsibility – you can shift national debates and kill off careers without having to worry about the consequences. As an MP, you have responsibility without power: you are held accountable for pretty much everything,

Jawad Iqbal

Team GB is a force to reckon with

Expectations are high for Team GB at the Paris Olympics. UK Sport, the Olympic funding agency, expects British athletes to win at least 50 medals and achieve a top-five finish in the overall table. That must count as the bare minimum and there is every chance that Britain could do even better than this. Why the confidence? Britain boasts 41 current World Champions across all the main Olympic disciplines. Paris is also the first games in a European time zone since the London 2012 Olympics, which helps with preparation and conditioning. Performing well at the Olympics is becoming routine: Team GB won 51 medals in the Beijing Games in 2008, followed by

Friday

Isabel Hardman

What’s behind Wes Streeting’s quality care reforms?

One of the big themes of Keir Starmer’s government could well end up being accountability in the public sector, which sounds boring until you look at examples of where that is sorely lacking. Take the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the NHS regulator. Today, Health Secretary Wes Streeting declared it ‘not fit for purpose’ after an interim report found some hospitals had never received a rating, that others hadn’t been reinspected for up to ten years, and that some inspectors seemed to have even less experience of healthcare settings than the average member of the public. That included inspectors who had never been in a hospital before, and ‘an inspector of

Steerpike

Keir cracks the whip on his Starmtroopers

As the third week of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government comes to an end, there’s certainly been a lot of change in town. From the party’s tone shift on private jets to the Culture Secretary’s volte face on the culture wars, the Labour party has proven it still has a penchant for U-turns. And in Westminster more specifically, with a parliamentary party of over 400 members, Starmer’s army is rather concerned with a change in MP discipline too. Steerpike has spent the last few weeks speaking to political newbies about how they’re getting on – and there have been more than a few grumblings… Whipped into shape Seven MPs have already had the

Andrew Tettenborn

Does Labour care about free speech on campus?

Universities fought tooth and nail against plans to impose fines if they failed to uphold freedom of speech. That proposal – contained in last year’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act – was one of the few things the Tory government could point to as a success. But under Labour the plan has been shelved. It’s a good day for universities; a bad day for anyone who cares about free speech on campus. This bleak episode neatly sums up Labour’s attitude to higher education Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that the ministerial order, which was required to bring into force the relevant parts of the new law, would be delayed.