Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Matthew Lynn

Britain's steel industry must die

It already faced tariffs in the United States, and it has been struggling to cope with some of the highest industrial energy prices in the world. Now what remains of the British steel industry faces what could well be a terminal blow. The European Union is about to impose tariffs of 50 per cent on steel imported from the UK. Labour ministers will no doubt start cobbling together rescue packages, and trying to devise a new strategy to rescue the industry. But perhaps it would be best just to be honest – and let the industry die.  The EU has set out plans to cut the amount of steel imported

Ross Clark

Kemi is right to preach fiscal responsibility

At the mausoleum that is this week’s Conservative party conference one of the bodies has just shown a slight muscular twitch. Kemi Badenoch will this morning try to reclaim the one subject on which the Tories can reasonably hope to base a revival: fiscal responsibility. Mel Stride has already proposed £47 billion worth of spending cuts. His boss will now announce a ‘golden rule’ whereby half the proceeds of those cuts will go to reducing the deficit rather than on tax cuts. I know that for the Tories to try to make a thing of fiscal responsibility is a bit rich given that public spending was allowed to balloon out

Luke Coppen

Islam and the Bible are fuelling France’s ‘baptism boom’

You have probably heard that something extraordinary is happening in the Catholic Church in France. The French bishops’ conference announced in April that more than 10,000 adults were due to be baptised in 2025 – a 45 per cent increase on the year before. France is seeing what the media call a ‘boom biblique’: a rapid rise in sales of the Bible It’s not just adult baptisms that are booming. A record 19,000 people, many young, attended this year’s Paris to Chartres pilgrimage. An unprecedented 13,500 high school students took part in the 2025 Lourdes FRAT pilgrimage, a major annual youth event. The country is also seeing what French media call a ‘boom biblique’: a rapid rise in

Michael Gove

Was that Kemi Badenoch's last conference? Quite right! live from Manchester

42 min listen

This week, Michael and Maddie record Quite right! in front of a live audience at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester – with attendance down, the big question is whether Kemi Badenoch can survive as leader of the opposition. There is the unmistakable air of fatalism among MPs staring down electoral annihilation – but would another change in leadership cement the Tories as pathologically regicidal? They also debate Badenoch’s bold pledge to bar candidates who won’t back leaving the European Convention on Human Rights – a ‘calculated risk’ that could redefine the party’s identity or too little too late? Then, in the wake of the horrific Manchester synagogue attack, they

Tuesday

Steerpike

Tice: Boris's brand is toxic

The Conservative party conference may be in full swing in Manchester but Reform UK’s politicians are still creating headlines. Deputy leader Richard Tice has given a rather punchy interview to Arabian Business during a trip to Dubai – in which he slated Britain’s immigration ‘disaster’, insisted a decline in the British work ethic was because the ‘UK became complacent [and] decadent’ and even claimed that Britain is ‘going bust’. Then the Reform man turned his attention to some big British names. First he took a swipe at a rather, er, controversial British broadcaster: former England footballer Gary Neville. Taking a pop at the left-wing right back over his patriotism, Tice

Steerpike

Bowie warns Tories: stop 'mouthing off' about Badenoch

The Conservative party conference may be drawing to a close, but the fighting spirit of the Tories isn’t going anywhere. At the Spectator’s well-attended Scotland event this afternoon – ‘Can the Tories turn back the teal tide?’ – MPs Andrew Bowie and Harriet Cross were packing the punches. The story of the Scottish Tories isn’t a negative one, they insisted, despite polling suggesting the next Scottish Parliament election could see them become the fourth party in Holyrood. Oh dear… But it wasn’t just Reform that was under attack from this punchy panel: shadow Scotland secretary Bowie had some stern words for the Kemi Badenoch detractors in his party. ‘Can I

Madeline Grant

Poor Lammy and Hermer got pulped by Robert Jenrick

Robert Jenrick has been walking a tightrope. Over the course of the Conservative party conference he has been having to navigate the tricky situation of playing both the prince over the water and the loyal lieutenant to Kemi Badenoch. Mr Jenrick so far has played his cards very well. He is successfully channelling both Bonnie Prince Charlie and Blondin, the man who pushed a wheelbarrow over Niagara Falls. Or even David Miliband meets Stan Laurel. Today was his most difficult performance yet. Be too bland and he’d join the legions of Tories who might have been king – destined to join the Rab Butler-Jeremy Hunt memorial club. Be too good

James Heale

Robert Jenrick steals the limelight at Tory conference

It is day three of Conservative Party conference and the punchiest speech of the event has just been made. Robert Jenrick, the heat-seeking missile of the Tory front bench, has just delivered another howitzer aimed squarely at Britain’s judiciary. Brandishing a judge’s wig, he addressed the conference faithful with the vim and vigour that have seen him soar to the top of the ConservativeHome shadow cabinet league table. Jenrick’s twenty-minute address – the last before Kemi Badenoch’s big speech tomorrow – was a full throttle, studs-up attack on what he calls ‘activist’ judges. He took aim at the ‘dozens of judges’ he claims to have uncovered with ‘ties to open

Tim Shipman

Who's listening to the Tories? Live from conference

39 min listen

Tim Shipman, James Heale and Lucy Dunn record live at Conservative party conference in Manchester. What’s the mood at conference – and has Kemi done enough to neutralise her detractors? Tim says he expects there to be no immediate leadership challenge but the Conservatives need to get real about the ‘attention economy’ they’re faced with. What inspiration can they take from Tory grandee Michael Heseltine? And can they ‘make conservative sexy again’? Plus, audience questions on the upcoming budget and the challenges for the Conservatives in both Wales and Scotland. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Michael Simmons

What happened to Reform’s Doge?

When Linden Kemkaran (formerly of The Spectator) was elected leader of Kent County Council, she presented herself as the poster-child for Reform in power. ‘The electorate,’ she said in June, ‘are looking to judge whether they can put their trust in a Reform government at the next election.’ Her administration set up ‘Dolge’, a ‘department of local government efficiency’, modelled on Elon Musk’s original, and instructed it to cut wasteful spending and find cash-saving efficiencies. After just five months, however, its efforts appear to have faltered. The council is already ‘down to the bare bones’, Diane Morton, Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care in Kent, told the Financial Times yesterday. Reform has

Brendan O’Neill

Greta and the flotilla fools have no self-awareness

I knew the modern left had its fair share of narcissists who can rarely see beyond their own navels. But even I never imagined they would spend the second anniversary of 7 October, the worst atrocity the Jews have suffered since the Holocaust, moaning about their ‘mistreatment’ by the Jewish state. Even I never imagined they would hijack the commemoration of the rape, abduction and slaughter of Israelis to moan about the hard beds and cold food Evil Israel allegedly foisted on them. You want us to weep over Greta’s rash when there are half-starved Jews in Hamas’s tunnels being forced to ‘dig their own graves’? The lack of self-awareness

Matthew Lynn

Britain can’t afford to lose AstraZeneca

It has already cancelled investments in Liverpool and Cambridge, while muttering darkly about moving its listing to New York and its headquarters to the United States. Now AstraZeneca, the UK’s largest pharmaceutical company, is threatening to stop investing in Britain completely if the country does not spend more on medicine. There may be an element of arm-twisting in that, and the NHS is so stretched for cash it can’t easily spend much more on drugs. And yet, the UK also can’t afford to lose a company as significant as AZ. And if that means the NHS spending more on pills, and less on salaries, that is a choice worth making. 

Steerpike

Badenoch: I'm being 'written off' like Thatcher

The Conservative party conference is in full swing in Manchester with plenty more speeches and fringe events to go. Despite being rather poorly attended this year, the atmosphere among members is not downbeat – although already Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has had to defend herself again some rather unfortunate poll results. A YouGov poll has revealed that half of all Tory members don’t think Badenoch should lead the party into the next election, which is hardly the best of news for the party leader to receive in the middle of her group’s big annual meet… But Badenoch has hit back, complaining to Times Radio today that she is being ‘written

Joanna Williams

Why do students think a bake sale is the way to mark October 7?

How best to commemorate the horrors of October 7th, 2023? How to mark the day on which hundreds of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, slaughtering almost 1,200 people, injuring thousands more, and taking 251 hostages? For students at the University of Liverpool, the answer seems to be a ‘bake sale’. That’s right. In remembrance of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, students will eat cake and raise money for Palestine. ‘Time for Dessert’ is the event’s sickening slogan. Protests are expected to take place today at universities throughout the UK Sadly, Liverpool is far from unique. Protests are expected to take place today at universities throughout the UK. Not demonstrations

Angela Epstein

The case for staying put: why this Jew isn't leaving Britain

Is it time for the wandering Jews to once again pack up and go? It’s a question that has been troubling communities of the Diaspora – especially in this country – ever since the atrocities of October 7th unleashed, in the words of the Chief Rabbi, unrelenting waves of hatred against our people. How much more of a warning did we need? Sometimes we muse in the abstract. Idling around the Friday night dinner table over a fragrant bowl of chicken soup and wondering if this is the time for ‘the Exile’. At others, the tone hardens. Not least on strident Facebook feeds where the gathering storm clouds of prewar Germany are invoked

Monday

Lucy Dunn

Exclusive poll: do the Tories have a leadership problem?

The Conservative party conference is in full swing and the Spectator is hosting a myriad of events across the next few days. This afternoon we hosted a panel conversation revealing exclusive Ipsos polling conducted for the conference. It revealed that ultimately the Tories may be down but they are definitely not out. The survey found that a majority of Brits believe that the Tories still have another general election win in them – while just 50 per cent felt the same about Labour, one of the more positive poll results for the Conservatives in months.  In more (relatively) good news for the party, more people think that Reform’s Nigel Farage

Madeline Grant

Mel Stride bewilders me

What is the purpose of Mel Stride? I don’t ask this to be personal I just genuinely don’t know. In some ways it’s a problem for all shadow chancellors: the Treasury is the most practical of departments, the opposition can only theorise about it. The economy ought to be the only trump card the Tories have left. They’re essentially in a game of strip-poker wearing only their socks and with one ace left – namely, the fact that the economy is going to tank even more when people learn the true extent of Rachel Reeves’s incompetence at the Budget. Meanwhile Reform’s spending plans might as well have been typed up

Steerpike

Burnham's Labour barbs at Tory conference

It’s not just Conservative politicians popping up at the Tory party conference this year: Labour’s Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has appeared at some fringe events to wax lyrical about the successes of devolution, his hopes for a Manchester tourist tax and reform of council tax. But just a week after the Labour Party conference, Burnham didn’t gloss over the rather, er, frosty welcome he received in Liverpool. ‘I’ll probably get a better reception here than I did last week,’ he quipped at the Centre for Cities event.  Burnham wouldn’t rate the performance of the Labour government out of ten – but he did pack a few subtle digs into

Chas Newkey-Burden

What's wrong with 'angry, middle-aged white men', Gary Neville?

Just when you thought we could all stop talking about flags, Gary Neville has arrived with his size ten boots to keep the ball in play. The ex-Man Utd footballer, turned property developer, said he removed a union flag from one of his Manchester sites because it was being ‘used in a negative fashion’. He also complained in a video message posted on social media that we’re being divided by ‘angry, middle-aged white men who know exactly what they’re doing’. I’m surprised it took Neville so long to wade in on flags because he’s always seemed up for a scrap. As a player, he wore his heart on his sleeve, goading

Tim Shipman

Economy: can we trust the Tories again?

11 min listen

Tim Shipman and Michael Simmons join Lucy Dunn live at Manchester for Conservative party conference. It’s day two, and we’ve heard from shadow chancellor Mel Stride, who unveiled various pledges including business rates relief and spending cuts. The Tories are clearly trying to position themselves again as the party of ‘fiscal prudence’ – but are people listening to them? As the team points out – whether through a lack of protestors or the speedy serving times at the conference bar – the convention centre is pretty quiet. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.