Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

Michael Evans

Is Israel ready for war with Hezbollah?

Whenever the great Shakespearean actor Sir Donald Wolfit had to exit the stage during a performance, he would always take a step back, showing the audience that he was reluctant to leave, before moving forward and departing into the wings on his left or right. The policy of the United States towards Israel and the war in Gaza has followed a similar series of forward and backward steps, with the Biden administration not leaving the stage, but eternally frustrated by the cuts and thrusts of Middle Eastern politics. Netanyahu believes that Israel’s survival, and his own political future, depend on winning in Gaza Another week has gone and little has

Steerpike

Fourth Tory embroiled in betting probe

Is there anyone in CCHQ currently not under investigation? The Sunday Times today reports that Nick Mason, the chief data officer of the Conservative Party, is now being probed by the Gambling Commission over allegations he placed ‘dozens of bets’ in the run up to the election being announced. With just 11 days to go until polling day, he has been forced to take a leave of absence – hardly the best look in the middle of the election campaign… Mason becomes the fourth Tory to be probed by the commission. Both Tony Lee, the party’s director of campaigns, and his wife, Laura Saunders, the candidate for Bristol North West, are

Robert Ford

Why Nigel Farage is becoming Ed Davey’s secret weapon

Ed Davey will be very happy about Nigel Farage’s political comeback. This might seem odd – Davey leads a socially liberal and vocally pro-EU party beloved by the latte sipping metropolitan professionals who loom large in Reform UK demonology. Yet it is the Liberal Democrats who stand to gain most from a Farage surge. A little political history and a dash of political geography explains why. The Lib Dems had their own overlooked electoral surge last time, slashing Tory majorities in seats the length and breadth of the Home Counties. While they didn’t score any wins, they built a solid platform for this campaign, with dozens of strong second places

Gavin Mortimer

Is Jean-Luc Melenchon the most dangerous man in France?

The figurehead of the far left and the man who dreams of becoming Prime Minister of France declared this week: ‘Macron is finished, and his supporters and the right are going to have to choose between us and the National Rally.’ Jean-Luc Melenchon’s boast is borne out by the latest polls. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is currently top, followed by the left-wing Popular Front coalition, with Macron’s centrists a distant third. Le Pen could even win enough seats to form an absolute majority in the 577-seat National Assembly given the radicalism of many within the left-wing coalition. Strange as it may seem for a far-left figure like Melenchon, but

Daniel Rey

Don’t dismiss America getting into cricket

US cricket is rising. After beating Pakistan and pushing India, the Americans have reached the last eight of the T20 World Cup. On Sunday, they play England. The success comes at a time of vast growth for American cricket. The US, the co-host of the tournament, launched a professional league last year and added T20 cricket to the 2028 Olympics in LA.  Long regarded as an oxymoron, cricket in America is being powered by serious financial backers. Its domestic championship, Major League Cricket, has secured investment from the CEO of Microsoft and the owners of four teams from the Indian Premier League, cricket’s sporting and commercial behemoth.  American cricket might only be emerging,

Saturday

Ross Clark

How has Farage fallen for the idea that the West provoked Russia?

Nigel Farage enjoyed a combative exchange with Nick Robinson in his BBC Panorama interview this evening, and acquitted himself well on many issues. True, the tax cuts and spending rises in his manifesto don’t add up – they rely on a rather over-hopeful expectation of the economy, as indeed do Labour’s. But then Farage is honest that he is not really selling us a programme for government, only giving an indication of the issues on which Reform UK will be pressing if succeeds in gaining a Commons presence. Therefore, his party can get away with some loose budgeting. But at the same time Farage made his first big error –

Debbie Hayton

JK Rowling’s accusations will hurt Starmer

Perhaps JK Rowling should be the leader of the opposition. She describes herself as ‘left leaning’, she has a huge following, and she also knows what a woman is. Writing in the Times this morning, Rowling defends her friend Rosie Duffield – the Labour candidate for Canterbury – following the appalling abuse she has suffered both in the past and during the current election campaign: Last month, a man received a suspended prison sentence for sending both of us death threats. Rosie was to be taken out with a gun; I was to be beaten to death with a hammer. The level of threats Rosie has received is such that

James Heale

Is Brexit safe under Labour?

17 min listen

Writer, trade unionist and Labour Brexiteer Paul Embery joins James Heale to discuss Labour’s plans for the EU should they get into government. Paul highlights the need for Labour to deliver on its promises and avoid alienating working-class voters. Will Rachel Reeves appease the Red Wall? And how tough will Labour be on immigration?

Agnès Poirier

Matt Ridley, William Cook, Owen Matthews and Agnes Poirier

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Matt Ridley argues that whoever you vote for, the blob wins (1:02); William Cook reads his Euros notebook from Germany (12:35); Owen Matthews reports on President Zelensky’s peace summit (16:21); and, reviewing Michael Peel’s new book ‘What everyone knows about Britain’, Agnes Poirier ponders if only Britain knew how it was viewed abroad (22:28).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.  

Steerpike

Six Corbynites switching to other parties

There’s been a lot of focus on splits on the right during the election campaign – but what about splits on the left? With less than two weeks to go until polling day, Mr S has been keeping tabs on those Corbynites who are deserting their former party for greener pastures. Quite literally, as many of them have jumped ship to the Green party – or are urging voters to consider non-Labour, independent candidates instead. So who are the lefties that have turned on Labour? Owen Jones Owen Jones, former Guardian columnist, led the exodus after announcing in March that he was abandoning Starmer’s Labour lot for ‘We Deserve Better’

Julie Burchill

The Green party’s women problem

In an excellent essay I wrote for this magazine at the start of the year – ‘Sir’ Ed Davey’s Lib Dems are the real nasty party’ – I touched on my adolescent crush on the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe: ‘I felt confusion watching Thorpe speak – he sounded so kind, yet looked so cruel – but dismissed this as a paradox of sex appeal, which he certainly had, having outraged his classmates at Eton by announcing that he planned to marry Princess Margaret, at that time second in line to the throne. It wasn’t until I read Jamaica Inn and shared Mary Yellan’s horror on discovering exactly how the vicar saw his flock that

Leon Mangasarian

Germany’s tragedy is that it isn’t ready for the future

How do we defend Europe without the Americans? With Donald Trump inciting Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to Nato members not paying enough, it’s clear a Trump 2.0 could shatter the alliance. This isn’t news. Leaders of Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, have known this since Trump took office in 2017. They know what’s strategically necessary to fill the gap. The trouble is, this would be politically impossible for Berlin. A Trump-led unravelling of Nato would confront Germany with a daunting to-do list Compensating for the United States, which provides 70 per cent of alliance defence spending, would be staggeringly costly for Germany. It would transform spending habits

Gareth Roberts

The boring truth about Keir Starmer

How would you define ‘working people’? You’d think that ‘people who work’ would be a pretty safe bet. But Keir Starmer seems to have a different definition, telling LBC earlier this week that working people are ‘people who earn their living, rely on our services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble’. Is this a tacit admission that those who have managed to save could be a target for Labour when it wins power? ‘Working people’ is one of Starmer’s most repeated phrases; he’s made it his own. It is usually said in an appropriately reverent way, with the same head-slightly-bowed tone

Steerpike

JK Rowling’s blistering attack on Sir Keir

It’s not just the Conservatives who are facing difficulties this election season. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party has found itself in hot water with one rather influential women’s rights campaigner. Renowned author of the bestselling Harry Potter series, JK Rowling, has now come out against Starmer’s army, blasting Sir Keir for ‘abandoning women’ concerned with the trans debate. Writing for the Times, Rowling slams the Labour leader for his ‘dismissive and often offensive’ approach to worries raised by gender-critical feminists, adding that despite once being a paid-up member, she would now struggle to vote for the party. Describing a book launch she recently attended – the ‘post-publication party’ for The

James Heale

Inside the battle for Bristol

Even if Keir Starmer wins a landslide majority next week, there is one former stronghold he might still lose. A Green insurgency is giving Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow culture secretary, the fight of her political life.  In this election the Greens are posing as a radical-left alternative to Starmer’s Labour. And Bristol Central, known as the ‘most left-wing constituency in Britain’, is where they believe they stand the best chance of winning a second seat in parliament.  Carla Denyer, the Greens’ co-leader, is the candidate here. Her manifesto: far more NHS and state spending, a tax on the rich, no university fees, free care-home costs, nationalised railways and net zero

Friday

Steerpike

Bet probe Tory was previously married to his wife’s opponent

Dear oh dear. With less than two weeks to go until polling day, Rishi Sunak’s campaign has been hit with more bad news. Over the last 24 hours, it has emerged that now two Tory candidates – Laura Saunders in addition to Craig Williams – are under investigation by the Gambling Commission after placing bets on the general election date. It gets murkier: Saunders is married to the Conservative party’s campaign director Tony Lee – who has been forced to go on leave after also coming under investigation for election gambling. And now Mr S can reveal another mind-boggling piece of the puzzle: Lee’s ex-wife, Mary Page, is the Green candidate in Bristol North West

Isabel Hardman

Farage’s Putin comments could trip him up

‘You know what I am! I’m a fighter, I’m a warrior, I’m a campaigner. I stand up against big institutions when they behave badly, whether they’re banks or out of touch bureaucracies based in Brussels. And very often, I win.’ Nigel Farage finished tonight’s BBC Panorama interview by offering his grand theme as a politician. He had some difficult questions to deal with. Yet Farage doesn’t need to worry as much as the other top politicians about his answers, because he is not judged by the same standards. That’s why he didn’t really engage with Nick Robinson on the detail of his £140 billion a year of spending commitments, or

Fraser Nelson

The Washington Post has missed out on a great editor

When Robert Winnett was named the new editor of the Washington Post, it made a lot of sense to me. He’s deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph, perhaps best known for being the driving force behind the MPs’ expenses investigation. His judgment and energy have been pivotal to making the Telegraph such a strong commercial and editorial success in a world that seems full of newspapers in crisis. The Post is fast turning into one of them which is why Jeff Bezos, its owner, turned to former Telegraph editor Will Lewis as CEO. And why Lewis, in turn, headhunted Winnett. But one thing I couldn’t quite work out: why would

Gavin Mortimer

France under Macron keeps getting worse

The warnings continue to come thick and fast in France about the disaster that could befall the Republic on 7 July if Emmanuel Macron and his government are not returned to power. From the celebrity world to the corporate world – including American investment bank Goldman Sachs – the belief is that France is doomed if either Marine Le Pen’s ‘union of the right’ or Jean-Luc Melenchon’s left-wing coalition is elected to government. Several former senior French politicians have joined the fear-mongering, among them Dominique de Villepin, who was Jacques Chirac’s centre-right prime minister in the 2000s before leaving politics for a lucrative career working with Qatar. In an interview

Isabel Hardman

Starmer looks slippery over Corbyn questions

It’s a measure of how weird the past few years in British politics have been that Keir Starmer’s claim that his Labour predecessor would have made a better prime minister than Boris Johnson has received so much coverage. Starmer made the comment during last night’s Question Time programme. It was a line that got blurted out under some pressure and it was a mistake.  The public evidently did not think Corbyn would have made a better prime minister than Johnson Starmer has initially said he had never really believed that Labour was going to win in 2019, but that he campaigned for the party. This would have held, had he