Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Andrew Liddle

The SNP shouldn’t celebrate being tied with Labour

It is a measure of the extent of the SNP’s decline that nationalist activists have seized on a new Ipsos poll that shows the party is now neck and neck with Scottish Labour. After all, it was only 18 months ago that the same company suggested the SNP enjoyed the support of more than half of people in Scotland, with Anas Sarwar’s party languishing on 25 per cent. Two resignations, a campervan and several unpopular policies later, however, and the SNP is now regularly recorded as being behind Scottish Labour, in one recent poll by as much as 10 points. Hence the excitement in otherwise weary nationalist circles that they may

Fraser Nelson

Why are Tories talking about a Labour Super Majority?

12 min listen

Grant Shapps has been speaking to media this morning and warning that a Labour landslide would be ‘very bad news’ for the country. Is the acknowledgement that Labour could seriously damage the Tories a slip of the tongue, or a new strategy for the Tories? Elsewhere, the interview that Rishi Sunak left D Day commemorations for is airing tonight. In a controversial moment, when asked what he had to go without as a child, he says Sky TV…  Megan McElroy speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. Join the Coffee House Shots team for a live recording on Thursday 11 July. Get tickets at spectator.co.uk/live.

Ross Clark

When will the Greens get real?

There is something a little refreshing about the Green party. In contrast to Rishi Sunak, who has no option but to carry on pretending he has the slightest chance of remaining in Downing Street after 4 July, Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay admitted at his manifesto launch this morning that his party isn’t looking to form the next government. The party’s realistic hope seems to be to double its number of Commons seats, from one to two. Nevertheless, the Greens do have a full manifesto for government, so let’s do it justice by taking it seriously. Mercifully, the Greens seem to have not bought into the fashionable concept of ‘degrowth’

Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon’s ITV hypocrisy

Back to Scotland, where the SNP’s Dear Leader is back in the news — literally, this time. It transpires that Nicola Sturgeon will be one of ITV’s election night pundits during the overnight vote count. The former first minister will appear alongside Ed Balls and George Osborne to provide expert analysis while the election results come out, with Sturgeon billed by the broadcaster as a ‘political insider’. You can say that again… But where Sturgeon goes, drama is never too far behind. Predictably the former FM’s critics have been quick to lambast the ex-SNP leader, with charges of hypocrisy levelled at Sturgeon for accepting a gig her party once blasted

Jawad Iqbal

The Tories’ best hope is to keep Sunak away from the camera

Is Rishi Sunak Labour’s not-so-secret weapon in this election campaign? The question has to be asked after Sunak’s latest political gaffe during an interview with ITV, due to be broadcast tonight, in which he is asked to speak about his experiences growing up. This line of questioning – in the hands of any normal politician – is fertile territory for speaking movingly about early life and family values. But Sunak is no ordinary politician, he is altogether rather extraordinary but not necessarily in a good way. Only in Sunak’s hands could such a soft ball question and easy opportunity be turned into yet another damaging political own goal.  Asked by the ITV

Julie Burchill

How will Remainers cope with a right-wing Europe?

I love to make up new words and see them gradually used more by others – for a writer, there’s no greater thrill. My brilliant ‘cry-bully’ – coined in this magazine back in 2015 – has probably been the most successful, to the point where it’s sometimes amusingly used by cry-bullies themselves, Owen ‘Talcum X’ Jones being the wettest and most bellicose example. Then there’s ‘Frankenfeminism’ (centering the fetishes of cross-dressing men over the rights of women while identifying as a feminist) and ‘Transmaids’ (the people who do this.) But the one I’m most pleased with, though the least used, is Le Grand Bouder, or – to translate it into a lovelier

John Keiger

France’s future looks far from certain

The much loved and quintessentially French singer, Françoise Hardy, born in 1944, died last night. French certainties are disappearing. The Fifth Republican regime could be next. President Macron’s stunning decision on Sunday night to dissolve the National Assembly in the wake of the remarkable victory of the Rassemblement National (RN) in the European elections is likely to turn a political crisis into a crisis of regime.  Following Macron’s 2022 re-election, devoid of a working majority, France entered a slow-building crisis. The fall-out continues to contaminate the political life of the country. After the agonising demise of the Socialist party, yesterday saw the implosion of the Republican party, the Gaullists who

Susanne Mundschenk

How Marine Le Pen could win

Rumours that Emmanuel Macron could resign if Marine Le Pen wins a majority in parliament spooked French markets so much yesterday that he was forced to come out and reject the speculation. He will stay as president, he says, no matter what. The French government will still function if Macron’s party loses more seats in parliament (where he doesn’t currently have a majority). As president, he’ll still have the prerogative over foreign policy, the power to dissolve the assembly and can call a state of emergency. So France would not sink into chaos the day after those elections – but Macron could lose the ability to set a domestic agenda

Katy Balls

The Tories are going public with their ‘Dunkirk strategy’

The Tories managed to avoid any major own goals or gaffes during the launch of their manifesto. Given some of the problems over the last few weeks on the Tory campaign that is a cause of relief for Rishi Sunak’s team. As for the contents of the manifesto – which pledged £17 billion of tax cuts – Labour have chosen to attack it as fiscally irresponsible while Tory candidates on the right complain it has not gone far enough in giving their base a reason to go out and vote. The Tory party has started running adverts suggesting it could be reduced to 57 MPs on election night Sunak’s team take issue

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak admits to Sky TV sacrifice

Oh dear. The first clips of Rishi Sunak’s now infamous ITV interview have started to surface ahead of the full programme, to be broadcast on the channel at 7pm this evening. And if the Prime Minister thought his camera charm offensive might help soften hard feelings about his early departure from D-day commemorations last week, he was sorely mistaken. The PM’s critics have been quick to blast Sunak for telling ITV that the 80th anniversary events for D-day were ‘incredible’ but they ‘just ran over’. And it’s a question from seasoned interviewer Paul Brand about Sunak’s relatability that has really got viewers’ goat.  ‘When you are wealthier than the King,

Gavin Mortimer

Can a ragtag coalition stop Marine Le Pen?

The left in France may not be much good at winning elections but they are excellent when it comes to forming coalitions. Within 24 hours of Emmanuel Macron’s shock announcement on Sunday night of a snap election on 30 June, left-wing parties made a declaration of their own. A coalition of Communists, Socialists, Greens and the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) – similar to the one formed for the 2022 parliamentary elections – would fight the election in a coalition called ‘The Popular Front’. Prime minister Gabriel Attal described his former party’s decision to ally with LFI as ‘revolting’ The first such ‘Popular Front’ in France was created in 1936

Kate Andrews

The Tories and Labour are both relying on a magic money tree

Ask any main political party how they plan to sustain public services in the medium-term, and their answer will be to grow the economy. Ask the Tories or Labour how they might be more generous in the future – able to offer up more tax cuts, or higher public sector pay settlements – their answer will be to grow the economy. Those parties got a rude awakening this morning, when the Office for National Statistics revealed that there was no economic growth in April. After better-than-expected growth in the first quarter of the year, which lifted the UK out of recession, the economy flatlined at the start of the second

Eliot Wilson

Unionists are right to feel furious with Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage likes to see himself as a reliable pal, so it was very much in that spirit that Reform UK’s new leader said that he was endorsing two Democratic Unionist Party candidates, Ian Paisley Jr in North Antrim and Sammy Wilson in East Antrim. Both are DUP stalwarts. Both are very likely to be re-elected on 4 July. Farage’s endorsement rests on their support for him during the long years of fighting to achieve and secure the UK’s departure from the European Union. The only problem is that Reform UK had previously signed a formal ‘memorandum of understanding’ to support the candidates of their rivals, Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV)

Iain Macwhirter

An audience member had the best line during the Scottish leaders’ debate

Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, has said he’ll resign after the 4 July election following criticism of his treatment of a rival Tory candidate and questions over his expenses. It is unusual, to say the least, for a party leader to announce their intention to step down during a general election campaign rather than after it. Even more singular for that leader to continue representing his party in leadership debates, as Ross did on the BBC last night. That elicited the best line of the night from a quick-witted audience member: ‘You need to tidy the flat before you move out, John’ With this in mind, the best question of the night came

Terry Barnes

Why is Australia culling wild horses?

A government-sanctioned programme to cull the brumby mobs of wild horses in Australia’s High Country has become a hot political issue in New South Wales and Victoria, the two states whose border is straddled by the Snowy Mountains. Immortalised in Australian literature through the famous 1890 bush ballad ‘The Man from Snowy River’, by the poet and journalist Andrew ‘Banjo’ Paterson, to many, these wild horses represent a living part of the Australian national legend.  Set in the Snowy Mountains, the poem tells the story of a posse of riders who chase down a mob of wild horses – brumbies – to recapture an escaped racehorse colt who has joined them. It’s a story that triggers

Mark Galeotti

Why is Putin still so desperate for western validation?

Everyone loves Russia, or at least echoes its talking points – if you believe the country’s state media. Why should it be so important for Vladimir Putin, who tries to appear impervious to foreign criticism, to magnify any seemingly supporting words? It underlines a centuries-old insecurity at the heart of Russia There was a distinct absence of western guests at last week’s St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), once Russia’s shop window for investment and trade deals and nicknamed the ‘Russian Davos’. There was the Hungarian foreign minister (who presented attending as an act of maverick courage), but otherwise the main dignitaries there came from the Global South – or

Tuesday

Amber Duke

Hunter Biden found guilty in gun trial

Hunter Biden was found guilty of all three counts of federal firearm charges on Tuesday, concluding a six-year investigation into whether the first son had lied on a federal form for a background check and illegally possessed a firearm while under the influence of illicit drugs.  Hunter was struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine in 2018 and had at least one stay in a rehab facility during the summer. However, as multiple witnesses testified during the trial, he had quickly relapsed by October 2018, the month that he purchased a gun. His ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, painted a picture of a deeply troubled man whose constant drug abuse led to

Senay Boztas

Why didn’t Geert Wilders do as well as Marine Le Pen?

‘We are really by far the biggest winner this evening,’ said Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), when the European election exit polls were published last week. But although the Netherlands was first to go to the polls – with strong indications that the far right would be victorious – his ‘win’ fell short of the storming result of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which has sparked a political earthquake in France. Wilders, an anti-Islam, anti-immigration politician, surprised everyone in the country, including himself, when his PVV became the largest political party in the Netherlands in November. A man who has lived with 24/7 security for two decades is currently putting together a

Isabel Hardman

Sunak’s manifesto is not credible

Rishi Sunak’s manifesto launch was necessarily defensive: the Prime Minister is trying to stem the losses in this election campaign rather than present an exciting vision of a new Britain. It was striking how much Sunak talked about Labour in his speech at Silverstone. Almost every Tory policy he referred to was immediately contrasted with what Labour would or wouldn’t do. His best line was that ‘if you don’t know what Labour will do, don’t vote for them. If you’re concerned about what Starmer isn’t telling you, don’t vote for them’. Even if the Tories did make bold promises, there is a credibility gap The best Sunak can hope for

Matthew Lynn

The London Stock Exchange is in serious trouble

It has impeccable green credentials. It is crucial to the country’s power grid. And it is one of the UK’s largest private companies. A floatation of Octopus Energy should have been just the kind of event that would give the London Stock Exchange a much needed boost. And yet it now emerges that it may well choose a rival market to list its shares. If that happens, it will accelerate the City’s decline into global irrelevance – and an incoming Labour government may well finish it off.  It is probably the worst news the London market could have had. The chief executive of the giant Octopus Energy, the largest electricity