Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Katy Balls

Is it smart to ban phones for teens?

11 min listen

Sunak’s top team is considering another ban: smartphones for teens. A consultation is due to begin this month that will question whether children need a smartphone, and if social media should require age verification. Could the debate bring the party together?  Also, there’s another suspension in Westminster. Mark Menzies has been suspended after claims he made a late night call to ask for money to pay off ‘bad people’. He strongly disputes the claims.  Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.  Produced by Megan McElroy. 

Lara Prendergast

The dangers of political prosecution

31 min listen

This week: the usual targets First: Trump is on trial again – and America is bored rather than scandalised. This is his 91st criminal charge and his supporters see this as politicised prosecution. As an American, Kate Andrews has seen how the law can be used as a political weapon – so why, she asks, is Britain importing the same system? In less than 18 months, the police have been sent to investigate Rishi Sunak for his seat-belt, Nicola Sturgeon for campaign funds, and Angela Rayner over her electoral registry: each time, the complainant is political and the process is the punishment. Kate joins the podcast alongside The Spectator’s editor Fraser Nelson

Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon’s husband charged in SNP police probe

Peter Murrell, former chief executive of the SNP, has tonight been charged with embezzling money from his party. Murrell, the husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, was taken into police custody earlier today for a second time in connection with Operation Branchform, the probe into SNP funds. Murrell was arrested at 9 a.m. today, just over a year after he was first held on 5 April 2023. On that day, the Sturgeon-Murrell household in Glasgow was searched by officers and the SNP’s HQ in Edinburgh was raided. Both Sturgeon and the party’s former treasurer Colin Beattie were arrested last year in connection with the probe, but were subsequently released

Malcom Kyeyune

Why did Swedish conservatives relax gender-change laws?

In the 2010s the main political dynamic inside western societies could be boiled down to simple left and right. Figures such as Jordan Peterson, and others loosely grouped under the banner of the ‘intellectual dark web’, were only just rising to prominence and had begun to discuss the new-fangled idea of the ‘culture wars’.  These days conservatives are just phoning it in, going through the motions, and collecting their paychecks for as long as they can Today, the battle between progressives and conservatives has been replaced by something far more confusing and unsettling. The recent legislative debacle in Sweden, in which a right-wing government – a government that conservatives cheered

James Heale

What the Mark Menzies scandal means for the Tories

You’ve got to feel for Rishi Sunak. He spends his days slaving around the clock to shave half a percentage point off inflation, only to find one of his MPs making lurid headlines, again. Today, the Tory boat has been rocked by Mark Menzies, who lost the whip following claims that he had misused campaign funds. He has also been suspended as the government’s trade envoy to Colombia, Chile, Peru and Argentina. Labour is naturally keen to take full advantage of a fresh set of Tory woes According to the Times, the MP demanded that his constituency manager pay thousands of pounds in cash to ‘bad people’ with whom Menzies had

Iain Macwhirter

Humza Yousaf could never realise Sturgeon’s fantasy climate plans

It was Cop26 in Glasgow and Nicola Sturgeon was in her element, posing for selfies with Greta Thunberg, David Attenborough and assorted world leaders. The then first minister was desperate to upstage Boris Johnson who had very much put his mark on the global climate shindig. ‘It’s one minute to midnight on the Doomsday clock,’ the prime minister warned the assembled green lobbyists and corporate CEOs, ‘and we need to act now’. He promised to cut UK greenhouse gas emissions by 68 per cent of 1990 levels by 2030 and to achieve net zero by 2050. Nicola Sturgeon just had to go one better. Scotland would cut emissions by 75 per

Steerpike

Prince Harry ditches UK as primary residence

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Queen of Privacy never manage to keep out of the news for too long. This time it transpires that the red-headed royal has now officially changed his primary country of residence from the UK to the US. Too good for us, Harry? Documents on the Companies House site reveal that the media-shy monarch filed for a change of address for his sustainable tourism business (‘Travalyst’) on Wednesday. However, the change is dated for 29 June 2023 which is, curiously, the day that King Charles asked Harry and his American wife to vacate Frogmore Cottage in Windsor. This is the property, dear readers, that the

Ross Clark

Labour should think twice before taxing pensioners

Labour, according to Rachel Reeves, is now the party of low taxes. She has said she won’t raise income tax, National Insurance, capital gains tax and corporation tax, as well as ruling out a wealth tax. But that still leaves a few options for jacking up taxes, as one of Reeves’ advisers, Sir Edward Troup has hinted. Last week, Troup, a former head of HMRC, was appointed by Reeves to look at efforts to reduce tax avoidance. This is a slightly ill-timed initiative given that Labour is simultaneously trying to play down the case of a particular taxpayer who stands accused of failing to pay capital gains tax on a

Eliot Wilson

It’s no surprise the SNP’s climate change law has failed

When Nicola Sturgeon unveiled the SNP’s climate change pledge in 2019, the First Minister boasted that Scotland had the ‘most stretching targets in the world’. The problem was that they were too stretching: five years on, the flagship goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 75 per cent by 2030 has been binned. The decision to axe the climate target means that another part of Sturgeon’s legacy lies in tatters. This debacle also reveals something simple: writing something into law doesn’t mean it will happen. Despite talking a good game, the Scottish government has consistently missed its climate targets – it failed to achieve eight of the last 12 annual

James Price

We need more Kemi Badenochs

On Tuesday, parliament voted for the first time on legislation to begin the phasing out of smoking (not just cigarettes, but cigars, shisha, you name it), and to create a two-tier legal system where some adults will be able to buy these products, and some won’t. Although the ban seems popular with the public, it has become a lightning rod for Tory MPs, who see it as a shibboleth for how conservative they and their colleagues are. Westminster-watchers are, inevitably, seeing it through the lens of a future leadership contest. The vote was free – that is, not one where members of Parliament were whipped to vote with the government.

Steerpike

Why won’t Humza close Scotland’s tartan Tavistock?

Another day, another Holyrood mess. This time, it’s hapless Humza Yousaf being criticised for his slow response to the Cass review into gender services. It’s not like the Scottish First Minister to be missing in action when it matters… If Yousaf’s time as First Minister is defined by anything, it might well be his staggering level of indecision. Just hours after Mr S asked the question about Scotland’s tartan Tavistock, hapless Humza Yousaf finally threw in the towel. This morning, the Sandyford gender clinic in Glasgow has announced it is pausing prescriptions of puberty blockers to new patients under the age of 18 in light of the Cass review. Only

Steerpike

Sunak loses another Tory MP over claims of misused funds

It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – which means it’s more bad news for Rishi Sunak. The beleaguered Tory premier had a relatively good day on Wednesday, celebrating falling inflation and a punchy performance in parliament. But today’s Times brings news that another Tory MP has lost the party whip while its claims about alleged misuse of campaign funds are being investigated. Mark Menzies, the MP for Fylde since 2010, is facing allegations that he made a late-night call to a 78-year-old aide asking for help because he had been locked up by ‘bad people’ demanding thousands of pounds for his release. According to the Times, £14,000 given by donors for

Katy Balls

Confessions of a defecting Starmtrooper

Next month, Keir Starmer is expected to lead his party to victory in the local elections. The Tories are forecast to lose about half of their councillors who are up for re-election. If it’s a very bad night they could also say goodbye to Ben Houchen and Andy Street, the metro mayors of Tees Valley and the West Midlands. All this would confirm that Labour is on track for a super-majority at the general election. Yet there is one election Starmer’s Labour must fight the left to win: that for the North-East mayor, which takes place on 2 May. The new mayoralty – which covers two million people from Northumberland

Freddy Gray

The Democrats have a Joe Biden problem

The Democrats dare to hope that this week will be a study in contrasts. On their side stands President Joe Biden, the veteran statesman, using all his diplomatic experience to stop a third world war breaking out in the Middle East. On the other, in the dock in Manhattan, sits Donald Trump, facing 34 criminal counts in a case relating to porn stars, adultery and hush money. As Biden urges Israel to ‘think carefully’ as it considers how to respond to Iran’s attack last weekend, Trump is, as ever, ranting away about himself. This speaks to Biden’s 2024 re-election pitch: it’s democracy (him) vs chaos (you know who). Trump can

The Spectator

A smoking ban is pointless and illiberal

Why is Britain poised to ban cigarette smoking, when the habit is already dying out anyway? Smoking is seen by the young as disgusting and outdated. A generation ago, 50 per cent of school pupils said they had smoked at some point. By the time David Cameron came to power, this was down to 25 per cent. It has since halved again, to 12 per cent – of whom just 1 per cent smoke regularly. Vaping among the young presents its own challenges, but smoking cigarettes (at £15 a packet) is in terminal decline. So naturally the state has decided to intervene. Smoking is dying out among the young because

Kate Andrews

The dangers of political prosecution

At the start of January, Donald Trump offered up a cheery new year message for Americans. ‘If I don’t get immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity,’ the former president declared on his social media platform Truth Social. With this, he touched on a looming question about 2024: will the presidential race be decided by lawyers and jurors, rather than voters? Trump showed up in court for the first criminal lawsuit against him this week, a case which could in theory result in a decades-long jail sentence. He’s accused of paying hush money to the former porn star Stormy Daniels, then falsifying business records to conceal the information from

Wednesday

James Heale

Sunak’s Truss problem

11 min listen

The day after her book was published, Rishi Sunak faced down questions from Keir Starmer and Labour members at PMQs about Liz Truss. While he had his replies at the ready, the questions underscored the main issue for Sunak: how should he deal with his predecessor?  Also on the podcast, there is more inflation news for the Government, and how will Starmer deal with internal party discipline? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Lisa Haseldine

Time is ticking to save Vladimir Kara-Murza

A year ago today, the Putin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed for 25 years – the longest sentence handed down to a political prisoner in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union over 30 years ago. For the last year, Kara-Murza has been held in a prison in Siberia, often in solitary confinement, with only occasional visits from his lawyer, a couple of books and hostile prison guards watching over him. Kara-Murza was arrested in April 2022 and held for over a year in pre-trial detention after being accused of treason and spreading ‘fake information’ about the Russian army. The most alarming aspect of the charges levelled against him

Lloyd Evans

Rishi gets witty at PMQs

Keir Starmer came to Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) with a spring in his step. He announced that he owned ‘a rare unsigned copy’ of Liz Truss’s memoirs. ‘The only unsigned copy,’ he added with a chortle. Then he asked Rishi Sunak to justify the calamities of Truss’s premiership.  ‘He should spend less time reading that book,’ said Rishi, ‘and a bit more time reading the deputy leader’s tax advice.’ That scuppered Sir Keir’s day in parliament. To wriggle out of trouble he played the class war card, and he accused Rishi, ‘a billionaire prime minister’, of ‘smearing a working-class woman.’  Rishi deserves great credit as a witty, fleet-footed Commons performer.

Jake Wallis Simons

Sunak has no excuse to not proscribe the IRGC

Lord Renwick, the Labour peer and former Foreign Office mandarin, used to say that young diplomats of a certain breeding suffered from the ‘Wykehamist fallacy’. This, he said, was the tendency to assume that even the most bloodthirsty despot had an inner civilised chap of the sort one might find at Winchester College. Treat him decently and the inner fair-minded fellow would come out. ‘Actually’, Renwick would point out, ‘they’re a bunch of thugs.’ Given Rishi Sunak’s own schooling, the Wykehamist fallacy came to mind when the prime minister’s spokesman made clear that the government would not be banning Iran’s terrorist arm, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Surely if