Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Andrew McQuillan

South Africa has no right to lecture Israel

As South Africa presented its case accusing Israel of genocide to the International Court of Justice, the presence of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in and around the Hague court gave a flavour of the calibre of those willing this case on. It was predictable that the South African government’s championing of this cause would ignite the ardour of the left. Quoting Nelson Mandela, the Labour MP Zarah Sultana took to X (formerly Twitter) to say with certainty that South Africa’s case against Israel was ‘devastating’. The true story of South Africa since the 1990s has been one of staggering corruption The African National Congress (ANC), which has exercised an

Kate Andrews

Will Red Sea strikes disrupt the UK economy?

November is proving to have been a lucky month in Britain. Inflation slowed significantly: from 4.6 per cent on the year in October down to 3.9 per cent on the year in November (a bigger fall than anyone predicted). Not only that: this morning we learned from the Office for National Statistics that the economy grew by 0.3 per cent, rebounding from an (unrevised) 0.3 per cent contraction in October.  Unfortunately that headline growth rate was largely thanks to a handful of temporary factors. Growth in overall services, up 0.4 per cent, is mainly attributed to a reduction in strikes that month, particularly within the health and transport sectors. Furthermore,

Jason M. Brodsky

Striking the Houthis won’t stop Iran

A month before the targeted killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, few would have expected the US government to eliminate him in a drone strike. Fast forward to this month, and the United States and its allies have launched a military operation to degrade and deter the Houthis. Last night, they launched strikes against more than a dozen Yemeni locations, with explosions reported in the capital Sanaa, the Red Sea port of Hudaydah, Dhamar and north-western Houthi stronghold Saada. The Houthis are armed, financed, and resourced by the IRGC and have been targeting commercial vessels in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a sensitive global chokepoint.

Theo Hobson

Why do I keep falling for Boris Johnson’s charm?

On Saturday, I was in a public library, waiting for an old guy to finish with the Times. But he seemed to be reading every word of every section, and sort of peering at it frowningly in an annoying way. So I did something I hardly ever do: I picked up the Daily Mail.  I had forgotten that I might find Boris here. I wondered what I thought of him these days. One is meant to despise or at least disdain him, of course. But I’ve always struggled to. Oh, I often come very close. I came close the other week, when I read Rory Stewart’s memoir. Politicians should obviously be devoted

Thursday

Angus Colwell

Britain and US launch airstrikes against Houthis

The US and the UK have launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen whose continued attacks are disrupting trade in the Red Sea. Rishi Sunak convened his cabinet on Thursday night to discuss what action would be taken. Strikes were reported in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and the Houthi stronghold port of Hudaydah. Downing Street said that the strikes were carried out by the Royal Air Force on military facilities. The UK’s National Security Council met on Thursday, and an emergency meeting of Cobra was convened. The Leader of the Opposition and the Speaker of the House of Commons were briefed. It’s understood that Sunak will not recall parliament on Friday

William Moore

Why Trump can’t be stopped

36 min listen

This week: can anyone stop Trump?  The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray takes a look at Trump’s ‘second coming’ in his cover story. He says that despite Trump’s legal troubles, he is almost certain to receive the Republican nomination. Freddy joins the podcast alongside Amber Duke, who also writes in the magazine this week about the brides of trump: the women hoping to receive the nod as his running mate. Also this week: the old trope is that there is nothing more ex than an ex prime minister, but what about an ex MP?  In the magazine this week, The Spectator’s political correspondent James Heale says that Tory MPs expecting to lose their

Katy Balls

Can the economy win Tory votes?

11 min listen

James Heale speaks to Kate Andrews and Katy Balls about Rishi Sunak’s new strategy to focus more on the economy as the election year kicks off. Can Rishi Sunak convince the public that he is the best man for the job? And how much control does the government really have when it comes tackling the economy?

Isabel Hardman

We don’t need targets to know the NHS is failing

How has the NHS missed most of its key targets for the past seven years? Some parts of the UK-wide health services (Northern Ireland and Wales) have never met the four-hour time target for A&E, for instance, while others only managed it during lockdown (Scotland) when visits plummeted. Analysis of the NHS’s own figures by the BBC found that NHS England last met the four hour A&E target in July 2015, the 62-day cancer treatment target in December 2015, and planned hospital care in February 2016.  The NHS also released performance figures today showing that while its waiting lists in England have fallen for the second month in a row,

Steerpike

Zac Goldsmith slapped with temporary driving ban

They say it’s a difficult change of gear when you leave government. Still, it seems Zac Goldsmith has had no problem keeping his foot on the pedal since he resigned last year, after complaining about Rishi Sunak’s ‘apathy’ towards environmental issues. Today, the former environment minister and eco-champion was temporarily banned from driving after being caught speeding on four separate occasions. Appearing in Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Goldsmith pleaded guilty to the four counts of speeding in Chelsea, Paddington and Twickenham between April and August last year. In April, he was caught doing 29 in a 20 zone on Chelsea Embankment. In July, he was 8 mph over the limit in

Jawad Iqbal

Tories are wrong to imply that Starmer is racist

Is it really some kind of underhand racist smear for Labour to claim that Rishi Sunak ‘doesn’t get Britain’? This is the charge being laid by No. 10 staffers at the door of the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, who made the accusation during the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the year on Wednesday. Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, whose parents came from India in the 1970s, told a radio interviewer that she was prepared to give Starmer the ‘benefit of the doubt’ that the remark ‘wasn’t about race’. She then went on to add that ‘only he can know what he is implying’, while somehow  making it perfectly obvious that there

Lisa Haseldine

Even in the Arctic Circle, Navalny remains uncowed

Alexei Navalny had a brutal December. At the start of the month the Putin critic abruptly disappeared from his prison colony in Vladimir, east of Moscow. For 20 days no one knew of his whereabouts until his lawyers tracked him down to the ‘Polar Wolf’ colony of Kharp, deep within the Arctic Circle. Yesterday, he was seen by the public for the first time since his transfer.   Appearing over video link, the gaunt Kremlin critic held a short press conference ahead of his appointment in court to sue the Vladimir colony where he was being held until December. Standing behind a metal grille, head shaved and dressed in a prison jumpsuit, Navalny

Freddy Gray

Is 2024 the ‘regime referendum’?

36 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to Daniel McCarthy, editor of the conservative review Modern Age, about all things Donald Trump. Do his ongoing trials help or hinder his campaign? Do the Democrats want him to be the Republican candidate or not? And is there a bureaucratic ‘permanent power’ that Trump would overthrow if he succeeds? The Spectator is hiring! We are looking for a new producer to join our broadcast team working across our suite of podcasts – including this one – as well as our YouTube channel Spectator TV. Follow the link to read the full job listing: https://spectator.com/article/wanted-a-broadcast-producer-for-the-spectator-2/

Steerpike

Hapless Humza crumbles on XL bullies

Take a bow Humza Yousaf. Just two months after his government opted out of a UK-mainland-wide ban on XL American bully dogs, SNP ministers have today caved in and admitted defeat. Yousaf threw in the towel today at First Ministers’ Questions, telling MSPs that – surprise, surprise – Holyrood will now ‘in essence replicate’ UK legislation banning XL bully dogs without a licence. And to think he could have saved himself eight weeks of hassle. According to the flailing First Minister: What has become clear, I’m afraid in the last few weeks, is we have seen a flow of XL bully dogs coming to Scotland, a number of people coming

Kate Andrews

Will inflation return to normal this year?

When will inflation return to the target rate? According to its latest forecasts, the Bank of England isn’t expecting inflation to slow to 2 per cent until 2025. But could this happen much sooner? Several independent forecasters are growing in confidence that inflation could get down to 2 per cent this spring, rather than next spring. Oxford Economics now expects inflation to average 2.1 per cent this year (a full percentage point lower than it expected in November). They also expect the inflation rate to slow to the annual rate of 2 per cent in April, as Ofgem once again lowers the energy price cap and last year’s higher prices

Isabel Hardman

Are the Tories cooling on their support for Israel?

The language in the government and parliament over Israel has changed a lot this week. Ministers are no longer mounting the full throttle defence of Israel or offering regular reminders to the Commons of what happened on 7 October. Lord Cameron’s evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday was just one example of that: the Foreign Secretary said that ‘of course’ he was ‘worried that Israel has taken action that might be in breach of international law’. He also repeated the line that ‘too many civilians have died’, and reminded Israel that it needed to do more to avert a famine in Gaza. Similarly, when Rishi Sunak was asked about

Julian Jessop

How much should we fear the return of the ‘bond vigilantes’?

BlackRock’s UK chief investment strategist, Vivek Paul, has warned this week that pre-election promises of large tax cuts or spending increases could unsettle the bond markets again. There are clear echoes here of the turmoil that followed the Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng mini-Budget back in 2022. How worried should we be? These warnings should not be dismissed lightly. BlackRock is a huge global player, with more assets under management than any other firm. Sentiment can be fickle and market selloffs are often self-reinforcing. The mini-Budget backfired in part because of mistakes that no-one is now likely to repeat, such as sidelining OBR There are also some reasons to think

Ali Ansari

Iranians are blaming the regime for the Kerman terrorist attack

Two suicide bombs killed nearly 100 people and wounded many more in the Iranian province of Kerman on 3 January, as Iranians gathered to commemorate the anniversary of the assassination of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani. It was the most devastating terrorist attack to hit Iran in many years.    Iranians are questioning why Soleimani’s family and the IRGC leadership missed their flight to Kerman, and so did not attend the commemoration There is little agreement in Iran over who was ultimately culpable for the attack. Opinions have sharply divided along political lines. The government quickly blamed the United States and Israel, suggesting the attack was an Israeli attempt to draw

Katja Hoyer

What a secret far-right meeting reveals about the AfD

It sounds like a scene from a dystopian TV drama: in a country hotel west of Berlin, far-right politicians met neo-Nazi activists and sympathetic businesspeople to discuss a ‘masterplan’ for Germany that involves the forced deportations of millions from the country. But this is no fiction. According to reports in the German media, such a meeting took place last November. These revelations will do little to calm the tumultuous political waters in Germany. Around two dozen people met at the picturesque lakeside hotel in Potsdam, according to the news outlet Correctiv, which published a detailed report of its undercover investigation. Given the explosive content discussed in speeches between meals, secrecy

John Keiger

Can ‘mini Macron’ rescue France’s president?

France’s Emmanuel Macron, the Fifth Republic’s youngest president, has just appointed its youngest prime minister, 34-year-old Gabriel Attal. The former socialist turned 2017 Macronista campaigner has had a meteoric rise through government ranks to education minister only six months ago. Attal’s remarkable communication skills, ability to think on his feet and interpret what voters wish to hear has made him Macron’s most popular minister. But this is a further desperate roll of the dice for a beleaguered Macron. The French leader has been deprived of a working majority since the 2022 legislative elections and forced to get his legislation by constitutional sleight of hand avoiding parliamentary votes 23 times. That legislation on

Steerpike

Watch: Jake Berry’s furious spat with Ian Hislop

Even as the credits rolled on ITV’s Peston, the row between Tory MP Jake Berry and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop showed no sign of ending. The pair had a furious bust-up over the Post Office scandal, with Hislop accusing the Tories of failing to act sooner to help innocent postmasters whose lives were ruined. Hislop said the government was effectively forced into action following the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office. ‘It is absolutely fatuous for this government to claim we’re acting now,’ Hislop said. Editor of @PrivateEyeNews Ian Hislop and Conservative @JakeBerry don’t seem to agree about the Government’s handling of the Post Office scandal 👀