Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
Freddy Gray talks to McKay Coppins, author of the New York Times bestselling book ‘Romney: A Reckoning’. Romney has announced he will not seek reelection in 2024. What next for the ‘never-Trumper’, could he support the creation of a new centrist party? And how does he feel about the significant losses in his career?
When Jeremy Hunt takes to his feet in the Commons this afternoon to deliver his Autumn Statement, he’ll be trying to woo voters with some tax ‘giveaways’: VAT thresholds might be raised to help small businesses and the basic rate of National Insurance could be reduced for the rest of us. But hold on. Before the Chancellor gives anything back, both he and the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak need to do something far more important: they should apologise for all the tax rises the Tories have imposed. We don’t know the final figure yet, but it turns out that the Chancellor has around £13 billion to £15 billion of ‘headroom’,
Following days of speculation, the Israeli cabinet last night approved a deal with Hamas for the release of 50 Israeli hostages – 30 children and 20 women. Currently there are some 236 people, including soldiers and civilians, held in Gaza. In exchange for the gradual release of hostages, Israel has agreed to four days of ceasefire and a release of 150 Palestinian prisoners. Israel will also allow fuel into Gaza and an increase in humanitarian aid. Everything Hamas does is a calculated attempt to survive so it can continue its terrorist acts Not all of the hostages from October 7th are being held by Hamas. Reports suggested that some were
Against the background of the war in Ukraine, a diplomatic row is brewing between Russia and Finland. Last week, Finland announced that it would imminently be closing four of its eight border crossings into Russia, promptly doing so on 18 November. The reason? An unexpected increase in the number of illegal migrants coming over the border from Russia in recent weeks. Finnish minister of internal affairs Marie Rantanen put the blame for this squarely on Russia. ‘The activities of the Russian authorities have changed in such a way,’ she said, ‘that it has become possible to get from Russia to Finland, despite the lack of necessary documents.’ At midnight on Saturday,
After weeks of negotiations, a hostage deal has been struck between Israel and Hamas. Under the terms of the deal, Hamas will release 50 of the women and children it kidnapped on 7th October in exchange for a four-day ceasefire. In return, Israel will release 150 Palestinians from its prisons. Substantial amounts of humanitarian aid, which will include medical supplies and fuel, will also be sent by Israel into the Gaza strip. The ceasefire has been structured so that it can potentially continue after the first four days are over. Israel has said that for every additional ten hostages Hamas releases, the truce will be extended by 24 hours. It
This morning, OpenAI – the firm behind ChatGPT – rehired its chief executive, Sam Altman, after it fired him on Friday. Altman is the most prominent ambassador for the world of artificial intelligence, and was set to join Microsoft after leaving the company. After his sacking, more than 95 per cent of OpenAI’s employees demanded that the board leave and reinstate him. Many staff were threatening to quit the lab, and Microsoft had agreed to match their pay. Today, OpenAI caved and welcomed him back. What’s going on here? Did a firm that was set up to make AI ‘for the benefit of humanity’, whose whole idea was to not
Matters of war and peace are not devolved, but they have nevertheless become the most powerful weapon in the SNP’s armoury as it seeks to fight back against a resurgent Scottish Labour party. Of course, given the nationalists’ record of misjudgement and appeasement in foreign policy, it is perhaps little surprise to see its motion to the Scottish parliament on Tuesday supporting an immediate, condition-free ceasefire. By supporting an immediate ceasefire, the SNP has put Scottish Labour – bullish after its victory in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election – and particularly its leader, in a difficult spot. There is no doubt the motion is also good domestic politics for the
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This week it is the scientists’ turn to appear before the Covid Inquiry with Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer and Sir Patrick Vallance. James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and The Spectator’s data editor, Michael Simmons to discuss the findings this week.
Rishi Sunak wants to frame a benefits crackdown in tomorrow’s Autumn Statement in compassionate terms, with ministers saying people with mobility problems and mental illnesses can no longer be ‘written off’ thanks to advances in technology making it easier to work from home. Instead, they will be expected to look for work or face benefits sanctions. The ‘carrot and stick’ approach being proposed will include a promise to claimants that their right to benefits won’t be reassessed if they look for work, as well as better support in the package of reforms being developed by work and pensions secretary Mel Stride. In lots of ways, this is compassionate: being out
To the rarified surroundings of the Upper House, where the newest member of the government took his place on the red leather of the ministerial front bench. Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton attracted quite the crowd yesterday when he was introduced for the first time, with one peer remarking that they had not seen the Tory benches so full since Covid. It was a similarly full turnout this afternoon when the new Foreign Secretary made his debut at the despatch box. Turning it on thick with his fellow peers, Cameron remarked happily on his newly enhanced surroundings: ‘When I look at the ornate carved wooden panels that surround us, and
Anyone who’s ever had a conversation with a Corbynista will know it’s impossible to talk to these people about anti-Semitism. The minute you mention the world’s oldest hatred their ‘buts’ come flying. ‘But what about Islamophobia?’, they say. ‘But what about other forms of racism?’, they cry. It’s like a tic, an involuntary ideological spasm that makes them mouth that intrusive ‘BUT’ before you’ve even got through all six syllables of ‘anti-Semitism’. For those of us who have tried to draw attention to rising Jew hatred in recent years, it is incredibly frustrating. I’ve been ‘butted’ in numerous TV and radio debates. You come to expect it. You know if
Scotland’s government has plenty of things on its to-do list: tackling inflation, dealing with unemployment and cleaning up the mess left behind by Nicola Sturgeon. But amidst these tasks, it has found time to wade into the gender debate – by publishing its ‘non-binary equality action plan’ to help those who do not fit in to one gender or another. Predictably, not everyone is happy. Tory MSP Murdo Fraser – a former deputy leader of the Scottish Conservative party – quipped: ‘Choosing to identify as ‘non-binary’ is as valid as choosing to identify as a cat.’ For that, Fraser has got himself into hot water with the usual suspects. Maggie
Why was the UK plunged into a lockdown with such little understanding about the likely consequences? This week it is the scientists’ turn to appear before the Covid Inquiry and Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, has highlighted a problem: the extensive and expensive UK pandemic planning did not consider lockdown as an option. This ‘might be considered a failure of imagination by a group of scientists who understood the nature of epidemics and their history,’ says Sir Chris, in his witness statement to the Inquiry. With ‘the benefit of hindsight’, he said, the first lockdown in March 2020 was ‘a bit too late’. With this comment, Sir Chris
Should we bother taking any notice of what Andrew Bailey says about inflation, given that he and his colleagues on the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) failed miserably to foresee any of the inflationary forces of the past two years? As late as May 2021 they were still predicting that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) would rise no higher than 2.5 per cent at the end of 2021 before falling back to 2 per cent. For what it is worth, the Governor of the Bank of England has come over all pessimistic. Addressing the Treasury Select Committee this morning he said markets have got it wrong: they are putting too much emphasis
We shouldn’t be surprised that Ian Fry, the United Nations’ rapporteur for climate change and human rights, has waded in on the jail terms handed to Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists. The UN has a growing habit of muscling in and trying to micromanage states’ internal affairs, especially in cases where there’s a progressive point to be made. Fry said he was ‘particularly concerned’ about the sentences received by the two activists who scaled the M25 bridge over the Thames at Dartford last year. Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland were convicted of causing a public nuisance, with Decker imprisoned for two years and seven months and Trowland for three years. Fry said the punishments were ‘significantly more
Dutch politics got a blast from the past on Monday when a right-wing politician was assaulted. The country goes to the polls tomorrow and the hospitalisation of Thierry Baudet, attacked with a bottle in a bar in the northern city of Groningen, is a reminder of what happened to Pim Fortuyn in 2002. After being assaulted in the weeks leading up to the Dutch elections, the flamboyant right-wing Fortuyn was then shot dead nine days before voters went to the polls. His assassin was an animal rights extremist who told a court he didn’t like the way Fortuyn talked about Muslims. Many people on the left long ago gave up protecting free speech and
Javier Milei, Argentina’s anti-establishment, pro-dollarisation and pro-privatisation president, is already making a splash. Milei, who won a surprise victory in the country’s election on Sunday, said in his campaign that the future of the Falklands ‘cannot be ignored’. The islands, he said, must be returned to Argentina. It didn’t take long for Britain to hit back. ‘The Falkland Islands are British. That is non-negotiable and undeniable,’ defence secretary Grant Shapps wrote on Twitter/ X this morning. Brits – and Argentines – should brace themselves for much more of these bust ups now that Milei is in charge. But the future of the Falklands is likely to be far down the
It’s another day of exciting testimony at the Covid Inquiry. Thus far, every viral-infected cough and spit has been poured over in endless detail by the assembled hacks, with the latest witnesses no exception. This week’s line-up has been full of familiar faces from the not-so-distant past, with Sir Patrick Vallance the star-turn at yesterday’s session. Today, he was followed by that other ray of sunshine, his fellow scientist, Sir Chris Whitty. Much of the Chief Medical Officer’s testimony was to be expected: UK scientists were ‘absolutely dependent’ on advice from international colleagues, there were differences of opinion on the speed of lockdown and he feared some early interventions because
When the government announces a range of tax cuts tomorrow, it has pledged to do so in a ‘sustainable’ way. What counts as sustainable, however, is going to be hotly contested – especially in light of this morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics, which saw the UK borrow more than forecast or expected last month. Public sector net borrowing came in at £14.9 billion in October – more than a billion pounds higher than forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility and £4.4 billion more than was borrowed during the same month last year. There are two ways to look at the data. The first is to note that while
Throughout the various Covid meetings, Sir Patrick Vallance was scribbling in his notebook almost as much as Michael Gove, leading Boris Johnson to assume that he was keeping a diary to be published afterwards. This made sense to Johnson who started to tell friends that Vallance knew ‘more about arse-covering than face-covering’ (Vallance had refused throughout the crisis to say whether the policy of police-enforced mask mandates had any basis in science). Now, we see some scribbles in Vallace’s diary via the Covid inquiry: not very illuminating and some expected insults about those who questioned lockdown. But there is one point that I’d like to take issue with. Vallance says