Read about the latest political news, views and analysis
11 min listen
New GDP figures show that the UK economy narrowly avoided recession at the end of 2022. Between the final quarter and the third quarter of last year, there was no change in the economy's output. Is this really good news? And do GDP figures matter if people still feel poorer? Max Jeffery speaks to Kate Andrews and James Heale.
Before Monday's earthquake, the old town of Antakya, known historically as Antioch, had been a wonderfully preserved labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets on a gentle hill rising from the river. Beautiful houses with peaceful courtyards had been turned into restaurants and hotels, where people sipped tea and smoked under the shade of trees. I had spent a couple of days in Idleb, northwest Syria, where I oversee operations as the country director for the HALO Trust, the landmine clearance organisation, and had decided to spend the weekend in Antakya before leaving for Gaziantep on the Turkish/Syrian border. That whimsical decision to stay in Antakya, and the choice to get up in the middle of the night for an early flight, were two of many factors that almost certainly saved my life.
Labour last night held the seat of West Lancashire on a ten-point swing from the Tories. The constituency has gone red since 1992 and was mostly recently represented by Rosie Cooper, who chose to resign to become chair of the Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust. Turnout was just over 31 per cent, with Labour winning with 62 per cent of the vote and the Conservatives on 25 per cent. It is a cliche, but perhaps the most surprising thing about this result is how unsurprising it is. The result was within less than half a per cent of national polling trends: currently Labour are on course to win a three figure majority that surpasses their 1997 result. The Reform party did better than expectations, taking 4.
Joe Biden was heckled by Republicans during the US president's State of the Union address this week. But that reception was warm compared with the one faced by his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa during his State of the Nation speech last night. Ramaphosa faced a record number of interjections from the floor, as he declared a state of disaster amid rolling power cuts and a looming recession. With an election due in May 2024, this speech was Ramaphosa’s chance to set out why his ruling African National Congress (ANC), in power since the late Nelson Mandela was elected in 1994, deserves another five-year term. Things did not go well.
The whole point about making five key pledges, as Rishi Sunak did at the start of the year, is to give the average voter a consistent message. The idea is that such pledges, which should have been judiciously drawn-up based upon extensive opinion research, are hammered home again and again until the typical person far away from the Westminster Village has digested them. What is Sunak’s administration for? Surely everyone knows that: to halve inflation this year, grow the economy, make sure our national debt is falling, cut NHS waiting and stop the boats.
It's the reshuffle move that everyone is talking about. The promotion of Lee Anderson to Tory deputy chairman has excited the Westminster press pack no end, with the Ashfield MP making headlines within his first 24 hours in the job. A run-in with a local radio station and his support for capital punishment have prompted much media interest into the 56-year-old. But some hacks, it seems, have now overstepped the mark. Anderson took to Twitter this morning to complain that 'some journalist is messaging ex miners who I worked with underground to ask about my life down the pits.
Lee Anderson, the recently-appointed Tory party deputy chairman, has sparked a political row with his comments on capital punishment. 'Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed. 100 per cent success rate,' he said in an interview with The Spectator. Rishi Sunak says he disagrees, and is not in favour of the death penalty. But what do most people think? Voters' views on some issues, like Brexit, range widely and change over time. But attitudes towards crime, and what to do with criminals, appear to be far deeper-rooted. You can never be too tough on crime, is the verdict of many voters. Last week, J.L. Partners asked British adults which punishment – from a fine to a prison sentence of more than 15 years – would be most suitable for 24 different crimes.
The breaking news is that Sandi Toksvig has demanded a meeting with God, over a friendly cup of tea. The BBC broadcaster has grown impatient with his vacillating human intermediaries and wants to explain to him what should happen in the religion that he allegedly launched. Love should come first, she plans to tell him. If he can’t reorganise his religion around this simple principle, he no longer deserves to be taken seriously as a modern deity. The gay vicars that I know are sanguine Toksvig is presumably unimpressed by the latest news from the Church of England's Synod. As expected, bishops have got approval for their compromise: no to gay marriage, yes to church blessings for same-sex couples. It’s not enough, say progressives, including some MPs.
Plop! That was the sound of another rat leaving the sinking Tory ship as Nadine Dorries announced on her Talk TV show that she will quit parliament at the next election. The former Culture Secretary and unashamed Boris Johnson fan joins a lengthening list of departing Tory MPs who have read the writing on the wall and know that inevitable defeat and years in opposition await after their appointment with the voters next year. The only remaining question is the size of that defeat: will it simply be a narrow victory for Sir Keir Starmer’s reinvigorated Labour party? Or a wipeout on the scale of Tony Blair’s 1997 New Labour landslide that left the Tories out of power for more than a decade?
It is vanishingly rare for the SNP-supporting paper The National – a publication that makes Pravda look like the Washington Post – to place anything remotely critical of Nicola Sturgeon on its front page. Yet on Wednesday it warned that the Dear Leader’s ploy to turn the 2024 general election into a ‘de facto referendum’ could ‘Blow It For Indy’. It is right. The idea looks like being about as popular as placing rapists in a woman’s jail. The plan, unveiled by the First Minister in high dudgeon last November, after the Supreme Court rejected her bill to hold an ‘advisory’ referendum on independence, was to present Scottish voters with a one line manifesto before the next Westminster vote in or around 2024.
10 min listen
The chatter in Westminster has been dominated by comments the new deputy chairman of the Conservative Party gave to James Heale, The Spectator's diary editor, in an interview published today. When asked if he was in support of the death penalty, Lee Anderson said: 'Yes. Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed. You know that, don’t you? 100 per cent success rate.’ On the podcast, Isabel Hardman talks to James and Katy Balls about whether No. 10 anticipated that the Conservative Party's new deputy chairman would be making quite so many headlines, so soon into his promotion. Produced by Cindy Yu.
39 min listen
This week: the haunting of Rishi Sunak. In her cover piece for The Spectator Katy Balls says that Rishi Sunak cannot escape the ghosts of prime ministers past. She is joined by former Chief Secretary to the Treasury and New Statesman contributor David Gauke to discuss pesky former PMs (01:05). Also this week: In the magazine Julius Strauss writes about Black Tulip, a volunteer-led humanitarian organisation who recover the war dead from the front line in Ukraine. He is joined by Mark MacKinnnon, senior international correspondent at the Globe and Mail in Canada, to talk about the time they spent with the Black Tulip (16:45).
It seems Liz isn't the only Trussite returning to public life. Her former chief of staff Mark Fullbrook has returned to the world of political lobbying, fresh from masterminding her 49-day regime in No. 10. Fullbrook's previous activities in this field were a regular feature of news reporting during Truss's seven weeks in office. And now, undaunted by past controversies, he has returned to Fullbrook Strategies Limited – the firm he established and ran between spring and September last year. The onetime partner of Lynton Crosby heralded the move by writing on LinkedIn: Today FSL resumes business after my co-founders and I completed our “gardening leave”.
It would raise the money needed to fix the health service. It would make sure the burden of paying for Covid fell on the broadest shoulders. And because it would do little more than bring the UK back into line with its major industrial rivals, it wouldn’t even have any impact on our competitiveness. When Rishi Sunak announced the decision to raise Britain’s rate of corporation tax from 19 to 25 per cent back when he was still Chancellor it was sold as a necessary step to restore the public finances, and one that would have a negligible impact on business. But hold on. AstraZeneca said this week that it was planning to build a new plant in Ireland because Britain’s taxes were now hitting it too hard – and it is likely to be far from the last to invest elsewhere.
Treasury select committee meetings are not usually the stuff of great television. But this morning, it was. The Bank of England’s governor Andrew Bailey was up as a witness to give evidence on recent Monetary Policy reports. And the committee’s new chair, Harriett Baldwin, came ready to highlight where (many) mistakes had been made. Starting with where we are today – inflation still over 10 per cent, five times the Bank’s target – Bailey was forced to sit and listen to his own record over the past eighteen months. Beginning in May 2021 and moving into that autumn, Baldwin quoted his own warnings about ‘very hot areas of prices’ back to him.
The middle-class left cracks me up. They’re always wringing their hands over the lack of working-class people in politics. And yet the minute a man from a working-class background – a former miner, no less – starts to soar in the political realm, they launch a hate campaign against him. They brand him thick, an imbecile, a Rottweiler, a piece of gammon. ‘What’s this gruff, ill-educated blowhard doing on our turf?’, they essentially say. It seems they like the idea of working-class people, but not the reality. Of course I’m talking about Lee Anderson, the colourful, outspoken Tory MP for Ashfield. He’s become the bete noire of the university-educated left.
China is back on the agenda in Westminster, with Liz Truss expected to make a speech on the subject later this month. This week, MPs have been rocked by the news that the Foreign Office has asked the governor of the Xinjiang region for talks. Erkin Tuniyaz – who has been sanctioned by the US – is planning to visit the UK next week, followed by trips to other European countries to meet 'stakeholders' to 'discuss the situation in Xinjiang.' Mr S scarcely need remind his readers about the region's appalling treatment of Uyghur Muslims. Survivors of detention camps in Xinjiang have testified that prisoners there are routinely raped, tortured and forcibly sterilised.
Does the CBI want higher taxes or lower taxes? This morning its director general, Tony Danker, complained that the rise in corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent is in danger of killing off economic growth. He also demanded at the very minimum that a ‘super-deduction’ – where businesses can cut their tax bill by 25 pence for every pound invested – be maintained. 'We know the economy can – and must – break out of its low growth trap, but we need action of business investment to achieve it,' he said. 'Firms are seeing the end to super-deduction with nothing to replace it but a big rise in corporation tax. This will have a huge impact on investment and leave the UK falling behind its global competitors.
This week Mark Steyn became the latest star to leave GB News, following a lengthy leave of absence for health reasons. The TV shock jock has made a name for himself with his diatribes about the Covid vaccine. But it seems that not all at the channel welcomed Steyn's multiple Ofcom investigations. The presenter uploaded a resignation video on Monday, complaining that TV bosses wanted to make him financially liable for any fines imposed because of his show’s output and calling CEO Angelos Frangopoulos an 'habitual liar.' And it seems that Steyn is not done yet unloading on his former colleagues. Announcing the launch of his first 'post cardiac Steyn Shows' on Wednesday, his website attacked the 'duplicitous weasels of GB News' and sneered at the channel's supposed ratings.
Putin’s war has finally made its way to the Russian home front. A leak from the Kremlin reveals that Russia’s regional governments are being ordered to conduct surveys of and update bomb shelters across the country. Speaking to the independent newspaper the Moscow Times, one Kremlin source said this audit had been going on since at least last spring. Renovating Russia’s bomb shelters is, however, easier said than done. A relic of the Soviet Union, the country’s shelters were decommissioned in the 1990s, with many being leased or sold to the private sector and many more falling into disrepair.