Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

Winston Marshall

The music industry is out-of-step on trans ideology

If you want a glimpse of progressive authoritarianism, look no further than the music industry. Two musicians, in successive weeks, have spoken out against the excesses of trans ideology. First of all Christian Henson, co-founder of Spitfire Audio, Britain’s leading sound library studio and software audio creator. Henson had the audacity to voice his concerns of what damage the trans ideology is doing to children. He tweeted: ‘As a parent I can no longer keep my mouth shut about this. I’m in full support of [Graham Linehan] and [J.K. Rowling]. Please look into this. If you have young children its in the post if you have autistic children its probably already on your doormat [sic].

Steerpike

Truss’s chief of staff quizzed by FBI

It’s been an eventful few weeks for Liz Truss. Our new Prime Minister has faced a baptism of fire not seen since by an incoming premier since Churchill and the fall of France in 1940. War, inflation, a-cost-of-living crisis and the death of the Queen: so much for a honeymoon. Still, Her Majesty’s passing has meant a brief hiatus from normal politics, which is expected to resume with gusto on Tuesday. And one issue which we can expect Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to probe with relish is Truss’s newly appointed Chief of Staff, Mark Fullbrook.

David Petraeus

Ukraine will win the war

The below is an edited transcript of David Petraeus’s interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto. On the war’s momentum: It has fundamentally shifted, and I'm normally fairly guarded and cautious about this, but the tide clearly has turned because the success of this offensive, as important as it is itself on the ground, is that it reflects a hugely important development: Ukraine has been incomparably better than Russia in recruiting, training, equipping, organising and employing additional forces. Russia has been struggling to do just that, literally running out of soldiers, ammunition tanks, fighting vehicles and so forth. Ukraine is supported superbly by the US and Nato, whereas Russia, even if it declared mobilisation today, could not reverse this fundamental reality.

Jörg Luyken

The AfD’s unlikely conversion to Merkelism

It is hard to keep count of the German orthodoxies that have died a long overdue death on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Annäherung durch Handel, the claim that government lobbying for German industry in Moscow and Beijing would moderate those capitals by tying them to our trade interests. That didn't work. Building a gas pipeline from St Petersburg based on a mission to make up for historic war crimes, even after the Russian army had annexed 10,000 square miles of a neighbouring country? It turns out that pacifist gestures are only taken seriously at one end of the pipeline. Refusing to send weapons to a war zone over fears that you might end up escalating the conflict? Well, brutal autocrats don't need much encouragement if they plan on flattening a city.

Nick Cohen

What republicans understand about monarchy

What ridiculous figures we republicans must seem on the eve of Elizabeth II’s funeral. We sound like desiccated rationalists who cannot understand that emotion, not reason, makes people identify with their country. Instead of joining in shared celebrations and mourning, we ask carping questions about the transparency of royal finances or the basic failure of our head of state and her advisers to stop Boris Johnson’s unlawful proroguing of parliament. We think we know our history and sociology. We say we understand that nations are ‘imagined communities’, which unite strangers with common symbols and emotions. Yet when faced with the power of monarchy to hold the United Kingdom together, we complain about feudalism and our Ruritanian love of pointless display.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Jacinda Ardern predicts a republican NZ

Tony Radakin – Putin’s war is a ‘strategic failure’ With the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II taking place tomorrow, it is no surprise that warm words and condolences have taken up so much of the airwaves since her death was announced ten days ago. However, amid the tributes, the world has continued to march on, and few have marched more relentlessly than the Ukrainian army. With their recent counter-offensive against Russian occupation proving so successful, Laura Kuenssberg sat down with Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the Defence Staff, to discuss their progress: https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1571418223781810182?

Mark Nayler

The Queen’s funeral and the row over Spain’s exiled former king

Juan Carlos, Spain’s exiled former king, will be present at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral in London on Monday – and the Spanish government is furious. Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez has reportedly tried to stop the ex-monarch from attending and a spokesperson for Podemos, the coalition’s junior partner, has described him as a ‘criminal on the run’. But the 84 year-old emeritus king, who abdicated in 2014 and fled Spain in 2020 under suspicion of fraud, is attending anyway, along with his wife, former Queen Sofia. He is right to do so. Juan Carlos’s attendance at Monday’s state funeral isn’t just a personal affair, separate from the controversy surrounding his alleged misdemeanors – it’s a family matter.

Frank Young

We need more royals

King Charles has been respectfully silent on any plans he might have to shake up the monarchy. Courtiers have spent years reminding anyone who asks that the topic is painful to him, signalling the passing of his ‘beloved’ mother. The only concrete proposed ‘reform’ that has leaked out over the years is the suggestion that as King, Charles intends to slim down the Royal Family. These plans badly misunderstand the public appetite for royalty: our new King should instead seek to increase the number of working royals. Don’t listen to sneering liberals, the Great British Public love a royal turning up to town. The Great British Public love a royal turning up to town The royals have huge pulling power.

Saturday

Jack Watling

Why didn’t Ukraine fall?

A week before Russia invaded Ukraine, expectations varied considerably. The US government was certain the Russians would strike at Kyiv and seize the Ukrainian capital in 72 hours. The Russian presidential administration concurred. In Paris and Berlin, officials were briefing that Anglo-American hysteria was leading the world to another Iraq WMD moment and that the Russians were just posturing. Views varied in Kyiv, but the government’s assessment was that a period of political destabilisation would be followed by a limited Russian offensive against the Donbas.

Owen Matthews

Owen Matthews, Cindy Yu and Alicia Healey

19 min listen

This week on Spectator Out Loud, Owen Matthews evaluates Russia’s ultra-nationalist threat (00:55), Cindy Yu reviews Perhat Tarsun’s The Backstreets (12:36) and ex-royal ladies maid Alicia Healey tells us why a handbag was the Queen’s secret weapon (15:22).Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

Robin Ashenden

When the Ceausescus came to tea

Anyone still in any doubt about the lengths to which Queen Elizabeth II was prepared to go in the line of duty might consider the hideous company the role at times foisted on her. In 1991, she had to clink glasses with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, and 20 years earlier had dined with Ugandan despot Idi Amin (though she later privately vowed to hit Amin with a sword if he dared to gatecrash her Silver Jubilee). But perhaps none of these grisly encounters was as gruelling as having to host Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceaușescu and wife Elena on a three-day state-visit, complete with Palace quarters, in 1978. Though a domestic monster, Ceaușescu’s international stock at the time was high.

Friday

Steerpike

Mark Field muses on Liz Truss’s fortunes

Since becoming the Tory leadership favourite early last month, Liz Truss is used to all sorts of people coming out of the woodwork. Old friends, former allies and even the odd foe have been very keen to share their opinions on Truss, the onetime Lib Dem radical turned Brexit-backing cabinet mainstay. But one person who we haven't heard much from is Mark Field, her fellow former Conservative MP, with whom Truss had a headline-grabbing affair in the mid-2000s. But now the Camden New Journal have set tongues wagging with a cheeky little piece in this week's edition about what Field has been up to since leaving parliament in late 2019.

Ross Clark

Is a weak pound bad for Britain?

Should we despair that the pound has slumped again today, falling below $1.14 for the first time since 1985? Or should we rejoice? It was, after all, a collapse in the pound following Black Wednesday in 1992 – along with dramatically lowered interest rates -- which precipitated a lasting economic recovery. It is all too easy to see the value of the pound as a national virility symbol, and think that the stronger it is, the better. In reality, a weak pound – or let’s say a pound set at a realistic level, which properly reflects the costs of wages, goods and services in Britain – can help stimulate the economy by making our exports relatively cheap.

Max Jeffery

Can the Met fix London’s spiralling crime problem?

10 min listen

Two police officers were stabbed this morning near Leicester Square in central London. What can new Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley do to fix the capital's crime epidemic? And the pound today fell to a 37-year low against the dollar. What can the government do to give the markets confidence?Max Jeffery speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.Produced by Max Jeffery.

Ian Williams

Even Xi is unimpressed with Putin’s bungling autocracy

To say that Vladimir Putin is giving autocracy a bad name is rather to state the obvious. But it now appears to have dawned even on his ‘old friend’ Xi Jinping that Russian incompetence and cruelty in Ukraine is undermining their joint ambition to re-write the international order. Putin’s admission that Beijing might have ‘concerns’ about his bungled war was cryptic but striking. ‘We highly value the balanced position of our Chinese friends when it comes to the Ukraine crisis,’ Putin said in remarks ahead of their meeting in Uzbekistan. ‘We understand your questions and concerns about this. During today’s meeting, we will of course explain our position.

Steerpike

Truss dismantles the eco ‘axis of evil’

Politics is a cruel business. One minute the gods are shining brightly on you, the next, you’re consigned to the barren wilderness. And few know that better than Liz Truss, our northern Premier with a Sicilian bent. For Truss, The Godfather appears to be less a film than an instruction manual, judging by the nature of her first reshuffle. Her old enemies were purged with Michael Ellis the sole surviving Sunak supporter.Truss knows better than most the fickle nature of the political game. Just two years ago, she was in the fight of her life at the DIT when she was battling to push through post Brexit trade deals.

Francis Pike

The morality of the EU’s gas grab in Azerbaijan

My enemy’s enemy is my friend. This ancient proverb partly describes the EU’s fast developing relationship with Muslim Azerbaijan, a Turkic country whose forever enemy is neighbouring Christian Armenia which is militarily supported by Russia. And natural gas is the crux of this unnatural alignment. On 18 July the EU gleefully announced that by 2027 the Azerbaijan government had agreed to increase its gas supply from its Caspian Sea fields to Europe from 8 bcm (billion cubic metres) to 20 bcm per annum. Although this would still only represent 12 per cent of Europe’s gas imports last year, President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, nevertheless described Azerbaijan as ‘a key partner in our efforts to move away from Russian fossil fuels’.

Cindy Yu

It’s wrong to ban China from the lying-in-state

Unlike some Americans, China’s communists have no problem getting their heads around hereditary monarchy. Last week, President Xi sent his condolences to the United Kingdom. Now, he’s sending one of his most trusted deputies to pay respects at the Queen’s funeral. China has called off its wolf warriors, its diplomatic ideologues known for berating the West. Beijing is on best behaviour. Instead, the bellicose rhetoric is coming from a few British MPs, indignant that Chinese officials have been invited to the funeral. Vice-president Wang Qishan, the man tasked with representing China, is one of Xi’s most reliable lieutenants, having led the President’s flagship anti-corruption drive.

William Nattrass

Viktor Orban is facing pressure from the right on abortion

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has become a towering figure in European politics over the past 12 years thanks to his promotion of ‘Christian democracy’ as an alternative to western liberalism, which he claims has lost its way. But a change to abortion laws introduced by the Hungarian government this week may indicate an alarming shift in his methods. The new regulation, brought in with little warning or debate, requires pregnant women to listen to their foetus’s heartbeat before they can access abortion services. Coming into force on Thursday, it strengthens abortion laws which have remained liberal throughout Orbán’s leadership.