Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Nigel Jones

Is Putin really in good health?

Soon after Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February a rash of stories appeared in the western media speculating that the Russian president was dying, or at least very seriously ill. The evidence offered was circumstantial but superficially compelling. This ranged from the absurdly long tables the dictator uses to keep his distance from his aides, to analysis of such symptoms as his awkwardly shaking limbs and puffy face. There were also reports that Putin keeps a top cancer specialist in his entourage at all times. Now, no less an authority than the boss of the CIA, William Burns, has poured a douche of cold water on such wishful thinking.

Steerpike

British Museum keeps the Chinese golden era alive

It's been a bit of a bad week for the British Museum. High temperatures forced staff to close the site early on Monday and Tuesday, damaging revenue flow and prompting renewed criticism of its BP sponsorship deal. Then today Sadiq Khan – the museum's own local mayor – called on the government to find a way of sharing the highly-prized Elgin Marbles with Greece. In such circumstances, the British Museum needs all the friends it can get. So it was no surprise therefore that two new names have been appointed as directors of the British Museum Friends, which serve as trustees of its collection. One of them is private equity chief Weijian Shan, who joins the star-studded board alongside the likes of Grayson Perry, Mary Beard and, er, chairman George Osborne.

Kate Andrews

Do Truss and Sunak’s spending pledges add up?

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have only a few weeks to make their case before postal voting begins on 1 August. Sunak has vowed to be 'the heir to Margaret Thatcher' in a comment piece in the Daily Telegraph today, in which he promises to deliver a 'radical' set of reform, without expanding much on what that reform would look like. Meanwhile Truss joined BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning to double down on her plans to grow the economy, admitting that ‘twenty years of economic policy haven't delivered growth’, even if the majority of this time has been under Conservative leadership.

Patrick O’Flynn

Why I’m coming round to the idea of Prime Minister Truss

The prospect of Liz Truss becoming the United Kingdom’s third female prime minister is antagonising all the right people. Almost the entire Remainer establishment – including state-sponsored leftist comedians, professors of European studies, AC Grayling, senior figures at the Times newspaper, Irish government insiders – is recoiling at the thought. It is only partly as a result of this that I find myself thawing towards her – if not quite warming – and hoping she defeats Rishi Sunak when the votes of the wider Conservative membership are counted in early September. This is a U-turn on my part.

Steerpike

Penny hits back at her critics

It's been a bruising week for Penny Mordaunt. Six days ago she was the favourite to be Prime Minister; now she's out of the running after a series of searing criticisms from colleagues and the press. A repeated line of attack she faced was the suggestion that she wasn't entirely across her brief, with Lord Frost claiming he had to request Mordaunt be transferred off the Brexit negotiation One of those making such a criticism was Anne Marie Trevelyan, the Secretary of State for International Trade. She said of Mordaunt, her departmental junior, that: 'there have been a number of times when she hasn’t been available, which would have been useful, and other ministers have picked up the pieces, yes.

Matthew Lynn

Is the eurozone about to plunge into a recession?

A reforming prime minister has been ousted by a fractious, divided parliament. The central bank is raising interest rates to try and stem inflation that is running out of control. Everyone is being urged to use as little electricity as possible as officials scramble around to secure enough energy, and the currency is crumbling as the economy turns down. It would, in fairness, be a reasonable description of a chaotic and struggling Brexit Britain. As it happens, however, it is a summary of the EU and the euro-zone as it stumbles towards its next crisis. As chaotic as Brexit Britain is looking, it will be just as difficult on the other side of the Channel. It is turning into a terrible summer for the eurozone.

Paul Collier

The Singapore model: lessons for the new PM from Lee Kwan Yew

Labour has sneered at talk of ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ as a post-Brexit economic model, while the tax-cutting wing of the Conservatives has embraced it with a passion. But neither seem to know much about how Singapore actually achieved its remarkable prosperity. Lee Kwan Yew, the country’s prime minister from 1959 to 1990 (and one of the greatest national leaders since 1945), transformed Singapore from corruption, division and poverty by moral, fiscal, social and market acts of genius which gave people a new sense of hopeful purpose. First, the moral genius. The population of Singapore was bitterly divided by racial and ideological antagonisms that had left the country isolated from its neighbours.

Rod Liddle

The high price of failure

I was listening to a rich bastard on the radio explaining why he was feeling disinclined to give any more of his money to the Conservative party. The term ‘rich bastard’ is the one which I was habituated to use when I was a member of the Labour party and which I have disinterred now to give my opening sentence a little more punch. It was axiomatic to us that anyone with sufficient dosh to consider squandering a few hundred thou on a political party must be a bastard and was both immoral and undeserving of his wealth. Wealth in any shape or form appalled us in an almost Freudian fashion – Sigmund, you may recall, equated potty training with the accumulation of money, and the supposedly subconscious link between faeces and money has never quite been expunged from the left.

Isabel Hardman

Last ones standing: the leadership finalists on taxes, net zero and freedom of speech

After the last televised leadership debate was cancelled when Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak pulled out, we asked the remaining three candidates if they would come on SpectatorTV to face questions before Tory MPs’  final vote. (Since going to press the contenders will have been whittled down to two.) This is an edited transcript of their answers. Do you propose tax cuts? If so, how would you pay for them? PENNY MORDAUNT: On the current trajectory Rishi’s set us on, we are going to be one of the most uncompetitive nations in the OECD and that cannot be allowed to happen. We have to be able to compete. So there will need to be some changes. But exactly what – and when – is not the issue for this contest.

Matthew Parris

Liz Truss is no Margaret Thatcher

The late Senator Lloyd Bentsen was 26 years older than the young Senator Dan Quayle when in 1988 they crossed swords in a debate in Omaha, Nebraska. Their exchange became famous. Quayle had been comparing himself with the late John F. Kennedy. Old Bentsen hit back: ‘Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.’ As it happens, I’m 26 years older than Liz Truss. So it’s a temptation to which I yield to quote that exchange, now that Ms Truss, explicitly, both in her wardrobe and the photo opportunities she contrives, is inviting comparison with the late Baroness Thatcher. I can’t quite mimic Bentsen’s claim.

Nicholas Farrell

Mario Draghi’s fall and the death of Italian left-wing populism

So, another unelected Italian government is collapsing, and the putatively pro-democratic media are all calling it a ‘dark day.’ In many ways, it is. Mario Draghi’s resignation (his second in the space of a week and this time for real) is bad news for Brussels and the Eurozone. The war in Ukraine was the catalyst for Draghi's fall as it tore apart Italy’s left-wing populist party, the Five Star Movement. That, in turn, destabilised Italy’s government. The Russian media will be ecstatic: first Boris, now this. But it is a great day for Italy's leading right-wing populist party – the post-fascist Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) – which is now in a very powerful position.

Francis Buckley

The European Union can’t fix its gas problem

Over a 20 year period, former German chancellors Gerhard Schroder and Angela Merkel, handed Russian President Vladimir Putin a vice-like grip on Europe’s energy security. Schroder, who enjoyed a well-publicised bromance with Putin, oversaw the start of Gazprom’s Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. With unseemly haste, soon after he stepped down as chancellor, Schroder became chairman of Nord Stream AG’s shareholder board. Schroder’s successor Angela Merkel — the Russian speaking daughter of a Lutheran pastor who joined the East German communist youth party in her teens — was equally accommodating.

James Forsyth

The future of the Tories is at stake

To govern is to choose. So leadership contests for a party in government tend to come down to a key policy question. In 2019 it was how to break the Brexit deadlock; this time it is what to do about the economy. Should the new prime minister prioritise tackling inflation or delivering immediate tax cuts? The candidates have been divided on this issue. Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, who I have been friends with for years, argues inflation makes everybody poorer and so getting control of it must be the primary objective. On the other side is Liz Truss. The Foreign Secretary wants, as she tells Isabel Hardman in this issue, to introduce £30 billion of tax cuts straight away.

Steerpike

Biden in ‘I have cancer’ gaffe

You're the American president on a visit to former coal plant in Massachusetts. You're ostensibly there to deliver remarks about climate change. You're facing criticisms for being out-of-touch, rambling and gaffe-prone. So what do you decide to do? Start suggesting you've got cancer in front of the world's press! An implausible-sounding scenario perhaps but that's exactly what bumbling old Biden did yesterday. In a speech delivered yesterday, America's septuagenarian president mistakenly referred to Glasgow as part of England and appeared to suggest he currently has cancer. Whoops! In a long-winded address on global warming, Biden began to describe the harmful impact of emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The Tories abandon fiscal conservatism at their peril

And then there were two. Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss now go to the membership. There’s much talk today about how brutal this contest will be. Penny Mordaunt’s supporters were arguing this morning that people should vote for her to avoid pitting these two against each other. But that would be false comfort. The argument between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak is one that the Tory party needs to have. Fiscal responsibility has been the Tories’ anchor for years On one side stands Sunak, who I have known for many years. He cleaves to the old Thatcherite position that the first thing to do is to get inflation under control. He believes that you don’t get something for nothing: you can’t cut taxes unless you are controlling public spending.

Robert Peston

Liz Truss presents a serious challenge to Rishi Sunak

After all that, Sunak entered the final members' round to be Tory leader and UK PM with a comfortable 24 vote margin of advantage over the runner-up Liz Truss. But her 113 votes are enough of a mandate from MPs to present Sunak with a serious challenge during the summer contest. What is striking is that the next Tory leader will represent continuity with the Johnson years Tory members, who according to surveys seemingly prefer Truss to Sunak, can't be swayed by the idea that Truss would not be able to lead MPs because too few support her – which would have been a credible argument if Sunak had been supported by nearer 200 of his colleagues. So the fight is on.

Isabel Hardman

Liz Truss vs Rishi Sunak: will the next phase be less rancorous?

11 min listen

Conservative MPs have chosen the final two candidates to be presented to the Tory membership in the final round of this leadership contest. Over the rest of the summer, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will be travelling around the country to attend dozens of hustings with Tory members. Will this phase be less rancorous? Or will the divides between the two candidates only become more apparent? Isabel Hardman talks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth.Produced by Cindy Yu.

Kate Andrews

The economic battle between Sunak and Truss

The Tory grassroots have got themselves a real economic debate this summer: Rishi Sunak’s ‘Thatcherite’ economic philosophy vs Liz Truss’s ‘Reaganite’ plans to boost growth. It’s not the most obvious distinction, given the former prime minister and president were great free-market allies. Both also cut tax. But it’s about the order of priorities: like the Thatcher years, Sunak believes that the most important task is getting inflation under control, which was reporting this morning to have hit a 40-year-high, rising by 9.4 per cent on the year in June. This is how he justifies the tax hikes he ushered in as chancellor, comparing them to what Nigel Lawson did in Thatcher’s government.

Michael Simmons

Fact check: Is Sadiq Khan right about fires?

Will global warming condemn Britain to more fires? Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, has been widely quoted this morning comparing recent fires around the capital to the Blitz. ‘Yesterday was the busiest day for the fire service in London since the second world war,’ he said – climate change caused the heatwave which ‘led to the fires’. He added that he was dismayed that the Tory leadership contenders were not discussing this ‘elephant in the room.’ So is this right – or misleading? As so often, it’s a mixture. Khan is correct to say that the number of calls to London fire brigade was a record high: it received more than 2,600 calls. But 999 call handlers can receive hundreds of calls about the same incident.

Lloyd Evans

The unedifying spectacle of Boris’s last PMQs

Today Boris gave his last performance at Prime Minister’s Questions. But was it his last? He left the House hanging at the end. Speaker Hoyle began the historic session with a soggy little homily praising Boris for seeing us through ‘dark times during the pandemic’. Then, laughably, he told MPs to adopt a ‘respectful manner’ and to stick to ‘issues not personalities’. And he wasn’t finished there. He quoted Erskine May’s advice that ‘good temper and moderation’ are the hallmark of a distinguished parliamentarian. Do we really need this micromanager filing the chamber with his lugubrious dronings? Hoyle sounds like a control-freak park keeper who deflates the bouncy castle ‘due to excessive sunshine.