Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Steerpike

Four of Jamie Oliver’s worst moments

The policemen who guard the Downing Street guards are used to rag-tag protesters rocking up and chanting in their faces. But Friday afternoon brought with it a more well-heeled crowd than usual, as a myriad collection of 200 kids and campaigners rocked up in Whitehall to protest the government's U-turn on the obesity strategy.  And at the centre of this bourgeois brouhaha was of course, the familiar face of Jamie Oliver, holding aloft an 'Eton mess' in true twee fashion. Oliver was incandescent at Johnson's decision, as he told the crowd beneath his own Union Jack umbrella, leading them in a chant of 'Eton!' to which they replied 'mess!' Subtlety never was his strong suit...

Steerpike

Remainers in meltdown over Union Jacks

The Jubilee weekend looms next month. For some, it's a chance to toast the monarchy; for others, simply an extra day off work. And for a small minority of Twitter-crazed loons, it's yet more proof that the UK is goose-stepping down the path of fascism. For the unfurling of Union Jacks on London's Regent Street, ahead of next month's celebration, is proof to some of Boris's more hard-of-thinking critics that a totalitarian regime is in the offing. After images of the UK's national flag were posted online this morning, a hardcore band of diehard Remainiacs went into something of a meltdown, furiously tweeting their rage to such an extent that the phrase 'Nazi Germany' was the second most 'trending' topic on Twitter this morning.

Sam Leith

Should a trans woman inherit a peerage over their older sister?

It’s House of Lords reform, Jim, but not as we know it. Matilda Simon has applied to contest the next by-election for hereditary peers, in the hope of taking her hereditary seat as Baron Simon of Wythenshawe. Matilda, Lord Simon? Here, in one story, is a positively combustible mix of the 21st and 11th centuries. Matilda began life as Matthew Simon – becoming on the death of her (then his) father the second Baron Simon of Wythenshawe. But she has since transitioned and become Matilda Simon. And the Lord Chancellor last week approved her claim to the peerage and therefore gave her permission to stand the next time a seat becomes vacant among the hereditaries in the Lords.

Nigel Jones

Is this the week Boris Johnson’s luck finally runs out?

'Is he lucky?' Napoleon demanded to know of one of his generals. When Sue Gray's partygate report is released in the coming hours, we'll soon find out if the luck Boris Johnson has enjoyed during his rise to the top continues. Given that Boris managed to escape from the Met police investigation into the festivities that played out in Downing Street during the pandemic with just a single fine, it seems unlikely the PM's luck is about to run out. It marks a miraculous turnaround from just a few months ago when it looked almost certain that partygate would bury Boris.

Sunday

Steerpike

Jeremy Hunt’s lockdown yarns

Jeremy Hunt is currently enjoying something of a renaissance  – all the more interesting in light of Boris Johnson's ongoing difficulties. The former Health Secretary has been touring the TV studios recently, promoting his new book Zero: Eliminating Preventable Harm and Tragedy in the NHS. It aims to 'reduce the number of avoidable deaths to zero and in the process save money, reduce backlogs and improve working conditions.' An ambitious goal, to say the least. Allies of Hunt though have been keen to stress that such activities are absolutely, positively, NOT part of any leadership manoeuverings – even if he doesn't rule out another bid in future. Hmm.

Steerpike

Ben Wallace lashes out at the Mirror

It looks like Ben Wallace had sugar on his cornflakes today. The Defence Secretary has gone 'full tonto' this morning at the Sunday Mirror over a story in today's newspaper about the amount of cash his department is spending to send the kids of top army officers to leading public schools. The paper says that last year some £1.5 million was handed over by the Ministry of Defence to schools like Eton, Harrow and Ampleforth, as part of the long-standing Continuity of Education Allowance. This covers 10 per cent of boarding school fees for forces parents so spouses can accompany them on overseas postings.

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: windfall tax ‘not off the table’

This week the minister doing the morning media round was Nadhim Zahawi, who faced questions over the probe into Partygate, school bullying and the possibility of a 'windfall tax.' Nadhim Zahawi – Boris Johnson ‘did not interfere’ in the Sue Gray report The Education Secretary spoke to Jo Coburn about the long-awaited Sue Gray report. Coburn asked Zahawi to explain why the Prime Minister had had a meeting with Gray, and if there was a risk of undue influence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo6GS99zB3Y A windfall tax ‘is not off the table’ Sophy Ridge asked Zahawi about whether the government was moving towards a potential windfall tax on oil and gas companies: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1528283515527249920?

Ross Clark

It’s time for Boris to take on the rail unions

Imagine if we gave the rail unions what they really wanted, and renationalised the railways. Would they then leave us alone and get on quietly with the job of driving trains, clipping tickets and so on? Like hell they would. Thankfully, Nicola Sturgeon has just tried this very human experiment, so that the Westminster government does not have to. On 1 April, railway services north of the border were taken back into public ownership so that, as the unions would put it, passengers could once again be put first and profits no longer drained away by nasty private companies rewarding their evil shareholders. And the result? Er, a national rail strike – just the same as the unions are threatening in England.

Sasha Lensky

Russia’s anti-Putin backlash is gathering strength

The backlash in Russia to Putin’s war is now visibly getting underway. For the first time, the President risks becoming a disappointment to all sides of the political spectrum. Those who advocate for war see his military efforts in Ukraine as flaky and inadequate. Those who oppose it see those same actions as war crimes – both against Ukraine and Russia, their homeland. Waging war is a costly business. In April alone, Russia received 133 billion roubles less in oil and gas revenues than expected, and a fall in the standard of living is inevitable.

Saturday

Stephen Daisley

The partygate scalp hunters can’t complain about the fallout now

Robert Peston, the fiercely well-connected political editor of ITV News and a contributor to Coffee House, reports ‘a sense of injustice and considerable upset’ in Downing Street that ‘the 126 Partygate fines have been levied disproportionately on women and junior officials’. Robert quotes a source who complains that ‘the majority’ of those fined are ‘very junior diary managers’ on salaries of roughly £24,000 and that ‘these fines are really stacking up for them’. It seems there is considerable discontent among female staff fined ‘for events they were at with their male bosses who seem to have got away no problem’, and that ‘lawyering up’ appears to have made the difference.

Fraser Nelson

The Met’s partygate investigation was worth the cost

In many ways, it has been absurd to have police spend months (and £460,000) investigating birthday cakes, glasses of wine and garden parties. Lord Finkelstein, the Tory peer and commentator at the Times, has come out against it (‘Playing politics is no business of the police’) and the front page of yesterday’s Daily Mail lambasts the cost. I respectfully disagree. If partygate focuses political minds on the wisdom of lockdown rules, it’s well worth it. Keir Starmer and Danny Finkelstein both voted for Boris Johnson’s lockdown laws. If they now find the laws objectionable if used to investigate past offences by politicians: good.

Katy Balls

Should the Tories try to lose the next election?

9 min listen

Some Tories want to lose the next election. Conservative policies and ideologies are stale, they say, and the party could do with a period in opposition. Is this really a good idea? And could a Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrat coalition find a way to keep the Tories out of government for decades?'If anyone is thinking that way, they don't deserve to be in power.' – Fraser NelsonKaty Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Peter Apps

Why disabled people will be forced to stay in burning high-rises

‘Grenfell is a story about a failed evacuation.’ These are the words of Professor Ed Galea, an internationally respected expert in fire safety and evacuations who, among other things, wrote a pivotal study into the attempted evacuation of the World Trade Centre on 9/11. But this is something the British state, and particularly the Home Office, appears utterly unable to accept. For decades, this country has relied on telling residents in burning tower blocks to ‘stay put’. This has been baked into the way we build our high rises: we require walls, floors and ceilings to effectively break the building up into a series of small, fire resisting boxes.

Friday

Steerpike

Jacob Rees-Mogg’s efficiency crusade

Ah, Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Old Etonian sometimes appears to have been designed by top lab scientists at CCHQ to perfectly antagonise the Sir Humphreys of SW1. Since his appointment as the Minister for Government Efficiency in February, every announcement by the Somerset MP seems calculated to enrage the civil service trade unions, keen to retain Covid-era hybrid working practices. For the Moggstar has been on a one-man war around Whitehall, rampaging around the Cabinet Office, decrying those mandarins who stubbornly refuse to abandon working from home. As part of this crusade to get back to the offices, Rees-Mogg last month toured his department and left calling cards on the empty desks of absent civil servants.

Katy Balls

Katy Balls, James Heale and Melissa Kite

16 min listen

On this week’s episode, we’ll hear from Katy Balls on Boris Johnson’s plans to divide and conquer (0.33).After that, James Heale on the broadcast battle obsessing British media (6.20).And to finish, Melissa Kite on the politics of horse muck (11.16).Produced by Natasha FerozeEntries for this year's Innovator Awards, sponsored by Investec, are now open. To apply, go to: spectator.

James Forsyth

The existential threat facing the Tory party

As James Kirkup says, some Tories are beginning to wonder whether it might be better for them to lose the next election. But defeat at the next election could see the Tories locked out of power for a generation. The local elections and the opinion polls suggest that the most likely result of the next election is not a Labour majority, but some kind of anti-Tory majority. But, as I say in the Times today, the Tories have more to fear from this kind of governing arrangement than an outright Labour victory. Why? Because it is more likely to lead to electoral reform.

Steerpike

Commons counts the cost of Queen’s Speech

There was much joy in Parliament earlier this month at the first in-person State Opening of Parliament since 2019. But the return of pomp and circumstance to the Palace of Westminster wasn't universally applauded. Some doomsters took to Twitter to bemoan the sight of Prince Charles sat besides the Imperial State Crown while reading the Queen's Speech about the cost of living. And it seems such critics are found in the Commons too, for Plaid MP Hywell Williams has paid down a parliamentary question asking about the cost of all the pageantry to the taxpayer. According to Sir Charles Walker – the chairman of the House of Commons Commission – a record £228,978 was spent by parliament on last year's Queen's Speech.

Katy Balls

Has Boris won back Tory MPs?

10 min listen

Given that Boris Johnson escaped the latest and final set of party fines from the police yesterday, does this mean partygate is over? Sue Gray's report is still yet to be published, where she intends to name and shame those in her report. Could this take some of the pressure off the Prime Minister?Also on the podcast, there is a growing divide within the Conservative party between those who want a windfall tax and those that don't. But where does Boris stand on this?All to be discussed as Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson.

Steerpike

Tim Farron’s fake Twitter army

Twitter may not be the real world, but it sure does set the conversation in Westminster. Commentators once spoke of 'the ground war' of activists on the ground and the 'air war' of broadcast interviews, but increasingly social media is where battles are fought and won. This week an audit in the States found that nearly half of Joe Biden’s 22.2 million Twitter followers are bogus, according to a study by software firm SparkToro which reported that 49.3 per cent of the president’s followers are 'fake followers'. SparkToro has defined 'fake followers' as 'accounts that are unreachable and will not see the account’s tweets (either because they’re spam, bots, propaganda, etc. or because they’re no longer active on Twitter).

James Kirkup

Meet the Tories quietly hoping to lose the next election

Would it be good for the Conservatives to lose power at the next election? Should smart young Tories with an eye on the future want to lose? Those are questions I’ve heard discussed in Conservative circles recently. And those questions arise from a Tory reading of politics that goes something like this: Boris is leading conservatism into a dead end. Lacking principles and consistency of ideas, he has left the Conservatives without any long-term strategy or even purpose. He’s squandered an 80-seat majority and will achieve no significant domestic policy change in this parliament. Woeful at governing, his Tories are now good only for wedge-issue PR campaigns and attacking Labour.