All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Four weeks from now, voters will be heading to their polling station, and the result of this election remains unpredictable. Today’s NHS stats and the recent flooding are reminders of the particular dangers of a winter election to the governing party. But a week into the campaign, the chances of a Tory majority have increased,
One of the main concerns about HS2, apart from its vast cost and disruptive effect on the countryside, is that in shortening distances between London and the North, it might lead to the capital further draining talent and money from other regions. Not so, says an official HS2 review leaked to the Times this week.
Whatever the outcome, the 2019 general election will be one of the most decisive polls in British history. Like the Liberal landslide of 1906 which led to the foundation of the welfare state, the Labour victory of 1945 or the 1979 election which introduced free-market Thatcherism, the 2019 election is likely to determine the nature
‘What is it with Jews and Corbyn?’ the guy asked. ‘Why are you so against him being in Number 10?’ I tend to avoid conversations about Jews and Corbyn with Labour voters these days. What more is there to say about the party’s anti-Semitism? If people still can’t see it, I generally take the view
Boris Johnson’s speech today was an attempt to set this election up as a choice between a Tory majority government and a hung parliament. He argued that if the Tories got the nine extra seats they need from their 2017 performance, then Brexit would ‘get done’ and the country would be able to move on
After being heckled and called a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ when he was out campaigning in Glasgow today, Jeremy Corbyn was presumably hoping for an easier time once he escaped the crowds outside. Unfortunately though, the Labour leader proved this afternoon that he is more than capable of causing his own gaffes. In a later interview with
In this volatile election, not much is certain about what will happen. But what you can be sure of is that the Spectator will be releasing one – if not more – Coffee House Shots podcast every day. Last night, the Coffee House Shots team took the podcast on the road – not very far,
I’m sending someone down to the supermarket later to do a bit of shopping on my behalf. I have given them a rough idea of what I want but my main instruction is that they must spend the entire £150 that I am giving them. If that was really how I did my shopping
Jeremy Corbyn has been heckled on the campaign trail in Glasgow by a passer by who accused the Labour leader of ‘running away’. Corbyn was giving an interview when he was asked: ‘Do you think the man that’s going to be the prime minister of this country should be a terrorist sympathiser, Mr Corbyn?’ The
‘You guys should get outside London and go to talk to people who are not rich remainers,’ Dominic Cummings declared in September to journalists expressing scepticism about Brexit. There’s been a strong sense, ever since Boris Johnson took office, that the Prime Minister and his advisors wanted to do things differently. Their plan it seemed
Hillary Clinton’s BBC interview in London is making headlines mainly about Russia, but students of the debate about transgender rights and self-identification should pay close attention to another moment in the interview. For Clinton, still the most prominent women on the left of politics in the world, said there are ‘legitimate concerns’ about the way
When Labour was hit by a cyber attack this morning it wasn’t long before the finger of blame was pointed at Russia. Corbynista MP Clive Lewis suggested it was ‘dirty tricks’. He wrote: But Mr S. recalls Lewis hasn’t always been so quick to jump to conclusions. In the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in
If an MP’s researcher is accused of sexual assault, what should the MP do? Co-operate fully with the police, of course, which is what Chris Skidmore claims he did when his assistant ended up in court. The Tory MP and minister for universities strenuously denies that he refused to provide the police with evidence. But
What was Emmanuel Macron playing at when he threatened to veto a second EU Brexit extension in October? Few would contest he was attempting to pressure British MPs to vote through Boris Johnson’s newly negotiated withdrawal agreement. He failed. But it’s also worth asking another question: why did Macron stick his neck out for Boris Johnson, a
Is anyone else watching Hillary Clinton’s whirlwind trip to the UK and thinking to themselves: ‘Thank God she didn’t become president?’ All her worst traits have been on display. Her arrogance. Her penchant for lecturing foreign countries (in this case ours). Her harebrained conspiracy theories. Her belief that loads of people are racists — or
Not that long ago, the sorts of views that were verboten on a university campus were genuinely out-there and nasty: fascism, racism, radical Islam, that sort of thing. It was generally accepted that university was the place to air and interrogate even the most eccentric ideas. Many people still had their limits, but those limits
Nigel Farage did a noble thing yesterday in agreeing to stand down Brexit Party candidates in the 317 seats the Tories won in 2017. Unfortunately, it isn’t sufficient to safeguard Brexit. If he fields candidates in Labour seats, which is his current plan, he could still do enough damage to deprive Boris Johnson of a
My infinitesimally small claim to fame in the UK’s upcoming elections is that the prime minister once called me McVeigh, as in ‘Timothy McVeigh.’ The year was 2001. I was a college student looking to pay the bills with punditry dollars and pounds. Boris Johnson was a sitting Member of Parliament for Henley and the
Nigel Farage says his decision not to run in Tory-held seats, but to contest Labour ones, eliminates the risk that there will be another referendum to decide whether we quit the EU. This is nonsense. It is helpful to Boris Johnson – who like Farage sees a referendum as pure poison – that the Brexit
No one has much certainty about what sort of government we will end up with after this election. Even when they are being totally honest in private, neither of the two main parties will really say they’re confident they can get a majority. The Tories hope they have a good chance of getting a decent
While launching her campaign to be returned as MP for North West Durham, Laura Pidcock revealed the barmy self-righteousness that has taken over the Labour party. This is how she wrapped up her speech: ‘I know it has been a long time coming, but we are on the path to justice. And because people know
It would obviously have been better for the Tories if Nigel Farage had announced that the Brexit party was standing down everywhere. As Katy Balls says, even now, his party is standing in those very Labour held marginals that the Tories need to win a majority. But I still think today’s Brexit party announcement has increased
Nigel Farage says his party will stand aside in all 317 seats the Tories won in 2017. This drastic u-turn in the Brexit party election strategy had been expected. But it still strikes me as a poorly thought through plan, given that it means the Brexit party will give a free pass to Brexit rebels like
Will a Leave alliance lead the Tories to victory in the snap election? Nigel Farage has today announced that the Brexit party will be unilaterally creating one. The Brexit party leader rowed back on an earlier plan to stand candidates in 600 seats. Instead, the Brexit party will focus its efforts on Labour-held seats. Speaking
We were about to crash out of the EU without a deal. The political system was in deadlock. Businesses were fleeing the country and investment was drying up, all against a backdrop of global trade wars and slumping demand across the eurozone. And what happened to the British economy against all those headwinds? As we
Andrew Marr was joined this morning by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Conservatives have published a document which they claim represents the ‘eyewatering’ cost of Labour’s policies should the party win the general election, with the overall figure estimated at £1.2 trillion. Marr challenged the figures, claiming that Conservatives were relying on ‘bogus accounting’.
In one of Boris Johnson’s opening salvoes of the 2019 campaign he said of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party: ‘they detest the profit motive so viscerally…they point their fingers at individuals with a relish and a vindictiveness not seen since Stalin persecuted the kulaks.’ Boris Johnson is no Winston Churchill. But in making that claim, the
Dear Nigel Believe it or not, I’ve been your defender. I’ve often told Americans, ‘Sure, he comes across as a fop. But listen to what he actually says. He’s smarter than you think.’ OK, you have an affect problem. I’ve seen through the clowning. I bet you’ve never been that camp off-camera, and lately you’ve
The latest challenge called for a poem that begins ‘By Waterloo Station I sat down and…’. Some of you begged, some swore, others slept. But most, in a pleasingly sizable entry, took their lead from weeping Elizabeth Smart. There was a welcome influx of newcomers this week, alongside the familiar names, and the tone ranged
Wales has not been the source of good electoral tidings for the Conservatives for a very long time. The party last won a general election here in ’59 – that’s 1859. Since then, Wales has had successive lengthy eras of Liberal and then Labour dominance, with the Conservatives rarely able to mount a serious challenge.
Every election campaign has a wobble. But the Tories broke new ground in managing to wobble before they’d even launched their campaign. However, the formal start of the Tory campaign on Wednesday night does appear to have stabilised things, I say in The Sun this morning. I understand that the Tories own polling still shows
The first official week of the Conservatives’ election campaign did not go as many inside CCHQ had hoped. A cabinet minister resigned, a row erupted over insensitive Tory comments on the Grenfell fire and a candidate stepped down over previous comments on rape. Despite this, the Conservatives end the week with a sense of cautious
Home Secretary Priti Patel downgraded our national terrorism threat assessment last week from ‘severe’, where it has sat for the last four years to ‘substantial’. Attacks have now been reduced from ‘highly likely’ to ‘likely’. We’re never given the full analysis of the reasons for the changes in alert levels, which is independently assessed by
Thirty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall, socialism is back in fashion. The anniversary is a good occasion to reflect on some of the lessons that we have collectively un-learned, or perhaps never learned properly in the first place from the fall of Communism. The division of Germany into a broadly capitalist