Conservative party

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A concrete crisis, Labour reshuffle and Gabon coup 

Home More than 100 schools were told to close buildings before the new term because they contained the wrong kind of concrete. The Health and Safety Executive said that reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) ‘is liable to collapse with little or no notice’. In total, 156 schools are affected, of which 104 require urgent attention and 52 have already received repair works. But in Scotland, where 35 council-run schools had been found to contain Raac, none had to close.

Matthew Parris

Britain has an entitlement problem

An Institute for Fiscal Studies paper, published at the end of last month, makes grim reading. Through the prism of the media reports it generated (‘One in 11 workers in England could be NHS staff by 2036,’ said the Guardian; ‘NHS staff will make up 49 per cent of the public sector workforce in 2036,’ said the Times), the most sensational finding was that our health service will be eating up an ever-increasing share of public spending. But, as so often, this particular cuckoo in the nest of public provision is only the most newsworthy of so many indications of Britain’s long, slow slide into insolvency. The gap grows between what we consider ourselves entitled to and what our governments can afford The paper is part of the Institute’s series Green Budget 2023.

Wednesday

Katy Balls

The Tories need a shake-up – and Sunak knows it

When prime ministers sense the end is near, they tend to follow a similar pattern. They change senior civil servants and appointees, as Boris Johnson and Gordon Brown did. They avoid consulting their cabinet and instead hide behind special advisers. They declare they don’t like polls, before saying that the only poll that matters is the election. But before all of this, they usually attempt a ‘reset’. It’s rarely a sign of rejuvenation, but rather the start of the embalming process. Rishi Sunak is aware of this, which is why there’s no use of the word in No. 10 as politics prepares to resume. He has so far resisted calls from backbenchers to change course, ditch his five priorities and articulate a grand new vision.

James Heale

India’s century: Sunak’s plan for a new Indo-Pacific alliance

When Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, India’s press was thrilled. ‘From Age of Empire to Rishi Raj’ declared the Times of India: another headline hailed the ‘Browning Street’ phenomenon. ‘Indian son rises over Empire’, proclaimed the New Delhi TV channel, a play on the colonial-era adage that the sun never sets on Britain’s empire. When Sunak visits New Delhi for the G20 next week, it will be quite a moment. Two Hindu heads of government will meet – the old power and the new. Sunak’s agenda is to bind Britain closer to a growing Asian economic powerhouse – which last week completed its first successful moon landing – while containing China by bolstering its rivals.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Scottish drug deaths, more strikes and the Lucy Letby verdict

Home The number of drug deaths in Scotland fell to 1,051 in 2022, the lowest since 2017, but still the worst record per head in Europe. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, who in March had pledged ‘to stop the boats once and for all’, said that ‘there is not one simple solution and it can’t be solved overnight’. On a sunny Monday, 661 migrants landed in Britain in 16 small boats; one man, on making landfall, made the Albanian eagle gesture popular among football supporters. England was defeated 1-0 by Spain in the final of the women’s football World Cup; the Spanish Prime Minister said that Spanish FA president Luis Rubiales kissing the forward Jenni Hermoso on the lips afterwards was an ‘unacceptable gesture’.

The Spectator

Ulez expansion has gone ahead in defiance of evidence

London’s Ulez scheme has been expanded. A new network of cameras filming the traffic movements of millions of Londoners is now switched on. Old cars and vans, often used by sole traders, will be charged £12.50 a day if they pull out of their driveways. Keir Starmer had asked the London Mayor Sadiq Khan to ‘reflect’ on the policy after Labour lost the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. Khan duly did, and concluded that he would stick to plan A. With 4,000 Londoners dying of air pollution every year, he said he had no option. But if that figure is correct, why has air pollution been mentioned in only one death certificate in four years? Nationally, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels have fallen 75 per cent over the past three decades, thanks to cleaner car engines.

James Heale

The problem with the Tories’ ‘local heroes’

You know the Conservative party is in trouble when it does not dare use its name on leaflets. Instead, it took a two-pronged approach in the last two general elections: a presidential campaign for the national media and local politics for the doorstep. With the Tories now 20 points behind Labour, it seems the strategy for next year’s general election is to once again go easy on the Conservative brand and emphasise the local-hero credentials of the candidates. All they need is to find some local heroes. It’s not just that local candidates are seen as more attractive, the barriers to outsiders have been fortified ‘Voters want someone who is going to fight for them and that’s an easier conversation to have if they are a local resident,’ says one newly picked Tory candidate.

Wednesday

William Moore

The covert campaign against field sports

If a general election is held, as is rumoured, in November next year, Labour could return to power exactly 20 years after the Hunting Act was passed, and there is the very real possibility of field sports being finished off altogether. Then, the government’s assault on hunting was a long, bloody, open conflict. Today, the campaign against countryside pursuits is more covert – a gradual process of lawfare. Over the past two decades, more and more regulation has crept in. Field sports and the rural economy that surrounds them are suffering. The groups set up to protect rural England often now work against the interests of both gamekeepers and farmers, with the result that the countryside is being drained of the people who understand and can conserve it best.

Katy Balls

My morning spin class with Rishi Sunak

It was 7.31 a.m. and I was late for my Notting Hill spin class. That meant the lights weren’t on when I entered the studio and scrambled to find my bike. Bleary-eyed, I noticed a man waving at me as I approached Bike 49. It was Rishi Sunak, on the bike next to mine. ‘I promise I booked this one,’ I said, so he didn’t think I was stalking him. The instructor started to shout motivational phrases at us and blast out Britney Spears and Dua Lipa. For the next 45 minutes, Rishi and I sweated it out side-by-side. This week an LA TikToker had a similarly surreal experience when she rocked up at the Santa Barbara SoulCycle studio for an early morning Taylor Swift-themed ride, only to find it filled with security.

The Spectator

Letters: ‘supercops’ won’t save us from rising crime

Crime stoppers Sir: If the Tories’ reputation on crime lies in the hands of these innovative supercops, then it will be sadly doomed, no matter how enterprising they may be (‘Rise of the supercops’, 5 August). Whether we like to believe it or dismiss it as woolly liberalism, the police and courts have a limited impact upon crime. The reality is that crime is driven by powerful social and economic forces, not the effectiveness of the local constabulary. In a liberal democracy, leaving the police to deal with any complex social problem, particularly one as diverse and intractable as crime, is fraught with danger. The police do have an important role to play but so do many others.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Supercops: the return of tough policing

40 min listen

In this week’s cover article, The Spectator's political editor Katy Balls takes a look at the bottom-up reform that’s happening in some parts of the country, and asks whether tough policing is making a comeback. Katy joins the podcast together with Kate Green, Greater Manchester's Deputy Mayor of Crime and Policing. (00:50) Next, the war has finally gone to Moscow. Recently, a number of drone strikes have hit targets in the Russian capital. Though Ukraine hasn’t explicitly taken responsibility, in the magazine this week, Owen Matthews writes that it’s all a part of psychological warfare. Owen is the author of Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine and he joins the podcast.

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Supercops: the return of tough policing

In a few weeks’ time, police across the country will receive a new order: ‘Investigate every crime’. It may not sound like a novel concept, but over the past few years forces – including the Metropolitan Police – have largely given up on low-level crime. Austerity was seen as a reason to ignore burglaries, thefts and minor assaults if officers believed there was little chance of identifying a suspect. But now a new theory is about to be put into practice: that investigations will lead not just to more convictions, but to more deterrence.

Kate Andrews

Can the Tories come up with a tax offer in time?

Last summer, all the Tory party could talk about was tax. It was at the heart of the leadership contest and the dividing line between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The then foreign secretary promised to move fast and bring in deficit-financed tax cuts; the former chancellor said this would end in tears and instead pledged fully funded cuts over six years. Neither plan saw the light of day. All talk of tax cuts was suspended after Truss’s mini-Budget, when the premise of her borrow-and-spend agenda was tested to destruction. Since then, tax has become a difficult topic to bring up. Even within Tory circles, calls to cut tax are usually met with a pointed question: did you forget what happened last time?

Wednesday

Sebastian Faulks

I sledged Steve Smith for England

In this summer of sporting dramas, every patriotic sports fan likes to think he’s done his bit to help. I went up to Manchester with my brother last Thursday and in the evening we found ourselves in an Indian restaurant with the England wicket-keeper Jonny Bairstow at the next table. I feel sure it was Edward’s and my manly cries of ‘Good luck, Jonny’ as he left that helped him bat so brilliantly for his 99 not out. Though I suppose it could have been the vindaloo that fired him up. My major influence on the Ashes series came a few days earlier, when I bumped into the Australian all-time-great batsman and scourge of England, Steve Smith. This was on the balcony of the All England Club at Wimbledon, where he was having a quiet chat with some friends.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: NatWest, fires in Greece and Twitter’s new look 

Home Dame Alison Rose resigned as the chief executive of the NatWest group, which owns Coutts bank. She had been the source of a BBC report that Nigel Farage’s account at Coutts had been closed because it no longer met the bank’s financial requirements. Dame Alison also apologised to Mr Farage for ‘deeply inappropriate’ comments in a Coutts dossier on him which showed his account had been closed because of his political views. Her resignation came only after No. 10 had expressed ‘significant concerns’ about her remaining as the board wanted. The volume of goods sold by Unilever fell by 2.5 per cent in the first half of the year, but sales measured by price grew by 9.4 per cent. A fire destroyed more than 40 businesses on an industrial estate at Baldock, Herts.

Wednesday

Ian Williams

Tory floundering over China is a gift to Labour

Earlier this month, a Chinese spy reportedly tried to enter a private House of Commons meeting with Hong Kong dissidents. The alleged spy claimed to be a lost tourist, and there was a brief stand-off before he quickly left. The area was far from those usually visited by tourists, and some Hongkongers, fearing for their safety, covered their faces during the event. ‘I believe this man was a [Chinese Communist party] informer,’ said Finn Lau, one of two pro-democracy activists at the meeting who have CCP bounties on their heads. ‘This is one of the remotest committee rooms in parliament. And it is on the top floor. It is not a coincidence that a random Chinese tourist was outside the room at the exact right time and was attempting to access the event.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Rishi Sunak is right about illegal migration

The Illegal Migration Bill is having a distorting effect on the Tory party. It has put Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith together on the side of liberal opinion – and Ken Clarke on the side of the Prime Minister. This week, May and Duncan Smith sought to stop the government from overturning a Lords amendment which would prevent the deportation of those claiming to be victims of people-trafficking. Rishi Sunak thinks that loopholes in the law have been exploited by people-traffickers. May and Duncan Smith disagree. It fell to Clarke, a fierce critic of the government since Brexit, to challenge the plan’s opponents to come up with a better way of addressing the illegal migration problem.

Matthew Parris

Don’t write off Rishi

Were I sure this was about me alone, I’d hardly bother to mention it: but I may be typical of quite a few others. If so, it’s a touch too early for the Tories to abandon hope. Last Saturday I wrote in the Times about Sir Keir Starmer, suggesting he lacks the voice or personal command of a prime minister who will need to bully the left into division lobbies and knock warring heads together within his party. Some 900 online readers responded beneath that column. A few agreed with me but the overwhelming majority simply raged against the present government, not a few suggesting that anything would be better than this.

Thursday

Cindy Yu

Chris Pincher’s suspension spells more trouble for Rishi Sunak

14 min listen

A year on from allegations that Chris Pincher groped two young men at the Carlton Club (allegations that ultimately triggered the downfall of Boris Johnson), Parliament's standards watchdog has now found that Pincher brought the House into disrepute and recommended an eight-week suspension. On the podcast, Isabel Hardman says that this makes a by-election in his constituency of Tamworth a question of when, not if. But even worse for the Conservative party, their newly-selected candidate in that constituency is the current MP of another constituency. Cindy Yu talks to Isabel and Katy Balls about the mess that CCHQ finds itself in now. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Wednesday

James Heale

Did the NHS need a service at Westminster Abbey?

14 min listen

The NHS marks its 75th anniversary today, and in Westminster, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer attended a service at Westminster Abbey in honour of the organisation. James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews about why there was a church service for the NHS and whether Rishi Sunak's time would have been better spent at Prime Minister's Questions. Produced by Cindy Yu.