Fraser Nelson

Theresa May has never published her case blaming Russia for the Salisbury poisoning. She has reason to be wary of Blair-style intelligence dossiers, and she didn’t need to make everything public to win the support of allies. But as things stand, her case against Russia is open to misinterpretation by the Kremlin. As we have seen with this morning’s headlines. Yesterday, Sky News interviewed Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of Porton Down, who said: “We were able to identify it as Novichok, to identify it was a military-grade nerve agent. We have not verified the precise source, but we have provided the scientific information to the government, who have then used a number of other sources to piece together the conclusions that they have come to.

Now that Alexander Nix has been suspended as Cambridge Analytica chief executive, the hunt is on to see who else he has been meeting – in London or Washington. His meetings with UK officials would have been disclosed. But one wasn’t: a meeting with Boris Johnson in December 2016. The Foreign Secretary wasn’t seeking the algorithm that took Trump to victory – his objective was to try to learn about, and improve links with, Team Trump. And here was a Brit who, apparently, was a close part of that team. Boris and Nix met on the advice of Foreign Office officials, at a time when Britain was scrambling for routes into the Trump administration. Nix had been deftly promoting himself as someone who had all sorts of connections in Trumpworld.

Philip Hammond declared himself to be an optimist in his Spring Statement today – and he had a few boasts to prove it: manufacturing enjoying the continued longest growth in 50 years, three million more jobs, borrowing down. He was laying into Labour, in a way he wishes he’d been allowed to during the general election campaign. But the news was in the accompanying financial forecasts: here’s what jumped out at me. 1. The Tories have given up trying to balance the books. Hammond didn’t make an announcement to this effect, but he laid out plans for deficits for years to come. George Osborne at least pretended to be, say, five years away from eliminating the deficit. Hammond has abandoned the pretence.

At the start of last year, The Spectator sought the help of readers in defending press freedom. Theresa May’s government was consulting on whether to press ahead with a draconian new law that would make publications like ours liable for the costs of anyone who wanted to sue us, for any reason they chose. The law, a hangover from the Leveson Inquiry, was intended as a way of bullying titles into signing up to Impress, a would-be press regulator bankrolled by the egregious Max Mosley. The legislation in question – Section 40 of the Crime & Courts Act – had been put out to consultation by the Culture Secretary and such things are often a numbers game.

At the start of last year, Katy Balls was assigned to the political beat for The Spectator. With the snap general election, she had a baptism of fire – and, before too long, a regular column in the national press (the i newspaper). This morning, she was one of the six journalists shortlisted as Political Commentator of the Year in the Press Awards, the Oscars of the UK media, alongside Stephen Bush of the i and New Statesman, John Harris of the Guardian, Dan Hodges of the Mail on Sunday, Marina Hyde of the Guardian and Rachel Sylvester of the Times. You can read her entry here. The Spectator’s political team – James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and Katy – is as strong as that of any UK publication.

Angela Rayner is perhaps the only Labour MP who works with a picture of Theresa May hanging above her desk. It’s there for inspiration, she says, a daily reminder of the general incompetence of the Conservative government and the need for its removal. ‘That picture motivates me, in a strange way,’ she says when we meet. ‘They are doing such a bad job of Brexit, and a lot of people will be let down. Again. The people who already think that politicians are lower than a snake’s belly.’ The anger is with politicians in general. ‘It just feels that this generation is not doing a very good job.’ Ms Rayner, 37, has been a politician for not even three years and her rise has been nothing short of extraordinary.

I interview Angela Rayner, the Shadow Education Secretary, for the forthcoming edition of The Spectator. I met her before Christmas and was fascinated by the way she explains her politics in terms of her biography. She tells me how much she owes to a welfare state that was there for her, in a way that it wasn’t for her mum, who left school aged 12. She worked her way up, and says a few Tories ask her why she isn’t a Conservative. Simple, she says: Labour is the party of the helping hand, and the Tories are not very sympathetic to single parents like her. The ones who’ve made it: sure, Tories like them. They like success. But those who still struggle? Who might not be so successful? Only Labour stands for them. I could have ran four pages words of interview with her.

'You wouldn’t make good spies, would you,’ chuckles Ruth Davidson as she finds us sitting with our backs to the door in the Scottish Parliament café. She then triumphantly declares that she knows who we’ve been speaking to when preparing for the interview — getting two out of the five names isn’t bad going. After this, she sets off for her office at a pace that leaves us and her communications director trailing in her wake. She scrolls impatiently through her phone as she waits for us to catch up at every security door. Davidson is as direct as she is energetic. When the editor begins by pointing out the state of the Tories when he left Scotland 15 years ago, Davidson cracks back, ‘Did you leave your accent behind?

Given that most think tanks and universities are heavily against Brexit, the recent arrival of the Legatum Institute into the arena of trade policy mattered. It was filling a a gap in the market: proper research into potential trade relationships, on the basis that Brexit might not be a disaster. It has also acquired the services of Shanker Singham, an experienced trade lawyer. Both he and Legatum have come under the microscope today with a Mail on Sunday splash suggesting that the Kremlin might be behind it all. Its headline: ‘Putin link to Boris and Gove Brexit “coup”’. Did this relationship go too far, and did Singham end up advising Michael Gove and Boris Johnson on a private (now leaked) memo to the PM?

Germany is this weekend seeing whether or not Angela Merkel will be able to form a government as she deals with the political fallout from her immigration policy. Quite a contrast from Norway, whose Conservative-led coalition recently entered its second term after taking a very different approach to refugees. Last week I met Sylvi Listhaug, who holds a recently-created position: Norway's Minister for Immigration & Integration. She’s with the Progress Party, the junior partner in coalition. You often read about her being 'outspoken' or 'controversial' and I was interested to see what kind of radical views she holds. At the end of the interview, I was left wondering if her take on refugee policy is actually further-sighted and more morally defensible than the Merkel approach.

When Britain voted to leave the EU, it didn’t necessarily follow that we’d be kicked out of its European Capital of Culture scheme – given that it aimed to be exactly that, rather than an EU Capital of Culture. After all Istanbul, Reykjavík and Stavanger all qualified and all won. There were some ominous signs: a few weeks ago, the European Parliament voted to amend the rules the scheme should be open to candidate states and EEA nations - butno mention was made of former members. So Iceland would be included in consideration for European status, but Britain excluded. It looked like a mean-hearted attempt to punish Britain for leaving, but could it really be so?