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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘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

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

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,

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