James Heale is The Spectator’s deputy political editor.
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15 min listen
‘The most gripping testimony’ since Dominic Cummings which could prove ‘extraordinary and quietly devastating’ for Keir Starmer. That’s the verdict of the Spectator‘s political editor Tim Shipman following sacked Foreign Office chief Sir Olly Robbins’s testimony today before the Foreign Affairs Committee. Tim and former FCDO mandarin Ameer Kotecha join James Heale to explain why
Keir Starmer is enduring perhaps his most uncomfortable afternoon in the Commons since being elected Prime Minister. He promised in his opening remarks that he would set out the full timeline of Peter Mandelson’s appointment, which ended in Olly Robbins’ dismissal last Thursday. Carefully worded and legally precise, his statement contained another revelation: Chris Wormald,
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20 min listen
Westminster is braced ahead of two key interventions in the Mandelson scandal. This afternoon, the prime minister will give a statement in which we understand he will convey his ‘anger’ at being kept in the dark about Peter Mandelson’s (failed) vetting process. Then tomorrow morning, we are expecting to hear Olly Robbins’s side of the
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16 min listen
Liberal Democrat peer Mark Pack and MP for Surrey Heath Al Pinkerton join James Heale to explain that it is a matter of ‘when not if’ the party become the second biggest in local government. Overtaking the Conservatives would be ‘seismic’ but they see it as inevitable, following a ‘long-run of sustained wins’ in the
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Danny Kruger joins James Heale to set out Reform’s plan to overhaul the British state – from taking on the civil service to restoring ministerial control – and why he believes the system will resist change.
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The Mandelson scandal claims yet another victim. Late on Thursday night, Olly Robbins was sacked from his post as the Foreign Office’s Permanent Secretary. It came six hours after the Guardian first revealed that Peter Mandelson had failed his security vetting clearance in late 2024 to become the UK ambassador to the US, with the
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It is the cardinal rule of British politics: never lie to parliament. For, as Boris Johnson found to his cost, the political penalty for ‘misleading the House’ can be fatal. Having shrugged off the abortive Anas Sarwar coup in February, some around Keir Starmer had started daring to hope that, with the outbreak of the
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22 min listen
It is a hard time to be a Labour MP. The polls are flagging, the economy is stagnating and the Middle East remains in crisis. But facing electoral armageddon in three weeks’ time, one brave backbencher has taken it up on herself to raise her party’s spirits. Samantha Niblett, the Honourable Member for South Derbyshire,
Here is a fun one: what do Giorgia Meloni, Pope Leo XIV, Ed Miliband and the Cato Institute all have in common? The answer is that they have each been attacked in the past 24 hours on Donald Trump’s overactive Truth Social feed. The US President’s erratic actions both online and off now seem to
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11 min listen
George Robertson (pictured), a former defence secretary and former NATO secretary-general, has accused the government of ‘corrosive complacency’ towards defence, which puts the UK ‘in peril’. This is all the more stinging because the Labour peer was one of the authors of the government’s Strategic Defence Review – and that makes two of the three
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13 min listen
Two big stories to chew over on today’s podcast, starting with Viktor Orban’s landslide defeat in Hungary. The left have been celebrating this as a victory over populism, but have they misunderstood Peter Magyar’s politics? He’s hardly the Hungarian Ed Davey – as figures such as Zack Polanski would have you believe – and shares
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With three weeks to go until the local elections, Reform are back campaigning on their favourite subject: migration. Having talked up deportations in the run-up to last year’s contests, the party is hoping to rerun the same playbook to achieve similar success. At a press conference this morning, Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf unveiled a
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Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has conceded election victory in Hungary after 16 years in power, with the opposition on course for a landslide win. Péter Magyar is set to be the country’s new prime minister and his party, Tisza, is forecast to win a massive majority in parliament. ‘The election results are not final yet,
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14 min listen
With one month to go until the local and regional elections, Megan McElroy and James Heale have hit the road with Luke Tryl and Louis O’Geran of More in Common. They report back from the focus groups they’ve been running in Wales, where voters view Labour through the prism of a double incumbency, as they
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15 min listen
Gawain Towler, Reform UK board member and their former director of communications, sits down with James Heale to talk about Reform’s appeal ahead of the local elections. Gawain argues that Reform needs to broaden its appeal as it won’t find the votes to win to its right, but points to their anti-establishment, nationalist and pro-business
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In the magazine this week, Ben Judah – former adviser in the Foreign Office – makes the case for ‘Anglo-Gaullism’. He says that Britain should learn the lessons of France’s Charles de Gaulle when carving out its place in the world, especially given the increasingly erratic nature of the US and the fragmentation of politics
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12 min listen
The new cabinet secretary, Antonia Romeo, has published a list of objectives setting out her vision for what the civil service will look like under her. Many have interpreted it as her tightening control over government … especially since Darren Jones stepped back from his Downing Street role. The path is clear for her to
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Nigel Farage likes a gamble. Crypto bros and hedge-fund managers bankroll his enterprises; his social circle is filled with traders, bridge players and money men who fancy a flutter. It was Malcolm Muggeridge who claimed that ‘to succeed pre-eminently in English public life it is necessary to conform either to the popular image of a
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It is one of the world’s most remote corners – but Greenland is playing an increasingly important role in global affairs. In January last year, the island’s 57,000 residents became an object of desire for Donald Trump. ‘I think Greenland we’ll get because it has to do with freedom of the world,’ declared the bombastic
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We are hours away from Donald Trump’s deadline for Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz. The President has ‘chickened out’ many times before and offered an extension of some kind, but the threats and posturing ahead of this deadline make it difficult for either side to back down. Will Trump really ‘end Iranian civilisation’
