James Heale is The Spectator’s deputy political editor.
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Hereditary peers have left their red leather benches for the final time. The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act became law earlier this year, which removes all hereditary peers’ right to speak and vote in Parliament by virtue of their family ties. Critics have described their role as indefensible, but others accuse Labour of political
In Scotland, a changing of the guard is near. But while Hearts are set to break the duopoly of Celtic and Rangers this season, there is no sign of the SNP yielding its iron grip on power. This, though, is a triumph less of technical brilliance than a series of own goals by Labour’s team
King Charles is about to travel to Washington to visit President Trump. The brief? Fix the strained relationship. No pressure! Can royal diplomacy steady relations? Will the trip be awkward given Trump’s recent words on Starmer, Chagos, The Falklands, and Canada? Does the King have what it takes to navigate such a diplomatic minefield? Elsewhere,
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Is Labour about to lose Wales? That’s what the polling suggests. After 27 years, Wales is seeking change. The beneficiaries look to be the outsiders, Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. Why is it this moment in particular that people are seeking new answers? In this special episode of Coffee House Shots, James Heale goes on
The long-debated assisted dying bill is expected to fail in the House of Lords today – described by the bill’s leading advocate Lord Falconer as failing ‘not on its merits’ but ‘due to procedural wrangling’. Natasha Feroze speaks to Tim Shipman and James Heale about whether that is a fair description of the bill. Plus
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Somewhere in the documents surrounding Peter Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment, the Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman reveals, is a text Keir Starmer sent the night before the announcement. ‘You’ll be brilliant in challenging circumstances,’ he told the Prince of Darkness. ‘And after many years of our discussions, we get to work together side by side. I
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It will come as no surprise that Keir Starmer appears to have heard a very different evidence session from Sir Olly Robbins to the one everyone else thought the ex Foreign Office mandarin gave yesterday. The Prime Minister arrived in the Commons for questions today convinced that Robbins had in fact largely backed him up,
Of all Labour’s heartlands, none has more mythos or magic than Wales. Its history of pits and pulpits produced Nye Bevan and Neil Kinnock; a quarter of the party’s leaders have held seats here. More than a century ago, Keir Hardie forged Labour’s rise from the Valleys in Merthyr Tydfil. In a fortnight’s time, those
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‘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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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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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
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.
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
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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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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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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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
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