James Heale is The Spectator’s deputy political editor.
From our UK edition
It is parliamentary recess and once again, Reform is making all the running. Having successfully rebuffed Labour’s plans to cancel council elections yesterday, today they announced their long-awaited shadow cabinet. The first four members of Nigel Farage’s team were unveiled at a press conference, with each stepping out on a podium to deliver a four-minute
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The parliamentary recess ought to buy Keir Starmer a bit of much-needed breathing space. But the Prime Minister has suffered an unwelcome rebuff today on his plans to reorganise local government. Amid protests at his plans, a legal showdown was planned for Thursday on proposals to delay 30 council elections across the North and South
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Following a weekend at the Munich Security Conference, there have been reports that the Prime Minister is set to sign off on a huge increase in defence spending. While this comes at a time of increasing threats to Britain, it isn’t just the UK’s position that’s under threat but Keir Starmer himself – who continues
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17 min listen
James Macintyre joins James Heale to discuss his new biography of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown: Power With Purpose. While the book has been years in the making, little did James know that it would end up published at the same time that its themes and subjects could never be more relevant. James tells our deputy political editor
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11 min listen
Keir Starmer has headed to Germany for the Munich Security Conference to meet allies and discuss defence, NATO and the war in Ukraine. He is expected to meet Chancellor Merz and President Macron later, before delivering a speech in the morning. But – after his worst week as Prime Minister – can Starmer use this
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When a PM is in crisis, what do they do? Sack the head of the civil service. Having lost both his Chief of Staff and Director of Communications at the beginning of the week, Keir Starmer resolved to make it a hat-trick by dispensing with the services of his short-serving Cabinet Secretary. The favourite to
From our UK edition
Sir Keir Starmer is now the Black Knight of British politics. Like the mutilated pugilist of Monty Python, he stumbles around the Westminster battlefield, blustering and boasting while desperately trying not to totter over. Starmer and his team have spent most of the day trying to defend their decision to hand a peerage to Matthew Doyle,
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15 min listen
PMQs today and – as predicted – Keir Starmer came out worst in a pretty unpleasant session. Kemi Badenoch pinned the Prime Minister on the continued Mandelson fallout and now the scandal over Matthew Doyle, the former No. 10 comms chief who – just four weeks after his ennoblement – Labour have already been forced
From our UK edition
What does a dying government sound like? At 12.08 p.m. on 4 February we got an answer. Keir Starmer admitted to the House of Commons that he knew about Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein when he made him ambassador to the US in 2024. There was a sharp intake of breath from the shocked
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13 min listen
After a dramatic day in Westminster, the threat to Starmer appears to have receded – at least in the short term. But with the Gorton and Denton by-election less than three weeks away, (more) trouble could be on the horizon. Luke Tryl – from pollsters More in Common – and James Heale join Patrick Gibbons to
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25 min listen
Morgan McSweeney resigned yesterday as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff and – while it was not a surprise, given his role in appointing Peter Mandelson – the news that the Prime Minister has now lost his closest aide and political fire blanket is a huge shock. The repercussions are numerous: Starmer loses the man widely
From our UK edition
Keir Starmer has this morning lost a second key aide in less than 24 hours. Tim Allan, No. 10’s communications director, has quit his post after barely five months in the role. In a short statement, Allan said: ‘I have decided to stand down to allow a new No. 10 team to be built. I
It is not just in Washington that the Epstein files continue to dominate. In Westminster, the political reverberations of the Department of Justice’s investigation are threatening to bring down the British government. At the center of the drama is Peter Mandelson: a former Tony Blair aide who served, until recently, as Our Man in DC.
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10 min listen
The sun is setting on Keir Starmer’s worst week in No. 10 – but potentially Kemi’s best. We go into the weekend with MPs publicly calling for his most senior aide, Morgan McSweeney, to step down because of his role in the botched vetting of Peter Mandelson, and with huge questions remaining about how much
From our UK edition
11 min listen
James Heale, Tim Shipman and Oscar Edmondson discuss the continuing fallout over the Mandelson scandal. The mood amongst Labour MPs is pretty dire – following a bruising PMQs and a government climbdown over the release of Mandelson’s vetting files – but is it bad enough for Labour MPs to challenge Starmer? And could his chief
From our UK edition
There is a sulphurous mood in the House of Commons today. Peter Mandelson hangs over Westminster, amid ongoing revelations about his contact with Jeffrey Epstein. At PMQs, Kemi Badenoch gave another impressive performance. She forced Keir Starmer to admit that he knew at the time of Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador that he had remained
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15 min listen
Another impressive PMQs from Kemi Badenoch – but she had plenty of ammunition to deploy after the Peter Mandelson scandal took a bleaker turn this week. The Prime Minister clearly wanted to make a strong statement in his first answer to Kemi Badenoch, saying that ‘Mandelson betrayed our country, our parliament and my party’. He
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British by-elections are often prolonged affairs, dragging on for months. Yet in the Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton – once home to Myra Hindley and the Gallagher brothers – campaigners are on a frantic dash to canvas the 82,000 voters before polling day on 26 February. ‘It is a proper three-horse race,’ says one.
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10 min listen
Coffee House Shots is on the road today. James Heale and Megan McElroy have travelled up to the frozen north to speak to the candidates who are lobbying locals in the lead-up to the Gorton and Denton by-election. This is the seat vacated by Labour’s Andrew Gwynne, and made famous by Keir Starmer refusing to
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12 min listen
It is one of the staple headlines of British politics: Peter Mandelson has resigned. The so-called Prince of Darkness was sacked as US ambassador last September, yet that has done little to stem the flow of stories about the alleged nature of his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. This weekend saw the publication of a
