Michael Simmons is The Spectator's economics editor. Contact him here.
From our UK edition
Humza Yousaf is the new leader of the SNP and in the coming days will be sworn in at the Court of Session in Edinburgh as the county’s sixth first minister. He inherits a bickering party and almost a decade of electoral stalemate over independence. It is far from clear what legacy his predecessor leaves in her
From our UK edition
As Nicola Sturgeon prepares to exit stage right, she’s been reeling off her greatest hits. Things she thinks she’s done to leave her mark on Scotland. She was helped this week by a study published in the Lancet. It claimed that her minimum unit pricing policy (where alcohol must be sold for at least 50p per unit)
From our UK edition
33 min listen
This week: In her cover piece for The Spectator, Harriet Sergeant asks what’s happened pupil absence which has increased since the pandemic. She is joined by The Spectator’s data editor Michael Simmons to account for the staggering number of children who were failed by the government’s Covid response (01:08). Also this week: Owen Matthews, The Spectator’s Russia correspondent, looks at
From our UK edition
Just how does Rishi Sunak intend to grow the economy? It’s the second of his five pledges; last week’s Budget was full of Tory talk about the virtues of getting people off benefits and into work. But the data shows a rather different picture: five million are on benefits while mass immigration – now running
From our UK edition
12 min listen
The SNP has confirmed that its membership has fallen to 72,000 – a loss of over 30,000 since 2021. This has prompted an open letter from leadership candidates Kate Forbes and Ash Regan, calling for transparency when it comes to membership numbers. Why are so many leaving? Also on the podcast, Humza Yousaf has committed
From our UK edition
Jeremy Hunt has just delivered his second Budget as Chancellor. The top message the Chancellor wants to push is that Britain will avoid recession. But the Office for Budget Responsibility’s report suggests immigration may be the real story. Among the policy announcements were an extension to the energy price guarantee, currently at £2,500, to July (effectively
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Pandemics kill people in two ways, said Chris Whitty at the start of the Covid outbreak: directly and indirectly, via disruption. He was making the case for caution amidst strong public demand for lockdown, stressing the tradeoffs. While Covid deaths were counted daily, the longer-term effects would take years to come through. The only real
From our UK edition
14 min listen
It’s been an interesting week in the race for the leadership of the SNP. Kate Forbes’s campaign has been plunged into fresh doubt by the news that her husband attended a private Tory hustings, whilst Douglas Ross has been forced to apologise after swearing during First Minister’s Questions. We also had the first televised hustings,
From our UK edition
Kate Forbes has taken an early lead in the race to replace Nicola Sturgeon. The Finance Secretary, who’s currently on maternity leave, has emerged in first place in a poll of Scottish voters. The poll for the Scotsman asked 1,004 people who they’d like to see leading the SNP and settling into Bute House. Forbes leads among SNP voters
From our UK edition
So now we know: Scotland will get its new leader on 27 March. The rules that will determine how Sturgeon’s successor – and Scotland’s sixth First Minister – will be chosen, were thrashed out by the party’s National Executive Committee on Thursday night. Nominations are now open and will close a week today. The ballot
From our UK edition
Nicola Sturgeon has announced that she is resigning, after eight years as First Minister. She has been in charge for a long time: a full generation by some definitions. This is certainly time enough to make your mark on a country with devolved powers unparalleled in the democratic world. But as she prepares to leave
From our UK edition
Has the NHS turned a corner? The winter crisis may be over, with pressure on the health service beginning to ease, but the pace of improvement is glacial. The latest performance figures for NHS England, published this morning, point to small improvements: waiting lists have flattened off and remain at 7.2 million; 12 hour waits
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Today is being dubbed ‘Walkout Wednesday’: thousands of schools are shut as teachers go on strike – and civil servants and lecturers are also on the picket line. Railway staff continue their strike today too and there is little sign of the strike deadlock being broken. We’re losing more working days to industrial action than
From our UK edition
Keir Starmer’s diagnosis of the NHS is correct. ‘If we don’t get real about reform, the NHS will die,’ he says. The Labour leader, and odds-on favourite to be next PM, has called for an ‘unsentimental’ shake-up of a service that is undeniably failing. Millions are waiting for treatment, ambulance waits are so long they
From our UK edition
The NHS is struggling. In December, English A&Es saw their busiest month on record: 170,000 people waited more than four hours to be admitted and nearly 55,000 waited more than 12 hours. These are the highest figures ever recorded. Ambulance response times were their worst ever too: the average wait for emergency call-outs was 93
From our UK edition
Nicola Sturgeon has blamed ‘unnecessary attendances’ at hospital for the mounting crisis within Scotland’s health service. In a speech defending Health Secretary Humza Yousaf this morning, she said ‘hospitals right now are currently almost completely full’. Turn to Facebook and her government is running a series of adverts where the government’s clinical director, Jason Leitch, advises patients to seek
From our UK edition
Crime hit a 20-year-high in Britain this year, yet more of these offences than ever are going unsolved. The stark reality is that, if you’re robbed, mugged or a victim of fraud, it’s less and less likely the police will catch those responsible. This year, in England and Wales, just 5 per cent of reported crimes resulted in anyone being
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Is unemployment beginning to bite? Or are the workless trying to rejoin the economy? That’s the key question after the unemployment rate rose to 3.7 per cent today. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics this morning reveal that even though unemployment is up, ‘economic inactivity’ is starting to fall, having previously grown by
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The NHS has a crisis every winter, but this year’s is on a different scale. Before a wave of strikes puts patients and care at risk, stats released by NHS England this morning show a health service already on the brink. Last month, the number of 12-hour waits in A&E departments in England exceeded 37,800,
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Ian Blackford has resigned after five years as Westminster leader of the SNP. In a statement he said the time was right for ‘fresh leadership’ and that he will not be standing for reelection at the group’s AGM next week. The announcement comes just a fortnight after the Ross, Skye and Lochaber MP survived an attempted
