Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Saturday

Gavin Haynes

‘Mm, uh huh, yeah’: Tucker Carlson and journalism’s therapeutic turn

Could the subject of the Sudetenland have been resolved more satisfactorily if Adolf Hitler had been given a more open platform? Somewhere he could really air his views? No messing, no clipping. Four hours on Joe Rogan, perhaps?         It’s a historical what-if stirred up again this week by Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The rangy two-hour session at the Kremlin, trailed for days, became available on Tucker’s website yesterday. It makes for uneven listening. Early expectations were of a blockbuster that could have become the most-viewed video in the history of Twitter/X. They have been wide of the mark.   For all his newsmaker status, the President begins with a 20-minute

George Magnus

How the Chinese markets lost faith in the CCP

Ahead of the Chinese new year holiday, Beijing has been intervening to prop up the country’s stock markets. Regulators have tightened market trading conditions, and this week the head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Yi Huiman, was fired abruptly, presumably as the fall-guy for the relentless decline in the markets, which have lost about $6 trillion in value since the end of 2021. There is a palpable concern about financial instability in China that travels all the way up to Xi Jinping Chinese equity prices have touched their lowest levels since 2018, and are not far from the lows reached in the 2015-16 financial crisis. Mr Yi’s two predecessors were also fired

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The left can’t stand France’s new culture minister

France’s new minister of culture has promised to put an end to the creeping cancel culture that is threatening the country. ‘Today wokeism has become a policy of censorship,’ said Rachida Dati, who was appointed to her post last month. ‘I am in favour of the freedom of art, the freedom of creation, and I am not in favour of censorship’. She explained that she will launch her campaign next week, summoning the great and the good of the cultural world to ‘ensure that we support creative freedom and do not support these new censors.’ Dati might have had in mind the 1,200 poets, editors, publishers, booksellers and actors, who

Fergus Mutch

Can the SNP claw back support in Scotland?

On Thursday, health secretary Michael Matheson resigned and Humza Yousaf undertook a ‘mini-reshuffle’ of his cabinet. The scandal of the £11,000 iPad bill was only ever going to end this way. That it was allowed to rumble on eroding public trust for months is symptomatic of the SNP’s wider fortunes, which began to rapidly deteriorate almost a year ago to this day. Fifty-one weeks ago a press conference was hastily arranged in the Drawing Room at Bute House. Nicola Sturgeon stood before Alexander Nasmyth’s pastoral portrait of Robert Burns, announced her resignation as first minister and set in motion a remarkable chain of events. The signs of the decline were

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Rishi Sunak’s week of howlers has exposed his big weakness

It is quite some achievement to launch an attack on Keir Starmer’s contortions over trans rights versus women’s rights and come off worse. Yet that is what has happened to Rishi Sunak this week thanks to an increasingly visible flaw in his make-up: Sunak simply lacks political nous. While he may have been a fluent public performer when serving as chancellor during the covid pandemic, it has become obvious that this was because he was in his comfort zone as a financial geek. But exposed to the much wider demands that the post of Prime Minister entails, Sunak is all at sea. He cannot spot an ambush to save his

Leon Mangasarian

Germany’s rustbelt is reviving – but voters are still flocking to the AfD

West Germany’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, hated eastern Germany and said – possibly apocryphally – that Asia begins at the east bank of the Elbe River. When people visit my forest in what’s long been Brandenburg’s rustbelt, I caution that Asiatic Germany isn’t Adenauer’s bucolic Rhineland, let alone Munich or Hamburg. Yet the ‘rustbelt’ moniker no longer suits a region that, while down and out for decades, is rebounding, powered by new industry and proximity to booming Berlin, the capital’s new airport and a Tesla factory. Even low-tech forestry is making money after having been on life-support five years ago. But there are also levels of anger I have never

Friday

Natasha Feroze

Boris Johnson accused of sabotaging Ukraine peace talks

10 min listen

Tucker Carlson released his highly anticipated interview with Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin last night. The two-hour long discussion was dominated by Putin who gave history lessons, blamed the Nord Stream 2 explosion on the CIA, and accused Boris Johnson of sabotaging the peace talks 18 months ago. Natasha Feroze speaks to James Heale and Freddy Gray about the highlights of the interview, and whether Boris Johnson’s role in the talks was as influential as Putin suggests. 

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Joe Biden isn’t working

Joe Biden isn’t working. That much has been clear to anyone who has followed American politics for the past four years. The 81-year-old often has no idea what he is saying or where he is. Yet it’s only now, months away from his possible re-election, that the Department of Justice, apparently in an attempt to exonerate him for committing a crime Donald Trump is accused of, has admitted the obvious: he’s not really in charge of himself, let alone the country.  After interrogating Biden about his hoarding of classified documents, Special Counsel Robert K. Hur reported: We have also considered that, at trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

What Tucker Carlson should have asked Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin relished being interviewed by American journalist Tucker Carlson, who doesn’t seem to know much about Russia, Ukraine or the war. The old autocrat turned a two-hour interview into a monologue and spent most of it talking about a fictionalised history of Ukraine. In one of the rare moments when Carlson dared to interrupt Putin and ask about the war, Putin said he didn’t start it. ‘This is an attempt to stop it. We have not achieved our aims yet, because one of them is denazification,’ he said, and then continued to talk about neo-Nazi Ukrainians. Putin said he didn’t start the war Maybe, that was ‘the truth’ Carlson

Sergey Radchenko

Tucker Carlson failed Putin’s history class

They say that he who sups with the devil should have a long spoon. But, driven by vanity and unconstrained by any understanding of Russia’s history or politics, Tucker Carlson slurped up the intoxicating broth of Vladimir Putin’s falsifications this week in his interview with the Russian president. Carlson took to Moscow well. His Russian hosts rolled out the red carpet, fawning over him with an admiration and servility that betrayed their sense of exasperation at being long shunned by the West. They saw him as a glittering American Prometheus who might just be gullible enough to take the fire of Russian disinformation back home. It was not the first

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Taylor Swift can’t save the EU

The EU hopes that Taylor Swift and other pop starlets will come to its rescue in June’s European elections. With pollsters predicting significant gains for the right, Brussels’ ruling elite is preparing to turn to ‘famous artists, actors, athletes and other stars for help’. Their ambition is to persuade these personalities to encourage their young fans to vote in the elections – and to vote for them, the ruling centrist elite.   ‘No one can mobilise young people better than young people, that’s how it works,’ said Margaritis Schinas, the EU Commissioner for Promoting the European Way of Life, recently. ‘That works better than commissioners speaking from the press room.’ A generation ago,

Steerpike Steerpike

Piers Morgan pulls show from TalkTV

Another twist in the ongoing TV wars. After nearly two years of competing with GB News, TalkTV’s biggest star last night dropped a bombshell: Piers Morgan is taking his daily Uncensored show off the terrestrial network to focus on its YouTube channel. The former Mirror editor says that television schedules had become an ‘unnecessary straitjacket’ and that moving online will allow him to conduct longer, more in-depth interviews. Though hopefully in a format more riveting than last night’s Tucker/Putin snoozefest… Speaking to the Times, Morgan said that greater numbers of people were watching his show on YouTube and that ‘you can’t defy audiences or tell them how they should be consuming’.

Steerpike Steerpike

Biden branded ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’

Special Counsel Robert K. Hur submitted his report on the confidential documents found in President Biden’s Delaware garage — and Mr S can confirm, it’s a doozy.  The report is brutal in its characterisation of Biden’s acuity. It says that Biden ‘did not remember when he was vice president’ Hur found that Biden wilfully concealed the fact that he held confidential documents, citing a recorded interview with his ghostwriter from 2017 where he claimed to have ‘stumbled upon classified documents.’ Amazingly, in 2023, Biden claimed not to have any recollection of this. In what CNN calls a ‘searing report’, Hur said, ‘We have also considered that, at trial, Mr Biden would likely

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Nobody can stop Vladimir Putin… from talking

The trouble with ageing authoritarians is not necessarily that nobody dares tell them they are wrong. It’s that nobody ever tells them they are being tiresome. A less polite man might have aggressively interrupted his interviewee, but would that have stopped Vlad, the intellectual impaler?  Yes, as Tucker Carlson’s big interview in Moscow finally dropped online tonight, the world learned that Vladimir Putin is, among other things, an almighty history bore. He just cannot be stopped. Following all the controversy and intrigue about what might be said, Putin managed to smother the excitement of the interview under an iron curtain of his own autodidactism. It was impressive, in a mind-numbing way.  Carlson

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Prince William should say no to a Royal reconciliation with Prince Harry

Might the King’s cancer diagnosis lead the Royals to put aside the squabbles that have torn the family apart and come together, having seen the bigger picture of life and death? It is quite touching that the prodigal son, Prince Harry, rocked up, however briefly, in London to visit his dad, though it’s hoped he’s not ‘wired for sound’ and that the heartfelt expressions from the King on how much he’s missed his ‘darling boy’ don’t turn up on any future Netflix documentaries. After all, Harry has ‘previous’ when it comes to spilling the beans; his hiss-and-tell memoir includes details of a supremely solemn event, the funeral of Prince Philip:

Thursday

William Atkinson

Rory Stewart is the wrong man to revive Oxford’s fortunes

Rory Stewart is a successful podcast host, but would he make a good Oxford University chancellor? The former Tory MP is in the running to replace Chris Patten, who is retiring. Stewart is the bookies’ front runner in the race: ‘This is a very interesting idea and an amazing role,’ he said, ‘but I would naturally have to think hard about whether I am the right candidate’. Stewart shouldn’t have to spend too long thinking: he’s the wrong man for the job. In his brief Tory leadership campaign in 2019, Stewart’s limitations became clear. His support amongst Tory MPs soon fizzled out as he failed to make a significant impression in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Who’s to blame for Labour’s green U-turn?

Who to blame for the demise of Labour’s £28 billion annual green investment pledge? According to Keir Starmer, it’s the Conservatives. He said this afternoon: ‘What would be really irresponsible is to know the damage done to the economy by this failed government and ignore that and pretend it didn’t happen.’ The party briefing is that because the Conservatives have crashed the economy and Jeremy Hunt plans to ‘max out’ the country’s credit card, the £28 billion is now unaffordable.  A quick way to set fire to voters’ trust in you is to drop your fiscal rules as soon as they don’t feel very fun. Within the party, there is

William Moore William Moore

Inside the plot to take down Rishi Sunak

42 min listen

Welcome to a slightly new format for the Edition podcast! Each week will be talking about the magazine – as per usual – but trying to give a little more insight into the process behind putting The Spectator to bed each week.  On the podcast: The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls writes our cover story this week about ‘the plot’ to oust Rishi Sunak. When former culture secretary Nadine Dorries made the claim in her book that a secret cabal of advisors were responsible for taking down prime ministers, she was laughed at. But with shadowy backroom fixers assembling to try and take down the prime minister, did she have a point? Katy joins

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Zelensky has sacked a Ukrainian hero

If you have to ask Ukrainians to name the biggest hero of the past two years, most would probably say Valery Zaluzhny, who has just been fired as the head of the military. Under his command, Kyiv was defended and Ukraine reclaimed more than half of the territory that Russia occupied since February 2022. It was Zaluzhny, as much as president Zelensky, who inspired Ukrainians. But now he has been sacked. One of his former deputies, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky has taken his place.  Zelensky broke the news in a video address to the nation. ‘I am grateful for every victory we achieved together and thanks to all Ukrainian soldiers who are heroically

Steerpike Steerpike

British Library left counting the cost of cyber-attack

In most countries, it would be a major scandal if foreign hackers successfully mounted a major cyber-attack on the national library. Unfortunately, the UK does not seem to be one of them. On 28 October, the British Library suffered a major incident which has brought the venerable body to its knees. Yet you would scarcely know that one of the largest such institutions had been crippled, judging by the rather-muted response in parliament and beyond. Still, Mr S has done his part to shine a light on this unedifying episode, firing off Freedom of Information (FOI) requests at every turn. Initially staff told Steerpike that ‘we will not be in