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

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France’s farmers will be back on Paris’s doorstep before long

In a week full of symbolism in France, the most striking image was the sight of armoured cars blocking the path of tractors outside Paris. The city’s first great wall was constructed at the end of the 12th century on the orders of Philip Augustus, but here was a new wall, of armour, erected at the command of Emmanuel Macron. They shall not pass. And so they didn’t. A few tractors made it as far as the international market at Rungis, five miles south of Paris; their drivers were arrested and held overnight. They were released a short time before Prime Gabriel Attal announced a new set of measures to placate

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Keir Starmer’s £28 billion problem

Another day, another story about Labour’s plans to ditch its pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green investment. The Guardian reports that party sources say the policy is destined for the chopping block – despite Keir Starmer saying on Thursday at the party’s business conference that the plan to spend £28 billion a year on green investment in the second half of the parliament remains in place so long as it meets the party’s fiscal rules. Notably, his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves was less effusive, refusing to commit to the policy despite being asked ten times in a Sky News interview. As I say in this week’s magazine,

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Gina Miller Edition

32 min listen

Gina Miller was born in Guyana to a political family, but was sent to England for her education. Fleeing dictatorship, she couldn’t receive financial support from her family, and so began finding work in hotels and handing out flyers. With an entrepreneurial spirit, Gina set up her first company in 1987 – a property photographic company. Since then, her CV boasts a myriad of achievements, degrees, the Vanity Fair Challenger Award and financial services. But she is most well known as the woman who set up the first legal challenge to the government’s attempts to trigger article 50 in 2016. Since then, my guest has worked on many anti-Brexit campaigns and

Nigel Jones

Why have Germany’s spies opened a file on their old chief?

It’s not often that an ex-spymaster is spied upon by his former colleagues. But just that has happened in Germany, where Hans-Georg Maassen, the former head of the country’s internal security service, the BfD (equivalent to Britain’s MI5), has been placed on a watch list for official observation as a suspected right-wing extremist. Maassen, who ran the BfD until he was elbowed out in 2018 after appearing to play down the threat of violence from right-wing extremists, is no stranger to attracting attention. In 2021, Maassen said that chancellor Angela Merkel’s immigration policies were ‘fatal’: The spy agency has also accused its former chief of being in close touch with the

Thursday

Natasha Feroze

Is Labour the party of business?

12 min listen

At the ‘Labour Business Conference 2024′, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves wooed business with a pledge that Labour would not raise corporation tax in their first term. Instead, she told the audience of FTSE 100 chief execs that a Labour government would keep the current cap at 25 per cent. How convincing is Reeves’ big pitch to business? Also on the podcast, the big news this week has been the Northern Ireland negotiations. What’s happened in parliament today? Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.  Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson. 

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

How the Tories gave up on liberty

43 min listen

On the podcast: have the Tories given up on liberty? Kate Andrews writes the cover story for The Spectator this week. She argues that after the government announced plans to ban disposable vapes and smoking for those born after 2009, the Tories can no longer call themselves the party of freedom. Kate is joined by conservative peer and former health minister Lord Bethell, to discuss whether the smoking ban is a wise precedent for the government to set. (01:22) Also this week: can the UAE be trusted on press freedom? At The Spectator that’s a question close to our hearts at the moment as we face possibly being sold off to an Abu Dhabi

Iain Macwhirter

Nicola Sturgeon wasn’t the only one to politicise the pandemic

Nicola Sturgeon ‘could cry from one eye if she wanted to,’ Alister Jack told the UK Covid Inquiry this morning. It was an interesting medical observation from the Scottish Secretary presumably intended to suggest that the former first minister’s emotional moments in her evidence yesterday were contrived. Sturgeon fought back tears a number of times when she insisted she just wanted ‘to be the best first minister I could be’ during the pandemic, resolute in her denials that she had had ulterior political motives. ‘I didn’t believe it for a minute,’ Jack, the Tory MP for Dumfries asserted, roundly accusing the former first minister of politicising the pandemic. Sturgeon had

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Interest rate cuts are on the horizon

The Bank of England (BoE) has held interest rates at 5.25 per cent for the fourth time in a row. This is no big surprise: with inflation ticking back up slightly on the year to December (rising to 4 per cent) – continued trade disruption in the Red Sea last month is expected to have some impact on prices – it was unlikely that the Monetary Policy Committee was going to start a rate-cutting spree so early in the year. Instead, the hints are in the language used by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in its report. Markets were looking for clear indication that rate cuts are coming. The BoE has delivered this,

Steven Barrett

The Northern Ireland Brexit deal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal is an end to any dreams of a UK that runs itself. Much of the focus has been on Northern Ireland, with the government hailing the legislation as a means of halting post-Brexit checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But there are far bigger – and more troubling – implications for the UK as a whole. Sunak’s deal makes it clear that our laws are still, in some cases, second to EU laws. So ignore the fanfare that the new deal, agreed with the DUP and called ‘Safeguarding the Union’, is something to celebrate. A large, dramatic, sleight of hand is

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour woos business with a corporation tax pledge

One of the big changes in the Labour party since Keir Starmer took over from Jeremy Corbyn is the approach to business. Rachel Reeves, Starmer’s shadow chancellor, made wooing the business community a top priority. Today, Starmer and Reeves went further with the ‘Labour Business Conference 2024’ held at The Oval, where Reeves said that a Labour government would not raise corporation tax in its first term. Instead, she told the audience of FTSE 100 chief executives that a Labour government would keep the current cap of 25 per cent. This, she said, would provide certainty to business. Reeves went further still, adding that she would keep open the possibility

Steerpike Steerpike

Ed Davey says sorry, finally

For Sir Ed Davey, sorry seems to be the hardest word to say. Three weeks ago, the embattled Lib Dem leader was asked to apologise for his role in the Post Office scandal but refused to do so ten times in an interview with ITV. Yet now, with his party plummeting in the polls, the former cabinet minister has thrown in the towel and uttered the forbidden word beginning with ‘s’. Writing in the Guardian, Davey, whose business minister role from 2010 to 2012 involved oversight of the Post Office, said officials had initially advised him to not meet Alan Bates, who led the campaign into the unjust targeting of

Dean Godson

The post-Brexit crisis in Northern Ireland is finally over

Rishi Sunak, with almost daily input from Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the Democratic Unionist Party leader, has just delivered a deal on the Windsor Framework that is notably pro-Unionist. He has managed to do so in the face of EU intransigence, an unhelpful White House, the ‘resistible rise’ of Sinn Fein in the Republic of Ireland, hard-line Loyalist rejectionism, and purist Brexiteer scepticism.  All this is the antithesis of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 1985 – the 40th anniversary of which falls next year – both in the substance of what has been negotiated and also how it was negotiated. To restore the devolved institutions on these terms represents a memorable achievement, considering the demographic

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Nothing will change after Mike Freer stands down

Nothing will change in the wake of Mike Freer’s decision to stand down. That a Member of Parliament says he is leaving politics because of intimidation from Islamists is troubling enough, but Freer is a government minister. If the state cannot protect him, can it protect any of us? In a letter to his local constituency association, the Conservative MP says he has received ‘several serious threats to my personal safety’ during his 14 years representing Finchley and Golders Green. He cited ‘attacks by Muslims Against Crusades, Ali Harbi Ali and the recent arson attack (where the motives remain unclear)’ for motivating his decision. Everyone will agree that something must

James Heale James Heale

Tory MPs to back power-sharing deal

After nearly two years, it looks like power-sharing will shortly be restored at Stormont. This afternoon MPs will pass two statutory instruments (SI) which will pave the way for the restoration of the executive in Belfast. The Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris and Minister Steve Baker will lead two 90-minute debates on changes to the Windsor Framework for goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The subject of Northern Ireland’s future featured little in the EU referendum campaign but has since proved to be arguably the thorniest Brexit-related issue in subsequent years. Today though, we can expect little of the sound and fury which has characterised much of the debate

Benedict Rogers

Britain must help Burma win its freedom

Three years ago today, the military in Burma (or Myanmar, as the junta prefers to call it) plunged the country back into hell. On 1 February 2021, Burma’s army, led by commander-in-chief General Min Aung Hlaing, seized power in a coup. After a decade of apparent liberalisation, which saw political prisoners released, space for civil society and independent media open up and democratic elections held, the clock was turned back on the country by more than ten years. Hlain’s army overthrew the democratically-elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, throwing her and many of her ministers and parliamentarians in jail. They also arrested thousands of activists and journalists and

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour refuse to commit to £28bn green pledge

When is a pledge not a pledge? When the Labour party are making it, it seems. The shadow cabinet is currently grappling with how best to explain their plans for a £28-billion Green New Deal, as set out by shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves in 2021. A fortnight ago, a party spokesman dismissed reports that the headline figure has been ditched as ‘complete nonsense’. But in an interview on Monday, Reeves failed to commit to the figure, claiming ‘everything that we do will be subject to the fiscal rules that I’ve set out.’ On the Wednesday morning media round, her junior spokesman Tulip Siddiq invoked infanticide as she danced around the

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Spain and the mystery of Scotland’s Covid travel list

Nicola Sturgeon had a very rough time at the UK Covid-19 inquiry in Edinburgh yesterday. A sticky moment in particular was when Scottish cabinet minutes were raised showing that the former SNP leader and her senior ministers discussed how to marshal ‘the experience of the coronavirus crisis’ into a fresh campaign for independence, as Isabel Hardman wrote about here. But there was another piece of evidence that was arguably more troubling. This was an email that was sent by the office of John Swinney, the former deputy first minister and second-in-command of the Scottish government during the pandemic. The email was addressed to Ken Thomson, then the top civil servant

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Can Trump ever get a fair trial?

I’m an unlikely defender of Donald Trump. Politically, he’s not my boy. Most of the former president’s hyperbolic rants make me cringe. Yet last week, I had to agree with DT that a jury’s award of $83.3 million of his assets to E. Jean Carroll for defamation was ‘absolutely ridiculous’. Keeping track of all the cases against Trump can be challenging, so let’s review. In 2019, while Trump was still president, Carroll went public with the accusation that back in 1995 – or was it 1996 – he raped her in the lingerie dressing room of Manhattan’s upscale clothing retailer Bergdorf Goodman. Trump denied the encounter had ever occurred and claimed

Douglas Murray

The Tory party has nothing to run on

These days I think often of Doctor Faustus. Not because I am contemplating selling my soul to Mephistopheles, but rather because I take a moderate interest in the Conservative party, and there is one detail of Doctor Faustus – at least in the Christopher Marlowe version – that arises often in my mind. That is the detail of what Faustus does after selling his soul. Part of the moral of the play, I suppose, is the disparity between what the Doctor imagines he will do with the time given to him and what he actually ends up doing with it. For, as readers of the play will know, Faustus ends

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why should graduates give back to universities that seem to hate them?

It is now a given of Northern Ireland issues that mainlanders cannot be expected to understand them. (Arguably, it was ever thus.) So we know that late on Monday night the DUP was finally persuaded to take part in governing Northern Ireland after a two-year gap, but we still do not really know what it will involve. The agreement is treated by most London-based media as good news, because that is always how any concession by Unionists is treated. Boredom and obscurity allow the case of Northern Ireland to be used by our main political parties, officialdom, the Republic, the EU and the US administration as the exemplar of virtue.