Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
11 min listen
James Heale speaks to Kate Andrews and Katy Balls about Jeremy Hunt’s latest proposals to reform the banking system. Will the ‘Edinburgh Reforms’ kickstart the much-needed growth in Britain’s economy? And is this the Brexit future Rishi Sunak always wanted? Produced by Natasha Feroze.
We are still a long way from the Winter of Discontent, when 29.5 million worker-days were lost to strikes. Nevertheless, with today’s strike of 115,000 postal workers the number is creeping inexorably upwards. This one-day strike alone will cost 40 per cent of the 273,000 lost working days recorded across all industries over the whole of 2018. To describe Britain as being in the grip of a wave of public sector strikes isn’t quite accurate. The 115,000 Royal Mail workers who have walked out today are not public sector workers. Nor are the train drivers, guards and other train staff who have been striking, on and off, for much of
The UK will partner with Italy and Japan to develop a new generation of fighter aircraft with the aim of having them flying by 2035. Britain and Italy were already working together through the future combat air system, but the announcement of Japan joining them is striking. For decades, Japan has had an informal cap on defence spending of one per cent of GDP. But attitudes are changing and the Japanese PM has announced plans to increase defence spending to two per cent of GDP by 2027. If Japan, which is still the world’s third largest economy, substantially increases its defence budget it will be a more effective counter-balance to
Fewer than one in 100 defendants in the Russian court system get acquitted. Even in the best of circumstances then, Ilya Yashin’s chances looked poor. As the last of Russia’s high-profile opposition politicians who remains alive and isn’t in prison or in exile, there never was any question as to whether he was going to be convicted. Today, he was predictably found guilty in Moscow’s Meshchansky District Court under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code, on the deeply-questionable charge of ‘spreading false information about the Russian military’. His crime was to raise the allegations of systematic human rights abuses in the Ukrainian town of Bucha on his YouTube channel in
Rishi Sunak’s government is trying to strike a difficult balance when it comes to discussing economic growth. On the one hand, there is broad consensus that the Liz Truss days (literally… just days) had to be dismantled to regain trust with the markets and retain the UK’s ability to keep borrowing at a stable price. On the other hand, there is recognition among ministers that the only way out of this high-tax spiral is to spur on some economic growth. In other words: achieve Truss’s goal while avoiding the many mistakes she made in her attempts to get there. It’s in this context that we should look at today’s major
Freddy Gray talks to the Spectator’s contributing editor Chadwick Moore about the release of the so-called ‘Twitter files’ and what they reveal about the extent of censorship and coverup before, during and after the 2020 election campaign. Chadwick Moore’s book ‘So You’ve Been Sent to Diversity Training’ is available now from all good retailers.
To 2 Lord North Street, SW1, home of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Once it was the likes of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng that were feted here, but last night there was a new queen in town. Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House, swept in with all her magnificent curls, to be the star turn at this year’s IEA Christmas shindig. To much applause from her ‘pen pals’ in the audience, Mordaunt regaled the crowd with a parody of It’s a Wonderful Life. In the world envisaged by Mordaunt, Ed Miliband won the 2015 election to be succeeded by prime minister Corbyn and all the horrors that would
Rishi Sunak is getting tough. Goaded by Labour’s systematic painting of him as ‘weak’, the Prime Minister has threatened ‘unreasonable union leaders’ that if they do not call off their Christmas strikes, he will introduce new restrictions on their ability to take industrial action. The desire to be ‘tough’ with trade unions is one of the few issues which unites the Tory party – apart from cutting taxes and reducing the size of the state, which Sunak feels unable to deliver at the moment. This is a Conservatism shaped by Margaret Thatcher as she destroyed the post-war consensus, one of the central features of which was the incorporation of the unions
Rowan Williams used his Reith lecture on religious liberty to make a plea to religious believers: don’t be afraid of being an awkward misfit. The former Archbishop of Canterbury called on believers to challenge the social consensus – even on contentious issues like gay marriage. His view is that religion is not a private affair, but impinges on public life. It does so, he said this week, in ways that the liberal order will find annoying, even disruptive. Believers appeal to transcendent truths beyond the ‘prevailing social consensus’, according to Williams. As a result, he said, they are rightly wary of an order whose only basis is human law, which
46 min listen
This week: For his cover piece in The Spectator Freddy Gray asks who will win in the battle between the Waleses and the Sussexes. He is joined by historian Amanda Foreman to discuss the fallout Harry and Meghan’s new Netflix documentary (01:00). Also this week: Should the House of Lords be reformed or even abolished? This is the question James Heale considers in the magazine. He is joined by Baroness Fox of Buckley to unpack Gordon Brown’s recommendation to do away with the second chamber of Parliament (13:14). And finally: In the books section of The Spectator Chloë Ashby reviews Con/Artist, the memoir of notorious art forger Tony Tetro. She is joined by Tony and
11 min listen
A number of measures are under discussion as Christmas looks like it will be dominated by strike action. What measures will the government put in place to limit the disruption? Also on the podcast, after the first episodes of Netflix’s new series Harry and Meghan were released, could the documentary be bad for Global Britain? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. Produced by Natasha Feroze.
Iran has announced the first execution of the current crop of protestors. Mohsen Shekari, who was just 23, was hanged earlier today after having been found guilty by a revolutionary tribunal of moharebeh, a crime which means ‘enmity against God’. Other protestors have been charged and convicted of crimes like fasad-fel-arz (‘corruption on Earth’) and baghy, which means ‘armed rebellion’. Both of those carry the death penalty, so it seems likely that more executions will soon follow. Shekari’s killing is intended to frighten those who face these charges and to dissuade demonstrators from taking to the streets at all. But will it work, as the tide of anti-government feeling continues to swell in Iran? Shekari was
For those of us who remember the miners’ strike in the 1980s it takes some getting used to the journey made by coal miners over the past 40 years: from working class heroes to climate ‘criminals’. To hear today’s reaction to the news that Michael Gove has granted permission to build Britain’s first deep coal mine for a generation is to step through the looking glass into a bizarre world where a Conservative government is considered evil for helping to create mining jobs in a de-industrialised region – and the ‘enlightened’ position is to eradicate the very last traces of the coal industry. Lord Deben, chair of the government’s Climate
Is that it? For months now much ink has been spilled about the ‘explosive’ revelations promised in Harry and Meghan’s multi-million pound Netflix bonanza, a ‘tell all’ sensationalist documentary replete with truth bombs to tear the curtain back on the whole squalid royal cabal. And yet, having digested all three soporific hours of the first edition this morning, Mr S was left rubbing his eyelids and wondering what all the fuss was really about. Of course, there was innuendo aplenty; the ritual breast-beating and eyes watering. There was the full English of Hollywood tricks: dramatic music, sympathetic lighting, dramatic cuts and a smorgasbord of stylistic shenanigans. But in terms of
No matter how heavily it snows today nothing will be as frosty as Pete Wishart’s resignation letter. The senior SNP MP has exited the front bench following the coup that replaced Ian Blackford with relative newcomer Stephen Flynn. Blackford is an ally of Nicola Sturgeon and discontent had grown in the party’s Westminster group of MPs about his perceived lack of independence from the leadership in Scotland. Flynn, who at 34 only entered Parliament in 2019, is expected to put distance between his Westminster group and the SNP government in Edinburgh. As MP for Aberdeen South he is seen as less hostile to the North Sea oil and gas industry than Sturgeon,
Germany is one of the world’s most successful liberal democracies. It is an unlikely place for a coup. Yet attempts to seize power – such as the far-right plot exposed by the country’s security services, that resulted in the arrest of 25 people this week – are more common in Europe than we might like to admit. Those held in custody in Germany are accused of plotting a putsch to overthrow the German government and replace it with a hereditary monarchy headed by an obscure prince. Three thousand police officers were involved in rounding up the suspects in this plot. Usually when such a swoop is mounted in Germany –
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, having hit almost 44,000 the month before: a decrease, but a worrying number still. Waiting lists for consultant-led treatment have grown by 74,000 cases and now stand at 7.2 million. Ambulance waiting times are still far higher than they should be too: now at 48 minutes. All of this before the going really gets tough.
One of my most delightful sporting experiences was watching the 2018 World Cup match between England and Tunisia in a Parisian bar. My English friend and I were heavily outnumbered by Tunisians but we were made to feel welcome in a festival of dancing and singing. Even when Harry Kane scored a late winner it didn’t dampen the spirits of the young Tunisians, many of whom were beer-drinking women. I imagine they celebrated long into the night last week when Tunisia beat France in the World Cup, a shock victory that was greeted with good-natured joy by Tunisians across France. Another North African nation has also been making its mark
Julian Knight was last night suspended as a Tory MP, following a complaint that was made to the Metropolitan Police on Wednesday evening. Details of the complaint are not yet known, with a spokesman for Chief Whip Simon Hart only confirming in a short statement that Knight no longer sits in the Commons as a Conservative MP: Following a complaint made to the Metropolitan Police this evening, we have removed the whip from Julian Knight MP with immediate effect. Both Hart’s spokeswoman and the Met have declined to provide any comment on the nature of the complaint. Knight, a senior backbencher, was elected to represent the West Midlands constituency of
It was one of the biggest police raids modern Germany has ever seen. Early Wednesday morning, 3,000 officers, among them members of special units sent by both state and federal police forces, searched 130 properties in 11 of 16 states. They arrested 25 people on suspicion of being members or supporters of a terrorist organisation plotting to overthrow the government. It’s the latest indication that Germany’s political underbelly contains a worrying element of extremists who are ready to act on their conspiracy theories. The group is allegedly known as the ‘Patriotic Union’ with an inner circle known as the ‘Council’. In total, 52 men and women stand accused of being
