Politics

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

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The minister trying to fix the Northern Ireland Protocol

One of the big priorities for the new Prime Minister is dealing with the situation in Northern Ireland. There’s no time for procrastination as the existing arrangements which suspend checks on goods travelling between Northern Ireland and Great Britain expire on 15 September. Liz Truss has made very clear that she is serious about getting the problems with the Protocol fixed and that while her favoured outcome is a negotiated settlement, she is also prepared to be tough. One of her newest supporters is Conor Burns, Minister of State for Northern Ireland, who only declared for the Foreign Secretary at the weekend but who is in Dublin at the moment

Steerpike Steerpike

Six of the worst bits of Meghan Markle’s interview

‘I have a lot to say’ claims Meghan Markle ‘until I don’t.’ But there’s no sign of such silence happening anytime soon, given the Duchess of Sussex’s latest sally in the pages of an American magazine. Whatever happened to all that privacy, eh? In a 6,400 word cover piece for The Cut, the Duchess certainly had plenty to say on everything from the British media and royal family to how little girls see her as a ‘princess’ and of course the similarities between her wedding and the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. Already the Mandela family have hit back, with the great man’s grandson declaring that ‘overcoming 60 years

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

What happens if Liz Truss designates China as a ‘threat’?

Early on in the Tory leadership campaign, Liz Truss was the only contender to say that she wanted to sit down with Vladimir Putin – so that she could ‘call him out’. It now seems that President Xi Jinping will be next in her firing line, after her team briefed yesterday that as PM she intends to put China on the same footing as Russia. According to campaign sources who spoke to the Times, Truss intends to redesignate China as a ‘threat’ rather than the ‘systemic competitor’ the government described Beijing as in last year’s integrated review. In the 114-page document setting out Britain’s foreign policy, the review described Russia

Ross Clark Ross Clark

It’s time to kickstart North Sea oil

It is reported this morning that one of Liz Truss’s first acts as prime minister, assuming she wins the Conservative party leadership election, will be to grant new licences for North Sea oil and gas extraction. But will it be enough – and quick enough – to alleviate the energy crisis? There are still substantial known oil and gas reserves in the North Sea left to be exploited. According to a report produced by the Oil and Gas Authority last September, known reserves of oil and gas in the North Sea at the end of 2020 amounted to 4.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). This is just a tenth of

Matthew Goodwin

Can the next Tory leader avoid John Major’s fate?

The wheels are coming off the Conservative party. In recent days, in the polls, the party averaged just 31 per cent of the national vote. This is John Major in 1997 territory, or William Hague in 2001, both of whom were humiliated at the ballot box. Britain’s governing party is now in the fast lane toward electoral wipeout. In fact, remarkably, half the people who voted for the party only 989 days ago have now abandoned it. This has given Keir Starmer and the Labour party a commanding 11-point lead. Meanwhile, the share of voters who think the next election will deliver another Conservative majority has collapsed to just 19 per

Steerpike Steerpike

Sturgeon’s swipe at Scottish voters

There was a lot more rubbish than usual at the Edinburgh festivals this August. With refuse workers out on strike, the debris piled high in the Scottish capital and other cities, much to the dismay of visiting tourists. But one attendee who remains clearly undaunted is Nicola ‘friend of the stars’ Sturgeon, who last night returned to make her fifth appearance at Edinburgh’s festivals to interview pro-independence actor Brian Cox. And it wasn’t just the local bins overflowing with garbage, as Sturgeon and Cox shared in an orgy of congratulatory nationalist self-love. ‘I just don’t give a fuck any more,’ he declared. ‘I can’t wait to reach that stage,’ she replied.

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Can Lord Frost save the Union?

Lord Frost is tipped to head up the Cabinet Office under Liz Truss, making him the Prime Minister’s point man on the constitution. Is he the right man for the job? It’s hard to tell. He was willing to say what others wouldn’t about the Northern Ireland Protocol and the government has been nowhere on that matter since he left. He recently penned a piece on the looming constitutional crisis in Scotland, making him perhaps the only senior Westminster figure aware there is a looming constitutional crisis in Scotland. On the other hand, Unionists have been burned before. I remember one chump who heralded Michael Gove as the man to

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The Tory party myth isn’t real

The Conservative party leadership contest (sometimes referred to as a ‘race’, which is pushing it) is nearing its end. It’ll be hard getting used to the world without it. We’re all such different people now, 900 years on. At least we’ll always have the misty water-coloured memories. One thing that both candidates agree on is that things have come to a pretty pass, and something, possibly even lots of somethings, must be done, and done urgently. This has been very strange to behold, as if the Tories have just woken up in a parallel universe where some other mysterious and nefarious political party has been in power for the last

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Truss pulls out of Nick Robinson interview

With a week to go until a new prime minister enters 10 Downing Street, the frontrunner Liz Truss has been criticised so far for limiting her media appearances – instead focussing on meeting the membership and making plans for government. So her decision to belatedly agree to a BBC interview with Nick Robinson won her praise. As the former BBC political editor wrote in this week’s Spectator: ‘[Viewers] want to see and hear their leaders questioned, challenged and tested about the decisions which shape their lives. Credit to Truss and Sunak for agreeing to just that.’ Alas, it appears Robinson spoke too soon. This evening the BBC has announced that Truss

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

The culture wars are coming to France

The infection of France by le wokisme continues apace. Last year, president Emmanuel Macron vowed to stand against intersectionality only to see his parliamentary majority swept away in the recent National Assembly elections in part by the leftist coalition of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Now a new woketarian front is opening against the mores of traditional France as transgenderism asserts itself with a campaign by Le Planning Familial, the non-profit association influenced by the movement created originally in the United States, active in France for 62 years and that has recently transitioned itself. The movement, which is subsidised by the government, has moved from offering advice on contraception and abortion to a

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Ukraine stuns Russia with a counter-offensive in Kherson region

The southern city of Kherson, which fell to Russian forces in the first few days of the war, is one of the places Ukraine would need to liberate if Putin’s army is to be repelled. But what realistic chance is there? Many argued that the Russian occupation is a one-way process: that having taken Crimea, Putin would extend his reach northwards and westwards – with the only question being how long Ukraine could hold off an offensive from its far-bigger enemy.  But that conversation is changing, and fast. This morning, the Ukrainian army broke through the first line of the Russian defence in Kherson region – a move that was

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Japan’s cult of safetyism

The Japanese government has launched an initiative to encourage young people to drink more alcohol. Yes, really. The national tax agency’s ‘Sake Viva’ campaign is an appeal for ideas to get youngsters boozing after taxes on alcohol products, which accounted for 5 per cent of total revenue back in the hard-drinking 1980s, fell to just 1.7 per cent in 2020. So, at a time of economic hardship, Japan’s youth are being asked to do their patriotic duty and get hammered. The falloff in social drinking is being attributed in part to the pandemic. Japan didn’t have a full-blown lockdown imposed from above, but the more subtle bottom-up lockdown that demonised

Sam Leith Sam Leith

We still love our failing NHS

A new poll about the NHS, the Sunday Times tells us, has discovered ‘a decline in support’ for the National Health Service. The story spoke of ‘wide dissatisfaction about the state of the health service’, under the headline: ‘Britain falls out of love with the NHS’. The figures from the poll itself tell a slightly different story. The headline finding was that three people in five are now not confident that they would receive timely treatment were they to fall ill tomorrow. But these three people in five aren’t necessarily saying they’ve ceased to approve of the NHS. It seems to me that they are simply affirming what they’ve read

Peter Wood

One worldview has taken over the historical profession

Professor James H. Sweet is a temperate man. He seeks to avoid extremes. But he also seeks to be bold in his temperance. You can do that by emphatically stating an opinion that seems above reproach. But Professor Sweet miscalculated. His emphatic bromide blew up, and he was left offering emphatic apologies. For those who have not followed this little academic circus, Professor Sweet, who teaches history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is also the president of the American Historical Association (AHA). That’s an important post. The AHA has more than 11,500 members. It publishes the American Historical Review, ‘the journal of record for the historical profession in

Mary Dejevsky

Why Crimea could be key to Ukraine winning the war

Over the six months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the ambitions of President Zelensky and his compatriots have only grown. From an early readiness to engage in talks – first in Belarus and then in Istanbul – Kyiv has progressed to an insistence that Ukraine can win, and from there to a definition of victory that includes not just a return to the status quo before the war, but the restoration of Ukraine’s post-independence borders, and now also the recovery of Crimea. Zelensky himself has often seemed slower than some in his entourage to expand the mission. But he has been adding his voice to those calling for the recovery of Crimea for

Mark Nayler

Europe still hasn’t learned from its lockdown debacles

In his fascinating interview in the current issue of The Spectator, Rishi Sunak revealed the black hole at the centre of the British government’s 2020 lockdown policies. The former Chancellor claims that two crucial things were lacking at the time of the lockdowns – political candour and a ‘grown up conversation’ between Boris Johnson’s government and the quarantined population. Two and a half years later, though, there’s been no such conversation, especially in the European countries where the legality of lockdowns has already been questioned. France was one of the first countries to challenge hastily-enacted measures that criminalised normal behaviour. In May 2020, lawyers appearing in the country’s highest court

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Olaf Scholz needs to deal with the Putin appeasers in his party

‘The weapons have to fall silent,’ the left wing of Germany’s ruling Social Democratic party suggested this week, in their latest public appeal for peace in Ukraine. The authors argued that it is time to find a way of living with the Russian government, putting pressure on the Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The intervention could well be a watershed moment for the Chancellor, whose own support for Ukraine during the conflict has been mixed to say the least. Now Scholz has been presented with a choice: either he faces down the appeasers in his own party, or signals once again that Germany is an unreliable ally to Ukraine. The left-wing SPD

Sunday

Julie Bindel

Why are lesbians no longer welcome at Pride?

The lesbian group Get The L Out UK, founded to protest gender ideology and the pressure on same-sex attracted women to date trans women, joined Pride Cymru yesterday to make their voices heard amidst a sea of hostility. Ever since the trans movement decided that lesbians who reject sleeping with trans women are somehow morally deficient, same-sex attracted women have been harassed, defamed and abused in the name of trans equality. Get the L Out represent those old-fashioned lesbians that reject the penis and all that is attached to it. As a lesbian that came out in the Life on Mars days of the 1970s, when I was told, on

Gilbert T. Sewall

Los Angeles is in freefall

On August 9, a crazy homeless woman riled by community activists stormed a Los Angeles city council meeting, shouting obscenities and threats at members, closing the assembly down. A proposed ban on homeless encampments within 500 feet of schools had been on the table. For the city’s extremists, ‘criminalising homelessness’ is cause for mayhem. Last week, a thuggish mob shut an entire downtown Los Angeles street after midnight, ransacking a 7-Eleven and injuring the sole cashier. Residents citywide fear a future of unprosecuted criminal raids, ‘street takeovers’, and organised looting. Central Los Angeles is awash in homicides, break-ins, carjacks, shoplifting, and vandalism. The once snazzy Sunset Strip and Melrose areas