Politics

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

Monday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Is Truss scared of the OBR?

11 min listen

The focus is on Liz Truss’s planned emergency budget. Over the weekend it was revealed that she wouldn’t consult the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) before announcing her plans. Could this backfire? Also on the podcast, investment bank Citi have warned that inflation could hit 18 per cent come January. Were the Bank of England’s projections too optimistic? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson.

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Sanna Marin and the rise of fake controversy

With an honourable exception for the Beastie Boys, I can’t stand the use of ‘party’ as a verb. It immediately reminds me of ‘Party, party, party, oikies!’ – the war cry of the drunken potbellied Afrikaaners who once roared in their bakkiesonto our Namibian campsite at about 2 a.m. and proceeded to be, well, Boerish. It’s a usage that smacks of creepy men in movies inviting young women into their cars, or footballers in search of questionably consensual sex. It has passed from a frat-boy Americanism into a tabloid euphemism for illegal drug use and sexual sleaze without ever quite passing through a phase of meaning, actually, having a party.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Truss and Sunak reach crunch week on the energy crisis

There’s still two weeks of the Tory leadership contest to go but by Friday the scale of the energy crisis that awaits the next prime minister will be clear for all to see. This is when Ofgem is due to announce the new level at which energy bills will be capped. After the price cap hit £1,971 in April, the forecasts point to trouble ahead. Cornwall Insight predicts the October rise could see bills go up to £3,582 a year. This could go up to £4,266 by January with suggestions it could even reach £6,000 by April next year. After Friday, both candidates will come under greater pressure to spell

Sunday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

What the Dugin assassination tells us about Russia

Car bombs used to be a fixture of gangland feuds in 1990s Russia but have since fallen out of fashion. This makes it all the more striking when, as happened on Saturday night, such a device rips through a car just outside Moscow, killing Darya Dugina, daughter of the controversial nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. She was a prominent figure in her own right, a journalist working for an outfit Washington says is owned by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin – under sanctions in the West for being the godfather of both the Wagner mercenary group and the infamous social media ‘troll farms’ – who had been a cheerleader for the war in

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Europe’s new migrant crisis

Earlier this month I spent a week in Sicily, driving south from Palermo to Agrigento and then east to Syracuse and Messina. It was my first visit to Sicily in 17 years and, given the media reports, I had expected to find the island crowded with migrants from Africa. In fact, I saw none, other than those I glimpsed in a fenced-off processing centre at the quayside in Agrigento, the first port of call for many migrants who arrive in Sicily. Last week the local paper in Agrigento drew on official government figures to reveal that so far in 2022, 45,664 migrants have landed on Italian territory, an increase of

Jack Brown

Will an Office for the Prime Minister work?

Boris Johnson now leads an interim administration. Within a fortnight, we will have a new occupant of No. 10. What will Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss find waiting for them in Downing Street? And what might the machinery of government mean for their ability to deliver on their campaign promises? The first thing that will strike the new Prime Minister is Johnson’s internal reforms. The creation of an ‘Office of the Prime Minister’ is potentially the most significant, although it was announced late in Johnson’s premiership and it remains to be seen how seriously it has been taken. On arrival, the new Prime Minister may therefore be equally entitled to

Theodore Dalrymple

How we fell for antidepressants

The French novelist, Michel Houellebecq, with his accustomed acuity about modern culture, titled his last novel but one Serotonin. By then, of course, this famous neurochemical had become the key to a perfect human existence, too little or too much of it resulting in all the little problems that continue to plague mankind. If only we could get the chemical balance in our brains right, all would be well, life would return to its normal bliss! After the commercialisation of Prozac, people started talking about the chemical balance in their brains in much the same way as they talked about the ingredients of a recipe. As Peter D. Kramer put

Steven Fielding

Thatcherism is a cult the Tories should not follow

Friedrich Nietzsche may not be the most fashionable member of the conservative canon, but doubtless he wouldn’t care much. He knew that one of the main symptoms of a civilisation in decline is ‘herd thinking’. Regardless of the victor, this summer’s Conservative leadership contest has been a case in point for Freud’s narcissism of small differences. None of the candidates have dared deviate from the dogma of Thatcherism. Grant Shapps said it loudest: like Thatcher, he would confront union ‘Luddites’ to save an ailing economy. Liz Truss wants to to ‘crack down’ on trade union ‘militants’ by making it harder for them to call strikes. Truss didn’t even need to name Thatcher

Saturday

Mary Dejevsky

The strange morality of sponsoring weapons

Forget fund-raising concerts donating spare clothes and offering your spare room to a refugee family. There’s a better way of showing your sympathy for Ukrainians: you can now sponsor weapons, and arm it with your very own message. For up to £2,500, Brits can send a personalised message to the crowdfunding site Sign My Rocket, who will then write it on a missile destined for the Russian army. Sending hostile messages to the enemy, of course, is not new, and may be as old as war itself. Dropping black propaganda leaflets from planes for the benefit of the enemy beneath has long been standard practice. Nor was it unusual for

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Don’t write off Michael Gove

No senior politician has ever possessed a talent for upsetting prime ministers to match that of Michael Gove’s. David Cameron unfriended him after the EU referendum, having believed Gove had assured him he would campaign for Remain only to see him mastermind the triumphant Leave operation. While Boris Johnson was forgiven for his front-of-house Brexit role, Gove was forever damned. Theresa May then left him out of her first cabinet as a calculated rebuke for his spectacular betrayal of Johnson during the 2016 leadership election by which time a ‘Game of Thrones’ mentality appeared to have completely overtaken him. Johnson himself last month fired Gove from the cabinet before he

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Katy Balls, Toby Young and Mark Palmer

15 min listen

On this episode of Spectator Out Loud, Katy Balls discusses the challenges facing prospective PM Liz Truss (00:52). Toby Young shares why he is defending a pro-Putin apologist (06:45) and Mark Palmer reads his notes on hand luggage (11:29). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Sunak and Truss are wrong about solar

Rishi Sunak has joined Liz Truss in grumbling about solar panels in fields. This is all rather dismaying, and revealing. It suggests that Conservative leadership contenders – and the party faithful they’re appealing to – lack faith in the transformative power of markets and free enterprise. Those solar panels that Sunak and Truss deplore are nothing less than an economic miracle, delivered by private companies seeking profit. Anyone who proclaims themselves supporters of markets should be shouting from the rooftops about this miracle, since it shows how people and organisations freely allocating capital makes our world better, fast. Private enterprise works because the incentive to make a profit by selling

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Gove says Truss’s plans are a ‘holiday from reality’

Is the Tory leadership race already over? That’s the narrative among Conservative MPs with two weeks of the leadership contest to go. The Sunak camp dispute this version of events – and tonight they have an endorsement which works in their favour. After several Tory MPs switched their allegiance from Rishi Sunak to Liz Truss, this evening Michael Gove has endorsed the former Chancellor. Writing for the Times, the former Minister for the Cabinet Office has argued Truss’s plans for immediate tax cuts are a ‘holiday from reality’ that would put ‘the stock options of FTSE 100 executives’ before the poorest. He says that Sunak is best placed to prioritise

Debbie Hayton

The gender debate is getting nastier

Elaine Miller is one of the grown-ups. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, with a specialism in pelvic health. She also jokes about it. Her comedy show, Viva Your Vulva: The Hole Story is currently playing at the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s a good one: the production has won awards and a five-star review. Miller is forthright – her audiences are warned about ‘strong language and swearing’ – but her performance is more than mere entertainment. In Miller’s words, The aim of the show is that the audience leave knowing what a pelvic floor is, what it does and where to take theirs if they think it

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Can Zelensky afford to freeze Ukraine’s gas prices?

This morning, Volodymyr Zelensky signed a moratorium on energy prices – so while gas bills are rising all over Europe, Ukraine will remain unaffected. This honours a pledge he made on his election. Freezing energy bills is a standard populist policy in Ukrainian politics (in a country where temperatures can reach -25ºC and the elderly can’t afford to buy medicine, it’s hard to win without making such promises). But there are now serious worries about whether it could bankrupt a government that needs all the money it can get to fight a war. Energy prices will be frozen until six months after martial law ends in Ukraine: the pledge is

Natasha Feroze

What does Mick Lynch want?

12 min listen

The UK has been hit by another round of rail strikes today with rising inflation and falling wages a recipe for continued disruption in the public sector. Labour rebels such as Sam Tarry are fast becoming celebrities among the unions. Could this leave Starmer in another predicament? Also on the podcast, as Liz Truss remains ahead in the leadership polls: is the special relationship safe in her hands? Natasha Feroze is joined by Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Oscar Edmondson.

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will inflation kill Truss’s tax cut plans?

This week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies offered tough words for those hoping for tax cuts: with inflation taking its toll on both government and household finances, the next prime minister would be forced to prioritise the most vulnerable and debt-servicing payments. This would require more revenue for the Treasury, not less. As the Office for National Statistics publishes the latest public sector finance data for July, are these warnings too pessimistic – or already proving apt? Inflation continues to ramp up debt interest payments – a grim reality for any government which wants to spend money on delivering new and better services, not on money it’s already spent. Last

Daniel Pipes

Salman Rushdie was never safe

The stabbing of Salman Rushdie sends a renewed message to the world: take Islamism – the transformation of the Islamic faith into a radical utopian ideology inspired by medieval goals – seriously. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the most consequential Islamist of the past century, personally issued the edict (often called a fatwa) condemning Rushdie to death in 1989. Khomeini, responding to the title of Rushdie’s magical-realist novel The Satanic Verses, decided it blasphemed Islam and he deserved death. Initially alarmed by this edict, Rushdie spent over 11 years in hiding protected by the British police, furtively moving from one safe house to another under a pseudonym, his life totally disrupted.  Already

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The growing extremism of France’s eco warriors

In August 1999 a group of protestors demolished a McDonald’s restaurant under construction in Aveyron, southern France. Their leader was Jose Bové, a middle-class farmer, who whipped up his followers by declaring that ‘McDo is the symbol of the multinational who wants us to eat crap and make the farmers die’. The French regard that summer’s day 23 years ago as the birth of the anti-globalist movement, the progenitor of a multitude of protest groups whose modus operandi has been direct action. Bové subsequently went into politics, representing the Green party in the European parliament between 2009 and 2019. Today he is retired but his example continues to inspire radical