All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The biggest factor keeping Theresa May in office is the absence of an alternative Conservative leader with broad enough backing in the party to be crowned her successor, without causing a messy contest that could destabilise the party and put it out of power. That is why some Tories are grimly resigned to Mrs May
It would be hard to describe Theresa May’s post-election, premiership as anything other than weak. But, weirdly, this weakness is turning into something of a strength as I say in The Sun this morning. No one in the Cabinet thinks that May can recover sufficiently to lead the Tories into the next election, so no
Founded in 1828, The Spectator has been proud to describe itself as ‘the oldest continuously-published weekly in the English language’. But this is rather modest, for it is both the oldest weekly magazine in the world, and the oldest general-interest magazine continuously in print. Yes, the internet is full of claims and counter-claims in this most competitive
It’s very weird when a friend is in the news. I’ve known Nicholas Holgate for years. Until now, he was Town Clerk for Kensington and Chelsea council. I would say this, but he’s one of the most decent people I know; think rock-solid integrity, think public service. He was in the Treasury for years before
If the British Conservative party is feeling stunned, having calamitously misread the public mood in a general election, then it is in good company. Across Europe, right-wing parties are struggling to find messages that resonate. It’s not that voters have turned away from conservative ideas: polls show a huge number interested in individual liberty, lower
Whether the youth vote had any serious impact on the result of the general election or not, Jeremy Corbyn knew how to exploit it in a way both Plato and Aristotle would have understood. In his Republic, Plato argued that democracy resulted in rulers behaving like subjects and subjects like rulers, with teachers pandering to
The UK economy is not in good shape. We invest a lower proportion of our GDP every year than almost anyone else, which is the main reason why our productivity is almost static. We have deindustrialised to a point where we do not have nearly enough to sell abroad to pay for our imports. We
Theresa May has made a far better offer to EU nationals, saying they will be granted permanent residence after staying five years. But the EU has not. Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, has said that her offer is ‘below our expectations and risks worsening the situation for our citizens’. He wants the European
One of the biggest criticisms of the Conservative snap election campaign is that it failed to make the most of the Tories’ economic record. Since then, former minister Rob Halfon has said the party ought to correct this by rebranding as ‘the Workers Party’. But is Theresa May actually putting people out of work? Mr S only
Theresa May’s body language on leaving the European Council summit last night shows quite how much of a toll the past few weeks have taken on the Prime Minister. She looks exhausted. Now, you don’t have to feel sorry for May: she did, after all, decide to call the snap election that has proved to be
Can you remember what was in this week’s Queen’s Speech? Boris Johnson couldn’t on the day it was unveiled, making a total mess of trying to sell it on Radio 4’s PM programme. But as the week draws to an end, the main question about the Speech is whether it will pass unamended, not whether
Happy Independence Day everyone (groan). One year on from that momentous day, here are 13 things we’ve learnt from the Brexit vote. Most people will take any argument that suits them. They will swap ideological clothing if needs be – note how many on the Left suddenly care deeply about the pound and the City,
Would Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May make a better Prime Minister? In April, when Theresa May called the election, that question was barely worth asking: 54 per cent backed May compared to just 15 per cent who opted for Corbyn. Now that’s all changed. For the first time, Jeremy Corbyn has overtaken Theresa May on
Although the Conservatives won the most votes, most seats and increased their national vote share, many Labour supporters remain convinced that Jeremy Corbyn was the real winner of the snap election. On Question Time last night, one such supporter was so angry about the democratic election result that they had to be ejected from the
This week’s Best Buys, provided by Moneyfacts, are Two-Year Fixed Rate Bonds.
I haven’t been in Camden this afternoon, so I can’t vouch for there being no marches of activists holding banners with the words ‘Labour Out’ and ‘Corbyn Must Go’, but somehow I doubt there are – and I certainly haven’t seen them on the news. But why not? Last week we saw no end of
Following the disappointing snap election result, Theresa May has had to relax her approach to government – gone are the days when Cabinet members are kept off the airwaves. As a result of the new regime, lobby hacks today finally had a member of the government speak at a press gallery lunch. Doing the honours was David Gauke, the
Theresa May was rightly criticised for her response to the Grenfell Tower blaze. The Prime Minister’s decision not to initially meet survivors or relatives of those killed looked dreadful, and in the days after the fire there was a real risk that what happened was being pinned squarely on the Tories. While it was right
This was a Queen’s Speech to fit the ‘sombre mood of the nation’, says the FT. ‘British politics is in a state of paralysis,’ and the government’s plan ‘was notable for what it lacked’, the paper says – pointing to the key manifesto pledges cast aside. It’s good news that some of these policies –
When John Curtice speaks, listen. That’s one thing we learned in the general election. This week we hosted John at the Social Market Foundation, where he explained just what actually happened on June 8. Among his many observations was that Jeremy Corbyn really had done something unprecedented: he changed the way voters saw him, for the better. In
Once upon a time, there lived a very bored (but exceptionally diligent) paralegal. Everyday she would head to the office and stare at the same Excel spreadsheet. It contained a litany of things that really don’t belong in an excel spreadsheet – friends and family members, photographs, old records, engagement rings, a collection of saucy
If British industry had its own Mount Rushmore, the carved rock would undoubtedly include the face of Sir Ralph Robins. As, successively, managing director, chief executive and chairman of Rolls-Royce between 1984 and 2003, he transformed the fortunes of a company that had been humbled by receivership and nationalisation in the 1970s. Thirty years ago
After a year of prevarication, it has emerged that the Prime Minister has agreed to offer permanent residency to all EU nationals who were living in Britain. Under current rules, anyone who has been here for five years can apply for permanent residency status: not quite the same as citizenship, but it confers the same rights
So now we know who’s really responsible for the horrible attack at Finsbury Park Mosque: it was the Sun wot done it. And maybe the Daily Mail too. No sooner had Darren Osborne allegedly crashed a hired van into Muslim worshippers than certain so-called liberals were stringing up the tabloids. The low-rent press poisoned his
On this week’s episode, we look at conservatism’s apparent decline, how society has responded to the Grenfell Tower tragedy, and whether young people have had their critical faculties vanquished by a certain boy wizard. First up: This time last year many were wondering whether the left, in Britain and abroad, was in terminal decline. The Brexit vote
Well this is interesting. I had got used to the standard response to terror. I had thought that when 22 young people get blown up by a suicide bomber in Manchester we were meant to say that it made ‘no sense’, that it ‘wouldn’t change us’ and that ‘love’ must overcome ‘hate’. I thought that
In case you missed the memo, yesterday was officially the ‘day of rage’. Hard-left activists took to the streets, vowing to ‘bring down the government’. Although protesters’ claimed that they were seeking justice for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, this was dismissed by a charity representing those effected; ‘they do not want their grief hijacked
How best to challenge the status quo? A week after an election result that surprised just about everyone, today’s best free thinkers descended on Church House, Westminster, to put forward their ideas to change the world. As Jo Coburn took a night off from BBC politics to chair Spectator Event’s ‘5 ideas to change the
So, they limp on, and Corbyn is justified in holding aloft the Queen’s Speech in jubilantly derisive fashion. Some of you Tories are no doubt hoping that Theresa May ‘recovers her mojo’ and that the past six weeks have been some weird transgression from her norm. No, sorry. She does not have a mojo. She
Theresa May has never been a scintillating parliamentary performer. She has never been particularly comfortable with that very House of Commons brand of humour that marks occasions such as today. So, in her first major appearance at the despatch box since the election, May played to her strengths. She largely eschewed humour and was instead
Oh dear. Although Theresa May has managed to make it through the Queen’s Speech today, the real test will come next week when MPs vote on it. With the Prime Minister’s authority already weak, talk has turned to who will be her eventual successor. So, it was a helpful coincidence that the frontrunner to be
Yesterday Mark Carney – who hates it when politicians say anything about him – had a pop at Boris Johnson, ridiculing his optimistic approach to Brexit as seeking “cake and consumption”. Set aside the impropriety of the Bank of England governor making such a political swipe, Brexit was a deep psychological blow for people like
Today’s exchanges between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons following the Queen’s Speech showed how much difference confidence makes to a leader’s performance. While Corbyn will never be a scintillating orator – speaking for far too long and ending with a sentence that seemed to be aimed more at entering the Guinness Book
Although a Queen’s Speech tends to be a joyful occasion for the government in power, today’s has been rather sombre for the Conservatives. Theresa Mays legislative plan for government is rather sparse now that she has binned the majority of the 2017 Tory manifesto. Happily, Kwasi Kwarteng was on hand to cheer downcast MPs in