Boris johnson

Thursday

Nick Cohen

The English right’s Putinesque conspiracy theories

The right, as well as the left, is home to the kind of flaming conspiracy nut who, in Bertie Wooster’s words, make ‘strong men climb trees and pull them up after them’. In another life, the activists for Vote Leave might have joined the thousands of hollowed-eyed onanists who post abuse under newspaper articles from their parents’ spare rooms, or become columnists for the Mail; fringe figures, best ignored. But just as on the left of politics the fringe is becoming the mainstream, so on the right, brooding paranoids, who cannot face a hard fact or uncomfortable argument squarely, are moving in to take over the Conservative Party. Vote Leave

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Boris needs you!

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Boris Johnson has kickstarted his battle bus tour of Britain which he hopes will convince people to vote out of the EU. But before he hit the road, he made a direct pitch to Spectator readers in an exclusive interview. The former mayor of London set out his Brexit battle lines, as he spoke to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson, saying: ‘It is unquestionably true that I’ve changed. But so has the EU. And of the two of us, it’s the EU that

Monday

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Boris vs Dave

With the May elections over, the EU referendum campaign is now in full swing. David Cameron started the day warning that Brexit could put peace in Europe at risk. In his speech at the British Museum this morning, the PM also asked whether leaving the EU was a risk worth taking. Here’s what he said: Boris hit back by making his case for voting out, saying that negotiating on behalf of the EU is like ‘trying to ride a vast 28-man pantomime horse’: He also sung ‘Ode to Joy’ in German: And Boris even appeared to forget the name of the city which, until a few days ago, he was

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

David Cameron is now in full ‘Project Fear’ mode

David Cameron’s speech this morning about the EU referendum will succeed in doing one thing: infuriating the hell out of Eurosceptics. The Prime Minister is set to warn that peace and stability could be at risk if Britain walks away from Europe. He’ll also go on to say that the European Union has brought together countries previously ‘at each others’ throats for decades’. In the Project Fear brand, it’s certainly a classic in the genre. But will it work? One of the interesting aspects of his line of argument is the appeal it is likely to have to younger people. Those under the age of 34 are generally much more

Friday

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Erdogan’s Europe

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Has Erdogan brought Europe to heel? In his Spectator cover piece, Douglas Murray argues that the Turkish President has used a mixture of intimidation, threats and blackmail to do just that and throw open the doors of Europe to Turkey. Douglas says Erdogan is a ‘wretched Islamist bully’ who has shown just how the EU works. But in pushing Europe around, is Erdogan now more powerful than Merkel, Juncker and Cameron? And how does the Turkish PM’s resignation this week changed the country’s

Thursday

James Forsyth

Enter Boris, eyes on the prize

[audioplayer src=”http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/262486539-the-spectator-podcast-erdogans-europe.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss Boris” startat=552] Listen [/audioplayer] After an eight-year detour into municipal government, Boris Johnson has now returned to national politics. The former mayor of London will mark this moment by going on the stump for the Leave campaign. He has some catching up to do: while never far from the public eye, he was absent from the Commons for seven years. Even when back in Parliament after the general election, Boris felt he could not take the cabinet job that was offered to him. But his time at City Hall hasn’t dented his ambitions; quite the opposite. He is the bookies’

Stephen Robinson

A toe-curling tragedy

Zac Goldsmith spent almost every day out on the stump during his London mayoral campaign dressed in the formal dark suit he inherited from his father, and had recut on his death in 1997. At least that is what a member of his team told me as I was out observing proceedings one day. I think that detail was offered as a bit of journalistic ‘colour’ to show Zac’s sense of filial duty, but that was the only sense in which his painfully understated campaigning could be said to have owed anything to Sir James Goldsmith’s bombastic, manic style when he ran the Referendum party. Some political campaigns are failures;

Saturday

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: When the right goes wrong | 30 April 2016

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Is crazy all the rage in today’s politics and are conservatives going a little bit mad? That’s the topic for this week’s Spectator cover piece in which Freddy Gray argues that in America and in Britain, the right is tearing itself apart. Whilst Brits might be busy pointing and laughing at Donald Trump, all over the world conservatism is having a nervous breakdown, says Freddy. And the EU referendum is starting to prove that British Conservatives can be as barmy as everyone else.

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 28 April 2016

‘England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her interactions, her markets and her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has, in all her doings, very marked and very original habits and traditions.’ This classic Eurosceptic statement was made, as Daniel Hannan reminds us in his excellent book Why Vote Leave, by a great European, Charles de Gaulle. He was explaining why France was rejecting our attempt to join the EEC in 1963. The General understood what the European project was, and why Britain was not a

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: When the right goes wrong

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Is crazy all the rage in today’s politics and are conservatives going a little bit mad? That’s the topic for this week’s Spectator cover piece in which Freddy Gray argues that in America and in Britain, the right is tearing itself apart. Whilst Brits might be busy pointing and laughing at Donald Trump, all over the world conservatism is having a nervous breakdown, says Freddy. And the EU referendum is starting to prove that British Conservatives can be as barmy as everyone else.

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Brexit Tories are feeling disrespected. How awful

There are moments when one wonders whether one is seeing and hearing the same things as others. For me such a moment occurred a fortnight ago when reading The Spectator’s weekly column by our political editor, James Forsyth. James is exceptionally well plugged in to the world of Westminster, but — beyond that — a person of cool and sensitive judgment, so I read what he writes with attention. He said this: ‘[The Prime Minister] is campaigning with no thought for the feelings of those in the party who disagree with him. It is one thing for a leader to disagree with close to half of his MPs and most

Monday

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Jeremy Hunt stands firm ahead of junior doctors strike

Jeremy Hunt has been facing questions in the Commons ahead of tomorrow’s junior doctors strike. The Health Secretary said the industrial action was ‘wholly unjustified’ and said ‘we are proud of the NHS but we must turn that pride into actions’: His sentiment wasn’t enough to placate Dennis Skinner, however, with the MP for Bolsover telling Hunt to ‘wipe that smirk off your face’: Labour’s Heidi Alexander insisted tomorrow would be one of the saddest days in the NHS – and said that the Health Secretary was to blame: Nicky Morgan also faced a tough time in the Commons as she defended Tory plans for all schools to become academies

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is the Leave campaign turning into Project Grouch?

Monday mornings are miserable enough as it is, but this morning the Leave campaign decided to treat us to the double whammy of a furious column from Boris Johnson in the Telegraph and an irritable Iain Duncan Smith on the Today programme. The Mayor is angry about Obama and the way the Remain campaign has patronised voters, while Iain Duncan Smith was annoyed not just about the accusations of racism that were hurled at Johnson for his ‘half-Kenyan’ comments last week, but also about the offer that David Cameron and his colleagues are setting out as part of the Remain case. The whole interview was rather grumpy, and the tone

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Theresa May has revealed she is a reluctant member of the In campaign

One of the worst kept secrets at Westminster is that Theresa May has a distinctly low opinion of Boris Johnson. As Home Secretary she has had more dealings with the Mayor of London than most Cabinet ministers, and there is clearly no love lost between the pair. When she decided to turn down his request to deploy water canons in London she didn’t do so via a discrete written ministerial statement, but by a statement in the Commons which Johnson himself had to sit through. So, there’s a certain irony that May has adopted the EU referendum position that many of Boris’s allies thought he would. She is for In,

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The hounding of Boris for his ‘Kenyan’ comment is the dumbest Twitterstorm yet

Normally, Twitterstorms, those unhinged uprisings against a politician or celeb who has dared to make an outré utterance, are best treated like tantrum-throwing two-year-olds. Stand back, let them do their foot-stomping, and wait for them to exhaust themselves. But the storm over Boris’s ‘part-Kenyan’ remark in relation to Obama is different. This Twitterstorm has been so dumb, and so destructive, that it cannot simply be allowed to pass and take its place in the bulging book of Times People Went Unnecessarily Crazy About Something. No, we need a reckoning with this Twitterstorm. We need to take stock. As a keen watcher of Twitterstorms, I’m struggling to remember any that have

Friday

Toby Young

There’s nothing ‘racist’ about Boris Johnson’s Obama comments

Nick Cohen is predictably over-the-top in his response to Boris Johnson’s piece about President Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate in today’s Sun. He begins by claiming he’s approaching this subject ‘with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey’. He then goes on to reprimand Boris for suggesting Obama has an ‘ancestral dislike of the British empire’ on account of his ‘part-Kenyan’ heritage and links this to his support for the Remain campaign. We’ll come to that comment in a minute, but Cohen goes on to conflate these remarks with the worst excesses of the birther movement: I’m not someone who throws accusations of racism around

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Boris Johnson’s attack on Barack Obama belongs in the gutter

Boris Johnson is a former editor of this newspaper, and as such has the right to be treated with a courtesy Spectator journalists do not normally extend to politicians who do not enjoy his advantages. I am therefore writing with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey when I say that Johnson showed this morning that he is a man without principle or shame. He is a braying charlatan, who lacks the courage even to be an honest bastard, for there is a kind of bastardly integrity in showing the world who you really are, but instead uses the tactics of the coward and the

Thursday

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: Obama’s Brexit overreach

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Is Barack Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate a welcome one or should he keep his nose out of our business? Tim Montgomerie says in his Spectator cover piece that such overreach is typical of the US President’s arrogance. But Anne Applebaum disagrees and says that Obama speaks on behalf of many Americans when he calls on Britain to stay engaged in European politics. So should we listen to Obama? Joining Isabel Hardman to discuss is Spectator deputy editor Freddy Gray and the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s heading for a hollow victory

[audioplayer src=”http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/260046943-the-spectator-podcast-obamas-eu-intervention-the-pms.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the PM’s hollow victory” startat=511] Listen [/audioplayer]‘Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won,’ wrote the Duke of Wellington after Waterloo. David Cameron may well feel the same about referendums on 24 June. The EU debate is already taking a toll on the Tory party and his premiership. While defeat would be disastrous for him, even victory will come at a heavy political cost. Victory is, for now, still the most likely outcome. Barring a dramatic worsening of the migrant crisis or another eurozone emergency, the uncertainty inherent in leaving the EU will probably mean

Tuesday

Michael Gove

Did Stephen King write the In campaign’s script?

One of the most striking things about the debate on Britain’s future relationship with Europe is that the case for staying is couched overwhelmingly in negative and pessimistic terms, while the case for leaving is positive and optimistic. Those of us who want to Leave believe Britain’s best days lie ahead, that our country has tremendous untapped potential which independence would unleash and our institutions, values and people would make an even more positive difference to the world if we’re unshackled from the past. In contrast, the In campaign want us to believe that Britain is beaten and broken, that it can’t survive without the help of Jean-Claude Juncker and his