Keir starmer

Thursday

Michael Gove

Weimar Britain, the war on science & are you a competitive reader?

36 min listen

First: a warning from history Politics moving increasingly from the corridors of power into the streets, economic insecurity exacerbating tensions and the centre of politics failing to hold; these are just some of the echoes from Weimar Germany that the Spectator’s editor Michael Gove sees when looking at present-day Britain. But, he says, ‘there are grounds for hope’ – what are they? Michael joined the podcast to discuss.   Next: why did science succumb to the ‘culture wars’? Biologist and peer Matt Ridley bemoans the ‘cultification of science’, arguing that ‘left-wing ideological nonsense’ ended up permeating through all scientific disciplines. Thinking ‘neutral facts’ were safe, Matt admits he – and colleagues

Monday

Saturday

Tim Shipman

What does Trump want from his state visit?

16 min listen

Donald Trump touches down in Britain next week for his state visit and political editor Tim Shipman has the inside scoop on how No. 10 is preparing. Keir Starmer’s aides are braced for turbulence; ‘the one thing about Trump which is entirely predictable is his unpredictability,’ one ventures. Government figures fear he may go off message on broadcast – he is scheduled to be interviewed by GB News. A second state visit, especially during a second term, is unprecedented. But, as Tim says, ‘Britishness is fashionable in Washington’ and no-one likes ‘royal treatment’ more than Trump. So, can Starmer take advantage of the President’s ‘love of the deal’? Tim joins

Thursday

Tim Shipman

Prince of Darkness sacked (again)

22 min listen

Another week, another departure. Conservative MP Neil O’Brien – who serves in the shadow cabinet as minister for policy renewal and development – was granted an urgent question in Parliament this morning, to question the government about Peter Mandelson. Then the news broke that Lord Mandelson had been sacked by Keir Starmer following further disclosures about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Neil joins Tim Shipman and James Heale to discuss the latest developments and also the questions that still remain: what did they know about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein; if they didn’t know, why didn’t they know; and will the government be forced to release their vetting files on Mandelson’s

The Spectator

Starmer’s survival depends on going against his instincts

Athelstan has long faded from public imagination, despite being the king who, in 927 ad, first united England. But thanks to a campaign by historians such as Tom Holland, David Woodman and Michael Wood, the 1,100th anniversary of his coronation last week was celebrated with a memorial service, a new biography and the naming of a train in his honour. Athelstan’s kingdom fragmented after his death, but its brief unification reminds us of the deep history of England and its constitutional order. What followed from Athelstan was the rule of law, parliamentary sovereignty, Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights: principles that have survived for centuries and inspired imitation across

Saturday

Tim Shipman

The red reshuffle overshadows Reform

14 min listen

Lucy Dunn catches up with Tim Shipman at Reform’s party conference, taking place in Birmingham, to get his reaction to Labour’s reshuffle. The reshuffle took place following Angela Rayner’s resignation from government. Tim argues that it’s clear the reshuffle centred around getting Shabana Mahmood into the Home Office, where she can tackle some of the biggest issues for Labour – small boats and asylum hotels. They also round up the goings on at Reform including leader Nigel Farage’s speech, who claimed Labour’s reshuffle proved an election could be sooner than we think… Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy.

Thursday

Tim Shipman

Can Rayner survive tax row?

16 min listen

24 hours after Angela Rayner admitted underpaying tax, the pressure remains on the deputy prime minister as Westminster now waits the outcome of the probe by the Prime Minister’s standards adviser. The Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman and the Sunday Times’s Whitehall editor Gabriel Pogrund join Patrick Gibbons to discuss whether Rayner can retain her briefs. As Gabriel points out, regardless of the outcome of the ethics probe, Rayner was seen as Labour’s ‘sleaze-buster in chief’. So how damaging is this to ‘brand Ang’? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Wednesday

Tim Shipman

PMQs: Rayner defended as Badenoch flops

17 min listen

Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch faced off in the first Prime Minister’s Questions following summer recess. With the date of the Budget announced that morning, the economy was expected to dominate – which it did, to the surprise of most MPs, who expected Badenoch to attack over the Angela Rayner tax row. The deputy prime minister had admitted that morning she underpaid stamp duty on her flat in Hove. The leader of the opposition did question Starmer on it initially, but as political editor Tim Shipman says she more than missed an open goal. Tim joins Isabel Hardman and Lucy Dunn to discuss how damaging the row is for Rayner

Monday

Tim Shipman

Labour's transfer deadline day

17 min listen

The summer transfer window comes to a close today but, as Parliament also returns from summer recess today, the only team Keir Starmer is focused on is his own in Number Ten. The Prime Minister has decided to reshuffle his advisers, including bringing in Darren Jones MP to Number Ten from the Treasury. Political editor Tim Shipman and James Kirkup, a partner at Apella Advisors and senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation, join economics editor Michael Simmons to go through the moves. Will yet another change in advisers boost Labour’s fortunes? Or are they doomed to relegation? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.

Thursday

James Heale

The left’s fightback against Labour has begun

If there is a hallmark of Keir Starmer’s leadership, it is a willingness to bash the left. For five years, he has repeatedly sided with his moderate factions to make Labour electable. Corbynites have been purged from parliament and the party machine. Principles and policies have been changed to meet the electorate’s approval. Last summer’s election result appeared to vindicate the Prime Minister’s strategy. But with Starmer’s authority crumbling, the British left is aiming to reassert itself and wreak its revenge from outside, rather than inside, the Labour party. ‘This Labour government is here to appease Reform. We are here to defeat Reform’ Three groups pose a threat to Starmer.

Thursday

Charles Moore

Who still supports Keir Starmer?

Successful political leaders hold in their minds some idea of what Mrs Thatcher called ‘Our People’. In this context, I do not mean the whole population of the country they seek to lead, or the core of the party they belong to. I mean that group of people with whose aspirations they most wish to identify. In making that identification, they combine direct self-interest – getting their floating vote – with a wider view about who are most important for the nation’s future prosperity and good order. In the Thatcher era, such people were the famous C2s, first-generation home-buyers, millions who could expect not only to earn but also to

Thursday

Andrew Gimson

Varun Chandra: the most important adviser you’ve never heard of

The porousness of the Establishment, and its reluctance to advertise its activities, are illustrated by the career of Varun Chandra. At the age of 40, he sits as business adviser at the right hand of the Prime Minister, accompanied him to the meeting on Monday with Donald Trump at Turnberry, and is credited with playing an invaluable role in the recent trade talks in Washington. Before the general election, he used his innumerable high-level contacts to persuade business that Labour would be a better bet than the Conservatives. About himself he has preserved an almost immaculate discretion. He has no Wikipedia entry and is not in Who’s Who. Almost everyone

Toby Young

Make Trump Britain’s prime minister

When I was a young man, the claim that Britain was in danger of becoming the 51st state was a political slur mainly thrown about by the left, particularly those who objected to the presence of US military bases. But there was some anti-American sentiment on the right, too – Enoch Powell, for instance, had a dislike of America’s hostility to the Empire that dated back to his service in the second world war. I’m even guilty of some anti–American prejudice myself and wrote a memoir in which I tried to convey that my failure to take Manhattan in the mid-1990s was because I wasn’t willing to sell my soul

Thursday

Tim Shipman

Can anything stop Reform?

A close associate of Nigel Farage received phone calls from three civil servants in the past week, asking how they might help Reform UK prepare for government. Officially, mandarins won’t begin talks with the opposition until six months before a general election, which might be nearly four years away. And Reform currently has just four MPs. But behind the scenes, the source reveals: ‘I’m personally getting middle-ranking civil servants in various departments asking if they can help – people who actually understand how to get things done. They don’t want to lose their jobs, but they want to tell us what’s going on.’ MPs may have departed Westminster for recess,

Thursday

Douglas Murray

The pointlessness of ‘smashing the gangs’

‘Smash the gangs’ is the fascinating slogan that Keir Starmer’s government has settled on for tackling illegal migration. What is the government going to do to stop the hundreds – sometimes thousands – of people sailing across the Channel and coming into England each day? ‘We will smash the gangs,’ they say. The slogan is interesting for reasons beyond the tough-guy rhetoric. For it suggests, of course, that it is people-smuggling gangs that are the main problem. Perhaps our government sees them as being like press gangs back in the day, roaming around northern France, waylaying passing migrants and forcing them on to rubber dinghies to begin a new life

Dot Wordsworth

Where did ‘husband’ come from?

‘Am I housebound?’ asked my husband as I was discussing with him the complicated history of the name for his role in life. ‘No, darling,’ I said. ‘You’re the one in the house who just is or lives there.’ Only later did I tell him that the word bond, behind the -band of husband, sank in worth with the years, following the same path as boor, churl and peasant. Whereas I as a housewife enjoy a comparatively transparent label, any husband’s title is obscure. It is simply a house-bond, but the first element of husband, hus-, no longer seems like house, and the -bond element is often mistaken for a

Tim Shipman

‘Let Keir be Keir’: inside the cabinet’s away day

Labour ministers face a range of terrible political choices, but when the cabinet met for an away day at Chequers last Friday, the first dilemma was what to wear. ‘There was panic beforehand about what “smart-casual” meant,’ one ministerial aide says. Both Hilary Benn and John Healey turned up in dark suits and red ties. ‘To be fair to the Defence Secretary, he hadn’t seen that bit of the invite,’ a No. 10 official explains. ‘Whereas in Hilary’s case, that is what his smart-casual looks like.’ By contrast, Peter Kyle, the Science Secretary, turned up in what one observer describes as a ‘tech bro AI T-shirt’. Finding an economic policy

Thursday

Laurie Penny

Corbyn’s new party is Starmer’s creation

Have you ever been to an activist meeting? A proper one, not a cocktail party for potential donors. If Keir Starmer has been to one lately, I suspect he didn’t stay past the minutes or he would have been better prepared for what happens when you try to get a roomful of lefties to point in the same direction. Starmer’s team have been so busy admiring their enormous majority that it has taken them a while to realise that they are trapped with 400 left-wingers in every shade of red from post-Soviet carmine to the most delicate salmon pink, all of them high on victory and spoiling for a fight.

Tim Shipman

The reign of Rayner

Angela Rayner declined an invitation to a hen do last weekend where the entertainment included axe-throwing. ‘She was worried about photos,’ says one attendee. The Deputy Prime Minister had to see a family member instead, but a close ally admits: ‘She is more careful about attracting that sort of publicity than she used to be.’ Robbed as we are of the sight of Rayner waving an axe around when the Prime Minister is suffering his worst weeks in Downing Street, it is tempting to ask, as Metternich didn’t quite say of Talleyrand: ‘What did she mean by that?’ It’s a far cry from the days when she screamed that the

Saturday

Tim Shipman

Labour’s first year (in review) with Tim Shipman & Quentin Letts

22 min listen

Cast your mind back a year. Labour had just won a storming majority, promising ‘change’ to a stale Tory party that was struggling to govern. But have things got any better? In the magazine this week, Tim Shipman writes the cover piece to mark the occasion of Labour’s first year in government. He takes readers through three chapters: from Sue Gray (freebies scandal and winter fuel cut) to Morgan McSweeney (a degree of professionalisation and dealing with the Donald) to the point at which ‘things fall apart’ (assisted dying, the welfare vote and Reeves’s tears). On the podcast, Tim is joined by The Spectator’s James Heale as well as sketchwriter