Keir starmer

Thursday

Peter Jones

What would the Romans have made of Keir Starmer’s freebies?

An ancient Greek, counting up the value of the gifts that Sir Keir Starmer had received over his spotless political career, might immediately have thought of the three mock goddesses of bribery that the comic poet Cratinus invented: Doro, St Give, Dexo, St Receive and Emblo, St Backhander. But a gift might be a bribe, or a genuine thank-you, or an act of altruism: after all, what are friends for? (Julius Caesar racked up gigantic debts.) Greeks agreed that gifts from rich to poor strengthened communal bonds and thought statesmen could serve their own interests if they were serving the interests of the people at the same time. As for

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Mad Men theory of drunk decision-making

In electing this government, we seem to have picked the worst of both worlds: higher taxation combined with austerity in the public finances. The one bonus I had hoped to see from a left-wing regime was a healthily indulgent approach to spending. Instead we get a Chancellor of the Exchequer who is a former Bank of England economist. Voting Labour and getting a neo-liberal Chancellor is like going on a Club 18-30 holiday and bringing your parents along. It defeats the purpose of the exercise. Our education and political systems select for the ability to win arguments far more than for the ability to solve problems In 2012 the Nobel

James Heale James Heale

Inside Labour’s love affair with Lord Alli

As a peer who hates publicity, Lord Alli might have been expected to dodge the Labour conference – given the near-constant coverage of ‘donorgate’. Former staff talk of birthday cards and Christmas gifts, of Prada bags and Paul Smith shirts Yet there he was, clad in his 1990s telly executive uniform of white trainers and dark suit, nonchalantly strolling around Liverpool. It was public confirmation of what Alli’s friends say privately: that brushes with the press won’t deter him from bankrolling the party he has financed for 25 years. Alli, who is thought to be worth £200 million, has found himself the unwelcome centre of attention over his gifts to

Monday

Katy Balls

Who was the real audience for Rachel Reeves’s speech?

11 min listen

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has just finished her speech at Labour conference. After a brief interruption by hecklers, she addressed austerity, the pandemic, and winter fuel payments. How was the speech received, and who does it really speak to?  Elsewhere, Sue Gray’s lack of appearance in Liverpool hasn’t done anything to slow down discussion of recent controversy. James Heale is joined by Katy Balls and John McTernan, formerly Tony Blair’s Political Secretary.

Friday

Katy Balls

Farage’s next move

14 min listen

Party conference season continues as Reform UK’s kicks off today in Birmingham. Katy Balls has been at the NEC hearing from Richard Tice, Lee Anderson and leader Nigel Farage, amongst others. What’s been the mood? And, after a remarkable few months, what could be next for the party? With Labour conference starting at the weekend, how worried will Starmer be about Farage? Also, what’s been the latest on the PM’s ‘donations for clothes’ row? Patrick Gibbons speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons. 

Thursday

The Spectator

Labour vs labour: how can the government claim to be promoting growth?

Growth, growth, growth: that was what Keir Starmer told us would be his government’s priority in his first press conference as Prime Minister. Nearly three months on, as the Labour party heads into its first conference in power for 15 years, it is becoming ever harder to reconcile Starmer’s promise with the policies that his government seems determined to deliver. With junior doctors voting to accept a 22 per cent pay rise, yet another group of public sector workers has been lavished with financial reward without any obligation to accept or implement more productive working practices. The NHS is in the midst of a pay bonanza at a time when

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Nigel’s next target: Reform has Labour in its sights

At this weekend’s Reform conference in Birmingham, the opening speech will be given by a man who wasn’t even a member of the party until four months ago. James McMurdock stood in what was once a Tory safe seat. Against the odds and after three recounts, he won, and is now Reform’s accidental member of parliament.  The day after the general election, Reform leader Nigel Farage held his celebratory press conference alongside fellow seat-winners Lee Anderson, Richard Tice and Rupert Lowe, announcing their new gang of four. Half an hour later, from a Westminster pub, they learned that they would be five – after McMurdock, a supposed ‘paper candidate’, was

Monday

Sam Leith

Keir Starmer and his wife don’t need a personal shopper

Well, colour me disappointed. I was among those – mugs, the uncharitable will be quick to call them – who imagined that Sir Keir Starmer represented the arrival of a welcome period of dull, unshowy decency at the top of our politics. I thought that whatever else he did – disappointed the left; enraged the right; made ‘hard decisions’ that nobody liked – it would be a long time before he was caught making chiselling excuses for accepting freebies, or rewarding donors with favours. His background as a lawyer, his punctilious attention to detail, that whole stiff air of priggishness he brought with him from the campaign trail to Downing Street: these may not have been attractive qualities, may not have been qualities that enhanced his personal charisma (as Boris’s

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Coffee House Shots live: the Starmer supremacy

47 min listen

Join Fraser Nelson, Katy Balls and Kate Andrews, along with special guest Jonathan Ashworth, for a live edition of Coffee House Shots recorded earlier this week. They dissect the first few weeks of the new Labour government and look ahead to the policies autumn, and the budget, might bring. Having surprisingly lost his seat at the election, how blunt will Ashworth be? The team also answer a range of audience questions, including: how big of a welfare crisis is the government facing? Would – and should – they reform the NHS? And could the challenge Reform UK poses to traditional parties continue to grow?  Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy. 

Thursday

Guy Ayling

Labour should work with schools, not tax them out of existence

Keir Starmer insists his plan to place VAT on independent school fees is not ideological. It’s a ‘difficult decision’, he says, but necessary to raise revenue which will be used to hire 6,500 teachers for state schools. He wants the independent sector to ‘thrive’. Few would deny that state schools need better funding, but it is important to question whether the policy will be successful at raising money and also to examine what a thriving independent sector looks like, how it can contribute to education more broadly – and how the VAT plan threatens all that. Labour has claimed for some time that the policy would raise £1.7 billion. This

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why is no one marching against VAT on school fees?

How passively we respond to revelations of Labour’s real direction of travel. As millions of pensioners brace for the confiscation of winter fuel payments and other Budget tax raids, shouldn’t they be pinning on their medals, raising their banners and marching down Whitehall – alongside columns of private school parents, furious at the imposition of VAT on fees? Yet so far barely a whimper of protest, as though those affected are racked with guilt at having kept the Tories in power for so long. In response to the school-fee fait accompli, Eton with its mile-long waiting list will hit parents with a full 20 per cent VAT hike from January,

Friday

Katy Balls

Why has Starmer taken down a portrait of Thatcher?

14 min listen

Keir Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin has revealed that the PM has removed a portrait of Margaret Thatcher from No 10. The portrait was originally commissioned by Gordon Brown. Why has he bothered to get rid of it? Elsewhere, the government has more plans for health, and select committees have some surprising new candidates. Megan McElroy speaks to Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls.

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

My time on Hinge

Back to work, back to school, back to politics: the French call it la rentrée and my own summer idyll in their country must end soon too. Back to the miserabilism of Starmerland – where all news, especially good news, must be seen as bad. What good news is that? I mean that shop prices fell this month by 0.3 per cent, after heavy discounting of non-food goods, for the first time since 2021; overall UK inflation having fallen close to the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Which makes autumn interest-rate cuts all the more likely, improving the outlook for mortgage borrowers and increasing the chance that the

Peter Jones

What ‘rot’ is Keir Starmer talking about?

With the elections over, it might be time to reflect on what Sir Keir Starmer means by ‘rot’ in the ‘foundations of this country’. What foundations are those? Political? In the democracy (‘citizen-power’) invented by the Greeks, men over the age of 18 meeting in assembly took all decisions that our politicians take today and, aged over 30, all decisions in the courts. It lasted for 180 years (508-322 bc), but did not survive, being characterised as ‘the rule of the poor, looting the rich’.  The Romans invented republicanism (‘the people’s property’). The Senate, drawn from the elites, both made the laws and occupied the various official positions – legal,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Starmer’s specs appeal

No doubt Lord Alli should not have been given a 10 Downing Street pass, but that is true of most who work there. BB (Before Blair), roughly 100 people were in the building. Today, it is 300. The quality of government has deteriorated as the numbers have swelled. At least Lord Alli has been genuinely useful. It is officially declared that he gave Sir Keir Starmer ‘multiple pairs of glasses’ worth £2,485. It was an inspired move. Until about April this year, Sir Keir did not wear spectacles on public occasions. Observers concentrated on his startled and unhappy-looking eyes because they were the only striking thing in his oddly inexpressive

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Just how ‘painful’ will Starmer’s October Budget be?

15 min listen

Winter is coming. That’s the message from Keir Starmer’s set-piece speech this morning from the No. 10 rose garden. After a tricky few weeks for the new Prime Minister on cronyism claims and anxiety about cuts to the winter fuel allowance, Starmer and his team attempted seize the agenda with a speech looking ahead to the months to come. However, anyone hoping for optimism will be disappointed, with Starmer warning things can only get worse. How bad can they be? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson. 

Monday

Katy Balls

How serious is the Starmer sleaze row?

Another week, another accusation of sleaze in relation to the Labour party. After initially winning some plaudits over the summer recess for his handling of the riots, the new Prime Minister is now fighting fire on several fronts – from growing unrest over the Treasury decision to limit the winter fuel allowance to questions over the wisdom of the party’s approach to settling trade union pay disputes. But the most striking of the criticisms is the ongoing standards row. In opposition, Starmer regularly promised to ‘clean up’ politics and launch a ‘total crackdown on cronyism’. This pledge makes up a chunk of Labour’s election manifesto with the promise of a

Thursday

The Spectator

Labour’s union problem

Less than two months in, one aspect of Keir Starmer’s government is becoming clear. This administration is closer to the trade unions than any we have had in the past 45 years. It is not just that the government has ceded readily to wage demands from teachers (a 5.5 per cent rise this year), junior doctors (22 per cent over two years) and train drivers (15 per cent over three years) – it has done so without seeking any agreement to changes in working practices. Given the abysmal productivity record of the public sector in recent years, especially since the pandemic, this is a remarkable omission. The government’s failure to

Thursday

Toby Young

Will Starmer make the Online Safety Act even worse?

Good God, there’s a lot of guff being talked about the Online Safety Act. This was a piece of legislation passed by the previous government to make the UK ‘the safest place in the world to go online’. To free speech advocates like me, that sounded ominous, given that ‘safety’ is always invoked by authoritarian regimes to clamp down on free speech. But after we raised the alarm, the government stripped out the most draconian clauses and put in some protections for freedom of expression, so even though it’s bad, it’s not quite as awful as it could have been. What about the BBC, which got several things wrong in

James Heale James Heale

Keir Starmer’s mission impossible

Labour backbenchers have spent years dreaming of the day they are in power and get ‘the call’ from the Prime Minister, inviting them to become ministers. But this time, a few were surprised that when the call came they heard the cut-glass accent of Sue Gray on the line. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised them. Her power over the government is hardly a secret: she helped run the country as a civil servant during the Tory years. Now she does so as a political adviser. Why disguise it? Sunak told the electorate to judge him on how well he fulfilled his five missions. In the end, they did Gray is