Labour party

Thursday

William Moore

Cruel Labour, the decline of sacred spaces & Clandon Park’s controversial restoration

51 min listen

This week: Starmerism’s moral vacuum‘Governments need a mission, or they descend into reactive incoherence’ writes Michael Gove in this week’s cover piece. A Labour government, he argues, ‘cannot survive’ without a sense of purpose. The ‘failure of this government to make social justice its mission’ has led to a Spring Statement ‘that was at once hurried, incoherent and cruel – a fiscal drive-by shooting’.  Michael writes that Starmer wishes to emulate his hero – the post-war Prime Minister Clement Atlee, who founded the NHS and supported a fledgling NATO alliance. Yet, with policy driven by Treasury mandarins, the Labour project is in danger of drifting, as John Major’s premiership did.

Michael Gove

Labour needs a sense of social justice

Clement Attlee, in the words of Winston Churchill, was a modest man with much to be modest about. Labour’s postwar premier has been invoked as a role model by Keir Starmer recently, in the context of Attlee’s support for Nato and robustness on defence. Starmer’s allies also argue that, like Attlee, he is an unshowy middle-England moderate who prefers quiet efficiency to ideological flamboyance. His biographer, the always perceptive Tom Baldwin, has declared: ‘There is no such thing as Starmerism.’ Nor, we are told, will there ever be. Which is exactly how, why and where this government is going wrong. A Tory government benefits from a sense of purpose; a

Saturday

James Heale

Michael Heseltine on Thatcher, Boris and Badenoch

30 min listen

An MP for 35 years, Michael Heseltine served as Environment Secretary and then Defence Secretary in Margaret Thatcher’s government. Following his well-publicised resignation in 1986, he returned to government under John Major and was Deputy Prime Minister for the last two years of Major’s premiership. Once seen as a potential successor to Thatcher and Major, he has sat in the Lords since stepping down as an MP in 2001, and in recent years has been an outspoken critic of Brexit. Lord Heseltine sits down with James Heale to discuss his thoughts on the current Labour government, how to fix Britain’s broken economy and why devolution should go further. ‘Deeply depressed’

Friday

Katy Balls

The Kim Leadbeater Edition

35 min listen

Kim Leadbeater has been an MP since winning the Batley & Spen by-election for Labour in 2021. She was elected to the constituency that her sister, Jo Cox, had served until she was murdered during the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign. Having pursued a career in health and fitness, Kim hadn’t initially intended on a life in politics, but she went on to champion social and political cohesion through the Jo Cox Foundation and the More in Common initiative. More recently, she has led the campaign to legalise Assisted Dying. The Bill is currently making its way through Parliament and has been described as the biggest social reform in a generation. On

Thursday

Oscar Edmondson

Reeves goes on the defensive

14 min listen

It’s the morning after the afternoon before, and Rachel Reeves has just finished her broadcast round, where she has faced tough questions and negative splashes in the papers. The Daily Mail brands Reeves ‘deluded’, while the Daily Telegraph warns of ‘five years of record taxes’. The Guardian splashes with ‘Reeves accused of balancing books at expense of the poor’, while the Financial Times says, ‘Tax rise fears cloud Reeves’s fiscal fix’. She is navigating two main issues: first, the additional welfare reforms have caused disquiet in the Labour Party, with a potential rebellion on the horizon; second, the conversation has already turned to whether she will have to return for further tax rises in the autumn. Meanwhile, her

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour’s popularity contest

A few months ago, over a plate of bone marrow, a Tory adviser was considering how best to kneecap Labour. With the government’s working majority at 168, opposition debates could only go so far. Viral attack videos were hard to come by and CCHQ was depleted. Then the adviser hit upon something: a league table of cabinet ministers ranked by the Labour membership. It was an idea that arose from bitter experience. The Conservative-Home website has for years been running a grassroots ranking, showing which ministers were favoured by party members. It has proved such an accurate tracker about who was in pole position for any tilt at a leadership

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Labour’s ‘Sabrina Carpenter’ Budget

18 min listen

This afternoon, Rachel Reeves made good on her promise to deliver only one fiscal set piece per calendar year by announcing what is widely being considered a Budget… this precedes a spending review in the summer and an actual Budget in the autumn. The headline is that the Chancellor had to find £15 billion in spending cuts to restore her headroom and keep within her own ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules. This comes after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) confirmed that the £9.9 billion margin she left herself in the autumn has disappeared. The OBR has also halved its growth projections – bleak news for the government. Among the announcements: further

Monday

James Heale

Can Britain dodge Trump’s tariffs?

14 min listen

Reports in the papers today say that the British government is considering scrapping its digital services tax – largely levied at American tech companies – in return for an exemption to Trump’s tariffs that come into effect on April 2. Would this be an effective – or desirable – move on the British part? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.

Sunday

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Reeves says living standards will increase

Rachel Reeves: ‘I’m confident we will see living standards increase’ A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that living standards in the UK are set to fall by 2030, news which increases pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves ahead of her Spring Statement next week. Appearing on Sky News this morning, Reeves rejected the JRF’s analysis, telling Trevor Phillips that there had been a ‘sustained increase’ in living standards since Labour came to power, and she expected that to continue. Reeves said that from April, people on the living wage would see a 6.7% increase in pay, and claimed that her government had brought ‘stability’ to the economy, although

Katy Balls Katy Balls

For Rachel Reeves the worst could be yet to come

Rachel Reeves has spent the morning touring the broadcast studios as she attempts to pitch roll for Wednesday’s Spring Statement. While this was never meant to be a big fiscal event, it has taken on a new significance as a result of the worsening public finances. The Chancellor is looking for billions in savings with the OBR expected to slash its growth forecast and for rising borrowing costs to have wiped out Reeves’s £10 billion of fiscal headroom. Speaking this morning, Reeves tried to put the unappetising options she faces down to a changing world as a result of global instability part related to Donald Trump and tariffs as well

Thursday

William Moore

Labour’s growing pains, survival of the hottest & murder most fascinating

43 min listen

This week: why is economic growth eluding Labour? ‘Growing pains’ declares The Spectator’s cover image this week, as our political editor Katy Balls, our new economics editor Michael Simmons, and George Osborne’s former chief of staff Rupert Harrison analyse the fiscal problems facing the Chancellor. ‘Dominic Cummings may have left Whitehall,’ write Katy and Michael, ‘but his spirit lives on.’ ‘We are all Dom now,’ according to one government figure. Keir Starmer’s chief aide Morgan McSweeney has never met Cummings, but the pair share a diagnosis of Britain’s failing economy. Identifying a problem is not, however, the same as solving it. As Rachel Reeves prepares her Spring Statement, ministers are

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The shape-shifting Labour party

It is difficult to gauge who is the more discombobulated by the Labour government’s recent Damascene conversion to a political viewpoint roughly approximating to common sense – the Labour left, Reform or the Tory right. It is equally difficult to believe that the current administration is the same one which took office on 4 July last year, so wildly different is its apparent ideological viewpoint. You will remember Keir Starmer’s first 100 days without much affection, I suspect. This was a government which seemed to delight in its staggering ineptitude, whether it be David Lammy and co conspiring with the Mauritians to reach a settlement on the Chagos Islands which

The Spectator

Kemi’s stance on net zero is courageous – and correct

Kemi Badenoch secured the Conservative leadership on the basis that she would confront her party and the country with uncomfortable truths. This week, in a speech to launch the Tories’ policy renewal programme, she effectively told Theresa May and Boris Johnson that they were naifs for committing to unachievable climate targets. The decarbonisation of our economy, she said, was a ruinously expensive folly. By stating baldly and unapologetically that it will be impossible for Britain to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 without huge economic pain she has broken a consensus and breached a taboo. It is difficult for opposition parties to attract attention for policy announcements so

Saturday

Michael Gove

Is Keir Starmer a Tory?

19 min listen

Slashing the winter fuel allowance, maintaining the two child benefit cap, cutting international aid, cutting the civil service, axing NHS bureaucracy, possibly slashing welfare expenditure… you’d be forgiven for thinking the Conservatives were in power. But no, these are all policies pursued by the current Labour government. So on today’s Saturday Shots Cindy Yu asks Michael Gove and James Heale, is Keir Starmer a Tory? While Michael admits to giving Starmer a ‘painful’ two cheers, he does say there is historic precedent for Labour governments enacting right-leaning measures: from Jim Callaghan’s migration policies to the economic ones of Ramsay MacDonald. How has Starmer got away with it? And what does

Friday

James Heale

The UK economy is shrinking – how much pressure is Rachel Reeves under?

14 min listen

New figures from the Office for National Statistics show the UK economy unexpectedly shrunk by 0.1% in January. This comes only a few weeks after the Chancellor’s pro-growth speech, and a fortnight ahead of her Spring Statement. Just how much pressure is Rachel Reeves under? And how likely is it that Labour will change their approach? Economics editor Michael Simmons and deputy political editor James Heale join Patrick Gibbons to discuss, as well as a look ahead to next week’s expected announcement on reducing the welfare bill. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Miatta Fahnbulleh Edition

37 min listen

Miatta Fahnbulleh was elected as the Labour MP for Peckham at the 2024 general election.  Born in Liberia, her family fled west Africa as the region descended into civil war, eventually settling in north London when she was just 7 years old. Trained as an economist, having studied at Oxford and the LSE, she went on to work in the civil service and at various think-tanks. After serving as the CEO for the New Economics Foundation, she became a senior economic adviser for Labour working with Ed Miliband during his time as leader of the Labour Party. Ed is now her boss again – at the department for energy.  On

Thursday

Charles Moore

Trump has breathed new life into Davos Man

So bad was the debut of this Labour government that many think it has already failed. But now, I suggest, there is at least a chance it will succeed. If it leads industrial recovery based on defence and security, tackles the flawed basis of large areas of welfare spending and sweeps away planning restrictions to build more, it will have confronted problems which the Tories evaded for years. Labour can do this, of course, only if it abjures the beliefs that Sir Keir Starmer has espoused throughout his political career, but that seems to be exactly what his managers, led by Morgan McSweeney, are now (rightly) forcing upon him. Rupert

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Starmer’s next target: his MPs

Labour MPs these days are experiencing whiplash. When in opposition, the party attacked the Tories’ proposed benefits cuts for ‘effectively turning on the poorest in our society’. Now, Keir Starmer plans to drive through £6 billion in welfare cuts of his own. Labour ministers previously spent much of their time scolding the government for showing insufficient respect towards civil servants. Now, Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has launched a crackdown on poor performers. Since the start of Starmer’s premiership, ministers have announced 27 new quangos – yet this week the Prime Minister scrapped one in a signal of intent, telling his cabinet they cannot do what the

Tuesday

James Heale

Starmer facing welfare rebellion

15 min listen

There is a row on the horizon over welfare cuts. Yesterday’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) was packed, with many lobby journalists expecting fireworks. The Prime Minister got a positive reaction for his message on Ukraine, with MPs impressed by his strong response since Trump took office, but there was some scepticism in the room about his plan to make £6 billion in welfare cuts. This is a difficult topic that cuts to the heart of the Labour Party and its position as the party of welfare – about 80 Labour MPs are said to oppose the government’s proposals. Can Keir Starmer weather the storm? James Heale speaks

Thursday

Katy Balls

Labour’s ‘two tier policing’ headache

12 min listen

Labour have found themselves facing accusations of enabling ‘two tier policing’ following new guidelines from the Sentencing Council. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has been quick to criticise the government, but Labour’s Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has also urged the council reconsider their recommendations.  Yvette Cooper’s former adviser Danny Shaw joins Katy Balls and James Heale to discuss the row. While Danny points out that the issue is more nuanced than the row makes out, to the public the very perception of ‘two tier policing’ will damage the government – and at a time when confidence in the justice system is at an all-time low. How will they fix the