James Heale is The Spectator’s political correspondent.
It seems that one of the great posts in British politics has been filled at last. The title of ‘Minister for Sticky Wickets’ was held by the likes of David Gauke and Michael Ellis during the Tory years. Now, with Keir Starmer on the back foot over freebies, it is Ellie Reeves filling that role.
13 min listen
This morning is the government’s big investment summit. They pledged to have the summit within their first 100 days in an attempt to hit the ground running and show the UK as a sensible place to do business. The timing – two weeks before the budget – is interesting, and so is the U-turn from
19 min listen
It’s another busy few days for the Prime Minister as he chairs the inaugural meeting of the Council of Nations and Regions today, marks 100 days in office, and hosts an investment summit on Monday. With the absence of Sue Gray looming large, James Heale unpicks the politics behind these milestones with Katy Balls and
16 min listen
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published its yearly Green Budget, weeks ahead of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first fiscal event. It’s grim reading, for both the government and the public. For Labour to make good on its promise to avoid ‘austerity’, taxes are going to need to go up significantly: by £25 billion, the IFS’s reports,
The Queen is dead: long live the King. This week brought an end to Downing Street’s unhappy experiment in dyarchy. Out goes Sue Gray, banished to the regions. In her place stands the Irishman who won the No. 10 power struggle: Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s first chief of staff in opposition, is back on top.
12 min listen
The Conservative party has narrowed down the leadership candidates to the final three, with James Cleverly taking a surprise lead over both of his more right wing rivals. With Cleverly all but confirmed to get into the members’ round, which of Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick will join him? Cindy Yu talks to James Heale
It’s official: the Tories believe in JC. Following last week’s party conference in Birmingham, James Cleverly has this afternoon topped the penultimate ballot of Tory MPs. The Shadow Home Secretary stormed into the lead with 39 MPs, overtaking both Robert Jenrick on 31 and Kemi Badenoch on 30 to officially confirm his status as the
Tory MPs are today preparing to cast their votes in the next round of the party’s leadership contest. The final four will become three, ahead of another ballot tomorrow afternoon to produce the pair who will go to the membership. It is now four weeks since Mel Stride was knocked out and the big shift
2 min listen
Who’s in charge in Downing Street? Until recently, the answer to that question would tend to reveal whether you were a Sue Gray or Morgan McSweeney supporter. Keir Starmer’s two most senior aides were viewed to be in a power struggle over the direction of the government. But with Gray’s resignation this weekend, it is McSweeney who is running
37 min listen
In this special Saturday shots we hear from a panel discussion on Brexit, originally recorded at Conservative Party conference. Four years on there are successes to point to, namely eliminating the cost of membership, new trade deals and the speed of the vaccine rollout. Yet the prevailing sense is that the full potential of Brexit
17 min listen
What Keir Starmer wants to be talking about today is his landmark £22 billion investment into carbon capture. Flanked by Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves, his speech was an unusually personal one where he spoke about the impacts of deindustrialisation. But how new is this policy? And what does this huge investment mean for the
The Prime Minister is in Liverpool today, outlining plans for green investment. Nearly £22billion is pledged for projects to capture and store carbon emissions from energy, industry and hydrogen production. This includes funding for two ‘carbon capture clusters’ on Merseyside and Teesside over the next 25 years. Ministers hope this will create new jobs, attract
With less than a week to go until MPs vote in the Tory leadership race, a row has blown up over an unlikely cause. A quarrel in a far away country is causing a rupture between the two men whom most colleagues think could be next to go out: Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly. Both
The United Kingdom will shortly be ceding sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Under the terms of a new treaty, there will be a 99-year-lease for Diego Garcia, the tropical atoll used by the US government as a military base. It follows two years of negotiation over the strategically important cluster of islands in
17 min listen
The final day of the party conference saw all four candidates take to the stage in a bid to have a David Cameron moment. Back in 2005, Cameron managed to gain momentum at the party conference with an assured speech (no notes) and get one over on his main rival – the then frontrunner –
The Tory front runner was third up in Birmingham. Throughout this race, Robert Jenrick has sought to position himself as someone with the polish of David Cameron and the politics of Nigel Farage. His speech today was very much in that vein: a staunchly right-wing message centred around delivering a ‘new Conservative party’. Like Cameron
It is the final day of Tory conference and the event for which we have all been waiting: the four leadership candidates are each delivering their 20-minute speeches, setting out their vision for the country. Tom Tugendhat had the mixed blessing of going first. The benefit of this was that it allowed him to deliver
It has been a busy Conservative conference for Kemi Badenoch, whose comments on Sunday about maternity pay have dominated the last few days. Each of the other candidates in the Tory leadership race is wary of saying anything that might remotely damage their chances next week. But Badenoch remains undaunted by criticism, as she showed
There are noticeably fewer people here at Tory conference in Birmingham this week. But one former MP can still reliably pack in the punters. Despite losing her seat in July, the ‘Liz Truss show’ shows no sign of any drop in enthusiasm, with some 300 conference attendees packing out a lecture theatre for a blast
It was a curious farewell for Rishi Sunak this afternoon. The Tory leader has just finished his final speech to the party faithful before handing over the reins in five weeks time. Keen not to overshadow his four would-be successors, Sunak opted not to give the traditional Wednesday farewell speech to a seated audience of
