James Kirkup is a partner at Apella Advisors and a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.
I’m almost starting to admire David Cameron. Almost. There is something that borders on the impressive about the former prime minister’s dedication to the destruction of his own reputation. He may have been a casually idle premier, but he’s really rolled up his sleeves and got stuck into the job of trashing his own name.
Queen’s Speech day is one of the set-pieces when the government gets to decide that morning’s headlines. Barring disaster, the stuff you brief to the media the day before the speech will be what leads that morning’s bulletins, and has the best chance of being the thing that punters remember about the speech – if
Social class is dead. Education is the political dividing line that matters. This has been apparent since (at least) the 2016 EU referendum, although it has not been recognised by enough people who do and write about politics. The results of this week’s elections should drive the point home. According to early analysis of polling
Ah, Hartlepool. The by-election there brings back memories: I am old enough to have reported on the last one, back in 2004, when Peter Mandelson went off to Brussels and left behind what was then a fairly safe Labour seat. My slightly faded memory of that 2004 vote informs my view of what is apparently
I am not a football fan. Reactions to plans for a European super-league remind me why. According to the BBC ‘critics say the move is being driven purely by money.’ Whereas in the prelapsarian days of, say, last week, professional football was all about craft and community? Free marketeers should be relaxed about this. You
13 min listen
The Treasury has released text messages that the Chancellor sent to David Cameron, in response to the latter’s repeated lobbying. While Labour is trying to land a blow on Rishi Sunak as a result of this, can they succeed? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and James Kirkup, Spectator contributor and Director of the Social
David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, has been doing his LBC radio phone-in show. If you believe LBC, he has ‘schooled’ a ‘caller’ who told him he is not English. If you listen to the exchanges in question, you’ll realise he did something much more impressive, and important than that. The clip, which is all
Say what you like about David Cameron, the man never stops trying to exceed expectations. I once thought that he’d never do anything sadder than giving his wife’s stylist an honour then running away from parliament like a child. Then he proved me wrong by publishing his memoirs. And now, demonstrating his unstinting commitment to
I am 45. That means I’m old enough to have been writing about politics at a time when political attacks on ‘NHS managers’ were a routine part of political debate and media coverage, standing alongside ‘yobs’ and ‘asylum-seekers’ as the nation’s villains. It’s also old enough to get me a Covid-19 vaccine, injected into my
30 min listen
The Lobby refers to the group of political journalists with access to the Palace of Westminster. On this episode, three former Lobby hacks – Fraser Nelson, James Kirkup (of the Social Mobility Foundation) and Francis Elliott (retiring political editor of the Times) – discuss their rehabilitation from the job, the old days of boozing lunches
At the time of writing, we don’t know what happened to Sarah Everard. However this story ends, it should be an important national moment of reflection, because the way it has made a lot of people feel deserves serious attention. When I say ‘people’, I largely mean ‘women’. And that reflection should come from men.
This is a story about politics and influence and openness. It’s also about the drive for trans rights and some of the people involved in that push, but in a way, that’s secondary. Because the issues involved here and the questions raised are bigger even than sex, gender and the rest. This is, in the
It was easy to miss because even at the best of times the House of Lords doesn’t grab public attention. But this week, something remarkable happened in parliament. In narrow legislative terms, peers have forced the government to accept amendments to the Ministerial and Other Maternity Allowances Bill. The Bill will make it possible for
We hear a lot these days about the need for responsible discourse around the pandemic. People who put into the public domain arguments and claims that are not fully supported by evidence and which can have harmful consequences are being called to account for their actions. Anyone with a public profile should always be willing
The Care Quality Commission has released its reports on the gender identity services offered by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. They make for grim reading. The CQC describes an NHS facility that — until last month — put vulnerable children on a pathway to the use of untested medicines and life-changing interventions, sometimes
The pandemic has not been kind on either libertarians or people in poverty. The libertarian argument that the state should generally leave people alone to make their own choices has not often succeeded as government, largely backed by the electorate, has chosen to respond to a collective risk with collective action, even if some of
England’s third national lockdown is an avalanche of news, affecting just about every bit of our lives. It’s a lot for anyone to grasp, but that’s still not an excuse for the fact that, once again, young people studying for technical qualifications such as BTECs have been ignored and let down. According to the Association
This is an article about some difficult, complex subjects: suicide, mental health, support for transgender children. It’s also about something very simple: a horrible failure of journalism by the BBC. I’ll come to the BBC in due course, but given that this is about the potential for self-harm among young people, I think it’s important
London will enter Tier 3 Covid restrictions on Wednesday, because people are mixing too freely and thus spreading a deadly virus. Next week, those restrictions will vanish for five days, allowing people to mix more freely, thus spreading a deadly virus. The paragraph above captures just how frankly stupid the Christmas Covid amnesty policy is.
It is reported today that a company called Britishvolt will build a huge ‘gigaplant’ making electric car batteries in Blyth in Northumberland. There are huge numbers attached to this: £2.6 billion of investment, 3,000 people directly employed and another 5,000 jobs promised in the supply chain for the factory. I really hope that this stuff
