Katy Balls is The Spectator’s political editor.
This week tens of millions of workers will receive their pay slips for the month of January and with them a tax cut. National Insurance is going down, so take-home pay is rising. Polls show that voters think Labour is more likely to cut tax than the Tories, a surprise weapon for Starmer The NI
12 min listen
Tory MP Simon Clarke called for Rishi Sunak to resign last night. In a piece in the Telegraph, he wrote that the Prime Minister was ‘uninspiring’ and ‘does not get what Britain needs.’ Will other Conservative MPs also demand Sunak resign, or will they unify around their leader? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and James
Here we go. Ever since 11 Tory MPs voted against the Safety of Rwanda Bill last week, talk has resurfaced that the party has a death wish. The problem is that different MPs define that as different things. While a mass of Conservative MPs say the rebellion over Sunak’s plan to stop the boats amounts
12 min listen
The UK launched a new set of strikes on eight Houthi targets last night. Typoon jets dropped £30,000 Paveway bombs on an underground storage site and surveillance and missile capabilities controlled by the Yemeni rebel group. But are the strikes working? The Houthis have continued to attack ships in the Red Sea, and a row
Just last week Rishi Sunak held a special Downing Street press conference to warn peers not to ignore ‘the will of the people’ and block his Rwanda plan. Fast forward a few days and Sunak’s warning appears to have fallen on deaf ears, with the Prime Minister suffering his first Lords defeat on the topic
14 min listen
Jeremy Hunt said he would look to cut taxes in the March budget. In the Mail on Sunday, he said he would look to emulate the late Nigel Lawson, who as Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor slashed rates. But Hunt has been promising tax cuts, and hardly delivering, for a while. Will this time be any different?
13 min listen
As problems in the Middle East and war on the continent dominate the headlines, David Cameron has been front and centre in his new role as foreign secretary. Is his experience coming in handy? Is he Rishi’s ‘prime minister abroad’? Katy Balls speaks to Craig Oliver, director of communications at No. 10 during the Cameron
28 min listen
Theo Clarke is Conservative MP for Stafford. She is the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Kenya and sits on the International Development Select Committee. Before being elected she set up and sold her business and then went on to be Chief Executive of an international development charity backed by Bill Gates. Theo got involved in
12 min listen
After much back and forth, the Rwanda Bill passed last night with only 11 votes against while other critics, such as Lee Anderson who resigned his party role, abstained. Rishi Sunak can celebrate a small victory as it appears that the Brexit ‘Spartans’ of yesteryear are something of a spent force today. Cindy Yu talks
Who is to blame if no flights with asylum seekers leave the UK for Rwanda ahead of the election? In a Downing Street press conference this morning, Rishi Sunak tried to suggest the answer would be the House of Lords or Labour rather than his government. In a bid to capitalise on the ‘Safety of
An election year, a tired government accused of being in power too long, and a bickering party. This was the backdrop to the coup against Gordon Brown in 2010 when Geoff Hoon – the defence secretary under Tony Blair – and his fellow ex-minister Patricia Hewitt called for a secret ballot. The coup was a
10 min listen
Last night Rishi Sunak faced the largest rebellion of his premiership over amendments to the Rwanda bill. There were also three resignations – deputy chairs Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith as well as PPS to Kemi Badenoch, Jane Stevenson. How much damage could do to his already divided party? Today, MPs will debate for a
The fallout from the return of the Safety of Rwanda Bill has begun – before a single vote has been cast. Lee Anderson has handed in his resignation as deputy chairman of the Conservative party, alongside his fellow deputy Brendan Clarke-Smith. The two red wall MPs, who won their seats in the 2019 election, had
11 min listen
With the Tories reeling from yesterday’s poll in the Telegraph, it is interesting that the party’s official election strategist Isaac Levido was already scheduled to address Tory MPs last night. Levido ran the 2019 election campaign and holds clout with Conservative MPs. What did he have to say? Is the Tory strategy evolving? Also on the
Tory MPs start the week fretting about their seats after the Telegraph published an MRP poll suggesting Keir Starmer would win a majority of 120 if an election were held tomorrow. So, it was a case of interesting timing that the party’s official election strategist Isaac Levido was already scheduled to address Tory MPs on
15 min listen
Polling published in the Telegraph has ruffled more than a few feathers in Westminster today. The YouGov survey shows that the Tories are on course to lose half of their MPs – including eleven members of the cabinet – at the next election. Are the Tories heading for another 1997 moment? What should we read into the
It’s a crunch week for Rishi Sunak as MPs prepare to cast their verdict on his Safety of Rwanda bill. The bill, which aims to get the government’s ‘stop the boats’ policy off the ground by unilaterally declaring Rwanda a safe country, returns to the Commons on Tuesday for its committee stage. There could then
14 min listen
New polling from JL Partners shows how Rishi Sunak has changed, in the eyes of the public. They found that while Sunak was initially seen as a direct ‘breath of fresh air’, he is now frequently described as ‘out of touch’, ‘spineless’ and ‘false’. To discuss what went wrong for the PM, James Heale and
15 min listen
Last night the US and the UK launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen whose continued attacks are disrupting trade in the Red Sea. The decision to sanction military action has been broadly welcomed in Westminster, but some have urged the PM to hold a retrospective vote on airstrikes amid fears that the UK risks
11 min listen
James Heale speaks to Kate Andrews and Katy Balls about Rishi Sunak’s new strategy to focus more on the economy as the election year kicks off. Can Rishi Sunak convince the public that he is the best man for the job? And how much control does the government really have when it comes tackling the economy?
