Conservative party

Sunday

James Heale

James Heale, Svitlana Morenets, Philip Hensher, Francis Beckett and Rupert Christiansen

38 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale analyses the state of the Conservative leadership race (1:09); Svitlana Morenets reports from the site of the Kyiv children’s hospital bombed this week (5:56); Philip Hensher examines the ‘Cool Queer Life’ of Thom Gunn (12:13); Francis Beckett reviews ‘The Assault on the State’ arguing in favour of bureaucracy (21:20); and, Rupert Christiansen reveals why he has fallen out of love with Wagner (27:05).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.  

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Coffee House Shots live: election aftermath

59 min listen

Join Fraser Nelson, Katy Balls and Kate Andrews, along with special guest Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, for a live edition of Coffee House Shots recorded earlier this week. A week on from Sir Jacob losing his seat, he declares ‘I can speak freely now’. So, why does he think the Conservatives lost the election? The team also answer a range of audience questions, including: how will the Conservatives win voters back? Is Nigel Farage here to stay? And what’s their verdict on Labour’s first week? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy. 

Saturday

Katy Balls

Welcome to Whitehall Watch

14 min listen

What happens to staff in Whitehall when a government changes? In this Saturday edition of the podcast, Katy Balls is joined by Henry Newman, former adviser to Michael Gove. He now runs Whitehall Watch, a project exploring who’s up, who’s out, who’s in and what’s going down across Whitehall, the corridors of power and the Civil Service. 

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Can Labour solve our prisons crisis?

16 min listen

Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has acknowledged that ‘our prisons are on the point of collapse’. She has announced that, from September, most prisoners serving sentences of less than four years will be released 40 per cent of the way through their sentences instead of the halfway point, which is currently the case. The policy will ease pressure on prisons, but the question remains; could this backfire? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and Professor Ian Acheson, former prison governor and former Director of Community Safety at the Home Office. You can listen to Shabana Mahmood on Women With Balls here.

Thursday

James Heale

Has Nato been a success for Starmer?

18 min listen

Keir Starmer is on his first big diplomatic trip to Washington, attending the Nato summit. He has called on member countries to increase defence spending, had a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, and enjoyed a dinner with Joe Biden – all in his first week of the job. How is the trip going, are there any tensions arising, and has it been a success for the new PM?  Oscar Edmondson discusses with James Heale and Sophia Gaston, head of foreign policy at Policy Exchange. 

The Spectator

Letters: what Biden and Ronaldo have in common

True conservatism Sir: Douglas Murray claims that the Conservative party ‘will need to have some people who are actually right-wing’ (‘The Tories only have themselves to blame’, 6 July). Why? Its name isn’t ‘the right-wing party’. It has no foundational obligation to be right-wing for the sake of it. Rather its mission is to be conservative, and the people who now identify as ‘right-wing’ seem to have no interest in conserving anything, whether it’s our countryside, rivers, values, place on the international stage, parliamentary system, cultural institutions, national life expectancy, economic stability – or anything other than their own positions and status, which many have lost regardless. I’m sure many

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Why was Jeremy Hunt SHOUTING AT ME?

Robert Jenrick, once immigration minister and still, just, MP for Newark, said on Sunday that the Tories lost not because ‘they had this slogan or that slogan… but because they failed to deliver’. Yes, absolutely, they failed to deliver, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that the slogans were diabolical too. In fact it was because of how awful the Tory slogans were, and the tenor of their whole social media campaign, that I couldn’t in the end bring myself to vote Conservative, though I have no other natural political home. Messages from Conservative HQ, sent as if from different senior Tories, all had the same crazed voice When

James Heale James Heale

Who will lead the Tories next?

Rishi Sunak performed a mea culpa when his shadow cabinet convened on Monday, taking full responsibility for the election loss. There were, he said, lots of lessons to be learned. He tried rallying his team, reminding them it was time to knuckle down and prepare for the King’s Speech. When those around the table began agreeing, with some saluting Sunak’s performance during the campaign, Kemi Badenoch decided she couldn’t take it any longer. Isn’t it necessary, she asked, to say that the snap election had been a calamity, the Tory campaign had been even worse – and that it was about time to examine why? She argued that Sunak went

Saturday

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Angus Colwell, Matthew Parris, Flora Watkins and Rory Sutherland

30 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: after President Biden’s debate disaster, Freddy Gray profiles the one woman who could persuade him to step down, his wife Jill (1:05); Angus Colwell reports from Israel, where escalation of war seems a very real possibility (9:02); Matthew Parris attempts to reappraise the past 14 years of Conservative government (14:16); Flora Watkins reveals the reasons why canned gin and tonics are so popular (21:24); and, Rory Sutherland asks who could possibly make a better Bond villain than Elon Musk? (25:00).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.  

John Oxley

What did the Tories do with power?

Fourteen years of Tory-led government is over. The second-longest period of dominance by one party since the war is done. For the left, that means relief and joy. For many on the right, there is a sense of frustration, a sense of waste: power has been squandered and little about the country feels more conservative, or even more successful than it did a decade ago. Much of it, bluntly, feels worse. Much of their legacy will be swept away by the stroke of a statutory instrument or a line in the next budget In some ways, this analysis is unfair. There have been some successes in the last 14 years of

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Labour’s Potemkin landslide

Something pretty big is missing from Labour’s historic landslide: the voters. Keir Starmer has won 63 per cent of the seats on just 33.8 per cent of the votes, the smallest vote share of any modern PM. Lower than any of the (many) pollsters predicted. So Labour in 2024 managed just 1.6 percentage points higher than the Jeremy Corbyn calamity in 2019 – and less than Corbyn managed in 2017. ‘But for the rise of the Labour party in Scotland,’ says Professor John Curtice, ‘we would be reporting that basically Labour’s vote has not changed from what it was in 2019.’ And that’s on the second-lowest turnout in democratic history. So

Thursday

Katy Balls

Exit poll predicts Labour landslide

12 min listen

The polls have closed and the exit poll is in. The BBC exit poll projects that Labour will win a landslide of 410 MPs and the Conservatives will be left with 131 seats. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats will win 61 seats, the SNP ten seats and Reform 13 seats. This would mean a Labour majority of 170 – and would be the Tories’ worst ever result. Megan McElroy speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. 

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The reckoning: it’s payback time for voters

39 min listen

This week: the reckoning. Our cover piece brings together the political turmoil facing the West this week: Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron, and Joe Biden all face tough tests with their voters. But what’s driving this instability? The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews argues it is less to do with left and right, and more a problem of incumbency, but how did this situation arise? Kate joined the podcast to discuss her argument, alongside former Cambridge Professor, John Keiger, who writes in the magazine about the consequences that France’s election could have on geopolitics (2:32).  Next: what role does faith play in politics? Senior editor at the religious journal First Things Dan Hitchens explores

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

History will judge Rishi Sunak kindly

Memorably sweeping statements tripping easily from the tongue have a habit of worming their way into assumptions we make and ending up as the judgment of history. The word ‘appeasement’ rather than the decisions Neville Chamberlain actually took have consigned the name of a defensible statesman to something approaching a term of abuse. ‘Milk snatcher’ did Margaret Thatcher immense damage. The ‘winter of discontent’ has become too easy a shorthand for the coinciding of deep-seated problems which Thatcher herself approached with great caution. I believe Sunak did a sterling job getting grown-up government back on its feet after Johnson and Truss ‘Dementia tax’ was an expression critically important in the

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Will there be an election upset on Thursday?

12 min listen

Tomorrow, voters will head to the polling booth to cast their vote in the 2024 general election. Will there be any surprises in store? So far, there has been little movement when it comes to the gap in vote share between Labour and the Tories. However, there’s still plenty of uncertainty across the parties as to what the exit poll will say at 10 p.m. on Thursday night. James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and James Kanagasooriam, chief research officer at Focaldata.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Has Reform peaked too soon?

14 min listen

The election campaign was going well for Nigel Farage’s Reform… until it wasn’t. A series of controversies have been difficult for the party to shake off. Will the distractions cost them votes and MPs? How will it affect their momentum – and who’s to blame? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Heale.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Coffee House Shots live: election special

58 min listen

Join Fraser Nelson, Katy Balls and Kate Andrews for this special edition of Coffee House Shots, recorded live ahead of the general election. As election day draws closer, Fraser talks through some myth-busting statistics and the team answer questions from the audience. Could this election increase support for proportional representation? What policy does the panel think has been the most interesting? And was there ever a probable path to victory for Rishi Sunak? Produced by Natasha Feroze and Patrick Gibbons. Check out The Spectator’s data hub for more graphs and statistics, updated daily. 

Saturday

Katy Balls

Labour’s women problem

14 min listen

The gender debate has become increasingly difficult for the Labour Party as the election campaign has rumbled on. JK Rowling has now agreed to meet with Labour to discuss gender transition policy, after writing in The Times that she’d struggle to vote for the party after feeling dismissed by them. After the election, will gender become an increasingly difficult issue for Keir Starmer? Megan McElroy speaks to Katy Balls and Sonia Sodha, chief leader writer and columnist at the Observer 

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Will Biden survive his debate implosion?

13 min listen

The Democrats wanted and needed a compelling performance from Joe Biden last night: a rebuttal to the concerns about his age and ability. Instead, his performance was disastrous. Is there any way he can survive this performance? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and Sarah Elliott, director of the UK-US special relationship unit at the Legatum Institute. 

Thursday

Katy Balls

Should we ban polls?

13 min listen

Some countries, like Canada and France, have bans on polling close to the election. Many figures on both sides of the campaign have been frustrated at how the media is consuming polling. What is a polling blackout, and why do some people want one? Megan McElroy speaks to Katy Balls and Chris Hopkins, polling expert and political research director at Savanta. Elsewhere, David Tennant has taken aim at Kemi Badenoch. She has, to little surprise, responded. With one week to go, does the electorate have any appetite for a culture war?