Politics Archives

Monday

17 Mar 2025

The OECD’s growth downgrade is yet another headache for Reeves

In more bad news for Rachel Reeves as the Chancellor prepares for next week’s Spring Statement, the OECD has downgraded Britain’s growth prospects. The organisation forecast the UK’s economy to grow 1.4 per cent this year and then just 1.2 per cent next year – compared with the 1.7 per cent and 1. 3 per cent that they’d previously estimated. In fairness, the whole world is seeing slower growth, according to the OECD’s estimates. America’s growth forecasts were also downgraded to 2.2 per cent this year, followed by 1.6 per cent in 2026 compared with the 2.4 per cent and 3.1 per cent that had originally been forecast. The report’s

Steerpike

Did Prince Harry lie on his immigration files?

Once again, the spotlight is back on the monarch of Montecito. A US judge has now ruled that Prince Harry’s visa documents must be made public by Tuesday – in a bid to find out whether the Duke of Sussex lied on his immigration files about drug use. In the end, truth will out… The release of the documents will help shed light on whether the Prince misled authorities over historic drug use. It is thought that the visa paperwork may include forms that would show whether the California-based monarch ticked ‘no’ when asked if he used illegal drugs – after both his own memoir, Spare, and his Netflix series,

James Snell

Why US airstrikes on the Houthis will fail

The United States has started what might well prove to be a long – and probably doomed – campaign of air strikes against Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, in Yemen. Since October 2023, the Houthis have been very successfully disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, firing missiles and launching drones at cargo ships, oil tankers, passenger vessels: hitting a few, sinking fewer, and inconveniencing millions. While few ships have been hit, fewer sunk, and even fewer people killed by this campaign, the numbers speak for themselves. Fewer and fewer ships are transiting the region, including using the Suez Canal to cut journey times between Asia and Europe. World

Sam McPhail

The redemption of Joelinton

Five years ago, the Brazilian midfielder Joelinton was one of the Premier League’s worst players. But yesterday he was Newcastle’s best in their 2-1 win over Liverpool in the League Cup final. Spurred on by the clamour of the final, his gladiatorial style overpowered Liverpool’s meek midfield. He celebrated every tackle like a goal, buoying teammates and fans alike. After a third crucial tackle, the commentators purred in unison: ‘That’s his hat-trick.’ Now he’s been called up to the Brazilian national side. His redemption is without end. Perhaps the circumstances of Joelinton’s arrival at Newcastle in the summer of 2019 were unfair. Manager Steve Bruce originally bought the Brazilian as

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Britain is facing a reckoning on anti-Semitism

It is difficult to fathom how an incident as horrifying as the kidnapping of Israeli musician Itay Kashti by three men in Wales barely registered as a blip on the national news agenda. In any just world, this crime – motivated by anti-Semitic hatred, religious fanaticism, and a chilling sense of political grievance – should have dominated headlines. It should have sparked national debate, serious introspection, and urgent discussions about the growing wave of anti-Semitism sweeping the UK and beyond. And yet, aside from a handful of reports, silence reigned. Kashti was lured to a remote cottage in Llanybydder, Wales, on 26 August 2024, under the false pretence of a

Katy Balls

Can Keir Starmer stem the welfare rebellion?

Keir Starmer is gearing up for a showdown with his party as the Prime Minister prepares to unveil his welfare reforms. On Tuesday, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall will announce the details of the government’s plan to shake up the benefits system in a bid to reduce the ballooning welfare bill and get more people back into work. The measures mooted have already proved controversial – there was talk of an announcement last week, for example, only for it to be delayed as final details were thrashed out. The measures Kendall is expected to include in what is being touted as £5 billion in savings involve tightening the eligibility

Eliot Wilson

The problem with Starmer’s peacekeeping plan for Ukraine

Sir Keir Starmer has been tireless in his diplomatic efforts to construct a ‘coalition of the willing’ and send a peacekeeping force to Ukraine. At the weekend, he hosted a conference call with 29 other world leaders, and on Thursday the defence secretary, John Healey, will convene a meeting of military chiefs at the MoD’s Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood ‘to put strong and robust plans in place to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security’. The Prime Minister’s commitment is firm and public. Along with likely partners France, Turkey, Canada and Australia, the United Kingdom is ready to contribute to a military force of up

Henry Donovan

How Friedrich Merz betrayed his voters

German politics has delivered yet another masterclass in how to betray your voters while maintaining a straight face. This time it is Friedrich Merz, the supposedly steel-spined conservative who spent years critiquing Angela Merkel’s drift leftward, who has now managed to outdo even his predecessor’s talent for abandonment of what he promised. Merz’s capitulation on Germany’s constitutional debt brake – a cornerstone of his campaign – took precisely fourteen days. Not even Britain’s most notorious policy flip-floppers could match such efficiency. The CDU leader who thundered about fiscal discipline on the campaign trail has now, with indecent haste, embraced the Social Democrats’ spend-now-worry-later philosophy, leaving Germany’s vaunted Swabian housewife –

Katharine Birbalsingh

In defence of Ofsted’s Hamid Patel

We stand at a critical juncture. Over the past decade, England has ascended the global education rankings with remarkable momentum. In mathematics, we have surged from 21st to 7th in the Pisa rankings. Our performance in reading on the Pirls scale now positions us as a leader in the Western world. Just last week, a delegation of 24 Flemish ministers and journalists visited Michaela Community School, where I am headteacher, and other high-performing schools, eager to glean insights from England’s educational success. Yet, paradoxically, our own Education Secretary remains indifferent to these achievements. Bridget Phillipson did not set foot last year in any of the country’s top 87 Progress 8

Sunday

16 Mar 2025

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Wes Streeting says the NHS is ‘addicted to overspending’

This week, Keir Starmer and Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced their plan to abolish NHS England, which Starmer has said will ‘cut bureaucracy’ and bring management of the NHS ‘back into democratic control’. Today on Sky News, Streeting told Trevor Phillips that the size of NHS England had doubled since 2010, when the NHS had ‘the highest patient satisfaction ever’. Streeting claimed that his restructuring would save hundreds of millions of pounds, and create a ‘smaller, leaner, more efficient head office’. Labour will also make big job culls elsewhere in the NHS, and Phillips asked Streeting whether it was right that the NHS’s 42 integrated care boards were being asked

Ross Clark

Is Rachel Reeves tough enough to cut disability benefits?

There are, as Rachel Reeves keeps telling us, some tough choices to be made. Whether she is personally tough enough to make them is another matter. It seems as if the government is already retreating on proposed plans to freeze Personal Independence Payments (PIP) in the Spring statement in ten days’ time. A putative backbench rebellion has grown in size to a level at which even a government with a majority of 160 cannot be sure of success. There were also rumoured threats of ministerial resignations. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Many Labour MPs have it in their heads that they were elected to protect the poor and

Matthew Lynn

It’s been a poor five years from Andrew Bailey

The pound has not collapsed. You can still trade shares, bonds and currencies in the City of London. And inflation, while still high, at least doesn’t come with ‘hyper’ as a prefix, at least not yet. If the Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey wants to celebrate today’s fifth anniversary of taking charge of the UK’s central bank he can at least reflect on a few modest achievements. The trouble is, they are very limited. In reality, Bailey has proved a poor if not catastrophic Governor – and everyone in the City knows it. When Bailey took over, he was the antithesis of his predecessor. The globe-trotting Mark

James Heale

Can Dale Vince make Labour go even greener?

Dale Vince has donated millions of pounds to Labour, but the green energy tycoon is only just getting started in politics. Having helped remove the Tories from power last summer, Vince is turning his attention from party donations to offering ministers a ready-made policy platform instead. The 63-year-old wants to champion an eco-agenda for Keir Starmer’s government via his Green Britain Foundation. The six-man outfit works to apply ‘green principles to transport, food, sport, telecoms, jewellery’ – and now the world of Whitehall too. When we speak over Zoom, Vince is critical of Labour’s decision to press on with both carbon capture and the Sizewell C reactor. The former, he argues, will not work at scale, while the new nuclear

Nicholas Farrell

What The Leopard is really about

Written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa at the end of his life in the late 1950s, it is a novel about the collapse – one century beforehand as a result of the reunification of Italy – of the Sicilian aristocracy of which his family was a part, and its replacement with what was called democracy. It also explains, oddly perhaps, the rise of the Sicilian Mafia without once even mentioning the word ‘Mafia’. Il Gattopardo – actually the word means ‘serval’, not ‘leopard’ – so named after the small wild cat on the family’s coat of arms – was the only book Tomasi, Prince of Salina, ever wrote. He failed to find a publisher while he

Saturday

15 Mar 2025

Steerpike

Did Blair persuade Carney to run for PM?

To Canada, where Mark Carney is settling into his first week in the top job. The former Bank of England governor won a landslide victory in Sunday’s election and has been quick to turn his attention to the growing animosity between his nation and its neighbour over Donald Trump’s tariffs. But what prompted the new Liberal party leader to go for the gig in the first place? The answer, it transpires, lies with one Tony Blair. According to Monday’s episode of the News Agents podcast, it was the New Labour stalwart who inspired Carney to run – after a luxury dinner and jaunt around West London. Co-host Emily Maitlis insisted

James Heale

Starmer insists ceasefire coalition has momentum

Following Thursday’s big speech on public sector reform, Sir Keir Starmer has since turned his attention back to foreign affairs. This morning the Prime Minister hosted a conference call with European and Commonwealth counterparts to discuss support for Ukraine. The ‘coalition of the willing’ met to discuss their response to Vladimir Putin’s contemptuous dismissal of their efforts on Thursday night. With the Russian President seemingly reluctant to entertain an imminent ceasefire, today’s ‘virtual summit’ was about maintaining a united front for the pre-negotiations. In his remarks, Starmer told coalition leaders that ‘what this week has shown’ is that Ukraine is ‘the party of peace’ as President Zelenskyy is the one

Steerpike

Reeves reignites freebies row over Sabrina Carpenter show

It’s shaping up to be a difficult year for Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is struggling to get many within her own party – and Cabinet – onside with proposed spending cuts. But fear not, Reeves has managed to find some downtime amid the drama. It transpires that she nabbed free tickets to US singer Sabrina Carpenter’s recent London show, with the Busy Woman letting her hair down at the weekend. Alright for some! As revealed by the i paper, the Chancellor rocked up at the sold-out show last weekend with free tickets – after other attendees had paid up to £900 to attend the Espresso singer’s gig. Reeves is not thought to have broken any

Nigel Jones

Reform are setting Labour’s agenda

No two politicians could be less alike than Sir Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage. But it looks as though the Prime Minister is transitioning into the Reform party’s rumbustuous leader – or at least stealing his velvet collared clothes. Consider the evidence. Over the past few days and weeks, Labour has adopted a raft of the policies advocated by the right-wing insurgents. These include: Labour’s dramatic rightward swerve in direction – doubtless prompted by Starmer’s policy guru Morgan McSweeney – is so radical that around half the cabinet’s ministers are reported to have expressed dismay and fears at their last meeting that the coming spending cuts will hit their departments.

Khadija Khan

Ramadan can be a time of suffering for those who dare break the rules

Ramadan, which this year runs until the end of March, is viewed by Muslims as a time of compassion and generosity. But for others – especially those who flout fasting rules in Muslim-majority countries – it can be a period of suffering and persecution. Liberal Muslims and those from religious minorities can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ‘holy month’. They face harsh punishments, exclusion, and seclusion for offending religious sensibilities. Liberal Muslims can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ”holy month’ Several young men were arrested in Kano, northern Nigeria, earlier this month for failing to observe the Ramadan fast. Those selling

Jake Wallis Simons

‘Trump’s America has made a suicidal choice’: An interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy is running on fumes. Plus ça change. “I slept as always last night, a few hours, with chemistry compelling me to sleep,” the Parisian public intellectual tells me when we speak on the phone. “I miss the process of sleep, the process of getting awake, all parts of the ceremony I miss. But insomnia has given me more than it has taken. More time, certainly more work, more vigilance; I’m awake.” “Maybe I would sleep better if I was British,” Lévy says His latest book, Nuit Blanche, which has yet to be translated into English, is a runaway bestseller in France, where it was released in January. It