Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Thursday

James Snell

What the ‘experts’ got wrong about Syria

Provincial capitals falling before an unexpected advance. Military units allegedly defecting, deserting or switching sides. Talk of a coup in Damascus. The Syria of 2012 is the Syria of 2024. For years this was a so-called ‘frozen conflict’. The front lines did not move, no matter how many artillery and aerial attacks there were on civilians in the country’s north. The maps did not change, though dozens of people at a minimum were killed in fighting every week. But now Syria’s civil conflict has reignited. From their portion of Idlib province, a broad coalition of armed groups led by the Islamists Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have taken over a significant

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Justin Welby says goodbye

Justin Welby has given his valedictory speech in the House of Lords, his first public remarks since his resignation. It was quite a sad speech in which the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury didn’t appear to know quite what he wanted to say about his own departure. He started by joking that ‘if you want to make God laugh, make plans’, then added: ‘Well, on that basis, next year, I will be causing God more hilarity than anyone else for many years, because the plans for next year were very detailed and extensive.’ He told peers: The reality is that there comes a time if you are technically leading a particular

Steerpike Steerpike

MoJ fail to stop theft on their own doorstep

‘More bobbies on the beat’, cried Keir Starmer in his definitely-not-a-reset speech earlier today. But even when there are coppers out on patrol, are they doing enough to strike fear into lawless criminals? Just a stone’s throw away from The Spectator offices in Westminster is the Brutalist monstrosity of the Ministry of Justice’s headquarters. Known as Lubyanka – after the KGB headquarters – the address of 102 Petty France street is notorious for ruining the views of not one, but two nearby London parks. Yet while aesthetics may not be the MoJ’s thing, you would hope that law and order actually is. But Mr S hears that wrong ‘uns are

James Heale James Heale

Is immigration not a priority for Labour?

12 min listen

There is a feeling of deja-vu in Westminster today as Keir Starmer unveiled his plan for change and six ‘milestones’ (not pledges) to turn the country around. They are: raising living standards in every part of the UK; rebuilding Britain with 1.5 million homes and fast-tracking planning decisions on major infrastructure projects; ending hospital backlogs and meeting the standard of 92 per cent of patients being treated within 18 weeks; putting police back on the beat; giving children the best start in life; and securing homegrown energy and putting the UK on track to 95 per cent clean power by 2030. The problem with setting out any list of priorities

Steerpike Steerpike

How much will the Chagos deal cost?

It’s a simple question: how much is the Chagos Islands’ handover going to cost British taxpayers? Yet for weeks now, Labour ministers have been stonewalling and squirming in their efforts to avoid giving a clear straight answer. Shortly after the deal was announced on 3 October, Foreign Secretary David Lammy told MPs that ‘the agreement will be underpinned by a financial settlement that is acceptable to both sides.’ Lammy promised on 7 October that ‘at the time of publishing the treaty, there will be a discussion of the costs’ before adding ‘but no basing agreements ever discuss costs.’ In response to a question by Caroline Dineage on ‘how much will

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

How twee triumphed, Graham Brady on Tory turmoil & celebrating pigs in blankets

37 min listen

This week: are we drowning in a sea of twee? Gareth Roberts writes the cover article this week, arguing against what he sees as the hideous triviality of our times. ‘The British have lost their aversion to glutinous sentimentality,’ he declares. How did we get here, and who are the worst offenders? Gareth argues that the triumph of twee has left us unable to face serious things with seriousness. Could there be sinister consequences if we don’t take this more seriously? Gareth joined the podcast to make his case, alongside Josh Cohen, psychoanalyst and author of All The Rage (00:49). Then: was Graham Brady the ‘kingmaker’ or the ‘kingslayer’ of

Steerpike Steerpike

Reform polls ahead of Labour for first time

When it rains for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot, it pours. In the same week an Ipsos poll revealed that over half of all Brits feel disappointed by Labour’s achievements so far, now another poll brings more bad news for Starmer’s army. The FindOutNow voting intention poll has demoted Sir Keir’s crowd to third place – overtaken by none other than Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Talk about a turnaround, eh? The survey, using data collected on 4 December, shows the Tories in first place with 26 per cent backing Kemi Badenoch’s boys in blue. Next, for the first time, Farage’s lot have beaten Labour. Reform has seen an uplift of two

Eliot Wilson

How Britain should navigate the new nuclear age

The dawn of a third nuclear age demands a ‘national and collective sense of purpose… leadership and a willingness to act’. That was the message of the head of Britain’s armed forces when he delivered his annual lecture to the Royal United Services Institute this week. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin has been chief of the Defence Staff for three years – usually a full term – but was asked earlier this year to stay in post for a further year, until autumn 2025. His tenure has seen Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel and the resulting conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, Iran’s ballistic missile strikes

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The problem with Keir Starmer’s pledges

Keir Starmer still clearly misses opposition. He spent almost as much of his reset speech complaining about the Tories and the mess he feels they made of things as he did talking about what he is actually doing. It’s almost as though government has turned out to be harder and less enjoyable than even he had predicted. He spent the first few minutes of his speech listing in his usual exasperated tones the ways in which the Conservatives had failed the country, deploying his analogy about tackling damp in a household by using a hairdryer, before saying: ‘Stabilising the economy, fixing the foundations, clearing up the mess – so we

Steerpike Steerpike

Prevent data reveals ‘Islamist’ referrals on the rise

While all eyes were on the Prime Minister’s big ‘plan for change’ announcement today, the government also chose this morning to release some new data to the public. One of the reports published today includes the latest Prevent stats – and they paint a rather interesting picture. Between March 2023 and 2024, there were a staggering 6,922 referrals to the programme which when broken down reveal an uptick in cases being referred due to ‘Islamist concerns’, a rise of over 130 from the previous year. How very interesting… The gap between referrals for extreme right wing behaviour and Islamist concerns has narrowed notably in the year ending March 2024, with

Robert Tombs

Macron’s disastrous legacy of failure

Robert Tombs joined John Keiger and Will Kingston on Spectator TV to discuss the political turmoil in France and what this means for Emmanuel Macron’s presidency. Here is an extract of what Robert had to say. Emmanuel Macron’s legacy is very likely to be disastrous. He’s a very intelligent man, a man of great qualities. I once saw him when he was newly elected when he came to England and he attended a meeting, a sort of reception, with Theresa May at the time. Poor Theresa May was standing in a corner on her own, and Macron was surrounded by admirers. Macron gave a rather brilliant improvised speech in English

Robin Ashenden

The pundits’ attacks on farmers would make Alan Partridge blush

In the weeks since Rachel Reeves’s Budget and its shock attack on agricultural property relief, we’ve seen various armchair pundits pontificate on farmers’ lives – a source of mounting exasperation for farmers themselves. The peak of pundit-on-ploughman contempt came, unsurprisingly, from LBC’s James O’Brien First, there have been the panicky announcements from the government – that the threshold for agricultural tax relief is £1 million, or that no, actually, it’s £3 million if you’re under 5’8” and are married to a woman called Susan or…“Ooh, look over there! A bird!”’ We’ve had Owen Jones on Jeremy Vine declare that farmers were overreacting due to ‘inflammatory’ rhetoric from the media, that

Steerpike Steerpike

Are we in for a ‘Nigel’ revival?

Once the popularity of politicians was judged by how many babies they were asked to kiss – now it’s by how many kids are named after them. The Office for National Statistics has today revealed the most popular baby names for last year, with Olivia remaining the top girls’ name and Muhammad overtaking Noah to take the top spot. Celebrity names such as Billie, Lana, Reign and Saint were on the rise too. ‘Rishi’ kept his place at the political names top spot, going from 36 babies last year to 37 thus year. ‘Boris’, perhaps surprisingly, held strong too, keeping level at 28. ‘Keir’ languished around the count of three,

Steerpike Steerpike

Half of Brits disappointed by Labour so far

Another day, another round of bad news for Sir Keir Starmer’s government. Now a new Ipsos poll has revealed that over half of all Brits feel disappointed by Labour’s achievements (or lack thereof) so far. 53 per cent noted their dissatisfaction with the governing party in the latest survey, which quizzed 1,092 adults between 22-25 November. Given Starmer’s time as PM has been dominated by reports of cronyism rows, freebie fiascos and top team infighting – not to mention Rachel Reeves’s poorly-received Budget – Mr S is hardly surprised… The Starmtroopers haven’t much impressed even their own crowd in the five months they’ve been in power – with almost a

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Weight loss drugs won’t solve the obesity crisis

The NHS is about to start doling out ‘the King Kong of weight loss drugs’ to obese patients – the scandal, needless to say, is that not enough people will qualify. The drug, Mounjaro, will be limited to people with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of over 35 and who have at least one medical condition resulting from their excess weight. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended that 220,000 people be given the drug in the next three years – a small fraction of the 25 per cent of the adult population which is obese.     How dare the NHS be so tight-fisted. It is,

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s France is no longer fit for purpose

Emmanuel Macron will address the French people this evening, 24 hours after parliament passed a vote of no confidence in the president’s government. Millions of French will likely tune in and the majority – 63 per cent, according to one poll – would love it to be a resignation speech. No chance, according to the man himself. Earlier this week Macron said he would remain in the Elysee Palace ‘until the very last second of my term to serve the country.’ The fact is that France is in unchartered waters and no one knows what will happen in the coming weeks and months Thursday’s newspapers in France pore over the

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Angela Merkel regrets nothing

Last night, nearly three years to the day since she handed over the reins of power to Olaf Scholz, Angela Merkel appeared at London’s Royal Festival Hall to promote her newly published memoir, Freiheit, or ‘Freedom’.  The compulsion to write her memoirs first arose in 2015, she said, out of a desire to explain her decision to open Germany’s doors to over one million asylum seekers Merkel’s autobiography comes at an important moment for the country she used to govern. After the collapse of Scholz’s traffic light government, Germany is staring down the barrel of a snap election expected to take place in February. With the country grappling with all-time

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The marketing genius of Jaguar

Woke it may be, but Jaguar’s ‘Copy Nothing’ video is a work of marketing genius. With its ungendered models, ungrammatical slogans (‘live vivid’, ‘delete ordinary’) and strange absence of cars, the 30-second ad has brought global attention to a brand that was dying for want of a new generation of customers, in an auto industry in turmoil over its stalled transition from carbon fuel to battery power. And a week later comes the reveal in Miami of the futuristic Type 00 electric concept car that the fuss was really about. Love it or hate it, the dictum of founder Sir William Lyons that inspired the video’s title, ‘a Jaguar should be a

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour’s Nigel Farage nightmare

Arriving on stage to accept ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards, Nigel Farage gave a warning to the Westminster establishment. ‘I’ve got a bit of a shock for you,’ he said. ‘If you think that I and four other people – the newcomers into parliament this year in the general election – were a shock, I’m very sorry but at the next election in 2029 or before, there will be hundreds of newcomers under the Reform UK label.’ He added: ‘We are about to witness a political revolution the likes of which we have not seen since Labour after the first world war. Politics

The Spectator

Labour’s confidence tricks

There is nothing new, nor necessarily fatal, about making a poor start in government. Margaret Thatcher had a torrid first couple of years in office, set back by galloping inflation and mass unemployment, before she found her direction. Those who assume that Keir Starmer is doomed to be a one-term prime minister thanks to his plunging popularity are speaking too soon. The resignation of Louise Haigh over a historic fraud conviction will swiftly pass. The mini-scandal of freebies accepted by government ministers, which kept Fleet Street occupied over the summer, has already been largely forgotten. Starmer is good at setting targets, rather less good at coming up with any realistic