Politics

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

Wednesday

5 Feb 2025

Steerpike

Watch: Kay Burley retires from Sky on air

So. Farewell then Kay Burley. After 36 years, the Sky star has announced she is retiring from the channel. In a two-minute monologue at the end of this morning’s programme, Burley reflected on her career in broadcast journalism, covering stories ranging from the death of Princess Diana and the Concorde air disaster to London winning the rights to host the 2012 Olympics. She said: After over a million minutes of live TV news – more than anyone else in the world – it’s time for me to indulge in some of my other passions, including my love for travel. So after covering 12 separate general elections including Sir Keir Starmer’s

Michael Simmons

Record Channel crossings expose Starmer’s failure to ‘smash the gangs’

More migrants have illegally crossed the English Channel since 1 January than in any previous year for this period. So far in 2025, 1,344 migrants were detected crossing the Channel in small boats between 1 January and 4 February, beating the previous record of 1,339 in 2022. The figures published by Border Force – and tracked daily by The Spectator’s data hub – put paid to Keir Starmer’s promise to ‘smash the gangs’. A key part of Labour’s manifesto – and one of Starmer’s ‘first steps’ – was to ‘create a fair system and stop the small boat crossings’. Since Starmer took office last July, there have been 24,586 migrant crossings. The news comes despite

Henry Hill

The real problem with CCHQ

When Kemi Badenoch’s leadership got off to a less-than-inspiring start, her defenders made a reasonable case that she needed more time. The Conservative and Unionist party had just suffered one of the most catastrophic routs in its long history; it would take more than a few months to right the ship. But as month has followed month, disquiet has been growing in Tory circles. The latest reports about Badenoch’s showdown with Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) do not inspire confidence either. This is telling, because to an audience of Tory activists, CCHQ ought to be an easy target. It’s hard to find anyone in the voluntary party with a good word to say

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The audacity of Trump’s Gaza plan

Some moments in history demand recognition, not just for their weight in the present but for the seismic shifts they herald. The Trump-Netanyahu press conference was one such moment – not a perfunctory diplomatic exercise, nor a routine reaffirmation of alliance, but an unambiguous declaration of intent. It was a disruption of long-entrenched, failed orthodoxies and the unveiling of a vision that dares to reimagine the Middle East in starkly different terms. For decades, world leaders have clung to exhausted formulas – peace processes built on illusion, agreements predicated on fantasy, and a wilful refusal to acknowledge the fundamental realities of Palestinian rejectionism and terror. That era is now over. Standing together,

Tuesday

4 Feb 2025

Owen Matthews

Why Trump hates USAID so much

The Trump administration’s takedown of federal spending has begun in earnest with the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent government agency that has been funding healthcare, pro-democracy and civil society programmes around the world since 1961. ‘We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,’ Elon Musk boasted on X, describing the agency as ‘a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.’ Over the past three weeks, USAID’s leadership and staff have been gutted by furloughs, firings and disciplinary leaves, the website taken offline and – most painfully to many – funding for thousands of NGOs around the world has been suspended, leaving

Scarlett Maguire

Trump’s popularity among Brits is rising

Back in July 2019, Donald Trump called Boris Johnson ‘Britain Trump’, before adding ‘that’s probably a good thing, they like me over there’. Awkwardly for Johnson at the time, this was certainly not the case for the majority of Brits, even among those who backed Boris. In 2019, 7 in 10 thought Donald Trump had been a bad president, including a majority of Conservative voters. While Johnson might have squirmed at Trump’s endorsement back then, politicians in the UK today seem to be rushing to ingratiate themselves with the new administration. And it’s not just politicians changing their minds, British voters are also warming to Trump 2.0. New data from

Oscar Edmondson

Reform in ‘poll’ position

13 min listen

It’s happened. Reform are now ahead of Labour, according to a voting intention poll by YouGov. Reform leads the landmark poll with 25 points, with Labour languishing all the way down in second place on 24 points. Meanwhile, the Conservatives place third on 21 per cent, the Liberal Democrats are on 14 per cent and the Greens on 9 per cent. While there have been a handful of polls to date putting Reform in the lead, they have so far been regarded as outliers. It’s a slim lead, but does it point to a long term shift in UK politics – or can it be dismissed as a blip? Does

Steerpike

Eleven lowlights from the assisted dying evidence session

To Westminster, where last week Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying bill began the evidence session of committee stage. But rather than provide much needed clarification about the scope of suicide bill, the three days of evidence sessions instead threw up even more questions about the safety of the legislation. After paying careful attention to the hours of hearings, Mr S has compiled some of the worst moments of the evidence sessions that left critics more concerned than comforted… Who’s there? 50 witnesses were called to give evidence last week – and it quickly emerged that there was nothing like an equal split between bill backers and sceptics. In fact, as revealed

Steerpike

Starmer set to close Chagos deal in ‘coming weeks’

Is Sir Keir Starmer determined to make himself more unpopular with the British public? The news of his latest Chagos offer is hardly likely to endear the Prime Minister to his critics – not least given the Labour leader has reportedly offered the Mauritians yet more money and ‘complete sovereignty’ of an island containing a US naval base. Way to go, Keir! Speaking to parliamentarians, the new Mauritian prime minister Navin Ramgoolam claimed today that Starmer cut a deal – in the presence, rather curiously, of his Attorney General Lord Hermer – that would effectively double the £9 billion first offered to the country to take back the archipelago. ‘We

John O'Neill

Revealed: ONS blames Ring doorbells for dodgy jobs data

What caused the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to lose faith in its own jobs figures? After the pandemic, the ONS asked for the ‘national statistic’ quality mark to be taken off its estimates of whether Brits are working when response rates to its labour force survey collapsed. Fewer and fewer people were willing to invite an interviewer into their home to give them the 45-minute questionnaire. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said ‘it is a problem’ to not have accurate unemployment numbers when setting interest rates, while Lord Bridges, chair of the House of Lords economic affairs committee, asked: ‘How are the Treasury and the bank to make

Steerpike

Burnham’s night czar eviscerates Reeves

Oh dear. It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – so that means more bad news for Rachel Reeves. Today, the flack comes from an unlikely quarter: someone you might think was actually on her side. Sacha Lord, who quit last week after more than six years as Andy Burnham’s night-time economy advisor, has today decided to turn on Reeves over her recent tax rises. In a scathing letter, Lord says is now reconsidering his Labour party membership, declaring: I heard Labour declare itself the party for business and growth. I no longer believe that to be the case…We have evidence, Chancellor, of swathes of job losses, venue closures and stalled

Matthew Lynn

What Trump’s tariff ‘opening salvo’ will teach him

Mexico and Canada have been given a last-minute reprieve from Donald Trump’s tariffs. China has offered only the most half-hearted response to them. At this rate, even the European Union may be off the hook. Equity markets have rallied strongly as the trade war which seems about to crash the global economy appears to have been averted. But has it really? Investors are kidding themselves if they think the crisis is over. Trump is clearly a leader who likes to get his own way In the end, it turned out not to be a re-run of the Great Depression, at least not for now. After President Trump slapped punishing 25

Ian Williams

Trump’s tariff war with China is just getting started

Over the weekend, Donald Trump described his sweeping 10 per cent tariffs against Chinese goods as an ‘opening salvo’. Within minutes of them taking effect at midnight last night, Beijing retaliated with targeted tariffs of its own against US coal, liquified natural gas (LNG), farm equipment and cars. It also announced export controls on a string of critical minerals to ‘safeguard national security’, and what it described as an ‘anti-trust’ investigation into Google. Like most Western internet and social media firms, Google is already banned from China, but earns money from Chinese businesses advertising abroad. The US President has described tariffs as ‘the most beautiful word’ In spite of the

James Heale

Will Starmer choose Brussels or Trump?

Europe or America – the eternal British dilemma. Keir Starmer made clear he rejects such a binary approach in his Guildhall speech in December. But with Donald Trump threatening tariffs on the European Union, Labour’s attempts to ‘reset’ the European relationship face an almighty challenge. Yet that hasn’t deterred Nick Thomas-Symonds – Starmer’s trusted lieutenant – from giving it an almighty try. Speaking in Brussels this morning, Thomas-Symonds gave the optimist’s case for how better EU-UK relations would benefit security, resilience and economic growth for both sides. There are ‘many, many unnecessary barriers to trade and investment’, the Cabinet Office minister argued, but now ‘there is a clear opportunity to upgrade

Kate Andrews

What does Donald Trump want from a trade war with China?

What are the real intentions of Donald Trump’s trade war? Does he really believe tariffs work to boost economic growth domestically? Does he see them as tools to prop up American businesses, as his Vice President does? Or, as in his first term, are threats of import levies almost purely about leverage – and if so, what does he want? Last-ditch efforts to pause 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods seem to have worked, with both countries pledging to better police illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the borders. Trump has suspended the implementation of tariffs for 30 days to see if both countries can move towards

Eliot Wilson

Starmer may come to regret his EU defence pact

Sir Keir Starmer has been on another overseas visit. On his 18th trip in seven months as prime minister, he travelled to Brussels yesterday to talk to European Union leaders about defence and security, an area on which he is keen to expand cooperation. His mission was both practical and symbolic: he is pursuing a defence agreement with the EU, but he is also desperate to show that he has ‘reset’ the United Kingdom’s relationship with Europe and has been welcomed into the club by the leaders of the 27 member states. As well as EU leaders, including the new president of the European Council, António Costa, Starmer met Mark

James Heale

Angela Rayner to create Islamophobia council

Today’s Telegraph splash could have been designed in a laboratory to trigger Tory tempers. After months of deliberation, the paper reports that Angela Rayner’s department now plans to create a council on Islamophobia. This will draw up an official government definition for anti-Muslim discrimination and provide advice to ministers on how best to tackle it. The person chosen to head the 16-strong council? Dominic Grieve, the uber-Remainer and former Attorney-General. Grieve wrote the foreword to the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims report in 2018 that set out the definition of Islamophobia which the Labour party subsequently adopted. It stated that ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a

Ross Clark

Asda and the absurdity of ‘work of equal value’

At last, some news of an industry in Britain that is flourishing. Unfortunately, it is one that is helping to suppress growth in every other sector of the economy. I am sure that the lawyers who have brought a case involving 60,000 female workers at Asda think they have won a famous victory after an employment tribunal ruled that most of them were victims of sex discrimination for being paid up to £3.74 per hour less than the company’s warehouse staff. But all they have really achieved, other than lining their own pockets and those of their backers, is to impose vast bills on hard-pressed retailers which, in some cases,

Katy Balls

Reform tops a YouGov poll for the first time

There’s reason for cheer at Reform HQ this morning: Nigel Farage’s party is leading Labour in a YouGov voting intention poll for the first time. According to the poll, Reform UK leads on 25 points with Labour in second place on 24 per cent and the Conservatives in third on 21 per cent. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are on 14 per cent and the Greens on 9 per cent. While there have been a handful of polls to date putting Reform in the lead, they have so far been regarded as outliers. In response to the poll, Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform, said: ‘Much more to come as

Nigel Jones

Germany’s immigration election is heating up

These are dramatic days in the usually dull world of German politics. Last Wednesday, midway through a fiercely fought federal election campaign, the Bundestag Parliament narrowly voted to close the nation’s borders and curb the legal rights of immigrants. Two days later, the same assembly reversed ferret and voted a similar measure down. So what on earth is going on? The bills to close the borders were the work of the man likely to become Germany‘s next Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU/CSU Christian Democrats – the centre-right equivalent of our Tories. Hard pressed in the polls by the hard-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) populist party, Merz took the