Politics

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

Tuesday

4 Feb 2025

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

Michael Taube

Canada’s tariff reprieve isn’t a victory for Trudeau

US President Donald Trump’s long-standing threat to enact 25 per cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico didn’t materialise yesterday. Both countries were granted 30-day reprieves on Monday after they agreed to Trump’s demands to stop the flow of illegal immigration and illicit drugs like fentanyl across the American border. Discussions related to tariffs and trade will be conducted during this time, too. ‘I just had a good call with President Trump,’ Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote in a post on X. ‘Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan – reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American partners, and increased resources to stop the flow of

Angela Patmore

Who cares about the cold old?

When I was a child, we lived in a two-up, two-down terraced slum in Walthamstow, East London with bombsites at the back. My father made me a doll’s house by dividing a box into four for the rooms. One year when we hadn’t any coal, I watched my doll’s house, disassembled, burning in the living room grate. I couldn’t grumble. I had asthma and for the first couple of years of my life there was no NHS. Just being alive was a bloody miracle. I rather admired the glittering ice patterns on the inside of my bedroom window. I was cold then, and I am cold now. I had hoped things might improve in the

Gareth Roberts

The voice coach row reveals how Keir Starmer will come unstuck

The news that the Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the adenoidal android, has employed a voice coach is simply astonishing. ‘I’ll take no lectures from the party opposite,’ is one of Starmer’s most well-worn sentences. At least now we know who he will take lectures from: actress Leonie Mellinger, star of The Winters Tale and the BBC’s Bergerac, who has been helping Starmer find his voice. ‘The transformation,” she says, “has been enormous.’ Really? Even after receiving years of tuition from the classically-trained actress, Starmer’s droning voice still send me to sleep. Starmer seems to see the rules as things for lesser mortals to follow, but for a smartypants like him

Julie Burchill

Rory Stewart is no match for JD Vance

I was highly amused to see that JD Vance has administered a right old ‘fagging’ – or whatever public school boys call it – to the ghastly Rory Stewart. Better known in some quarters as ‘Florence of Belgravia’, Stewart has developed a habit of dashing about in a dish-dash in search of broadcasting dosh, pouting all the while like an ambitious member of an all-boy fifth-form drama club determined to play Portia. Thanks to his inability to avoid spouting off, Stewart has embroiled himself in a spat on X with the new vice president of the US, JD Vance. In an interview with Fox News last week, Vance said: It’s so

Stephen Daisley

How John Swinney changes his stripes

Turning around a government that has lost its way is one of the trickiest feats in politics, all the more so if that government has enjoyed a long stretch of incumbency. The big beasts are gone, everyone who’s left is exhausted, the voter coalition is coming apart, and some begin to question the party’s purpose in power. ‘Time for a change’ is no longer just an opposition talking point: even insiders wonder if a spell out of office wouldn’t be for the best. A party veteran or a rising star steps forward, pledging renewal, a fresh direction and a fighting chance come the next election. That was the offer made

Gavin Mortimer

Why is Spain so anti-Trump?

Spain has been receiving some lavish praise of late in the British press. ‘Booming Spain is on track to a new age of prosperity’ was the headline in the Times last week, a response to the news that its GDP is forecast to grow by 2.5 per cent this year. The Financial Times was similarly effusive about Spain’s economy in a piece last October, in which it quoted the country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. ‘I can say that Spain is living an extraordinary moment. Our country is experiencing great success.’ The Times explained that Spain is growing at three times the rate of the Eurozone for three reasons: immigration, tourism and lower energy prices. Since 2022,

Monday

3 Feb 2025

Cristina Odone

Reforming Ofsted won’t fix Britain’s problem schools

The proportion of children staying away from school may be alarming – one in five – but the proportion of parents – almost one in three – who do not see school as a necessary part of their child’s daily schedule is even more so. Keir Starmer’s government understood that the connection between parents and schools needed fixing – and settled on Ofsted as part of the solution. For many, however, Ofsted was part of the problem. The suicide of Ruth Perry, a much-loved headteacher, had highlighted the pressure that school inspections placed on the teaching profession. The majority of teachers viewed the regulator negatively. Meanwhile, fewer than 4 in

Brendan O’Neill

Burning a Quran shouldn’t be a crime

England ditched its blasphemy laws back in 2008. No longer would it be an offence to engage in ‘contemptuous, reviling, scurrilous or ludicrous’ speech concerning God. No longer would any poor soul be hauled off to jail, far less to the stocks, for the crime of profanity. So you can imagine my surprise when a man was arrested in Manchester on Saturday after desecrating a copy of the Quran. Was blasphemy snuck back on to the statute books without anyone noticing? Sadly, Manchester’s cops appear to take a different view Reading about Saturday’s arrest, I found myself wondering what century this is. The man allegedly live-streamed himself burning a Quran