Politics Archives

Monday

3 Feb 2025

Steerpike

SNP mull ban on household cats

Here’s one to make you paws for thought: SNP ministers are considering a ban on pet cats, in a bid to protect birds and other wildlife. Yes, that’s right, an official report for the Scottish Government suggests establishing containment zones where residents can be forced to keep their pets indoors, or stopped from owning them altogether. Talk about putting a cat among the pigeons… The report by the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission (SAWC) claims that domestic cats have a ‘significant impact on wildlife populations’ as they hunt for fun, torture prey through play, and bring maimed animals home to their owners. According to the Daily Telegraph, SNP ministers said they

Julie Bindel

Will the Greens turn their back on Stonewall?

An earlier version of this article suggested that the Green party has left the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme. We are happy to make clear that this is not the case. Not one major UK government department is still signed up to Stonewall’s Diversity Champions Programme. At long last, Stonewall’s toxic influence on free speech, equality law and government policy is coming to an end. But the final nail in the coffin will be the exit of the Green party – which several senior members have been pushing for some time. Party insiders were recently given hope that the Greens had left the Diversity Champions scheme after the party’s membership appeared to

Matthew Lynn

Europe can’t win a trade war against the US

It will hit back immediately. It will target the industries that will hurt the most. And it won’t be bullied or pushed around. We can expect to hear lots of tough rhetoric from European leaders today as the bloc prepares to retaliate against Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs of 10 per cent or more on European exports to the United States. There is just one problem, however. It can talk as tough as it wants to – but it is still going to lose. With 25 per cent levies already in place on Canada and Mexico, and 10 per cent on China, steep tariffs on Europe now look inevitable. The EU

Ross Clark

Starmer is falling into the EU’s trap

No doubt Keir Starmer wants us to think he is being ‘grown up’ in accepting an invitation to dinner at an EU summit. But it is actually the reverse: he is behaving like a toddler in danger of being enticed into a stranger’s car by a bag of sweets dangled out of the window. As the Times reports this morning, Emmanuel Macron views him as a supplicant who is desperate to beg to be allowed partly to re-join the EU because Brexit has failed and immiserated the UK economy. The French president intends to take every advantage and to finish the job that wasn’t quite finished during the Brexit negotiations: to try

Katy Balls

Starmer’s Brussels charm offensive is a risky business

How far will the Labour government’s European reset go? This is the question being asked in Westminster as Keir Starmer embarks on a Brussels charm offensive. On Sunday, the Prime Minister met German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with the pair citing Donald Trump’s tariff war (launched over the weekend) as a reason why it’s a ‘good moment’ for the UK and the EU to improve relations. Next, Starmer travels to Brussels today where he will become the first UK prime minister since Brexit to attend an EU summit. Starmer will join for the evening dinner along with 27 leaders. Technically, the meal is being billed as a discussion on defence and

Gavin Mortimer

Europe is feeling the strain of mass immigration

Britain can’t cope, that was the response of Nigel Farage to last week’s disclosure by the Office for National Statistics that the population will hit 72.5 million in 2032. The leader of Reform said that Britain has already reached saturation point at 67.6 million, adding: ‘Our quality of life for all of us is diminishing directly as a result of the population explosion.’ The French feel the same, and examples abound of the strain being placed on the country as a result of mass immigration. The Friday before last a class of schoolchildren in Paris were having a PE lesson when it came to an abrupt halt. City Council officials arrived

Jawad Iqbal

Did Keir Starmer’s voice coach really count as a Covid ‘key worker’?

Who knew that being a voice coach qualified for ‘key worker’ status during the pandemic lockdowns? It has been revealed that the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer employed a personal voice coach as a ‘key worker’ during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite strict government guidelines at the time. The rules defined critical workers as those essential to public services – including those on the frontline of health, social care and transport. Nowhere does the official guidance mention the life-saving qualities of voice coaches as worthy exemptions to the lockdown rules. Yet, according to a report in the Times, Starmer appointed Leonie Mellinger, an actress and communications skills specialist, in such a role. Did

Robin Forestier-Walker

Why Donald Trump should care about Georgia

President Trump hasn’t just inherited the problem of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Somewhere in the handover is a memo on Georgia, another troubled country on Russia’s border. Georgians who cherish their freedom have for over two months been protesting on the streets, infuriated by their government’s decision to suspend accession talks with the EU. And they’ve paid a price. Hundreds have been detained, many of them suffering injuries in custody. Others have been beaten by government-affiliated thugs on their own doorsteps. But they continue to chant ‘Russian slaves’, for they are under no doubt whose interests the Georgian authorities now serve. Georgia became a victim of Russian aggression before Russia’s

Sunday

2 Feb 2025

Clemmie Read

Why are we obsessed with Japanese fiction?

Imagine you come across a small café in a back alley of Tokyo where you can travel back in time to talk things over with your ex-boyfriend, as long as you come back before your coffee gets cold. Or you stumble into an enchanted library, where the librarian gives you a book to cure your frustration with your sales job. Or, to ramp it up a bit, you serially murder misogynistic businessmen, tempting them to their deaths with your acclaimed beef stew. Or – and this is a common one – your worries about financial security are calmed by the appearance of a particularly comforting cat. For younger generations who

Joe Bedell-Brill

Yvette Cooper: ‘We’re not returning to the EU. We need to move on’

Ahead of Keir Starmer’s meeting with European leaders tomorrow, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper joined Sky News and reiterated Labour’s ‘red lines’: no return to the customs union, the single market or to free movement. Cooper told Trevor Phillips that Labour wanted to get rid of some of the bureaucracy around customs arrangements, and said that the deal the Conservatives had with the EU ‘was not a good one’. Phillips asked if the government was still negotiating a youth mobility scheme. Cooper said net migration had to come down, and that a youth mobility scheme was ‘not the right starting point… at all’. Phillips also suggested that the government might consider

Nigel Jones

Should the West be worried about DeepSeek’s ‘Sputnik moment’?

My late mother proudly possessed a curious object: a tea cosy decorated with the image of a Sputnik. In 1957, when Russia launched the world’s first satellite, this item would have been a charmingly incongruous mix of old and new technology. But today, younger readers might struggle to identify the functions of both a tea cosy and the shiny, spiked silver ball that was Sputnik 1. Back in the day, the world was shocked by the news that the Soviets had beat the West in the race to space. The New York Times mentioned the satellite in 279 articles in October 1957, the month of its launch. So profound was

Kate Andrews

Donald Trump kicks off the tariff wars

He did it, Joe! Following on from the $79 billion worth of tariffs he implemented in his first term – which went largely untouched by Joe Biden’s Administration – last night Donald Trump made good on his election promise to opt for another round of tariffs: this time, a 25 per cent tax on imports from Canada and Mexico, with China facing an additional 10 per cent levy on its goods. Despite whispers that the President might water down his plans in the last hours, he carved out very few exceptions for his new tax orders, which include Canadian oil and energy supply. It is now expected that America will

Edward Howell

Kim Jong Un’s North Korean culture war

If there’s one thing that a despot wants, it is to stay in power. North Korea’s totalitarian Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un, is no exception. Not only does he seek to maintain the survival of his ruling regime, but Kim also yearns for North Korea to be recognised as a de facto nuclear-armed state. But whilst revolutions are rare in the nuclear-armed hermit kingdom, Kim wants to ensure that even the slightest seeds of dissent fail to be sown. Whether military elites or the North Korean youth, everyone must be kept in check. And how better to do so than by drafting a 300,000-strong youth ‘shock brigade’ to reconstruct flood-damaged

Katja Hoyer

Why can’t Germany kick its addiction to Russian energy?

Despite imposing economic sanctions on Russia, the European Union has been importing record amounts of liquefied natural gas (LNG), a report has found. Russian LNG is exempted from the EU’s sanctions. A German state-controlled energy company appears to play a major role in this circumvention of sanctions. It’s not the only indicator that Germany is more reluctant to break its old ties with Russia than it lets on. The clamour for resuming economic ties with Russia comes from many different corners According to data collated by the commodities intelligence firm Kpler and first reported on by the news outlet Politico, the EU imported 837,300 metric tons of Russian LNG in the

Jim Lawley

What Luis Rubiales’s trial will reveal

The trial of Luis Rubiales, former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, starts in Madrid on Monday. After Spain won the women’s World Cup in August 2023, Rubiales kissed player Jenni Hermoso during the medal ceremony. She says that the kiss was not consensual. Rubiales maintains that it was and, along with three of his colleagues, is alleged to have brought pressure to bear on Hermoso to change her story. If found guilty, Rubiales faces two and a half years in prison for sexual assault and coercion. His colleagues, accused only of coercion, could be sentenced to 18 months each. A few minutes before the kiss, the camera

Daniel Thorpe

Are Syria’s Christians safe?

On a street corner in the old town of Damascus, rugged men with rifles stare sharply at passers-by. Despite their appearance, the long beards and scruffy improvised military fatigues, they are not the militiamen of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), but local Christian volunteers protecting the neighbourhood. When Bashar al-Assad fell and Islamist rebels took over, some of the Christians in the country feared the worst. Though atrocities have and do still happen, the bloodbath many feared never took place. “There was a feeling that the regime may protect us from fanatics,” explains Father Jihad, the head monk The police station nearby was ransacked by angry locals on the night

Saturday

1 Feb 2025

Ross Clark

Liz Kendall’s benefits crusade could make or break Labour’s fortunes

Could Liz Kendall turn out to be the most significant figure of Keir Starmer’s government, and a Chancellor in the making? When I wrote on the Work and Pensions Secretary’s proposed reforms here in November, I was sceptical that Labour really had much intention of pushing through benefits cuts, not least because the party had spent the past 14 years shouting ‘austerity’ every time the Tories so much as proposed to cut a bean from the benefits bill. Starmer himself has accused the previous government of “turning on the poorest in our society” when it proposed to end the temporary £20 weekly bonus added to benefits during Covid. Kendall has gained

Cindy Yu

Was Peter Mandelson the right pick for ambassador to the US?

22 min listen

‘An absolute moron’ – those were the words used by Chris LaCivita, a senior campaign advisor to Trump, to describe Peter Mandelson. Lord Mandelson is Keir Starmer’s choice for the next ambassador to the US, but Trump may yet refuse his letters of credentials. How wise is this appointment at the dawn of an uncertain era of US-UK relations? Cindy Yu talks to James Heale and Sophia Gaston, UK foreign policy lead at the security think tank ASPI. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Leon Mangasarian

Germany’s crumbling far-right firewall could turbocharge the AfD

Friedrich Merz, chancellor candidate of Germany’s Christian Democrats, stumbled in his bid to end Social Democrat-Greens domination of migration policy. After winning a Bundestag motion to reinstate border controls with votes of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the chamber rejected a law on to clamp down on migration. Merz’s use of the AfD drew the ire of ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, his predecessor as CDU leader. Her stunning public stand against Merz may have convinced 12 members of his own bloc to vote against the law. The bill was defeated on Friday with 350 members voting ‘no’ and 338 in favour. The icy enmity between Merkel and Merz is legendary

Gavin Mortimer

How many more knife attacks can France take?

Each day in France there are 120 knife attacks. On Saturday, one such incident resulted in the death of 14-year-old Elias as he left his football training in central Paris. He was stabbed after refusing to surrender his mobile phone. A 17-year-old has admitted the killing to police. France’s Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, expressed his horror at the death of Elias, and reiterated his determination to make France ‘a country where parents no longer have to fear seeing their child murdered for nothing’. He added that it ‘will be a long and difficult road’ and will require an end to the culture of excuses which ‘has plunged some of our