Politics

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

Cindy Yu

Can Reform turn more Tory donors?

15 min listen

Tuesday night’s Reform fundraiser was designed to spook the Conservative party, says Conservative peer and journalist Paul Goodman on today’s episode. He talks to Cindy Yu and James Heale about whether Kemi Badenoch can keep her cool under Reform’s domination of the airwaves. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Who killed Salwan Momika, the Iraqi who burned a Quran?

Salwan Momika, the Iraqi man who spearheaded the Quran burning protest in Sweden, was shot dead today. Five men have been arrested for the murder, which was committed in front of an online audience, with the victim livestreaming on TikTok at the time of his killing. While police in Stockholm haven’t formally announced the motive for the crime, Momika isn’t the first critic of Islam to have been brutally murdered in Europe – and I expect he won’t be the last. Momika had repeatedly received threats, from radical Muslims and Islamic countries alike, following the 2023 Quran burning demonstration, during which he had been attacked. He was initially provided with protection, but local authorities revoked it after a

Parents are asking too much of teachers

For a truly educational experience, visit your neighbourhood primary school. Watch the goings-on in the playground: tiny tots rushing around in nappies, pushing and shoving one another, tantrums puncturing the air. You can’t understand what most of them are saying because they mumble – inarticulate and mostly incomprehensible. Say hello to the ‘Covid babies’ – in our classrooms and out of order. Teachers up and down the country are welcoming to their Reception classes the babies of the early months of the pandemic – only to find that this cohort is like no other. A survey out today of more than 1,000 teachers and 1,000 parents of Reception-aged children in

Steerpike

Watch: Priti Patel challenged to apologise over borders failure

As Reform UK’s support surges, the Conservatives are coming under scrutiny for failing to deal with immigration to the UK during their time in power. Former Home Secretary Priti Patel found herself in the firing line after she was grilled on the Sun’s Never Mind the Ballots today. Quizzed by the newspaper’s political editor Harry Cole, Patel was first shown a graph of Britain’s immigration levels before being told: ‘You ended free movement for Europeans and you threw the borders open for the rest of the world!’ Ouch. An indignant Patel insisted ‘legal migration’ was behind the spike, and claimed ‘the brightest and the best’ had been let into Britain

Brendan O’Neill

Why are ‘anti-racists’ silent about Arbel Yehud’s terrible ordeal?

Watching Arbel Yehud being freed in Gaza today, I thought to myself: this is what it must have been like at Salem. Here we had a diminutive woman being paraded through a baying mob of hollering men. They barked religious slogans at her. They shoved and jostled to get a better view of the marked woman. They thrust their mobile phones in her face to capture her terror for posterity. They’ll no doubt share the clips. ‘Look! See how scared she was!’ Mercifully, Ms Yehud was being marched, not to the gallows, but to liberty. She was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led pogrom of

Ross Clark

Britain is not ready to give up North Sea oil and gas

Ed Miliband seems to have gone missing since Rachel Reeves announced her ambition for a third runway at Heathrow yesterday. Just before he disappeared, he mumbled that ‘of course’ he wouldn’t be resigning over the issue – in spite of threatening to do just that when he was climate secretary in Gordon Brown’s government. But then who needs Ed Miliband to thwart government growth plans when we have the courts to do it for him? This morning, Lord Ericht in the Scottish Court of Session hammered another great brass nail into the coffin of the North Sea. He ruled that licences granted to extract oil and gas from the Rosebank

Why is the assisted dying bill being rushed through parliament?

A change in the law letting people demand help from the state to kill themselves is the sort of thing any government ought to take a great deal of time over. It’s an area where thoughtful delay is entirely desirable, with committees of the great and the good encouraged to take a deep breath, hear as many views as possible and take their time over any conclusions. Unfortunately this is the exact opposite of what is happening with the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. It’s increasingly apparent that this proposal is being treated more as if it were some urgent infrastructure project that needs

Steerpike

Watch: Richard Madeley grills Rachel Reeves on CV

When it rains for the Labour lot, it pours. This morning Rachel Reeves came under fire on Good Morning Britain as she appeared on the airwaves for a media round. She may have made her big growth speech yesterday, but the Chancellor still can’t escape questions about her rather controversial curriculum vitae. Quizzing Reeves on whether she has been straight with the public about her economist background, Richard Madeley wasn’t pulling any punches. ‘This is your first appearance on Good Morning Britain for quite a months and certainly since allegations about you enhancing your CV surfaced,’ the presenter began, going on: You told Stylist magazine that you worked at the

In defence of ‘traditional’ exams

You might think that students will be celebrating the news that universities could be moving away from ‘traditional’ exams in favour of “inclusive assessments,” which include open-book tests and take-home papers. They shouldn’t.  I was one of the unfortunate Covid crop of undergraduates who didn’t sit a single exam during their time at university. Yes, I avoided the last-minute nerves about what was going to be in the exam paper – and I saved time not needing to cram during last-minute revision. But the truth is that avoiding exams devalued my degree, so much so that I didn’t bother going to my graduation ceremony. Avoiding exams devalued my degree, so

Is Serbia heading for its 1968 moment?

Serbia has been gripped by months of student protests in response to a tragic accident at Novi Sad railway station in November 2024, when the collapse of a concrete canopy roof claimed 15 lives. The protests have come to resemble a sort of May ’68 moment. Not in the sense that they are occurring in the same global context of cultural change, social liberation and anti-war activism. The demands of the protesters today are much narrower. But the students’ inventive tactics, grassroots organising, daily blockades and sit-ins at universities invite such comparisons. The president offered his condolences for the dog Donna, who was run over during a protest What began

Freddy Gray

The many questions of the Washington plane crash

‘What a terrible night this has been,’ writes President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform. ‘God bless you all!’ Trump also expressed his bafflement as to how a Black Hawk military helicopter, operating out of Fort Belvoir in Virginia, managed to collide with American Eagle Flight 5342, a commercial passenger plane carrying 64 passengers, directly over the Potomac river as the aircraft came into land at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC.  The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were

Steerpike

Reform lures Tory donors to £1m bash

Uh oh. Things aren’t looking good for the Tories – after a number of former Conservative donors paid five figures to attend a fundraiser for Reform UK. The luxurious do included Dom Pérignon champagne, bagpipers and even an opera singer. Talk about switching sides… It transpires that multiple Tory donors attended the £1 million-raising Reform UK fundraiser – at which party leader Nigel Farage asked guests to give him the ‘ammunition’ he needs to soar to electoral victory. Audience members included Bassim Haidar and Mohamed Amersi, who each paid £25,000 for a VIP ticket to the event to sit with Farage – while other attendees paid £10,000 for a seat

Lisa Haseldine

Friedrich Merz turns up the heat on Germany’s migration debate

Last night, Friedrich Merz, leader of the opposition and the man most likely to become the Germany’s next chancellor, came one step closer to ending freedom of movement into the country. In a tense vote in the Bundestag, Merz and his conservative CDU party managed to pass a motion designed force the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz to tackle illegal migration head on by just three votes. Controversially, they were only able to win it with the help of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. Merz’s motion was a political gamble. Designed to drive a wedge between his party and the centre-left SPD and Green parties in particular, Merz’s

Is Europe about to switch Nord Stream back on?

Could Gazprom’s Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines, partially destroyed by saboteurs in September 2022, eventually be reopened? This week, Denmark’s energy agency authorised Nord Stream 2 AG – the Russian-owned company that operates the pipelines – to begin work capping the severed ends of the three destroyed pipelines. That will be the first step to restoring the link that before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine used to supply up to a 40 per cent of Germany’s gas.   The move comes just days after Alice Weidel, leader of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland party or AfD, told a party conference in Riesa that ‘we will put Nord Stream back into operation, you can

Martin Vander Weyer

I’m being driven mad by Microsoft Outlook

Call me a cynic, but I suspect this week’s headlines about a revival of Heathrow’s third runway plan amount to little more than a political game. Arguments for and against this project have been aired many times over, from a white paper in 2003 to the Davies Commission’s final report (in favour) in 2015. Much to the detriment of London’s status as a global city, the runway has stayed in the long grass – due to marginal-seat politics under the flight path as much as genuine environmental concern – while no satisfactory alternative at Gatwick or Stansted has ever advanced and the advent of the Elizabeth line is Heathrow’s only

Rod Liddle

My money-saving tips for Rachel Reeves

It is always upsetting to watch a woman enmired in distress and so I thought I might ride on my trusty charger to the assistance of Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, with a few suggestions as to where she might make spending cuts. Rachel needs these cuts because she can’t raise taxes and the British economy is lying flat on its back in an alleyway with wee dribbling down its leg. Growth is what we need, plus some serious savings to the Exchequer. Clearly, most civil servants should be sacked – bringing a bounteous gift to the nation’s coffers My first suggestion would be to cut the rate of benefits by

Peter Mandelson’s rocky path to Trumpworld

The muddle about who’s to be the next British ambassador in Washington has been only a small part of the grandiose confusion which surrounds Donald Trump’s assumption of power. Sir Keir Starmer announced that Lord Peter Mandelson would bring ‘unrivalled experience to the role and take [the Anglo-American] partnership from strength to strength’, apparently without checking first that President Trump would be willing to accept him. The US President’s campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, said Mandelson was ‘an absolute moron’ who should ‘stay home’. He did nothing to improve his prospects when he described Trump as ‘reckless and a danger to the world’ How ambassadors get appointed is a mystery to

Katy Balls

The Tory party’s wannabe comeback kids

When a prime minister leaves No. 10, they usually discover the phone soon stops ringing. But there is at least a brief window when they are more popular with colleagues than they were in office. Why? The resignation honours list. It is a way to curry favour, settle debts and win back friends. While the thank-you list appears after a premiership is over, it can affect how a leader is remembered. While the honours list appears after a premiership is over, it still affects how a leader is remembered In keeping with her premiership, Liz Truss’s list was short – but it still became the subject of fierce debate in