Politics

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

Friday

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Will the Tories suspend Alan Duncan?

Oh dear. Sir Alan Duncan is at it again. Back in April the former Tory minister was investigated by the Tory party after claiming the Conservative Friends of Israel group was ‘doing the bidding’ of the Israeli prime minister. Amid accusations of antisemitism, he called for Lord Polak, CFI’s former head, to be ‘removed from the Lords because he is exercising the interest of another country not that of the Parliament in which he sits.’ It prompted a stinging response from the Board of Deputies who said his ‘disgraceful’ words ‘effectively accuse two Conservative peers, one of whom is Jewish, of dual loyalties.’ Having survived that furore, it seems Duncan

James Heale James Heale

Labour’s ‘working people’ muddle

11 min listen

Who exactly are ‘working people’? The Labour party’s use of this phrase during the election raised questions over who they will really be levying taxes upon. With less than a week to go until the Budget, Labour in government is now again struggling to give a clear definition of what they mean. James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Christopher Snowdon

What’s the point of banning Elf bars?

Part of me wishes that disposable vapes had never been invented. Until they arrived, it seemed like the battle for tobacco harm reduction in Britain had been won. The kind of people who want to ban everything wanted to ban e-cigarettes, but most people could see that they were a relatively harmless substitute for cigarettes and were helping to drive down smoking rates. Then along came the Elf bars and Geek bars and the mood began to sour. Whether it was because of the price or the colours or because it was simply a fad, they became somewhat popular with teenagers, just as Juul had become popular with high school

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Could there be a Tory leadership upset?

The end is finally in sight. In a week’s time, the winner of the Conservative leadership contest will be announced. Within the Tory party, most MPs are braced for a Kemi Badenoch victory. Could the result be closer than currently expected? On Thursday night, there were rumours that the final ConservativeHome survey of members would make for uncomfortable reading for Badenoch – with Jenrick in a close second. The results have now been published and the survey finds that Badenoch maintains a comfortable lead. The contest has taken on the typical dynamics of a frontrunner and an insurgent On the question of ‘who should be the next leader of the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The real problem with Rachel Reeves’s Budget fiddle 

Remember Gordon Brown’s ‘golden rule’ – that over the course of the economic cycle the only net borrowing he would allow was to fund investment? As for current spending, he told us, he would pay down debt in the good times so that he could borrow in the bad. It sounded reassuring, until Brown started to fiddle with the figures in every conceivable way. He shunted debt off the public balance sheet via private finance initiatives.  Is anyone confident that Reeves really will invest her extra £20 billion a year in such a way that it will earn the taxpayer a return? He kept stretching out his idea of the

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Farage blasts ambassador picks for Trump 2.0

It’s the question all of Westminster is asking. If Donald Trump wins, who will be our next man in Washington? One person definitely not in the running is Nigel Farage, longtime friend and ally of the Republican president. At The Spectator’s Americano event last night, the Clacton MP told host Freddy Gray that he definitely will not become the new British ambassador, saying: Clearly I’ve decided to get back into elected politics, so I’m off the table. But I repeat the point that if this government needs any help with relationships with Trump 47, I will do all that I can. Will David Lammy take up such an offer? Don’t

David Shipley

It’s obvious why crime is up in Britain

Yesterday, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its annual report on crime in England and Wales. This combines data on crimes reported to the police and the Crime Survey for England and Wales to produce the best estimate of how much crime is being committed. It makes for grim reading. While overall crime is up 10 per cent, some offences have soared. Robbery is up from an estimated 60,000 incidents last year to an estimated 139,000 this year, although the ONS say they prefer to use the police reported figures for robbery which show a rise of 6 per cent, from 77,106 to 81,931. Meanwhile, violence with injury is estimated to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Daisy Cooper Edition

35 min listen

Daisy Cooper has been a stalwart of the Liberal Democrats for over a decade. From councillor to MP, she has served as the deputy leader of the party since 2020. First elected to parliament in 2019, she came to prominence when she represented the party in two of the general election debates earlier this year.  On the podcast, Daisy talks to Katy Balls about her ambition to be a conductor, how she created her first job, and whether she’d like to be leader one day. As the Liberal Democrats are now the largest third party in Parliament for 100 years – with 72 MPs – Daisy tells Katy what it’s

Thursday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Reeves’s Budget needs to win over the market

Rachel Reeves confirmed on her trip to Washington DC that she will be changing the government’s self-imposed fiscal rules, allowing the Chancellor to borrow up to £50 billion more for infrastructure investment in Britain. The change – which will take into account the government’s assets – will further loosen what are already quite loose rules created by Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, which aimed to get debt falling as a percentage of GDP by the end of a five-year rolling period. It’s no surprise then that international markets are a little nervous. While plans to change the fiscal rule have been floated for over a month now – giving investors

Jamie Franklin

Who does Justin Welby speak for?

Archbishop Justin Welby’s appearance on The Rest is Politics has caused quite a stir in Anglican circles.  For the most part, the Archbishop came across well and gave some very insightful answers when questioned, for example, about original sin and peace-making in war-torn nations. But these good things are inevitably going to be overshadowed by Welby’s answer to Alistair Campbell’s question about gay sex. Campbell asked Welby whether he had a ‘better answer’ to the one he gave Campbell in 2017, on whether gay sex is a sin. Welby essentially refused to reply, saying he didn’t have a good answer. In this most recent interview, however, he says that he has thought

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Cambridge in crisis, Trump’s wicked humour & the beauty of AI ceramics

53 min listen

This week: Decline and Fall – how our greatest universities are betraying students.Our greatest universities are betraying students, writes David Butterfield, who has just resigned from teaching Classics at Cambridge after 21 years. What went wrong? First, class lists of exam results became private, under alleged grounds of ‘data protection’, which snuffed out much of the competitive spirit of the university. Now even the fate of examinations hangs in the balance. Grade inflation is rampant, and it is now unheard of for students to be sent down for insufficient academic performance. For students, the risks have never been lower. ‘The pace of change over the past decade has been astonishing,

James Heale James Heale

How many Tories will defect to Reform?

11 min listen

After Nigel Farage’s overture to Tory councillors to ‘defect’, one already has. Farage has also been on manoeuvres, piling on the criticism against Labour for its volunteers campaigning for the Democrats in the US. James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Freddy Gray about the latest. Tickets are still available to join Freddy Gray and Nigel Farage on Thursday 24 October for their analysis on the US election. Get your tickets here. Produced by Cindy Yu.

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Osborne takes a pop at Jenrick’s ECHR plan

With just over a week until the victor of the Tory leadership race is announced, the contest is ramping up and endorsements are rolling in. Now the former Chancellor under David Cameron has offered his thoughts on who the next leader of the Conservative party should be on his Political Currency podcast today. Announcing his decision to podcast regulars, the ex-Evening Standard editor told listeners that he was throwing his weight behind Kemi Badenoch. ‘I’ve ticked the box, and I’m about to post it after this podcast.’ Going on, the Remainer blasted Robert Jenrick’s policy plan, lamenting: I started the campaign thinking that Robert Jenrick was going to win. But

Jawad Iqbal

Starmer can’t afford to lose the argument on slavery reparations

The Commonwealth – whose 56 nations are meeting in the Pacific island nation of Samoa – looks set to defy Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer by putting slavery reparations on the agenda. The leaders of some Caribbean countries insist it is ‘only a matter of time’ until Britain bows to demands of handing over billions of pounds in compensation. Reports suggest they are pushing for a clear agreement on plans for reparatory justice and want to publish this in the all-important final communique of the summit. Such a move would lay bare the growing divisions at the gathering. It would also amount to a damaging public setback for Starmer, who

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Sir Keir rated worse than predecessors at same point as PM

When it rains for Sir Keir, it pours. It now transpires that the Labour leader has achieved a worse rating as Prime Minister than all of his recent predecessors – bar Liz Truss, who didn’t manage to last quite as long in the top job. It seems for Keir Starmer, things can only get, er, worse… New polling by YouGov collected between 19-21 October from over 1,600 adults shows that little more than a quarter of Brits believe the current PM is doing well in post, while almost two-thirds of the population think Starmer is performing badly. It’s in stark contrast to the ratings of the last Labour prime minister

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MoJ protestors blast ‘ridiculous’ Labour prison scheme

To Westminster, where outside the Ministry of Justice more than 300 protestors have held a silent vigil this afternoon. Activists from a myriad of campaign groups – including Just Stop Oil, Palestine Action and Black Lives Matter – gathered in front of the department building for 90 minutes today to call for the release of political prisoners and the resignation of crossbench peer Lord Walney, an independent adviser on political disruption. The action was organised by ‘Defend Our Juries’ which slams ‘sham trials’ that, it claims, jail protestors for ‘peaceful acts of protest’ like road blocking, traffic disruption and throwing soup at 100-year-old paintings. Now climate and justice activists have

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Tory councillor defects to Reform after Farage plea

Well, well, well. Less than 24 hours after Reform UK leader Nigel Farage wrote to Conservative councillors in a bid to persuade them to defect to his party, the first has defected. James McIvor, a councillor in Essex, has switched to the Farage-founded party – in a tweet that suggests more of his former colleagues will join him. How very curious… Taking to Twitter today, McIvor declared: It is an honour to represent my community and serve the people of Ontario and its beautiful surrounding Essex villages. In order to continue to do so to the highest standard, I’m delighted to announce I have joined Reform UK. It’s time to

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why the call for slavery reparations is a scam

It would be a shame if Britain were forced to leave the Commonwealth, given the great work it has done over the decades – especially under the guardianship of the late Queen. But our departure is swiftly going to emerge as an option if grasping Caribbean governments continue with their threat to ambush Keir Starmer at the Commonwealth summit in Samoa and press for reparations for slavery. This is an issue which is not going to go away among Commonwealth countries, given that all three of the candidates to replace Baroness Scotland as the organisation’s Secretary General appear to be in favour of pressing for billions of pounds in ‘reparatory

Nigel Jones

Austria’s far right is shut out of power, again

Austria’s mainstream politicians are combining to ensure that the winners of last month’s general elections, the far right Freedom party (FPO) are kept firmly out of power. The Alpine republic’s president, Alexander Van Den Bellen – aligned with the Green party – has invited the current chancellor, Karl Nehammer, whose centre right People’s party (OVP) came second in the elections, to form a coalition explicitly excluding the FPO, which topped the polls with 29 per cent, running on an anti-immigration, pro-Putin platform. Nehammer is now likely to form a ‘grand coalition’ Austria is the latest European ‘domino’ to propel a populist radical right party to the forefront of politics after the

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Farage: ‘Ludicrous’ for Labour to damage Trump relationship

Sir Keir Starmer’s lot have hardly had an easy start in government, what with the cronyism rows, freebie fiasco and frockgate. Now the Prime Minister is dealing with a backlash from one of the presidential candidates, after Labour activists flew stateside to canvas for Kamala Harris. This week, Donald Trump’s campaign even complained about the matter to the Federal Election Commission – alleging that the volunteering by Labour party members, alongside the reported contact between senior party figures and the Harris campaign, was ‘illegal foreign campaign contributions and interference’. Crikey. Trump ally Nigel Farage hasn’t been shy on the matter, insisting last week that ‘this is direct interference by the