Politics

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

Sunday

Thomas Edwards

Pope Francis leaves behind a divided church

Pope Francis’s death at the age of 88 was neither untimely nor a great surprise. Having made what appeared to be a miraculous recovery from double pneumonia and kidney failure – and subsequently turning up at St Peter’s in a poncho just two weeks ago – Francis appeared to have been granted a new lease of life. Despite this, he left this world on Monday morning, the day after administering the Urbi et Orbi blessing and the second day of the Easter Octave. As times go for a Pope to depart this life, he picked a suitable moment. Many of the accounts of the Pope’s life, following his death, have

Jane Stannus

Canadians need saving from Mark Carney, not Donald Trump

Tomorrow’s election will be one of the most important in Canadian history. The results hang on one crucial question: what’s the biggest threat to Canada right now? The Liberals, under the guidance of Mark Carney, have used every tool at their disposal to frighten, persuade, and cajole voters into believing the biggest threat to Canada is American tariffs and America’s president. But while relations with America are indeed something Canadians should care about, let’s hope that they’re not quite gullible enough to fall for that one. Let’s hope they recognise what Liberals have spent ten years proving over and over: the greatest threat to Canada as we know it isn’t

Michael Jackson

Jacinda Ardern and the empty politics of ‘kindness’

Just over two years on from stepping down as Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern is awaiting the imminent release of her memoir titled Jacinda Ardern, A Different Kind of Power. The launch will be supported by a 9-night US and UK book tour. The marketing around both employs the ‘kind and empathic’ messaging now firmly cemented as her international brand. Eventbrite, for example, asks us to imagine ‘what if kindness came first?’. Today, if you ask Meta AI or ChatGPT ‘what one word best describes Jacinda Ardern’s leadership style’ they will both respond with ‘empathetic.’ These words do not, however, encapsulate her brand in New Zealand – despite

Charles Parton

Why the new pope won’t be welcome in China

Choosing a new pope has more in common than you might expect with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress’s system for picking a new general secretary. Both processes are autocratic, secret, and rigid; they focus on the leader’s infallibility, and involve a lack of succession planning. And women don’t get a look in. China’s president Xi Jinping commands over 1.3 billion souls; so, too, will the new pope. He will also own the allegiance of an estimated 12 million Chinese. But how will he exercise his pastoral care and oversight? Pope Francis, who was laid to rest yesterday following his death on Monday, had a ‘thing’ about China. He was

Sam Meadows

Bolivia’s fuel crisis could cause a populist turn

‘Some of them will have been waiting for two days.’ My taxi driver was pointing at a queue of lorries, vans and cars stretching essentially the entire length of Villazon, a small town on Bolivia’s border with Argentina. At the front of the queue? A petrol station. Bolivia is in the grip of a severe fuel crisis. Bolivia has traditionally been heavily reliant on natural gas exports, but a collapse in production after years of government neglect has sparked shortages, causing the long queues at petrol stations. The country, the only landlocked nation in South America, and also one of the poorest, is currently importing substantial amounts of fuel. The

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Labour’s benefits cuts aren’t working

Britain’s welfare crisis may have slipped from the front pages following Liz Kendall’s £4.8 billion worth of cuts announced ahead of the Spring Statement, but the problems haven’t gone away. Figures quietly released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) this week show that, despite Labour’s planned ‘reforms’ to the benefits system, nearly a million more people will end up on incapacity benefits by the end of the decade, at an additional cost of £9 billion. Kendall’s reforms have only chipped away a few pebbles from Everest Last autumn, the DWP’s own forecasts projected welfare spending on disabled and sick Britons passing £120 billion by 2030. After all of

Saturday

Zoe Strimpel

Could Maga’s baby boom policies backfire?

If there is one thing that Trump appointees, and most Trump voters, can get behind, it’s that marriage and babies are good, and falling fertility rates (now 1.57 children per American woman vs replacement level of 2.1), single parenthood and abortion are bad. The administration has been preparing to announce baby boom policies – possibly in partnership with the Heritage Foundation, masterminds of Project 2025 – and those of us with ovaries are braced. Measures to help make reality the Maga vision of an America re-peopled with big joyful broods and happy families may include a Hungary-style payout of $5,000 (around £4,000) to married new parents; IVF subsidies (Trump called

Alexander Larman

Virginia Giuffre was a victim of careless cruelty

The death of Virginia Giuffre by suicide at the age of 41 brings to an apparent end one of the grimmest and saddest sagas that has unfolded in public life in the past few decades. Giuffre, who came from a troubled and unhappy background and later became prey for both the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his enabler Ghislaine Maxwell, was one of the classic ‘small people’ who is used and discarded by the powerful and perverted. It is hard not to remember the famous lines from The Great Gatsby when thinking about her fate: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back

Madeleine Teahan

Pope Francis’s funeral brought the least and the greatest together

In the story of Pope Francis’s papacy, the same thread ran through the first and final chapters. On the evening of his election in 2013, he appeared on St Peter’s balcony dressed in plain white – shunning the red papal mozetta – delivering a simple ‘buonasera’ with a shy wave to the rapturous and adoring crowds. He was a pope among the people from beginning to end Just as he kept things simple then, he opted for a modest wood coffin today rather than the three-casket option made of cypress, lead and oak. Although popes are usually buried with a new mitre, which costs hundreds of pounds, Francis insisted his

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Will the assassination of another Russian general change anything?

Friday morning, Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik was heading out from his flat in Balashikha, a commuter town east of Moscow, when a car bomb exploded, killing him. There can be little doubt this is an operation by Ukrainian intelligence, another example of their capacity to launch skilful targeted assassinations in the heart of Russia. But will it actually change anything? That is more doubtful. It is hard not to assume this was another killing by the Ukrainians Moskalik was not a high-profile figure, but as deputy head of the General Staff’s Main Operations Directorate (GOU), he was a capable officer and potentially on a career track for even higher office.

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The Pope’s funeral was symbolic of the man

The funeral of Pope Francis is perhaps his last chance to set his mark on the papacy. The ever so slightly pared down ceremony today is symbolic of the man, as were so many of his other ways of being pope. It will be difficult for Francis’s successor to return to the more ornate habits of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, let alone the monarchical ways of earlier popes. In some ways this is a shame – those traditions weren’t about the individual, but about the office, though they may jar with modern sensibilities. The function of the pope is not to be liked as widely as possible One of

James Heale James Heale

‘An era of five-party politics’: John Curtice on the significance of the local elections

20 min listen

Legendary pollster Prof Sir John Curtice joins the Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale to look ahead to next week’s local elections. The actual number of seats may be small, as John points out, but the political significance could be much greater. If polling is correct, Reform could win a ‘fresh’ by-election for the first time, the mayoralties could be shared between three or more parties, and we could see a fairly even split in terms of vote share across five parties (Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives, the Green party, and Reform UK).  The 2024 general election saw five GB-wide parties contest most seats for the first time. These set

Alex Klaushofer

Why are MPs turning a blind eye to ‘two-tier’ policing?

Does Britain have a ‘two-tier’ attitude towards policing? The Home Affairs Committee, made up of 11 Tory, Lib Dem and Labour MPs, is dismissive of the suggestion. ‘It was disgraceful to see the police officers who bore the brunt of (the) violence being undermined by baseless claims of ‘two-tier policing’, its report, published earlier this month, says of the police response to the ugly scenes that followed the Southport murders last July. It’s a questionable claim – and I’ve been left wondering why they chose to reference a piece I wrote about two-tier policing for The Spectator in August. Legislation in the pipeline could give the police even more powers ‘Police

Kristina Murkett

How Trump could reverse America’s baby bust

Over the past few weeks, the White House has been considering a range of ideas to boost America’s falling birth rate: a $5,000 (£3,756) ‘baby bonus’ to new mothers, programmes to educate women on their menstrual cycles, a ‘National Medal of Motherhood’ for women with six children or more. Trump has pledged to be the ‘fertilisation president’, whilst J.D. Vance has said, ‘to put it simply, I want more babies in America’. Across the world, countries are trialling increasingly creative and dramatic policies to try to reverse the fertility decline. In Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s self-proclaimed mission is ‘procreation, not immigration’, mothers with two or more children are

Michael Evans

Can Pete Hegseth remain at the Pentagon?

The moment the Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s nomination for defence secretary, the Pentagon community knew it was in trouble. One horrified defence official said at the time: ‘He may have been educated at Princeton and Harvard, but does he know anything about running a huge organisation like the Pentagon? No, he doesn’t.’ As both Trump and Hegseth have said in recent days, the Pentagon establishment was against this controversial appointment from the beginning and have claimed this is why the defence department is going through its current turmoil, with summary sackings, accusations of intimidation and unauthorised leaks to sympathetic, ‘establishment’ newspapers. There is a degree of truth in

Linda Jaivin

How Mao haunts China

Imagine a time traveller from Mao Zedong’s China – say a Red Guard  – landing in a Chinese city today, nearly half a century since Mao’s death in 1976 brought the Cultural Revolution to an end. Picture her in baggy unisex khaki and blunt bob, gaping at women her age prancing past in heels and short skirts. See her take in the soaring buildings, bustling shopping centres and pumping night clubs. She looks at a newspaper. Some things make sense: ‘America’s democracy is in decline,’ one headline declares. There are familiar reports on model workers and the same sort of photos of leaders visiting factories and welcoming foreign presidents. But

Friday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Zelensky counters Trump’s surrender deal

I open the calculator on my phone to count how many civilians have been killed in Ukraine over the past five days. The number 38 stares back at me. I hope I haven’t missed anyone. An apartment block in Kyiv. A five-story building in Pavlohrad. A bus in Marhanets. Russian missiles and drones found Ukrainians in their beds, on their way to work or school. In Kherson, the traffic lights had to be switched off to stop Russian drones striking civilian cars as they stopped at junctions. The city remains a training ground for fresh Russian recruits. Hunting real people teaches them more quickly than hitting lifeless dots on a screen. Yet the peace talks continue. Steve Witkoff, the US Special Envoy to

Lucy Dunn

Is a Scottish visa the answer to Scotland’s workforce crisis?

There aren’t many politicians calling for a rise in immigration to Britain at the moment, but you can count on the SNP to be different. Today the party’s Scottish visa bill had its second reading in the sparsely-populated Commons, with sponsor Arbroath and Broughty Ferry MP Stephen Gethins spending 50 minutes elaborately making the case for its passage through parliament. Taking aim at the ‘poisonous’ Reform stance on Britain’s borders, Gethins’ speech dipped between reprimanding Labour for their lack of support and pleading with them to back his call to fully devolve immigration powers to Scotland. Neither carrot nor stick seemed to have much effect.  Giving Scotland a separate immigration

Sam Meadows

Milei freed the peso. Argentina’s economy survived

It was Argentina’s ‘liberation day’, Javier Milei proclaimed last week after meeting US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in the Pink House, Argentina’s presidential palace. On Friday, he had shocked the country by lifting the cepo – ‘clamp’ in Spanish – which has restricted currency trades in South America’s second-largest economy for so long. ‘After 15 years of capital controls, we have cast off the anvil to which we were chained,’ Milei said. Lifting the cepo was a key part of Milei’s policy agenda. Nevertheless, few expected him to do anything before mid-term elections in October. But doing so was a key requirement of the disbursement of $20bn from the International Monetary Fund, also announced on

Andrew Tettenborn

We don’t need a crackdown on killer cyclists

Wayward cyclists watch out: Keir Starmer is coming for you. The government has announced a crackdown against bikers who kill pedestrians. The offence of ‘careless cycling’ is to be punished with a potential two years’ imprisonment if someone is injured, five if they are killed. With ‘dangerous cycling’, the punishment could be up to five years for injury, or imprisonment for life – yes, life – in the case of death. Much of Middle England, especially motorists exasperated by cyclists often behaving as if they own the road (not to mention the pavement), will cheer. But the case for this crackdown is not as strong as it looks. For one