Politics

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

Thursday

31 Oct 2024

Why is the UN meddling in France’s hijab ban?

The United Nations this week criticised France for refusing to allow women and girls to wear a Muslim headscarf on the sports field. In a report published on Monday, a panel comprised of what the UN called ‘independent experts’ concluded that France’s measures banning women from wearing hijabs in sports were ‘discriminatory’. The experts said that the measures ‘infringe on individuals’ [French athletes’] rights to express their religion, identity and beliefs, as well as their right to participate in cultural life’. They also said that France’s secularism laws, which were introduced in 1905 to counter the influence of the Catholic church, ‘are not legitimate grounds for imposing restrictions on the rights

Steerpike

Reeves runs scared from GB News viewers

Budget day has been and gone and this morning Rachel Reeves was expected on the media morning round to discuss the fallout from her fiscal statement. Only it appears that the Chancellor seems to think she has better things to do than speak to the usual selection of broadcasters about her tax-raising Budget the morning after. It transpires that, at the very last moment, Reeves pulled out of a scheduled interview with Times Radio this morning – before pulling the same stunt an hour later with GB News. So much for transparency… While the Chancellor isn’t keen to reiterate her own Budget – a rather flimsy excuse, Mr S thinks

Lucy Dunn

Now the SNP must prove it can govern

In the history of devolution, no Westminster government has ever given Scotland as large a block grant settlement as the one announced by Labour on Wednesday. In her fiscal statement, the chancellor declared that politicians north of the border will receive £1.5 billion this year and a record £3.4 billion next year via the Barnett formula. It’s a move that caught the SNP by surprise, and one that has thrown the nationalist’s political strategy into doubt. Long before the July election, the SNP government began an anti-Labour austerity campaign – claiming Keir Starmer’s ‘tough decisions’ rhetoric was code for public service spending cuts while using policy positions like Keir Starmer’s

Jean-André Prager

Labour’s Budget is a missed chance to solve Britain’s benefits problem

‘Fixing the Foundations’ is the phrase the Labour government wants in your head after the Budget. But the thin gruel for dealing with the challenge presented by our ill-health and disability benefits system suggests those words don’t count for much. Apart from the defence of the realm, there is nothing more foundational to society than the way it treats its most vulnerable and most disadvantaged. Some people are, through no fault of their own, not able to work. Its the duty of the government to ensure that a safety net is in place to help these people; it must balance this by ensuring that the system is fair to the

Ian Williams

Why the Great Firewall of China is waging war on Halloween

The Chinese Communist party (CCP) is spooked by Halloween. In Shanghai, police have rounded up people gathering in costumes that included a Donald Trump with bandaged right ear, Spiderman, Deadpool and Batman. A man dressed as Buddha was also shown being escorted away in videos posted on Chinese social media, but quickly deleted by online censors. The aim seems to be to prevent a repeat of last year’s celebrations, when revellers used the occasion to take a tongue-in-cheek poke at the CCP, and costumes included a surveillance camera and hazmat suits (a swipe at Covid lockdowns). It has at times been like a game of cat and mouse The online

Rory Cormac

Sabotage is back in fashion

Sabotage seems to be back with a bang – and if not with a bang, certainly with a lot of smoke. Incidents have come thick and fast since 2022 when someone – and it still is not clear who – sabotaged pipelines in the Baltic Sea to disable the flow of natural gas from Germany to Russia. Since then, we have seen suspicious fires (or attempted fires) everywhere from an Ikea warehouse in Lithuania to a paint factory in Poland; we have seen explosions at defence plants and arms manufacturers spanning the US, Wales, and Germany. Meanwhile, arson brought French railways to a standstill on the eve of the 2024

Michael Evans

Can Zelensky and Putin do a deal?

Warring parties often strike deals. Exchanges of prisoners, ceasefires to deliver aid, covert talks between intelligence services – and eventually, hopefully, peace. But since Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of troops across the Russian border into Ukraine on 24 February 2022, there have been no peace negotiations and no sign of meaningful compromise from either Moscow or Kyiv. But now, after nearly three years of horrendous casualties and destruction in Ukraine, preliminary talks are underway, according to the Financial Times, for a deal in which both sides would agree to stop or reduce attacks on energy installations. While it might seem a bizarre development, it’s now in Moscow’s interest as much as

Matthew Lynn

The true cost of Labour’s Budget is impossible to calculate

No sombre music accompanied Rachel Reeves’s Budget, nor was there a reading from Corinthians. Yet, those details aside, one point is surely clear: Labour’s first Budget in 14 years was a requiem for entrepreneurial Britain. The four decades from the Thatcher reforms of the early 1980s, that turned the UK into one of the best places, at least in Europe, to start and build a company, are now officially over. Britain’s economy will be a lot poorer thanks to the Labour government. In Labour land, entrepreneurs might as well not exist True, the Budget might not have been quite as bad as some of the advanced speculation suggested. Even so,

Douglas Murray

The strange silence around the Southport attacks

There are certain rules in British public life that are worth noting. Such as this one: if someone is killed by a jihadist or someone who could plausibly be connected to immigration in any way, the British public will not be informed of the possible motive – or at least not until it becomes impossible to conceal it any longer. It was revealed that the attacker was of Rwandan heritage, at which point people said: ‘Nothing to see here’ Certain rules follow on from this. One is that ‘wise’ heads will inform anyone who does mention a likely motive that they must be exceptionally careful not to prejudice any forthcoming

Christopher Caldwell

How quickly would Trump wash his hands of Ukraine?

For American politicians, all wars are two-front wars. There is a hot battlefield somewhere in the Middle East or the South China Sea, and there’s a political battlefield in Washington, D.C. The domestic contest is decisive. The same goes for Europe. With Joe Biden riding into the sunset and the presidential campaign drawing to a close, American interest in Ukraine is winding down, too. Europeans talking tough about ‘standing up’ to Russia had better be prepared to do so on their own. The next president will find the domestic pressure to scale back involvement in Ukraine irresistible Donald Trump’s campaign message, muddled though it is, bodes ill for the Ukrainian

Katy Balls

Labour’s new cabinet divide

There were no civil servants present when ministers gathered for their weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday. The reason? It was time to talk politics. On the eve of Labour’s first Budget for 14 years, Keir Starmer tried to rally his ministers around a common message: blame the Tories! He spoke of the so-called fiscal black hole bequeathed to Labour before he handed things over to his Chancellor to explain why difficult decisions were required on spending, tax and welfare. Plenty of Labour MPs and aides question the wisdom of an election campaign which has boxed them in For all the attempts to unite against a common enemy, just a glance

The Spectator

Rachel Reeves is taking us back to the 1970s

The first fiscal event to be delivered by a female Chancellor of the Exchequer is a landmark moment, but in every other regard this Budget was a return to the familiar, and failed, approach of Labour governments past. This was the Life on Mars Budget – a journey back to the 1970s, only without the cheap booze and fags. Tax rises, increased borrowing, a bigger state, spending on public services unaccompanied by meaningful reform and additional costs for those businesses which create wealth – we have seen all these before and we know they are the markers of decline. This Budget was a journey back to the 1970s, only without

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Tax rises, a cheddar heist and snail delivery man gets slapped

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeatedly mentioning an inherited ‘£22 billion black hole’, raised taxes by £40 billion in the Budget, while saying she was abiding by Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase taxes on ‘working people’. A big hit came from increasing employers’ contributions to national insurance; the threshold at which it begins to be paid was reduced from £9,100 to £5,000. But income tax and NI thresholds for employees would be unfrozen from 2028. Capital gains tax went up; stamp duty for second homes rose. Fuel duty would again be frozen. The non-dom regime was abolished. Tobacco went up; a pint of draught went down

Wednesday

30 Oct 2024

James Heale

Has Rachel Reeves killed the family farm?

As the post-Budget scrutiny gets underway, there is one group of obvious losers from today’s statement: farmers. The rural community is up in arms about Rachel Reeves’ changes to tax relief on farmland. From April 2026 this will be capped at 50 per cent for assets over £1 million – which works out at around roughly 67 acres. The average UK farm size is 217 acres, meaning the vast majority of ordinary family farms will now have to pay inheritance tax. Farms with amenity value or higher local land prices – such as those in the South of England – will be particularly impacted. Rural MPs from across the House

Ross Clark

The markets don’t like this Budget much

It has been a good day for investors in the Alternative Investment Market (Aim), with the index of the top 100 Aim shares up 4.3 per cent. But that merely serves to undermine the damage that Rachel Reeves had done to the market by previously suggesting that she might remove the exemption whereby Aim shares were free of inheritance tax (IHT). In the event, she made Aim shares liable for 50 per cent of the normal rate of IHT – hence the relief rally. Yet Aim shares are still down 2 per cent since election day. By contrast, the Ftse small cap index – smaller shares within the main London

Steerpike

Watch: OBR denies review legitimises Labour’s £22bn claim

Rachel Reeves’s fiscal statement has been and gone but the fallout from today’s Budget is still being assessed. One rather interesting element of the Chancellors’ speech this afternoon concerns the Labour government’s claim that the Conservatives left a £22bn blackhole in the economy after the party’s 14 years in government. Despite shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt and outgoing Tory leader Rishi Sunak vehemently denying this is accurate, Reeves insisted to the House today that she will publish a ‘line by line’ analysis of her claim. On the topic of publications, the OBR has been no great ally to Starmer’s army. It released a review of its own today on the contents

Kate Andrews

Living standards take a hit in Labour’s Budget

‘Judge us by whether, in five years’ time, you have more money in your pocket,’ Keir Starmer told the Mirror earlier this week. This comment came ahead of his speech in the West Midlands, which was designed to prepare the country (and markets) for the Budget. ‘Everyone can wake up on Thursday and understand that a new future is being built, a better future,’ he said in his address. The message was clear: tough decisions now would lead to a brighter – and more prosperous – future in the UK. In simple terms, the tax hike is set to redirect cash from workers’ wages to the Treasury instead Has that promise been

John O’Neill and Michael Simmons

Eight graphs that expose the truth about Labour’s Budget

Rachel Reeves sounded triumphant as she delivered Labour’s first Budget in 14 years. ‘Invest, invest, invest,’ the Chancellor said. She claimed hers was a Budget for growth and prosperity and, that most of all, it was a Budget to help working people. But the Office for Budget Responsibility – the body set up 14 years ago by George Osborne to judge fiscal events – doesn’t seem to agree. Its report, published immediately after the Chancellor delivered her Budget, makes for grim reading. The stand-out chart in the OBR’s report shows the effect the increase in employer National Insurance contributions will have on Britain’s labour force. Reeves gets much of her

Lloyd Evans

Rachel Reeves sounded bored by her own Budget

The Tories lied! That was the thrust of Rachel Reeves’s first Budget today. She was very specific about the falsehoods. At the time of the spring financial forecast, she said, ‘they hid the reality of their public spending plans.’ Parliament and the public were the victims of ‘a cover up’ about pressures on our economy. The cunning Tories even duped the Office for Budget Responsibility by failing to provide ‘all the information’. But hang on. The OBR is staffed by the brainiest economists in the country, if not the world. Is possible that this synod of geniuses were duped by a few Tory wonks armed with dodgy spreadsheets? Reeves appears

Tom Clougherty

Labour has no idea how to break Britain’s spiral of decline

The government came into office promising to prioritise economic growth. Now, after their first Budget, I suppose we have some idea of what that means: more borrowing to fund public sector capital projects, and higher tax and regulatory burdens on business. This does not seem very likely to prove a successful recipe, and furthers the impression that this government is likely to fall into the same trap that ensnared its immediate predecessors: managing Britain’s relative economic decline, with no clear idea of how to break out of it. The biggest single item in the Budget is the £25 billion increase in employer National Insurance contributions. There are a few things