Politics

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

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Tracy-Ann Oberman Edition

31 min listen

Actress and writer Tracy-Ann Oberman is well known for her roles across theatre, radio and television, including Dr Who, Friday Night Dinner, It’s a Sin and, of course, EastEnders. Most recently, she has taken on one of the most famous, and problematic, Shakespearean roles: as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Inspired by her great-grandmother, she has reimagined the role as a Jewish matriarch, and the play returns to London’s West End this December. On the podcast, Katy Balls talks to Tracy about her obsession with the Roman Empire, what it was like spending a term in Moscow towards the end of perestroika, and her  career from soap to Shakespeare, hero to villain. As she has

Daniel Rey

How postal votes could deliver Donald Trump the White House

Watch or attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies, and you may well see something surprising: an electronic billboard encouraging people to vote by post. It’s a big u-turn for Trump, who has spent years maintaining that postal votes are manipulated. Ahead of the 2020 election – which took place in the pre-vaccine era of the pandemic – Trump’s White House even blocked additional funding for the Postal Service, fearing that Democratic voters were more likely to avoid going to a polling station. Following the election, one of his many claims of voter fraud was predicated on supposedly corrupted postal ballots. ‘Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,’ Trump said So why the

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Does the Guardian need reminding that Hamas are the bad guys?

The Guardian has found a new minority it wants to shield from offence. A new oppressed group it might shed some virtuous tears over. A put-upon section of society that urgently requires the warm, loving hug of Guardianista pity. And you won’t believe who it is. It’s the mad militants who invaded Israel on 7 October last year. I probably shouldn’t call Hamas gunmen ‘mad’ – the Guardian might accuse me of ‘demonising’ them. In possibly the most crackpot piece it has published this year – and that’s saying something – the Guardian has slammed a new documentary about the 7 October attacks for ‘demonis[ing] Gazans as either killers or

Nigel Jones

Starmer’s first 100 days could not have gone worse

Labour marks 100 days in power tomorrow, but there is precious little for Keir Starmer to celebrate. It is a truism of modern politics that a government’s first three months or so sets the tone for everything that follows. If the newbies hit the ground running, all will be well; if not, disaster inevitably awaits. The Labour leader has hit the ground stumbling As Labour ruefully contemplates the ruinous results of its first hundred days, a landscape of shivering and penurious pensioners; suits, specs and soccer seats worth thousands scrounged from generous millionaires; parents penalised for sending their kids to private schools; British territory handed over; vicious infighting in Downing

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Guardian deletes controversial 7 October review

Uh oh. To the Grauniad, where trouble is afoot. It transpires that the paper’s review of One Day in October, a harrowing Channel 4 documentary about the tragedy of the 7 October terror attack on Israel by Hamas, has caused quite a stir. So much so that it has, in fact, been deleted and wiped entirely from the Guardian’s website. The review had ruffled feathers after suggesting that the documentary had portrayed Gazans as ‘testosterone-crazed Hamas killers’: If you want to understand why Hamas murdered civilians, though, One Day in October won’t help. Indeed, it does a good job of demonising Gazans, first as testosterone-crazed Hamas killers, later as shameless

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Labour’s China pivot, Yvette Cooper’s extremism crackdown & the ladies who punch

48 min listen

Successive governments have struggled with how to deal with China, balancing them as a geopolitical rival yet necessary trade partner. Recent moves from Labour have sent mixed signals, from the free speech act to the return of the Chagos Islands. Further decisions loom on the horizon. As Rachel Reeves seeks some economic wiggle room, can Labour resist the lure of the Chinese market? The Spectator’s Katy Balls, and visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) James Crabtree, join the podcast to discuss further (02:05). Plus: as the first issue under The Spectator’s new editor Michael Gove, what are his reflections as he succeeds Fraser Nelson? He reads an excerpt

Matthew Lynn

Rachel Reeves’ Budget is falling apart

It could be 30 per cent. Or 35 per cent? Or perhaps 39 per cent? Heck, who knows, if Rachel Reeves wants to keep the accountants on their toes, perhaps 39.657 per cent. The Treasury is, according to the latest leaks to the Guardian, looking at an increase in Capital Gains Tax as it scrabbles around for tax rises to fund the Chancellor’s spending plans, while not putting up the amount ordinary people are paying. The trouble is, whatever number she picks it is not going to work – and Rachel Reeves is fast gaining a reputation as a shambolic Chancellor. The list of failed tax rises from the new government

Steerpike Steerpike

Treasury: no plans for Reeves’ robes

It’s tough times at the Treasury for poor Rachel Reeves. With three weeks to go until Labour’s first Budget, every mandarin on Horse Guards Road has been rummaging down the back of the proverbial sofa, looking for any extra cash to spend. The fiscal rules look set for a rejig; taxes are likely to be raised and there’s talk even of spending cuts – though whether the Chancellor can get that past her backbenchers remains another matter. And with Reeves demanding ‘efficiency savings’ across Whitehall, it seems that retrenchment has even extended to her own office. For centuries, successive ministers at the Treasury were given a robe of office in

Steerpike Steerpike

Pro-life buffer zone residents could face £10,000 fines

Welcome to the land of the unfree – otherwise known as Scotland. John Swinney’s SNP government have laid out its rules for anti-abortionists north of the border, and the measures are even worse than many campaigners first imagined. Buffer zones – in which pro-life activists cannot protest – were introduced at the end of September after MSPs passed the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) bill earlier in the year. And it now turns out that if residents living within these exclusion areas, within 200 metres of abortion clinics, hang protestations in their windows, they could be fined up to £10,000. Golly. In a letter sent to residents by the

James Heale James Heale

The ‘Green Budget’ could leave Rachel Reeves red-faced

16 min listen

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published its yearly Green Budget, weeks ahead of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first fiscal event. It’s grim reading, for both the government and the public. For Labour to make good on its promise to avoid ‘austerity’, taxes are going to need to go up significantly: by £25 billion, the IFS’s reports, and that’s just to ‘keep spending rising with national income.’ Can Reeves square the circle?  James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Ron DeSantis’s climate bill has nothing to do with Hurricane Milton

Hurricane Milton has left more than two million homes and businesses in Florida without power and threatens to be a mortal threat for those in its path. But for some, the hurricane also appears to a very large stick with which to beat Florida governor Ron DeSantis for scrapping the state’s climate change goals. DeSantis’ detractors have to explain how a plan to achieve 100 per cent green energy by 2050 will keep Florida’s residents safe from hurricanes A bill, which DeSantis signed in May, removed climate change as a priority in state energy policy and cut the word ‘climate’ from several pieces of state legislation. It banned offshore wind turbines and

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour under fire over Taylor Swift policing fiasco

Dear oh dear. It transpires that the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper received a free concert ticket to Taylor Swift’s shows in the summer – like many of her Labour colleagues. The revelation comes a day after the now-ousted Tory leadership candidate James Cleverly attacked Cooper over claims that the police had been pressed to provide extra protection for Taylor Swift. How very curious… On Wednesday, it was revealed that Cooper had personally intervened to ensure the US pop star received a police convoy to her Wembley shows in London. After a terror attack on Swift’s Vienna tours was foiled, it was claimed that the singer’s mother – and manager –

Christian Wolmar

Can HS2 be fixed?

Choose your expression: ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place’; ‘I wouldn’t start from here if I were you’; or simply ‘this is the biggest omnishambles in history’. All these apply to HS2 as Louise Haigh, the Secretary of State for Transport, attempts to come up with a coherent strategy for a project that has now run for 15 years and has worked its way through around £35 billion – but is still only less than half-completed. Worse, on its way it has shed most of its sections, such as running to Manchester and Leeds or connecting with HS1, that would at least have made the end product a

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The ‘Green Budget’ could leave Rachel Reeves red-faced

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published its yearly Green Budget, weeks ahead of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first fiscal event. It’s grim reading, for both the government and the public. For Labour to make good on its promise to avoid ‘austerity’, taxes are going to need to go up significantly: by £25 billion, the IFS reports, and that’s just to ‘keep spending rising with national income.’ That’s before the government tackles its pledges to invest. And that doesn’t rule out that ‘further tax rises or spending cuts could be required before the end of the parliament’. Despite speculation that Reeves is changing the fiscal rules to enable her Treasury to borrow

Cristina Odone

What’s the problem with zero-hour contracts?

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is set to unveil her workers’ rights bill this week – and ‘exploitative’ zero-hour contracts are in the firing line. But has Labour actually stopped to ask workers what they think? They might be surprised by what they hear: a survey of over 1,000 young people has found that an overwhelming majority (75 per cent) of those in precarious work were satisfied with their working conditions while only 24 per cent were not. It sounds counter-intuitive; happy with no job security, low status work, shifts cancelled at short notice? Satisfied with lower wages and significantly higher turnover rates? And yet young people do seem keen on these roles:

Eliot Wilson

Labour’s House of Lords peerage reform is just hot air

Labour’s crackdown on the House of Lords continues apace. In an effort to reform the upper house, parties could soon be made to provide written justification for peerage nominations they put forward. Under the proposal they would have to submit a citation explaining why the candidate is being proposed and what contribution to public life he or she has made. On its own, this idea is inoffensive. It is, admittedly, transparent in capitalising on the ongoing rumblings over Boris Johnson’s nominations in his 2023 resignation honours: 32-year-old Lord Ross Kempsell, former political director of the Conservative party, and Baroness Charlotte Owen of Alderley Edge (31), a Downing Street special adviser.

Edward Howell

Why North Korea is cutting off all roads to the South

If you visit South Korea, you may be startled at the presence of road signs pointing towards Kaesong and Pyongyang: two destinations that many of Seoul’s visitors will rarely have frequented. The latter – informally known as ‘Pyonghattan’ for its high-rise buildings – needs no explanation. The former was once the capital of dynastic Korea from the 10th to 14th centuries. One millennium later, it would become a special industrial region of North Korea, and home to the infamous Kaesong Industrial Complex, a now-closed joint economic development with South Korea. Yet soon, the roads and railways linking the democratic South to the authoritarian North will be no more. On Tuesday,

Douglas Murray

Does Keir Starmer have a soul?

One of the main arguments against hereditary peerages is that talent and ability are not always passed down across generations. There is much to this. Students of history will know that all the great dynasties see some kind of falloff in capability. Whether the Habsburgs, the Plantagenets or the Kinnocks, the families produce a man – or occasionally a couple of men – of quality, only to see their heirs and successors squander everything. The same rule exists in a meritocratic age. Someone in a family makes a fortune. The next generation spends it. A generation after that, the family is back to square one. Give or take a generation,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Who will dress Keir Starmer now?

It is worth upholding the stuffy point which should have prevailed at the start. It was always improper and unethical for Sue Gray (formerly in charge of Propriety and Ethics in government) to leave the civil service to become Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. In her beginning was her end. Carrying with her all her inside knowledge, she was almost a gamekeeper turned poacher, inspiring mistrust among career officials without winning the respect of the much rougher political crowd. To understand why she was unsuited to her job, one has only to imagine how the thing would look the other way round, with Morgan McSweeney being suddenly announced as,

James Heale James Heale

Can Morgan McSweeney reboot the government machine?

The Queen is dead: long live the King. This week brought an end to Downing Street’s unhappy experiment in dyarchy. Out goes Sue Gray, banished to the regions. In her place stands the Irishman who won the No. 10 power struggle: Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s first chief of staff in opposition, is back on top. McSweeney’s allies believe that the new government will flourish into maturity after a troubled start. ‘We’re back to being political,’ one crows. As another minister prefers to put it: ‘He needs to go around and crack some heads – and quick’ The new chief’s strengths are threefold. First, he is familiar with how the PM