Politics

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

Tuesday

24 Sep 2024

The hidden costs of furlough

It wasn’t long ago that a Conservative government was congratulating itself for achieving the lowest unemployment figures in half a century. This won’t wash any more, since the wider picture has become clear: while official unemployment figures remain low, figures for ‘economic inactivity’ have seen a sharp rise. We have 9.4 million of working age who are economically inactive – a number that has increased by one million since before the pandemic. It is just that only a small proportion of them show up in the unemployment figures. Many of the remainder – 2.8 million – are on long-term sickness benefits, a number that has risen by 700,000 since the

Monday

23 Sep 2024

Lucy Dunn

This is a ten-year plan, says Labour health minister

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has made a lot of noise about the perilous state of the NHS, insisting the institution must ‘reform or die’. But while the rhetoric is right, what does Labour actually plan to do about it? There are ‘three shifts’, health minister Stephen Kinnock told Isabel Hardman at The Spectator’s ‘How to fix a broken NHS’ audience today: a change of focus from hospital care to a more community-centred approach, a move from a paper-based, analogue-style practice to better use of AI and digital technology, and a transition from dealing with sickness to emphasising prevention. But it’s not just the NHS that has to adapt and modernise: other facets

Steerpike

Labour MP: regulate media to ‘make Starmer’s job easier’

To Liverpool, where all the wit and wisdom of Sir Keir’s Labour party is gathered. Starmer’s army has come to the city armed with bright ideas and insightful opinions — and no one more so than Bell Ribeiro-Addy. The Labour MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill has been thinking long and hard about the woes her party has faced this last week — cronyism accusations, a freebie fiasco and anti-Sue Gray leaks, to name but a few — and has come up with a solution. To help Starmer better handle press scrutiny, Ribeiro-Addy has suggested the Prime Minister should consider, er, regulating the press. If you want to deal with

Steerpike

Refugee Council’s closed door policy

When the Tories were in power, one of the harshest critics of the government’s Rwanda scheme to deport asylum seekers were the Refugee Council, who branded the plan, among other things, as ‘absurd and inhumane’ and ‘slam[ming] our door in the face of refugees in search of safety.’ Mr S was therefore curious to know what solutions to the asylum crisis would be proposed by the charity, at its event entitled ‘After Rwanda: Building an Asylum System That Has Public Support’, taking place at Labour conference this afternoon. Due to speak at the event was Home Office minister Angela Eagle, who would perhaps have been able to explain why Keir

Katy Balls

Who was the real audience for Rachel Reeves’s speech?

11 min listen

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has just finished her speech at Labour conference. After a brief interruption by hecklers, she addressed austerity, the pandemic, and winter fuel payments. How was the speech received, and who does it really speak to? Elsewhere, Sue Gray’s lack of appearance in Liverpool hasn’t done anything to slow down discussion of recent controversy. James Heale is joined by Katy Balls and John McTernan, formerly Tony Blair’s Political Secretary.

Steerpike

Watch: Reeves’s hypocrisy over freebie row

Back to Labour’s freebie row, which has spilled over into conference week. Sir Keir Starmer’s top team is desperate to get on top of the scandal, yet every time they try, they somehow manage to make things worse. Take Labour’s winter fuel payment-cutting Rachel Reeves, for example, who spoke to ITV News today about the fiasco. The Chancellor was quizzed about the whole affair on the airwaves after Labour’s popularity nosedived amid tales of extravagant gifting. First admitting to a cronyism problem that the party is ‘making sure we get a grip of’, Reeves then turned to defend a series of luxurious donations: What really grates is that people donate

Brendan O’Neill

The plight of Hatun Tash shames Britain

There is a Christian preacher, a woman, who has suffered the most heinous persecutions. She has been chased by mobs, arrested, unlawfully jailed and even stabbed. Where did this hellish hounding of a follower of Christ occur? Afghanistan, perhaps? Somalia maybe? Actually it was right here, in Britain. An angry mob formed around her Her name is Hatun Tash. She is an ex-Muslim originally from Turkey. She’s now a Christian convert and colourful street preacher. She regularly gave impromptu sermons at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, where she’s been known to hold up a desecrated copy of the Koran while spreading the word of Christ. Her style is not to

James Heale

Is Labour going through its own Partygate?

11 min listen

Labour’s first party conference in government has opened under the shadow of the ‘Frockgate’ scandal, which continues to rumble on. James Heale and Katy Balls report from Liverpool on what the mood is like – and the big topics for the party this week. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.

Isabel Hardman

Has Labour got anything new to say at its party conference?

Have you learned anything about this Labour government from the conference speeches so far? Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ address to the hall in Liverpool this lunchtime was an announcement-free zone, and the same is true of all the other ministers who have got up to speak so far. All of them have followed the same format: attack the Tories and say things were so much worse when Labour came into office than expected, then move onto listing what the government is doing in very general terms, and then appeal to the party to work with the minister to get this done. This strategy allows the party to have a victory lap

Limor Simhony Philpott

Can Israelis stomach another war?

It was late in 1997 when I got to a small military base on the border between Israel and Lebanon. Straight out of training, my welcome to the base involved sitting in the war room wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest, hoping that the barrage of rockets flying over our heads, courtesy of Hezbollah, wouldn’t hit. It was time of constant clashes with Hezbollah in south Lebanon. Casualties were commonplace. I’ve been to too many funerals and have seen too many parents bury their sons – my friends, peers and brothers in arms – than I’d care to remember. It was also a time when the Israeli public grew

Matthew Lynn

We don’t need Rachel Reeves’ ‘industrial strategy’

It is not hard to imagine what will be in Rachel Reeves’ ‘industrial strategy’. There will be lots of ‘green industries’, along with plenty of ‘cutting-edge technologies’, all designed to nurture ‘national champions’ in the ‘sectors of the future’. And presumably Lord Alli, the Labour donor who has been footing the bill for Keir Starmer’s wardrobe, will be put in charge of overseeing all the details. Alongside the tax rises in the Budget planned for next month, the Chancellor’s promise of a full-blown industrial strategy is a troubling prospect. ‘Around the time of the Budget we will publish a green paper on a new industrial strategy focused on driving and

Isabel Hardman

It’s no surprise nurses want a bigger pay rise

Just as the Chancellor Rachel Reeves was talking in her conference speech about the importance of resolving public sector strikes, the Royal College of Nursing announced that its members had rejected their pay deal. Nurses have voted two thirds against the 5.5 per cent pay rise, and the College published a letter to Health Secretary Wes Streeting warning that ‘this outcome shows their expectations of government are far higher’. The timing was no accident. It was almost at the very same moment that Reeves was arguing that the government needed to make pay offers to stop the strikes so that public services could run properly again. The RCN’s ballot underlines

Steerpike

Wes Streeting’s surprising praise for Reform

After the general election this year, Nigel Farage argued that he was now the leader of the opposition, after his Reform party took more than six million votes, and came second in swathes of seats across the north of England. The Conservatives furiously disagree with him of course, especially given the Tory party’s higher vote share and seats – but one person at least seems to subscribe to Farage’s way of thinking. Speaking at an Ipsos Mori event at Labour conference on Monday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting pointed out that the Conservative party is currently in a fight for its survival and that ‘we are kind of due’ the sort

Philip Patrick

The tragic cost of Japan’s floods

Yet another natural disaster has struck in Japan as floods and landslides in the Noto peninsula, precipitated by ‘unprecedented’ rainfall, have killed seven (according to the state broadcaster NHK) with 10 people missing. As usual, these numbers are expected to rise. The Ishikawa area was pounded on Saturday with the heaviest continuous rainfall (540 millimetres in 72 hours in the city of Wajima) since records began. One resident Akemi Yamashita described scenes as ‘heart-breaking’ with the floods, which she saw rising quickly to half the height of her car as she drove through town, like ‘something from a movie’. This latest tragedy is a reminder of how treacherous, climatically and

Katy Balls

Who was the real audience for Rachel Reeves’s speech?

Rachel Reeves had to deal with unexpected turbulence in her party conference speech, after anti-Israel protesters interrupted her. But that was the easy bit, since she just opted to go for the Labour line for stage disruption: ‘We are a changed Labour party that represent working people – not the party of protest’. That response received applause in the hall, where delegates regularly cheered on the first female chancellor. The harder task for Reeves today was finding a way to hold the line on difficult spending decisions, while also striking a more upbeat tone than the miserable-ism that has dominated the past few weeks. Reeves made it clear she would

Steerpike

Starmer’s biographer slams ‘office politics’ of freebie fiasco

It’s day two of Labour conference and Sir Keir Starmer’s freebie fiasco still hasn’t gone away. Over a week since it transpired that clothing donations to Lady Starmer hadn’t initially been declared properly, revelations that the Prime Minister has received over £107,000 in donations since 2019 have caused outrage among the party’s voter base – and its own MPs. Corbynista Diane Abbott slammed the party’s top team for being ‘in the pocket of millionaires’, while Labour parliamentarians have blasted Starmer’s ‘double standards’ over the issue. Talk about trouble in paradise… But not everyone believes the matter deserves media attention. At a Labour conference fringe event today, Sir Keir’s own biographer

Steerpike

Watch: Reeves’ heckled by Gaza activist

It’s Rachel Reeves’ big day at conference today. After 80 days of doom and gloom, the Starmer army have concluded that this might not be doing wonders for business confidence and party morale. So the Chancellor is seeking to strike a more optimistic note in her address to activists, declaring that her budget will have ‘real ambition’ and that there will ‘be no return to austerity.’ But with Reeves barely a third of the way through her speech this lunchtime, it seems not all in the audience were a fan of her style. The Chancellor was loudly interrupted by a pro-Palestine protester who shouted: ‘And we are still selling arms

Gavin Mortimer

Is Michel Barnier’s cabinet really conservative?

Emmanuel Macron’s new government marks, in the words of the BBC, ‘a decisive shift to the right’. That is also the view of Le Monde, the newspaper of the French left, which quotes Socialist party chairman Oliver Faure’s description of it as ‘a reactionary government that gives democracy the finger’. This government is not right wing. To quote Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally, ‘this “new” government marks the return of Macronism through a back door.’ Eighteen of the 39 ministers are Macronists including those responsible for education, finance, foreign affairs, Europe and defence. Another presidential loyalist is Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the minister for ecological transition, who hates Marine Le

Steerpike

Starmer sends Glittergate warning

To Liverpool, where Sir Keir Starmer is enjoying his first Labour conference in government, against the backdrop of rather stormy weather and an even worse week of press. On Sunday night, the Prime Minister attended the Scottish Labour reception to welcome new MPs north of the border and ramp up support for his Caledonian lot ahead of the 2026 Holyrood elections, enthusiastically endorsing the Scottish leader as speculation about the fortunes of the party grows. A jubilant PM told the crowd: We’ve got a Labour government with 37 Scottish Labour MPs who want and are willing to stand for election. Places like that in Scotland – they don’t fall from

Kate Andrews

Why has Rachel Reeves suddenly become cheery?

Can Rachel Reeves inject some optimism into the debate around Britain’s economy? That seems to be her ambition today, as she prepares to address Labour conference – and the country – this afternoon, where she will look forward to a ‘decade of national renewal’ and promise ‘no return to austerity.’ The change in language is striking. Having used this summer to prepare people for a ‘painful’ and ‘difficult’ Budget in October that will have to include tax hikes and spending cuts, Reeves is now talking about the fiscal event as ‘a Budget to rebuild Britain’, and pointing to a much more positive future: a economic ‘prize’ of a more stable