Politics

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

Monday

3 Jun 2024

Why Farage is back as Reform leader

He’s back. After all the teasing and all the rhetoric, Nigel Farage has finally announced his return as Reform leader. Having initially pledged that he would not stand at this election, he told a 100-strong room in Westminster: ‘I’ve changed my mind.’ He will now stand as Reform’s candidate in Clacton – the only seat Ukip ever won in a general election, back in 2015. ‘I cannot turn my back on the people’s army’ he said to the room. ‘I cannot turn my back on all those people who voted for us… I can’t let those people down, I won’t let those people down.’ If this is to be a change

Ross Clark

Nigel Farage’s election U-turn could be deadly for the Tories

No wonder that Nigel Farage has decided that he would rather be leader of Reform UK than merely honorary president, and that he would like another shot at standing as an MP in Clacton. He looks as if he is the only politician – with the possible exception of Ed Davey – who is actually enjoying this campaign. Indeed, he seems to have engaged what used to be Boris Johnson’s secret political weapon: optimism. That could prove to be deadly for the Conservatives. Farage’s thin skin seems to have thickened markedly Farage hasn’t always been all smiles on the campaign trail. On the contrary, in 2015 Ukip’s then economics spokesman,

Isabel Hardman

George Galloway: Labour is the ‘number one enemy’

George Galloway would be happy if his Workers’ Party of Britain denied Labour the chance of an outright majority at the election because it would mean that whoever was in power would have to listen to the smaller parties. That was his message today when interviewed by Andrew Neil on Times Radio: the former Labour MP does not see a Labour government as being at all worthwhile over and above a Conservative one. He is standing in Rochdale, which he won in a by-election earlier this year after Labour messed up with its own candidate. ‘We are a threat to Labour in at least 100 places. We can either beat

Steerpike

Watch: Lib Dems photobomb Sunak event

Can anything go right on Rishi Sunak’s magical mystery tour? Nothing seems to be going right for the Prime Minister as he campaigns around the country, seeking to overturn Labour’s 20-point lead in the polls. Whether it’s attendees rolling their eyes on camera or an ill-advised trip to Belfast’s Titanic Quarter, the PM often seems to attract headlines for all the wrong reasons. So Mr S was not surprised to see the local Lib Dems making the most out of a visit by the PM to Leander rowing club in Henley-upon-Thames. As Sunak chatted away to locals, a Lib Dem vessel came motoring past behind him, with attendees on board

Stephen Daisley

The taxman has failed Britain’s poor

Today we are witnessing a significant failure of the UK state. This morning, the personal finance campaigner Martin Lewis reported that around 30 per cent of families had not received their latest child benefit payment. HMRC, which administers the payments, said it was ‘working to resolve the issue’ and advising claimants to ‘continue to check your bank account throughout the day’. This evening, HMRC said that 500,000 claimants had been affected. Child Benefit is worth £24 per week for the eldest child and £15.90 for every child thereafter. These sums will seem trivial to those with means but to poor and low-paid families they are a financial lifeline. The Daily

James Heale

What is Nigel Farage planning?

Nigel Farage continues to tease Westminster with his endless ‘will he, won’t he?’ dance. The former Ukip leader is hosting an ‘emergency press conference’ at 4pm amid speculation that he will announce he is standing as a candidate for Reform. It’s been a rollercoaster fortnight for Farage. His initial response to the election was to rule himself out from running, preferring instead to focus on the United States. In the days that followed, Farage expressed his ‘huge regrets’ about that decision. His commitments stateside seem less extensive than many first thought, with Farage expecting to only do one event for Donald Trump in Detroit. His two speeches for Reform last week, meanwhile,

Eliot Wilson

Starmer’s ‘national security’ pitch looks insecure

Still haunted by the memory of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Keir Starmer has devoted today to reassuring the electorate that he is committed to maintaining nuclear weapons. The Labour leader is determined not to be seen as unreliable on defence and national security, so has announced that HIS government will introduce a ‘triple lock’ on the nuclear deterrent. A ‘triple lock’ is a tedious phrase, beloved by politicians who have been so careless with promises that they have to engage in a linguistic arms race. If they say they will do something, voters simply don’t believe them, so instead they must create the impression of an inviolable pledge, a measure that will be permanent and

Steerpike

David Lammy’s nuclear-level U-turn

Labour is out this morning insisting they can be trusted with national security – honest! Keir Starmer’s latest wheeze is a ‘nuclear deterrent triple lock’ aimed at giving a ‘total commitment to securing the UK’s future nuclear deterrent.’ Such a ground-breaking policy includes such prior commitments as, er, upgrading the current fleet, maintaining a continuous at-sea deterrent and the construction of four new nuclear submarines at Barrow-in-Furness. Indeed, the only thing that seems new about Labour’s big nuclear announcement is its sheer chutzpah. For at least a dozen members of Starmer’s own hand-picked shadow cabinet have previously voted against renewing Trident – including his chosen man to be Foreign Secretary,

Steerpike

SNP leader’s bizarre funding plea

The SNP will soon have more election campaign launch events than predicted Westminster seats if it continues at the rate it is going. The party’s latest launch — the third this year — was held in the luxury Radisson Blu hotel in Glasgow on Sunday afternoon, where party activists and political candidates gathered to hear a series of speeches ahead of the looming general election. Marketing itself as the party of ‘change’ (Mr S doesn’t have to look far to know where that’s been stolen from), the Nats slammed ‘continuity Keir’ as the ‘most right-wing Conservative Labour leader’ to date. But while the SNP is pledging to ‘eradicate’ child poverty

Isabel Hardman

Kemi Badenoch isn’t alone in dodging the issue of social care

Elections aren’t just fights between the parties over policy. They also include conspiracies of silence where neither side will benefit from talking that much about an issue. Social care is one of those toxic problems: it is a key driver of inefficiency in the NHS, and should have been reformed three decades ago. It is also expensive, complicated and little-understood by voters, who resent any iteration of reform because all involve someone shelling out money when many people think it is free currently (it is not), or that it somehow should be. When Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer launched their big NHS plans last week, they failed to mention social

Iain Macwhirter

The problem with Kemi Badenoch’s transgender reforms

It is five years since Labour’s then equalities spokeswoman, Dawn Butler, told a BBC interviewer that babies aren’t born with a sex. It was the high point of transgender ideology, which captivated all the politician parties to some extent in the 2010s. Even the Tory minister, Penny Mordaunt, told MPs in 2018 that ‘trans women are women trans men are men’ – a genuflection to the quasi religious dogma that people can be born in the wrong body. They cannot of course, and this weird doctrine has been one of the most extreme examples of the flight from reason and scientific certainty on the left since the millennium. Badenoch’s intentions are honourable and many women will

Debbie Hayton

Sunak’s gender attack will hurt Labour

If the country has not had enough sex by now, it may have by the election. Political sex, that is – Rishi Sunak has clearly spotted an opportunity for a fully frontal attack on one of Labour’s weak spots. This morning, the Prime Minister promised that if re-elected, his government would rewrite the Equality Act to make it clear that sex means biological sex. It would be a sensible move away from the current confusion where nobody is really certain what the law means. Perhaps in 2010 the outgoing Labour government never imagined that the definition of sex would be controversial? But the text of Labour’s Equality Act – ‘a reference

Andrew Tettenborn

The Northern Irish law posing a threat to free speech in Britain

On Friday, the High Court in Northern Ireland deflected a serious threat to the right to free speech, not only in the province but also in the country as a whole. It was, however, a very close-run thing, and the affair is still highly worrying. A Northern Ireland Assembly law that came into effect last year, the Justice (Sexual Offences and Trafficking Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, made it an imprisonable crime to publish the fact that someone had come under police investigation for a sexual offence unless and until they were charged. If they were never charged the matter had to be hushed up until 25 years after their

Katy Balls

Revealed: Sunak and Starmer’s plans for battle in first TV debate

The parties are gearing up for their first full week of campaigning since parliament was dissolved on Thursday. This means one-time MPs are now just candidates, and the spending limits are on. Both parties revealed their battle buses over the weekend – Labour’s is emblazoned with ‘Change’ while the Tories have gone for a three-point slogan: ‘Clear plan. Bold Action. Secure Future.’ This week, all eyes will be on the north-west – where Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will go head-to-head in the first debate of the election. The duo will be appearing on ITV on Tuesday at 9 p.m. for their first televised showdown. So far there aren’t many

Geoff Hill

Jacob Zuma remains a problem for South Africa

More than 30 years after the Berlin Wall came down, leaders of the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s long-time ruling party, still refer to each other as ‘comrade’. Unless, that is, you’re seen as a problem. ‘Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa will be here,’ ANC secretary general Fikile Mbabula told journalists on Sunday morning as he explained how, around 5 p.m., the President would receive the final election results at the main counting centre between Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria. ‘There’s nothing to celebrate in terms of performance of the ANC,’ he said. Zuma has come away with 14.6 per cent of the vote but still claims it was rigged against

Sam Leith

Keir Starmer is treating the House of Lords with contempt

We have different approaches to tidying up, my wife and I. It bothers her very much that the house we share with three chaotic children is so untidy. Over the years unsightly, useless, out-of-date items accumulate in every room: incomplete jigsaws, dried-out paints, barely-played boardgames, broken furniture, too-small and obscurely stained clothes, collections of shells and pebbles, or that vibration-sensitive fluffy penguin which flaps its stubby wings and blares out a tinny version of ‘Rock Around the Clock’ when a spider stamps its foot anywhere within a kilometre of it. My fantasy, when the clutter gets intolerable, is to have a clear-out in which everything that doesn’t spark joy goes

Sunday

2 Jun 2024

Steerpike

Tories to amend Equality Act to protect biological sex

The Tories have continued their habit of making a big election pledge at 10:30 p.m every weekend. Last time, it was the reintroduction of national service; this week it is their plans to overhaul the Equality Act. Yes, that’s right, after 14 years in government, the Conservatives have finally decided that it might be worth taking a look at one of the most contentious pieces of legislation which Labour passed in its dying days of office. Better late than never eh… The Tories claim that if they are re-elected they will amend the Equality Act in order to make clear that the protected characteristic of sex is ‘biological sex’. This

Steerpike

Diane Abbott confirms she will stand for Labour

Oh dear. It seems that Diane Abbott has outmanoeuvred Keir Starmer once again. Week one of Labour’s much-vaunted election campaign has been overshadowed by the row over the status of the Hackney North MP. Having lost the Labour whip in April 2023 for her ill-judged Observer letter, Abbott’s status was still unresolved when the campaign began ten days ago. Following the BBC’s revelation on Tuesday that the investigation into Abbott had actually concluded back in December, Keir Starmer was forced to endure three days of questions about appropriate action before declaring on Friday that she was ‘free to go forward as a Labour candidate’. The hope among some Starmer allies

Andrew Kenny

What the end of sole ANC rule means for South Africa

Election day on 29 May was a tumultuous, wonderful day for South Africa. 30 years of corruption and ruin under the sole rule of the African National Congress (ANC) party came to an end. The ANC, which won 63 per cent of the vote in the first democratic election in 1994, and 70 per cent in 2004, now only won 40 per cent. When the ANC took power in April 1994, South Africa had the strongest economy and the best infrastructure in Africa. We had a plentiful supply of the world’s cheapest electricity and the world’s greatest mineral treasure. The horrible apartheid laws had been scrapped by the last white

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Diane Abbott bullied by ‘overgrown schoolboys’

Questions over whether Diane Abbott had been banned from standing as a Labour candidate were a distraction for Keir Starmer’s campaign this week, eventually ending with Starmer confirming that Abbott was ‘free to go forward’ for Labour. Some in the party are unhappy with Starmer welcoming Tory defectors while suppressing left-wing candidates such as Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Faiza Shaheen, who were both barred from standing for Labour this week. Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, Baroness Chakrabarti claimed Diane Abbott had been bullied by ‘overgrown schoolboys in suits’ sending anonymous briefings. Chakrabarti said she had been ‘personally assured’ by the Labour leadership that those briefings were unauthorised, but implied that Abbott had