Politics

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

Monday

Zoe Strimpel

Why climate activists love to hate Israel

Climate activists have been busy since 7 October. The demands for ‘action now’ on global warming continue, but affairs in the Middle East are proving to be a distraction for Just Stop Oil. Cries of ‘free Gaza’, ‘ceasefire now’, and even ‘from the river to the sea’ – a chant, purported to be a cry for peace and ‘solidarity’ with Palestinians, but used by those who want to wipe Israel off the map – have now joined, and at times drowned out, the usual green slogans. Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists took part in a sit-in protest at London’s Waterloo station on Saturday to demand a ceasefire, despite Hamas continuing to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

What France gets right about assimilation

Among the crimes of Suella Braverman, the now former Home Secretary, was a speech she gave in Washington at the end of September. Multiculturalism had failed, she told her audience, ‘We are living with the consequence of that failure today’. ‘Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades… if people are not able to settle in our countries, and start to think of themselves as British, American, French, or German, then something is going badly wrong.’    Her speech was predictably panned by the left – Amnesty International accused her of ‘cynicism and xenophobia’ – but also

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP MP dismisses the ferries scandal

If you can’t fix a problem, pretend it never existed. That seems to be the logic of SNP MP Alyn Smith at least. Speaking at ‘The Breakup of Britain’ conference this weekend, the Stirling MP appeared to suggest to his audience that Scotland’s ferries scandal is, er, not actually a priority for the people of Scotland. Smith told the distinctly silver crowd that: I knocked the best part of 200 doors this morning. Actually talking to people out there in the real world who want some hope, who want to know that politics isn’t all about WhatsApp messages, iPads and ferries. It’s about bigger stuff than that. It’s about dealing

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Sunak makes more pledges – but what happened to his last five?

In his speech in north London his morning, the Prime Minister confirmed that tax cuts are coming this Wednesday, as is another attempt by the government to get Britain’s 5.5 million missing workers back into employment. But Rishi Sunak didn’t stop there. Having achieved one of his five pledges for the year last week — the inflation rate halved in the year to October, slowing to 4.6 per cent — the Prime Minister decided this morning to offer up five more. Now in addition to the ‘five promises’ made in January — halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing public debt, cutting NHS waiting lists and ‘stopping the boats’ (a pledge

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Sunak changes his tune on tax cuts

Tax cuts are around the corner. That was the message from Rishi Sunak when he addressed hacks this morning in a speech on the economy. Ahead of Wednesday’s Autumn Statement, Sunak said that, after he achieved his target of halving inflation, his government is now able to enter ‘the next phase’ of its plan to grow the economy – and cut taxes. Of course, how much of a role the government really played in bringing down inflation is debatable (it’s largely down to global factors outside of Sunak’s control). But the practical effect of meeting the target is that Sunak now feels able to begin reducing the tax burden. After

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why has Rishi Sunak made five more pledges?

11 min listen

James Heale, Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson look ahead to the Autumn Statement this week. Will Rishi Sunak commit to cutting taxes? And with barely a year to go before the election, would implementing any policies now be felt in time?

Annabel Denham

The Tories must get serious about welfare reform

You can’t fault Mel Stride for trying. Conscious that our current levels of worklessness are neither sustainable nor likely to win the Tories plaudits at the next general election, the Work and Pensions Secretary has been proposing a range of wild and wacky solutions. In February, it was reported the government would be expanding ‘midlife MOTs’ to get the unemployed under-50s back to work. In July, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) policy generator was at it again, encouraging doctors to refer patients to life coaches rather than sign them off sick.  Now we’re getting the stick: new reforms would see people who refuse take on work placements or

Steerpike Steerpike

Met police swell their social media army

Scarcely a week seems to go by without an incident involving one of the Metropolitan Police’s social media accounts. Recent controversies on Twitter/X including ruling on whether the term ‘jihad’ constitutes hate speech, getting fact-checked by community notes and making demands for further powers in a post explaining their inability to prosecute those who clamber over statues. So Mr S thought he’d do some digging into how much the Met’s online army is now costing the hard-pressed London taxpayer. As is the want of bureaucracies everywhere, the force recently undertook a reorganisation under which its ‘Social Media Team’ was subsumed into ‘a broader Digital Media Communication Team, in an expanded

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs want a sense of vision from the PM

The Autumn Statement marks the latest in Rishi Sunak’s series of (often contradictory) relaunches Jeremy Hunt has started the week of his Autumn Statement in a rather more upbeat mood than usual. He spent yesterday talking about the importance of bringing the tax burden down and getting the British economy ‘fizzing’: a significant change of language from his previous focus on the importance of getting inflation down. He told me on Times Radio that he saw a clear dividing line with Labour: ‘Conservatives do believe that if we’re going to be a dynamic, thriving, energetic, fizzing economy, we need to have a lower tax burden actually, than we’ve got now.

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

A potential hostage deal shows the weakness of Hamas

Details are sketchy and the deal is far from done, but all the signs are pointing towards a hostage agreement in which up to 50 Israelis are released by Hamas in return for a ceasefire of several days. Make no mistake: this indicates that both tactically and strategically, the war is moving decisively in Israel’s favour. This much seems obvious when the prospective, Qatar-brokered deal is held against the hostage playbook that has been followed by both sides over the years. By that old equation, one Israeli captive was worth up to a thousand Palestinians. That was seen most vividly during the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011, when 1,027

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Can the government be trusted with free speech? 

This summer, horrified by the rising numbers of students no-platforming and harassing visiting speakers whose views they don’t like, the government anointed the Cambridge philosopher Arif Ahmed ‘free speech tsar’. Prof Ahmed said at the time that his new role, at least as he saw it, wasn’t a culture wars stunt: he was interested in protecting free expression across the political spectrum.   There is a culture of systematic no-platforming and double-cucked snowflakery, it turns out, in the supposedly pro-free-speech government We have every reason to think he’s been beavering away since then to ensure our campuses continue to zing with the free and frank exchange of ideas, and good on him. But if

Sam Meadows

The new chainsaw wielding leader of Argentina

The location was the same – the circumstances starkly different. Almost 12 months ago, hundreds of thousands of people gathered on Buenos Aires’ immense central avenue to celebrate their team’s win in the World Cup. A year on, and hundreds – honking car horns and waving the blue-and-white Argentine flag – were there to celebrate the electoral victory of Javier Milei. The far-right libertarian, who describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist, began the race as a rank outsider, having only entered politics in 2020 and making his name as a bombastic television economist.  The far-right libertarian, who describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist, began the race as a rank outsider In his

Sean Rayment

Can Israel go on like this?

All generals plan military operations based on the ten principles of war – rules if you like, which, if adhered to, will provide the best chance of success. The most important of these principles is the selection and maintenance of an aim. Even if every Hamas terrorist in Gaza is killed or captured, it is questionable whether that would mean that the group has been truly destroyed The aim should always be a single, unambiguous and easily understood objective – such as destroying the enemy located on Hill X. It then follows that everyone, from the most senior officer to the lowest ranked soldier, knows what needs to be done and can

Sunday

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: will the Autumn Statement bring cuts?

This week the politics shows were focused on the economy, as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt prepares to make his autumn statement next Wednesday. Hunt has signalled he may deliver tax cuts, and has said ‘everything is on the table’. Laura Kuenssberg pointed out that the tax burden is the highest it has ever been, despite the Conservatives being in power for thirteen years, and asked if Hunt regretted that situation. Hunt admitted he’d been forced to make difficult decisions because of the pandemic and subsequent high inflation, and said he believed lower taxes were essential for ‘dynamic, thriving… economies’.  Benefits cuts for people not looking for work  Hunt refused to confirm

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

What changed Hunt’s mind on tax cuts?

Has Jeremy Hunt had a change of heart or a change of circumstances? The Chancellor has spent the past few months crushing any hope of a major tax cut in next Wednesday’s Autumn Statement, insisting that the government’s main priorities – including tackling inflation and improving the dire state of the public finances – directly contradict calls to cut taxes now.  Just a month ago, Hunt was telling grassroot members at Conservative party conference that the Treasury was in no position to talk about personal tax cuts, ‘or even to ask what if’. If there were to be any kind of update in the Autumn Statement, he said, the priority would

Steerpike Steerpike

Will Sunak publish Braverman’s ‘ransom note’?

Another week of Tory wars looms in SW1. Ministers are desperately trying to find a fix to the Supreme Court’s legal kiboshing of the Rwanda scheme. But one person they certainly can’t rely on for any favours is Suella Braverman, the recently-axed Home Secretary. On Tuesday, she published a stinging three-page assessment of Rishi Sunak’s premiership; on Thursday, she drafted her own ‘five-point plan’ to fix Rwanda. And today she has done a big-two page interview in the Mail on Sunday in which she accuses the PM of a lack of ‘moral leadership’. Ouch. But one detail that jumped out to Mr S in the Mail interview was about something

Steerpike Steerpike

Cameron squirms over China links

Welcome back to Westminster, David Cameron. The return of the former PM to frontline politics has prompted a deluge of stories, mostly concerning the business links he built up in his post-premiership career. One theme that keeps cropping up is China – hardly surprising, given that Cameron is now charged with running British foreign policy. Indeed, today’s Sunday Times reports that Lord Cameron helped to secure up to $3 billion in investment for a controversial project run by a sanctioned Chinese company and launched by President Xi. He was paid to visit Dubai and Abu Dhabi and lobby potential investors on behalf of Port City Colombo, a development in the

Luka Ivan Jukic

The strange tale of Count Kalergi and the Pan-European Union

If the European Union created its own version of Mount Rushmore, who would it place in its pantheon? Horst Köhler, Helmut Kohl, and Francois Mitterrand – the architects of the Maastricht Treaty – perhaps? Or maybe Alcide De Gasperi, Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet, and Konrad Adenauer, who set in motion the long and winding process of European integration in the 1950s?  Almost certain to be overlooked is the man who founded the modern movement for European unity in the first place. That is, the eccentric, cosmopolitan Austro-Hungarian aristocrat Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coundehove-Kalergi.   Kalergi had an unusual background. He was born in Tokyo in 1894 to an Austrian

James Hanson

Could Nigel Farage win I’m a Celebrity?

This weekend, Nigel Farage enters the jungle on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! – reportedly for a fee of £1.5 million, the highest in the show’s history. How Coutts must wish they still had his custom. His very appearance is already being objected to by the usual suspects. In the Guardian, Zoe Williams accused ITV of ‘fun-washing’ Farage’s reputation, broadcaster Danny Baker called the channel ‘morally bankrupt’, and the hashtag #BoycottImACeleb has already been used by around 10,000 people on X. So far, so predictable. But what if, over the next three weeks, Farage charms the British public? What if, not the first time, he pulls off an

Saturday

Euan McColm

Why the Michael Matheson roaming scandal matters

When it comes to pomposity, nobody in Scottish politics can compete with SNP president Mike Russell. A great comic archetype in the tradition of Captain Mainwairing or Hyacinth Bucket, Russell combines a thwocking great dollop of self regard with a devastating lack of self-awareness. As such, it was hardly surprising to see Russell clamber up on his high horse when it came to the matter of an expenses claim for £11,000 of mobile data lodged by Scottish Health Secretary, Michael Matheson. Isn’t the real damage caused by dishonest politicians? After the Scottish Conservatives highlighted details of the amount run up by Matheson during a week-long family holiday in Morocco last