Politics

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

Saturday

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Why the Tories need the new Hong Kong voter base

With the Conservatives trailing around twenty points in most polls, the outcome of the next election seems all but set. However, even if Rishi Sunak will struggle to lead his party to a fifth term, the scale of a likely Labour victory remains unclear. Whether it’s a backlash from the Muslim community over Starmer’s position on Gaza or Scottish independence, there are plenty of factors that could dampen a Starmer victory parade. One of these unknowns that could swing the balance for some crucial seats in the next election are that of the new voters from Hong Kong, 125,000 of whom have come to the UK on British Nationals (Overseas)

Niall Gooch

The Tories’ biggest missed opportunity

In about a year’s time, maybe less, the British people will collectively hand the Tory government their P45s. Rishi Sunak will be mildly disappointed for about five minutes and then move on to a cushy billet in a Silicon Valley tech firm. The Cabinet members will mostly return to the backbenches. Some of them will be able to wangle regular gigs in the newspapers or on TV, where they will argue for the red meat policies that they failed to pursue in office. And so will pass one of the most incredible missed opportunities in British political history. A Tory majority of a size not seen since the Thatcher years has been used to achieve a great deal of nothing at all.

Limor Simhony Philpott

After Hamas, who will control Gaza?

Who will rule Gaza once the war is over? Israel, so far, hasn’t provided an answer. The country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been clear that his aim is to wipe out Hamas. He said this week that Israel will claim responsibility for security in Gaza for an ‘indefinite period’, in order to stop Hamas from rearming and establish long-term security. But Israel is unlikely to have the stomach to stay in Gaza as casualties mount. So who will step into this vacuum? One possible solution is for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to take over as the ruling body in Gaza. The PA governed over the Palestinian territories following the

James Heale James Heale

Has Nadine Dorries lost the plot?

14 min listen

This week Nadine Dorries’s new book The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson has been published, and it has ruffled some feathers in Westminster. In it, she claims there was a plot orchestrated by a secret cabal of back room advisors, politicians and individuals in the media to overthrow Boris Johnson. Just what is ‘the movement’? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Christopher Howse, assistant editor at the Telegraph.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Rishi Sunak is in office but not in power

Can Rishi Sunak still catch a break or has the plughole spiral of British politics now dragged him firmly into its unsparing ambit? It is just possible that he will come up for a lungful of air on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court delivers its long-awaited verdict on whether the Rwanda scheme is legal. More likely, the justices will rule the plan incompatible with their ever-more elastic interpretations of European Convention rights, sending him whirling further downwards. Suella Braverman probably won’t be Home Secretary by then. Or, if she is, she will probably walk should Sunak fail immediately to come round to her view that we must now leave the

James Jeffrey

Gaza and the terror of tank warfare

As Israel encircles Gaza City, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) is conducting what we in the British Army call Fibua, or Fighting In Built-Up Areas. Less ceremoniously, it’s known as Fish – fighting in someone’s house – or Fish and Chips – fighting in someone’s house and causing havoc in people’s streets. But the flippant name belies the danger – and terror – of these operations. My taste of Fibua came in 2004 during tank operations in Al Amarah in southern Iraq. While my experience might be a little out of date, the fundamentals of urban combat for tanks haven’t really changed. The tank is a formidable weapon. But when you’re

Chana Hughes

Britain’s synagogues have never been fuller

It has been just over a month since the Hamas massacres on 7 October. For British Jews, these past few weeks have been a month of prayer gatherings and vigils; desperate longing for the hostages’ return and an end to the torturous conflict. A month of pain, loss, confusion and worry. Our lives have changed forever. We have had to change not just the way we think of Israel but how we think of Britain. The past month has exposed an ugly underside. We once thought we lived in a tolerant society. Now we are asking: ‘Can we safely share our Jewishness here?’, and ‘do we belong?’. As Jews we

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory WhatsApp wars resume

Ding, ding, ding! The latest round of fighting has just concluded in the weird and wonderful world of Tory WhatsApp groups. In a series of messages obtained by Sky News, various backbenchers turn on each another in the ongoing fall-out from Suella Braverman’s row with the Metropolitan Police. Some were supportive; others critical but one thing is for sure – none of them are very happy. Veteran right-winger Sir John Hayes kicked off the exchange by declaring that it was ‘so sad to see protests being allowed on the Remembrance weekend’, arguing that it was ‘wholly inappropriate’ and urging colleagues to ‘speak for the law-abiding, patriotic majority by saying so’.

Natasha Feroze

Is Suella Braverman safe for now?

12 min listen

Despite mounting pressure from Conservative MPs to remove Suella Braverman, no announcement has been made yet. How much pressure is Rishi Sunak facing over the Home Secretary’s stand-off with the Met Police? Also on the podcast, Natasha Feroze speaks to James Heale and Isabel Harman about the Conservative Home Cabinet league table ahead of a possible reshuffle. 

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why is the Welsh parliament condemning Israel?

This week, the Welsh parliament announced that it ‘condemns the Israeli Government’s indiscriminate attacks on Gaza’ and ‘calls on the international community to…bring pressure to bear on the Israeli Government to end the siege of Gaza which contravenes international law and the basic human rights of Palestinian civilians’. Those were the terms of a motion laid by Plaid Cymru and passed by Members of the Senedd by 24 to 19, with 13 abstentions. The motion was not entirely without merit: it condemned Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians and called for the hostages to be released. But this story nonetheless offers a signal from the devolution crisis that no one in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Suella Braverman’s clumsiness makes Met reform less likely

Suella Braverman’s career as Home Secretary may be over very soon. But a long tail of it will be the criticism she has made of the Metropolitan Police. It was unprecedented for a Home Secretary to make the claims she did of ‘picking favourites’ and bias. In the long-term, reforming the police might have become harder. Only a few months ago, the prevailing mood in Westminster was that the Metropolitan Police was in need of reform, not just because of its seeming inability to root out rogue coppers following the murder of Sarah Everard, the conviction of David Carrick, and the revelations of misogyny from the Charing Cross Police Station,

John Keiger John Keiger

Could the world go to war again?

Armistice Day is an appropriate moment to reflect on why democracies triumphed in the two world wars that blighted the twentieth century. The simple answer is because – however much they hesitated – they believed in what they stood for and were able to will their victory. As the French philosopher, future Resistance member and champion of post-war liberal democratic values, Raymond Aron, wrote in June 1939: ‘I believe in the final victory of the democracies, but on the one condition, that they should want it.’ So Britain could mobilise its population for war to an extent unequalled by totalitarian states, without using totalitarian methods.   For all the loose talk

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

In praise of Humza Yousaf’s Israel response

Humza Yousaf is one of the most prominent Muslims in public life. This is tangential to his being elected SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland, but has handed him an unexpected role during the recent Israel-Gaza crisis. It’s one that he is taking seriously and, in my view, discharging well. Yousaf doesn’t discuss his faith often – few leaders do – but he takes it seriously and released a picture of himself praying with his family in Bute House on his first day in the job. At a time when politicians tend to cover up their faith, it was quite a move – he was saying (as his rival

Limor Simhony Philpott

‘Humanitarian pauses’ will help Israel defeat Hamas in Gaza

As the IDF continues to close in on Hamas in the heart of Gaza, the US announced that Israel will implement daily four-hour ‘humanitarian pauses’ in fighting in the north of the strip. Hours after the announcement yesterday, during a press conference, the Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant spoke rather differently about the pauses. He stated that Israel would not stop the fighting against Hamas until all the hostages held by the group had been returned. Only then could proper humanitarian pauses go ahead. The inconsistent messaging from the American and Israeli sides regarding these humanitarian pauses reflects the American administration’s frustration with Israel’s refusal to pause the fighting. The

Alexander Larman

Prince Harry wins his latest legal battle – but at what cost?

Prince Harry has won a small victory in his High Court battle: a judge ruled this morning that his privacy case against Associated Newspapers, the publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, can proceed to trial. Harry is part of a group of seven, including Doreen Lawrence and Sir Elton John, who have accused the newspaper group of all manner of reprehensible behaviour, including listening in on private telephone conversations, accessing confidential records and even planting bugging devices within vehicles. Associated denies the accusations, calling them ‘preposterous smears’. It asked the judge hearing the case, Mr Justice Nicklin, to dismiss the case without trial. But Nicklin refused to

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Where does the Suella Braverman debacle go next?

The debacle concerning Suella Braverman makes the front page of most papers today after No. 10 confirmed that the Home Secretary had failed to get sign off for a Times op-ed on police bias published earlier this week. Despite Downing Street using Thursday’s lobby briefing to say that Braverman and her team had ignored a No. 10 request to tone down the piece, the Prime Minister has said he still has confidence in his Home Secretary. Given several Tory MPs and anonymous government ministers have joined in with calls from opposition parties for Sunak to sack Braverman, the question in Westminster is how long this current position can hold. Jeremy

Joanna Williams

The negative side of being ‘sex positive’

‘Let’s talk about sex, baby,’ sang female rap duo Salt-N-Pepa back in 1990. More than 30-years later, it can seem as if we talk about little else. Today, we are not just expected to talk frankly about all matters carnal but to be ‘sex positive’. Emma Sayle, the founder of ‘Killing Kittens’ – which organises posh orgies for bored bankers – is the latest to urge us to speak up about sex. ‘Being sex positive is just being open about sexuality and being able to talk comfortably about sex without any shame or guilt or judgment,’ she said in an interview with the Times this week. Her words were revealing,

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The spectre of recession continues to haunt the UK economy

The UK economy grew 0.2 per cent in September. This followed 0.1 per cent growth in August, revised downwards from 0.2 per cent. Monthly figures don’t always tell a story on their own, but these past two months of data reflect the UK economy’s trend for the year – one, unfortunately, of virtually no growth. The provisional Q3 figures are out this morning as well, showing no economic growth between July and September. A tiny 0.1 per cent uptick in the services sector was offset by a small fall in construction output, which has led to a flatlining economy. Compared with the same quarter in 2022, GDP has increased by

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Britain must stand up for its Jews

In his speech to parliament on Tuesday, King Charles declared that Britain was ‘committed’ to tackling anti-Semitism. His remarks were made amid a surge in acts of such bigotry on British streets, the majority occurring in London.   On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Police announced that they had arrested 98 people on suspicion of anti-Semitic hate crimes since Hamas’s slaughter of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians on 7 October. The Met recorded 408 alleged anti-Semitic offences in October, an increase of 380 on the same period in 2022. It will take courage and determination to dispel this darkness – from politicians, the police and the general public Marie van der Zyl,

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Arlene Phillips Edition

34 min listen

Arlene Phillips was born in Lancashire, but moved to London to pursue her love for dance. She started age 3 and by the age of 20 she became a dance teacher. From here she formed the dance troupe Hot Gossip and made regular appearances on the Kenny Everett show, catapulting her into the public eye. She went on to be involved with some of the biggest productions on West End – including Grease, Guys and Dolls and the Sound of Music. She’s also choreographed films such as 1982’s Annie and has worked with some of the stars like Freddie Mercury and Tina Turner. In 2004 Arlene was on the original