Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
12 min listen
So far, both major parties in the UK have aligned on their approach to the Israel-Gaza conflict, but can the Labour party really hold their position, considering how much of the party’s grassroots support come from Muslim backgrounds? James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Conservative Home’s editor, Paul Goodman. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.
In the early hours of this morning, Vladimir Putin touched down in Beijing to attend the third forum of the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) at Xi Jinping’s invitation. The trip is clearly important to Putin: it is just the second time that he has left Russia, and the first time travelling beyond the former Soviet Union, since the international criminal court (ICC) issued a warrant for his arrest in March. Xi invited Putin to attend the forum back in March in a show of unity when the former visited Moscow just days after the ICC issued its warrant. At the time, the visit – during which both leaders were
Matt Hancock, don’t retire just yet – we may need you back. There’s a new terror spreading across Britain – and even better for the tabloids, this one seems to have come from France. It is all a big and rather silly panic The great bedbug scare bubbled up a few weeks ago as an infestation in Paris, but within days the critters seemed to have jumped the Channel, quite possibly brought here by rugby fans – or by a pair of Australian tourists who claimed to have been bitten on an overnight train from Austria. Within a week the great terror had reached Luton, Stevenage and Hull, where the
It’s all very well judging political parties on their polling figures. But what exactly do voters think about their leaders? Look no further: thanks to Savanta polling for the Scotsman, Mr S has discovered just how negatively the people of Scotland view those vying to be their next First Minister. Bottom of the pile is, shock, horror, flailing First Minister Humza Yousaf. Quelle surprise! The polling confirms what we already previously knew: hapless Humza is officially ‘Useless’. His first six months in power at Holyrood have seen him struggle to escape the shadow of his predecessor – and that ongoing police probe. A new word cloud generated about him from voter
When Rishi Sunak spoke in the Commons chamber on Monday, he reiterated the UK government’s ‘total condemnation’ of the attacks by Hamas on Israel which have left at least 1,300 dead. Sunak said his government ‘must support, absolutely, Israel’s right to defend itself. To go after Hamas, take back the hostages, deter further incursions, and strengthen its security for the long term.’ However, he added that this ‘must be done in line with international humanitarian law’. Sunak also said he had spoken to the Israeli Prime Minister about the need to ‘minimise the impact on civilians in Gaza’. The comments were echoed by Keir Starmer. The Labour leader used his
The grey suits were out in force today at the launch of the official history of the 1922 Committee’s first centenary. Knights, grandees and peers of the realm all crammed into Committee Room G of the Palace of Westminster to hail the release of Philip Norton’s updated book. As one quote on the blurb put it: ‘The 1922 is probably the most significant body in British politics that almost no one knows anything about – and what they do think they know is probably wrong.’ Reflecting on the Committee’s history, Norton remarked that: When they started, there was quite a high turnover [in chairmen] but not a high turnover in
Last night, after a suspected Islamist fanatic gunned down two Swedish football fans in Brussels to ‘avenge Muslims’, the BBC ran a headline calling it a ‘terror’ attack. This should seem entirely unremarkable. After all, it was a terror attack, so the language had the benefit of being accurate. The problem, of course, is that the corporation has a policy of refusing to describe the butchers of Hamas in the same terms. It is true that the BBC amended the headline pretty quickly after realising its error. The broadcaster has insisted in its guidelines that its journalists should use descriptive terms like ‘bomber’, ‘attacker’, ‘gunman’, ‘kidnapper’, ‘insurgent’ and ‘militant’ by default. As John
Could our current record levels of immigration be a flash in the pan, a statistical spike brought about by the confluence of several exceptional factors? After the figure for the twelve months to June 2022 came in at 606,000 net and more than one million gross, that would be a comforting notion for those who believe that mass immigration on this scale is feeding multiple social pathologies, from housing shortages to collapsing cultural cohesion. So perhaps we should rejoice at the news that two of our leading universities have put their seal upon a report suggesting that 2022’s net migration is not the shape of things to come but the
‘We are in a horrible fiscal bind’ says the Institute for Fiscal Studies this morning, as it publishes its Green Budget report ahead of the Autumn Statement. A combination of stagnant growth, stubborn inflation, rising debt interest payments and a tax burden at a postwar high has produced a grim assessment of the UK economy, which the IFS suggests will worsen in the coming years, as ‘huge fiscal pressures’ around the National Health Service and public sector pensions increase (more on that here). The report’s conclusion is that now is not the time to raise taxes. It would make terrifying reading for a Conservative prime minister and chancellor if they weren’t already aware
Yesterday’s statement on prison reforms from the Justice Secretary Alex Chalk was very much one of those why-didn’t-you-see-this-coming affairs. Chalk has only been in the brief since April, but he has had more warning than the past fortnight that prison capacity was running out. One of the problems Chalk has is that he is mopping up thirteen messy years for the Ministry of Justice Yesterday he sought to reframe the story by arguing he had in fact seen it coming. He told MPs: ‘I have been candid from the moment I took on this role that our custodial estate is under pressure.’ But he tried to suggest that this was
For perhaps the first time in its history, the Office for National Statistics does not know how many employed, unemployed and economically inactive people there are in the country. This morning, the monthly labour market figures were due to be published. But late last week news slipped out that the employment portion of the release would have to be delayed. The reason: plummeting survey response rates. You simply cannot make decisions about which levers to pull if we do not know how many people are in work Each month, Britain’s statisticians work out how many people there are in the workforce based on responses to a national ‘Labour Force Survey’.
One of Britain’s best-known cartoonists, Steve Bell, says he has been ‘effectively sacked’ by the Guardian after drawing Benjamin Netanyahu. It wasn’t published, but he released it on Twitter (above). It depicts Netanyahu operating on his own stomach, showing a cut in the outline of the Gaza Strip. Bell then used Twitter to say what happened next: Losing him over this cartoon was a mistake and sets a dangerously low bar for what counts as unacceptable satire I filed this cartoon around 11 a.m., possibly my earliest ever. Four hours later, on a train to Liverpool I received an ominous phone call from the desk with the strangely cryptic message
Change in Poland looks likely. A second exit poll gives the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) the most votes, but not enough to form a majority. The nativist right-wing party Konfederacja might’ve helped them form a coalition, but even combined the two parties still don’t have the numbers. Ex-Eurocrat Donald Tusk, who leads Civic Platform (KO), says he has built a coalition with Lewica, on the left, and Third Way (TD), conservatives, that can govern Poland. The result is not particularly good for the Polish people, or for Europe, but the European Commission in Brussels, and progressives on the Continent generally, will be delighted. Brussels benefits twice over from Tusk’s
We’ve all been there, haven’t we? One minute you are sitting down, with a cup of tea, ready to listen to Sir Keir Starmer’s latest conference speech, the next you wake up, 17 hours later, the tea spilled across the floor, a line of dried spittle tracked on your chin, because Keir Starmer is so intolerably boring, after a mere three seconds of his stilted and nasal delivery you lapsed into a state of unconsciousness which was sufficiently profound to register on the Glasgow Coma Scale. This, after all, is a man whose idea of an incredible story is the time he went to a hotel and they gave him
‘I don’t feel safe’ is the cry of students the western world over at the prospect of hearing terrifying opinions such as ‘there are two sexes’ or ‘your skin colour shouldn’t matter’. This bluff talk of ‘hate’, terror and even, incredibly but regularly, ‘trans genocide’, used to come over merely as pathetic and entitled. Singer Will Young telling the Labour conference that he was ‘terrified’ of the Tories winning the next election would, the week before, have been merely laughable. Coming days after the slaughter in Israel, it sounded unforgivably crass and narcissistic. This is, I think, less a coherent political ideology than a sickness of western affluence mixed with
Russia’s latest offensive has exacted a heavy toll on its forces. They have lost 127 tanks, 239 armoured personnel vehicles and 161 artillery systems in the past week, according to Kyiv, with the casualties reaching more than 3,000 military personnel. Vladimir Putin is trying to change the narrative, framing Russian forces’ actions as ‘active defence’ rather than ‘active combat operations’. While Putin tries to temper expectations of major frontline gains, the battle for Avdiivka persists, albeit with waning intensity. ‘I hope that these dirtbags who settled in Avdiivka will be levelled with three-ton bombs in a similar way Israel is levelling Gaza right now’, said Sergey Mardan, a Russian state
The following is an edited excerpt from Douglas Murray’s lecture at the Sheldonian Theatre earlier tonight, in honour of Sir Roger Scruton. It features the actor Kevin Spacey reciting a scene from William Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. By the last year of his life Roger had finally been not just honoured in his own country but given a position by a Conservative government to advise on that most pressing of issues – how to try to build beautiful housing in a country desperately in need of housing and even more desperately in need of beautiful housing. Roger was engaged in his researches when a young snake of a man came to
Should the UK warn Israel about its response to the Hamas attack? The Prime Minister was very pointed as he told the Commons that people ‘should call [the 7 October attack] what it was: a pogrom’. His statement was grave and included full support for Israel and for Jewish people in Britain. He repeatedly told MPs that ‘we will continue to stand with Israel… not just today, not just tomorrow, but always’. He continued: ‘This atrocity was an existential strike at the very idea of Israel as a safe homeland for the Jewish people. I understand why it has shaken you to your core.’ Keir Starmer was similarly unequivocal in
43 min listen
When China brokered a historic detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran earlier this year, it seemed that a new phase in world history – and certainly in Chinese foreign policy – had opened up. Instead of the US being a policeman of the world, it was the rising power, China, that was stepping into that role. Whereas Chinese foreign policy had previously only really cared about promoting trade and silencing dissidents, it seemed that perhaps, now, Beijing was taking a more leadership role in global diplomacy and security issues. And yet the events of the last week and China’s response to them have shown that perhaps the country isn’t ready
For the past 18 months, the UK economy has been stuck in the purgatory of an eternally predicted but non-arriving recession. The Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR), Bank of England, and the IMF have been among those to have predicted recessions that have not – yet – happened. But now, for what it is worth (which, to judge by the history of economic forecasting, is not much), one often-pessimistic body has stuck its neck out and said that Britain will avoid a recession. The EY Item Club has upgraded its forecast for economic growth across 2023 from 0.4 per cent to 0.6 per cent. Next year, it says that growth
