Politics

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

Wednesday

Graham Watts

Labour deserve credit for its Grenfell response

Angela Rayner’s lunchtime announcement to the House of Commons, giving details of the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s final report, was a week earlier than the Prime Minister’s commitment to respond to the Inquiry within six months of its publication on 4 September 2024. Frankly, it’s the only deadline that has been met in the sorry saga that has taken almost eight years to bring the Inquiry’s business to a conclusion. Sir Martin Moore-Bick made 58 recommendations, 37 of which were directed at government, with the remainder directed at other bodies and institutions. A dozen recommendations are aimed at one or other of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

We saw the real Keir Starmer at PMQs – and it was ugly

Strange atmosphere at PMQs. Our MPs seemed to believe that the Commons debate was a vital briefing session for Sir Keir Starmer as he prepares to meet President Trump in Washington. Everyone advised the PM how to handle himself. But it’s far too late. Sir Keir has already grovelled to his new master by pledging to buy bombs and bullets instead of spending cash on failed states overseas.  Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, joked that Sir Keir had slashed the aid budget on her personal recommendation. ‘I’m glad he accepted my advice. It’s the fastest response I’ve ever had from the Prime Minister.’ Sir Keir answered with facetious gallantry. ‘I’m

Steerpike Steerpike

From the archives: Rupert Lowe’s first fight for freedom

These days, it’s rare to find an MP who is consistent in his politics. So Mr S was delighted to discover on a trip to the archives that there is an exception to this usual rule. Rupert Lowe has served as the no-nonsense Honourable Member for Great Yarmouth since July 2024. Prior to his election as a Reform MP last year, Lowe was an MEP for the brief-lived Brexit party in 2019, which topped the European elections and toppled Theresa May. But, two decades before that, Farage and Lowe were candidates for rival Eurosceptic parties at the 1997 election: the former for Ukip, the latter for Jimmy Goldsmith’s Referendum party.

Jawad Iqbal

There is reason behind Trump’s AI Gaza video

Donald Trump really knows how to wind up his political opponents. That has to be the only rational explanation behind his decision to share on social media a video – apparently AI-generated – of what a US-owned Gaza Strip could look like in the future. It is 35 seconds of unadulterated visual idiocy, veering from the bizarre to the senseless. Why do it? What is the point, exactly? The video starts with the territory in ruins after the war with Israel, with the caption ‘Gaza 2025… What’s next?’ The US president is shown sharing a cocktail, topless and poolside, with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. These are not flattering

Theo Boer

Britain must learn from the Netherlands’s mistakes on assisted dying

As a former member of a euthanasia review board in the Netherlands, I have closely followed the debate surrounding Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill. In 2001, and with 15 years of experience with makeshift regulations behind us, the Netherlands became the first country to introduce a euthanasia law. In support of this law, I worked from 2005 to 2014 for the authorities in charge of monitoring euthanasia cases. I was convinced that the Dutch had found the right balance between compassion, respect for human life, and guaranteeing individual freedoms. However, over the past two and a half decades, I have become increasingly concerned as I have witnessed the steady expansion

Steerpike Steerpike

How will the Chagos deal be funded?

To the Commons, where Prime Minister’s Questions has this afternoon taken place. Sir Keir Starmer was asked a ranged of questions, from energy to aid to the economy. But while the Labour PM appeared to enjoy his to and fro with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, on the Chagos Islands he was a little more cagey… When Conservative MP Kieran Mullan quizzed Starmer on whether the deal to cede sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago would be funded from the Ministry of Defence’s budget, the Prime Minister did not have a straight answer – despite the straightforwardness of Mullan’s question. Pushing the PM, the Tory politician asked: The Leader of the Opposition

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The BBC’s Gaza farce takes another sinister turn

So the moral rot at the BBC appears to run even deeper than we thought. The storm over its Gaza documentary just got a whole lot worse. As if it wasn’t bad enough that this Israel-mauling hour of TV was fronted by the son of a leading member of Hamas, now we discover that the Beeb whitewashed the bigoted views of some of the doc’s participants. It omitted their Jew-bashing. This is as serious a breach of broadcasting ethics as I can remember. The film was swiftly mired in scandal Gaza: How To Survive a War Zone was first broadcast on BBC Two last week. The film was swiftly mired

Owen Matthews

Trump won’t find a minerals bonanza in Ukraine

US President Donald Trump has announced that Ukraine is ready to sign a deal that gives US investors a share in the country’s mineral riches. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, who two days ago vowed not to sign any deal that his countrymen would be paying for ‘for ten generations’ is due in Washington on Friday to sign a revised accord. The US’s most controversial demand – that Washington keep $500 billion in revenue from exploiting Ukraine’s resources as payback for military aid – has reportedly been removed from the final text.  While the final details of the deal remain undecided, one thing is certain: the scale of Ukraine’s mineral wealth

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Badenoch accuses Starmer of ‘patronising’ her

It is getting rather repetitive writing that Kemi Badenoch had an uncomfortable Prime Minister’s Questions, so how about this: today’s PMQs showed that Keir Starmer does not regard the Conservative leader as any kind of political threat. He openly ridiculed her in his answers – perhaps too openly to appear statesmanlike.  The question that invited that ridicule followed a fairly benign one on ensuring that Ukraine be at the negotiating table in talks on the country’s future. Badenoch told the Commons she would then turn to the details of the defence spending announcement, saying: Over the weekend, I suggested to the Prime Minister that he cut the aid budget, and

Patrick West

Keir Starmer is right to cut foreign aid

It was inevitable that the announced cut to Britain’s international aid budget would cause a stir. The curtailment earlier this month of the USAID programme provoked outrage among progressive voices worldwide, despite the fact that scheme funded some dubious causes. Why, then, would our compassionate classes react any different? Yesterday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer explained that his plan to increase defence spending would be partly balanced by a reduction in the aid budget, from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of GDP. Some of his Labour colleagues aren’t happy. Sarah Champion, the Labour chair of the international development committee, reacted: ‘Conflict is often an outcome of desperation, climate and

Iain Macwhirter

How independent are Britain’s nukes?

Keir Starmer has sought to get into Donald Trump’s good books by boosting defence expenditure – and doing it in a very Maga way: slashing the UK aid budget to pay for it. That has no doubt caught the eye of the US president, as has the Prime Minister’s promise to put British boots on the ground in Ukraine as part of a European peacekeeping force after a deal is struck. Mind you, that assumes that Vladimir Putin will keep to any deal to end the war. What if he doesn’t? Who guards the peacekeepers? Trump has made clear that European nations will have to look to their own security

Steerpike Steerpike

Chagos judge also supported slavery reparations

Well, well, well. It turns out that an international judge who ruled against Britain on the Chagos Islands has also, er, called for the UK to pay over £18 trillion in slavery reparations. Patrick Robinson is a Jamaican judge who has previously served on the International Court of Justice – and was one of the judges who, in 2019, agreed the UK should hands over the archipelago ‘as rapidly as possible’. How very curious… As reported by the Telegraph, Robinson is a big supporter of Britain paying reparations to African and Caribbean countries for slavery – and even helped write a recent United Nations report that proposed the UK should

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

What does Trump’s minerals deal mean for Ukraine?

Has Donald Trump’s heavy-handed negotiation style scored a win, or have the Ukrainians managed to wrench a victory of sorts from the jaws of defeat? Although the details are still unclear, Kyiv and Washington are confirming that a deal on mineral rights has been agreed, and that Volodymyr Zelensky will be on his way to the White House on Friday to sign on the dotted line. Trump has abandoned his ludicrously overblown demand for a $500 billion (£400 billion) return on what has actually been no more than $120 billion (£95 billion) given in total aid, through revenue from Ukrainian oil, gas and rare earth metals. Zelensky had understandably rejected

Matthew Lynn

Will Trump’s ‘golden visas’ threaten Rachel Reeves’s tax plans?

Fed up with Rachel Reeves’s tax rises, with the calls for wealth and mansion taxes, and the loss of non-dom status? For $5 million (£3.95 million), there is now a very easy escape route. President Trump has just announced a ‘golden visa scheme’, allowing investors an easy path to American citizenship. That is aimed at attracting global entrepreneurs to the US. But it could also pose a real threat to the British economy. The UK depends on a small group of taxpayers to keep its huge state machine financed It is certainly a dramatic move. Golden visas that allow citizenship in return for investment have traditionally been restricted to a

Justin Marozzi

Ukrainians are keeping calm and carrying on in defiance of Trump

In 2023, I had coffee with the celebrated Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, on Yaroslaviv Val Street in the ancient heart of Kyiv. The modern city is built over the ruins of the rampart built by Yaroslav the Wise, the eleventh-century Grand Prince of Kyiv, to keep out invaders. Now, on the third anniversary of the most recent invasion of Ukraine, Kurkov, whose novels are known for their dark humour, is in a much more sombre mood. Donald Trump’s savage and surreal attacks on president Zelensky have left the country reeling. ‘Of course, Ukrainians are shocked and upset,’ he says. ‘If two weeks ago Russia considered Americans and Poles their main

Edward Howell

How North Korea will use its $1.5 billion of stolen crypto

For a country that is notorious for its lack of connection to the outside world, North Korea is one of the world experts in cyberwarfare. Only this week, North Korean hackers managed to steal $1.5 billion from the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, in what is the largest cryptocurrency hack on record. The fact that the stolen money is just over 5 per cent of the country’s GDP does not mean the profits will be going to the North Korean people or economy though. After all, nuclear weapons and missiles hardly come cheap. There has been a deluge of North Korean cyberattacks in the 21st century. The country even has its own state-run

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Starmer’s surprisingly ruthless foreign aid cut

Ten years ago the idea of a British prime minister announcing a cut in foreign aid to 0.3 per cent of GDP would have been unthinkable. David Cameron’s Tories had exempted the Department for International Development from austerity, repeatedly declaring that it would be wrong to balance the books on the backs of the world’s poorest people. Naturally, Cameron’s coalition partners the Lib Dems supported this stance, while Labour revelled in having been the party that raised aid spending to this level and legislated to create a legal duty for subsequent governments to maintain it. The case for radically cutting the aid budget only saw the light of day in

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The Climate Change Committee is living in cloud cuckoo land

Energy bills may be going up and the economy may be flatlining, but not for long. Thankfully, the government’s Climate Change Committee has the answer. In a press release introducing the committee’s Seventh Carbon Budget, published this morning, interim chair Piers Forster declares: ‘The committee is delighted to be able to present a good news story about how the country can decarbonise while also creating savings across the country.’ By 2040, when the CCC sees the UK’s carbon emissions falling by 87 per cent on their 1990 level, the cost of heating and lighting our homes is going to fall by £716 a year and the cost of running a

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Europe can’t silence its working class forever

Last December the European Commission published its ‘priorities’ for the next five years. All the bases were covered, from defence to sustainable prosperity to social fairness. And of course, the most important priority of all, democracy. ‘Europe’s future in a fractured world will depend on having a strong democracy and on defending the values that give Europeans the freedoms and rights that they cherish,’ proclaimed the Commission, which pledged it was committed to ‘putting citizens at the heart of our democracy’. December was the same month that a Romanian court cancelled the presidential election, after the surprise first round victory of the Eurosceptic and anti-progressive Călin Georgescu. It was claimed the election had been