Politics

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

Monday

Irwin Stelzer

Does Trump really need Starmer’s bridge to Europe?

This week, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is heading to Washington to establish himself as a ‘bridge’ between the US and the EU, and to breathe new life into the Anglo-American Special Relationship. There is much to discuss between the historic allies. Starmer has announced that a ‘security guarantee’ from America is the only way there can be ‘a lasting peace agreement … the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again.’ Trump is negotiating an agreement with Putin, and leaving it to the Europeans to defend the continent while America attends to other business in the Pacific, Greenland, Panama, the Middle East and any other places Trump

Travis Aaroe

We don’t need ‘postliberalism’

In 1979 the price of gas at the American pump doubled to $39.50 a barrel – $172 in today’s money. The future of industrial civilisation seemed in doubt. But to Jimmy Carter, these oil woes were a distraction from the real issue: the moral failure of the American people. ‘Much deeper’ than the energy crisis, said the President, was a ‘crisis of confidence’ in politics and society, born out of a ‘worship of self-indulgence and consumption’.  It was an example of a very old trick. The default response of a governing class to a crisis is to frame it as a general moral one – one that, conveniently, implicates everyone

Sunday

Jacob Heilbrunn

The AfD will be a thorn in Merz’s side

Alice Weidel, the leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, didn’t mince her words. Speaking immediately after the German federal election on national television in Berlin on what’s known as ‘the leaders round’, she claimed that the mainstream conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) merely won a ‘pyrrhic victory’. Its head, Friedrich Merz, had no real choice, Weidel said, but to form a coalition with her radical right party (which scored over 20 per cent of the vote). A three- party coalition, she added, would be ‘a millstone around Merz’s neck’. The AfD will enjoy the luxury of being able to criticise any new government at will Merz was having none

Ido Vock

Is Friedrich Merz up to the task of fixing Germany?

As was widely predicted, Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has won Germany’s federal elections with around 28 per cent of the vote. For the first time since the formation of the Federal Republic in 1949, a far-right party – the Alternative for Germany (AfD) – has come second in a national election, winning an unprecedented fifth of the vote. The AfD surge seen tonight will dominate politics for the next four years. The party has pulled off an historic upset in the face of near-universal hostility from other parties and the media. The far right benefited hugely from a campaign largely focused on migration, its core issue. A series of terror attacks

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Friedrich Merz on track to win German federal election

After two torturous months of campaigning, the wait is over. Friedrich Merz, leader of the conservative CDU party, is on track to win Germany’s federal election. According to the official exit poll, published at 5pm UK time, his party has won 28.9 per cent of the vote. This means they are set to become the largest party in Berlin’s new parliament. Hot on the heels of the CDU is the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which has achieved 19.7 per cent of the vote. While it is its highest ever result in a federal election, their projected vote share suggests the far-right party will be just shy of the

Joe Bedell-Brill

Bridget Phillipson: ‘I welcome that Trump is able to bring the Russians to the table’

Trump launched a series of extraordinary attacks on President Zelensky this week, describing him as a dictator, and sidelined Ukraine in peace negotiations he began with Putin to end the war with Russia. In anticipation of a crucial meeting with Trump next week, Keir Starmer has insisted that Ukraine must be ‘at the heart of any negotiations’, and the UK has also announced new Russian sanctions. On Sky News this morning, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson confirmed that defence spending in the UK will be raised to 2.5 per cent of GDP, although she gave no timeline on when that might be achieved. Speaking to Trevor Phillips, Phillipson said it was

Iain Macwhirter

It’s time to reform the Gender Recognition Act

What were they thinking? When Tony Blair agreed, in 2004, to legislation allowing transsexuals – as they were then called – to change their legal sex, he probably thought Labour was merely ‘being kind’ to a tiny number of people with the medical condition of gender dysphoria. He never expected thousands of young people to start asking for gender reassignment, puberty blockers, and genital surgery. Yet here we are. Nor, I’m sure, did the Labour MPs who voted for the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) expect women to be forced to undress in front of natal men in changing rooms, or that male-bodied transgender athletes would be competing in women’s sporting events,

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Will Macron get tough on Algeria over the French knife attack?

Emmanuel Macron will hold talks with Donald Trump on Monday at which the President of France will attempt to ‘make Europe’s voice heard’. Still seething about being excluded from America’s peace negotiations with Russia, Macron wants to reassert the continent’s authority Stateside.  It will be a forlorn exercise. One of the reasons America – not just Trump’s administration but the one that preceded it – no longer attaches much importance to the EU is because they can see how weak it’s become. The world understands that Macron talks the talk but never walks the walk It’s timidity towards Algeria is a prime example. On Saturday, an Algerian man was arrested

Jack Rankin

The Tobacco Bill shows how we Tories lost our way

He’s having a tough time of it at the moment, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Andrew Gwynne. You see, I went to sixth form in his then patch when I was already an active, and surely irritating, young Conservative. When my more left-wing classmates were doing work experience with him (and I don’t know if Andrew remembers this) he made it clear he’d take me on too, despite my politics. I didn’t take him up on the offer, but I thought it spoke well of the man, and it stuck with me.  That’s why I gave him the benefit of the doubt when he referred to me

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

What to look out for in Germany’s federal election

After two long months of campaigning, Germany heads to the polls today for its federal election. Approximately 60 million voters across the country’s 16 states will elect the new government. Will incumbent SPD chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party be punished for his three years in power? Will the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) cruise to its highest ever federal result? Will Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU do well enough to only need one partner to form a coalition? This is what to watch out for tonight. To enter the Bundestag, the parties need to win at least 5 per cent of the national vote. The German proportional representation system means that everyone gets

Theodore Dalrymple

The real problem with mental health benefits

A contributory factor to the continuing impoverishment of Britain is psychiatric diagnosis – or rather, the superstitious official belief in it. More than two thirds of Incapacity Benefit claims over the space of two years were for supposed psychiatric conditions. Psychiatric diagnosis has produced more invalids than the first world war. It is the foundry in which the mind-forg’d manacles are produced – mass-produced, in fact. The most common diagnoses – of depression and anxiety, for example – are completely dependent on what the patient tells the doctor. The doctor’s default position, quite rightly, is to believe what his patients tell him. Failure to do this can lead to disaster,

Jonathan Spyer

Isis is filling the vacuum in Syria

‘Isis is taking huge advantage of the current situation in Syria,’ Ilham Ahmed told me, when we met in the north Syrian city of Hasakeh in mid January. ‘In the recent time, there have been many attacks on checkpoints of the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces). They are most active in the al Badiya area. There’s no security control there, and we have confirmed intelligence information of plans for an attack on the Al Hol camp to liberate the families there.’ Ahmed chairs the foreign relations department of the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES). This is the Kurdish-dominated de facto government with which the US and its allies aligned

Mary Dejevsky

Will Potsdam swing right?

Guten Tag – or, as they more often say in these less formal times, Hallo – from constituency number 061, otherwise known as Potsdam, a city of parks, palaces, film studios and Prussian-ness. For the British, Potsdam will always be the place where the victorious Allies met to carve out the zones of Germany’s occupation – a division which led to Germany becoming two separate countries. After reunification in 1990, Potsdam was designated the capital of the state of Brandenburg. The Potsdam vote will be a test of both the left and far-right’s capacity to broaden its appeal In so far as many German cities have a complicated history, the history of

Matthew Lynn

How France killed its start-up culture

It would encourage digitally savvy entrepreneurs. It would be a hub for artificial intelligence. And it would encourage a wave of new companies, replacing the ageing giants of French industry. When Emmanuel Macron became president, turning the country into ‘le start-up’ nation was central to his mission to modernise the economy. In fairness, he had some success. And yet with one of the world’s most punishing wealth taxes passed by the National Assembly last week it is about to be killed stone-dead. It was always slightly implausible for a country best known for its long lunches, short working week, endless holidays, and generous early retirement ages, but Macron was determined

Saturday

Charles Hecker

What business does America have in Russia?

It didn’t take long for preliminary discussions between the US and Russia on Ukraine to morph into something dramatically more ambitious. As negotiators left talks in Riyadh this week, both sides signalled their intent to reach agreement not only Ukraine, but also on economic and geopolitical cooperation.  President Donald Trump’s remarks following the talks – which were led by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov – made it sound as if a full rapprochement between the US and Russia was within reach. An almost gravity-defying change in US foreign policy toward Russia is in the works.  Three years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The Apple encryption row has come at the worst time for Keir Starmer

I am not sure about the capacity of AI to take over the world and suppress humanity, but big tech certainly has the ability to spark a trade war. There is a fuss brewing right now over an encryption system known as Advanced Data Protection available on iPhones and other Apple devices. Several weeks ago, the Home Office demanded that Apple create a so-called ‘back door’ into the system to allow law enforcement agencies to access photographs and other users’ data, saying that it was necessary in order to tackle child abuse and other serious crime. Apple held out, refusing to compromise the privacy of its customers. Now it has

James Heale James Heale

How the Whips’ office really works

35 min listen

Simon Hart joins James Heale to talk about his new book Ungovernable: The Political Diaries of a Chief Whip. Having stepped down at the 2024 election, Simon has become the first former Chief Whip to publish his diaries. What are his reflections on the Conservatives’ time in office? Simon explains why his decision to resign under Boris Johnson was so difficult, why the Rwanda vote under Rishi Sunak was their finest hour, and why the Whips’ office is really the government’s HR department. Just how Ungovernable was the Tory Party? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Is New Addington Britain’s bleakest estate?

There’s blood spattered on the pavement but locals in New Addington, an estate in Croydon, southeast London, seem curiously unbothered. ‘I’ve had no problems,’ Eli, who lives around the corner from the latest stabbing, tells me.  Eli’s house is close to Rowdown Field, where last March a human head and other dismembered body parts were found. Sarah Mayhew, a 38-year-old mother of two, was murdered and her remains dumped here. Flowers and solar-powered candles are pinned to the side of a metal cargo container in the car park visited by her killer. Leftover police tape flutters in the wind. The roar of traffic from the main road shatters the silence.

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Keir Starmer is doing a Boris on immigration

Keir Starmer is just the latest in a long line of prime ministers who says that immigration has been far too high in the past and needs to be greatly reduced. He berates Tory leader Kemi Badenoch constantly on this point, pledging to get a grip on migration volumes and accusing the Conservatives of having presided over a ‘reckless, one nation experiment in open borders.’ It’s a wounding blow to which Badenoch is yet to devise an effective answer. And let’s face it, being outflanked on migration scepticism by Starmer, a man who once declared that ‘a racist undercurrent… permeates all immigration law’, ought to hurt. Yet now Starmer himself

Alex Klaushofer

What Lebanon’s energy crisis can teach us in Britain

“See that?” my friend pointed to a pylon on the hill opposite the window. “That’s the dawla.” The dawla (pronounced “dowleh”) is Arabic for state, and my hostess was telling me about an essential feature of life in contemporary Lebanon: the ability to understand when there is electricity and who is providing it. If the light on the pylon was orange, I would know that power was coming from the national grid. If, like good Net Zero citizens, we eschew gas, it could also mean no heating, hot meals or hot showers It was my first trip to Lebanon for almost fifteen years. In the early 2000s, I went repeatedly