Politics

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

Thursday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

The British state is bigger than ever

The state is bigger than ever. The number of workers employed in central government has hit 4 million for the first time. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show employment in the public sector hit 6.14 million in December, up 53,000 in a year. Employment in central government hit a record high and was up 105,000 in a year. Those employed by the NHS hit a record high too, of over 2 million, and was up by nearly 50,000 in a year. Yet, as Katy Balls and I point out in today’s cover story for the magazine, productivity has not kept pace. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in the

Debbie Hayton

How the NHS gave up on recording biological sex

If data is worth collecting, then surely it is worth collecting properly. As a scientist I’d argue that unreliable data is worse than no data at all. At least if there is nothing recorded, then there is nothing to mislead. On one of the most basic categories of all – sex – it seems that official records are all over the place. According to Sullivan’s review, ‘gender’ – whatever that is – started to replace sex in the 1990s Readers of The Spectator are probably well aware of the issues already, but Professor Alice Sullivan – Head of Research at the UCL Social Research Institute – has led a review

Eliot Wilson

The EU wants to shaft British defence firms

Sir Keir Starmer’s attitude to Europe and the EU is hard to fathom. As a left-leaning human rights lawyer who lived in Kentish Town before he moved into Downing St, he could hardly be more of a stereotyped Remainer. He campaigned to stay in the EU and to hold a second referendum when he was Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit spokesman. Yet by the time the Labour party manifesto was published last year, he pledged ‘no return to the single market, the customs union, or freedom of movement.’ Perhaps this week his attitude will be clarified. On Wednesday, the European Commission published a White Paper on defence and rearmament. One of the most eye-catching

William Moore William Moore

Labour’s growing pains, survival of the hottest & murder most fascinating

43 min listen

This week: why is economic growth eluding Labour? ‘Growing pains’ declares The Spectator’s cover image this week, as our political editor Katy Balls, our new economics editor Michael Simmons, and George Osborne’s former chief of staff Rupert Harrison analyse the fiscal problems facing the Chancellor. ‘Dominic Cummings may have left Whitehall,’ write Katy and Michael, ‘but his spirit lives on.’ ‘We are all Dom now,’ according to one government figure. Keir Starmer’s chief aide Morgan McSweeney has never met Cummings, but the pair share a diagnosis of Britain’s failing economy. Identifying a problem is not, however, the same as solving it. As Rachel Reeves prepares her Spring Statement, ministers are

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Netflix’s Adolescence is far from perfect

According to one gushing review, Netflix’s Adolescence is the ‘most brilliant TV drama in years’. And that verdict is at the mild end. Others have called it ‘flawless’ and ‘complete perfection’. The drama has achieved a 100 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the TV and film review website. If you haven’t watched Adolescence yet, you are almost certainly being implored to do so by friends, relatives, or – oh, the irony of it, as will become clear – by online peer pressure. Adolescence becomes just a little too preachy The four part mini-series, which tells the story of a 13-year-old schoolboy, Jamie Miller, who kills a classmate, certainly deserves

Nigel Jones

The JFK files will infuriate conspiracy theorists

When Donald Trump ordered the declassification of thousands of secret government documents on the assassination of president John F Kennedy, it looked like it would be a red letter day for America’s conspiracy theorists. The reality has been rather different. The JFK files – as well as other documents about the killings of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, which were released on Tuesday – look like a very damp squib. These documents lead to more questions than answers Around 2,000 documents were included in the release from the US National Archives and Records Administration. But despite Trump’s insistence that the files should not be redacted, many still have passages

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Ukraine is just one part of Trump’s Great Game

Washington D.C. For Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, it’s a case of today Ukraine, tomorrow the world. In their much-hyped telephone call this week, the Russian leader didn’t appear to give much away: a step towards a sort-of ceasefire, a prisoner swap and a few other bits and bobs. But Putin knows that Trump wants a lot more than just an agreement on the Donbas. Settling the most significant conflict in Europe since the second world war is merely a prelude to a much bigger deal in the Holy Land, a truly historic arrangement that could satisfy the Donald’s desire to be thought of as a peace legend. That’s why

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The shape-shifting Labour party

It is difficult to gauge who is the more discombobulated by the Labour government’s recent Damascene conversion to a political viewpoint roughly approximating to common sense – the Labour left, Reform or the Tory right. It is equally difficult to believe that the current administration is the same one which took office on 4 July last year, so wildly different is its apparent ideological viewpoint. You will remember Keir Starmer’s first 100 days without much affection, I suspect. This was a government which seemed to delight in its staggering ineptitude, whether it be David Lammy and co conspiring with the Mauritians to reach a settlement on the Chagos Islands which

James Heale James Heale

Inside Team Kemi’s plan for power

In elections, as in wine, lesser years can still produce good vintages. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown first won their seats in 1983, the year of Labour’s ‘longest suicide note in history’; William Hague’s landslide defeat in 2001 gave us David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson. The 2017 election is not recalled fondly by many Conservatives. Yet it produced the cluster of ambitious Tories running the party today. Ahead of the party conference in October there will be a steady drumbeat of announcements Kemi Badenoch was marked for the top as soon as she entered parliament. ‘It was clear from the start she wasn’t there to make up the

Katy Balls and Michael Simmons

‘Austerity is back’: Inside Labour’s emergency budget 

Dominic Cummings may have left Whitehall but his spirit lives on. Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has repurposed Cummings’s call for ‘weirdos and misfits’ as a plea for ‘innovators and disruptors’. Downing Street this month launched an ‘AI Ideas’ competition in pursuit of bright sparks. A hackathon will follow. In No. 10 and 11, aides channel Cummings’s language as they talk of acting as an ‘insurgent’ government. ‘We’re all Dom now,’ says one government figure. In one area, Cummings’s influence on the new government is most apparent: the diagnosis of a failing state. Keir Starmer’s chief aide Morgan McSweeney has never met Cummings, but these days

Wednesday

Lucy Dunn

Are the Scottish Tories becoming irrelevant?

Another day, another poll that shows Reform could, from a standing start, pick up at least 14 seats at the 2026 Holyrood election. Nigel Farage’s party is attracting supporters from all of Scotland’s main parties – 5 per cent of SNP voters are backing Reform while only six in ten Labour voters would get behind the reds again next year – but the Scottish Tories have the most to lose. As Farage’s lot witness a further surge in support north of the border, the Scottish Tories appear set to lose almost 50 per cent of their seats. In short, Scottish voters are opting to support a group with no parliamentary

James Heale James Heale

Spring Statement or ‘Emergency Budget’?

12 min listen

The question that everyone in Westminster wants answered is what will actually be included in next week’s Spring Statement. Previously, the Spring Statement wasn’t looking like much to write home about – little more than an update. But with the economy taking a turn for the worse and her fiscal headroom narrowing, it has taken on renewed importance for Rachel Reeves, with the opposition trying their best to brand it as an ‘Emergency Budget’. What does Reeves need to do to calm the markets? Also on the podcast, Pensions Minister Torsten Bell gave an interesting interview to Newsnight last night, defending the government’s welfare reforms. Where are we with the fallout from

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Starmer looked scared of Badenoch at PMQs

At PMQs this week, Sir Keir Starmer got a proper grilling for a change. Kemi Badenoch used smarter tactics: short questions sharply focused; half-truths instantly rebutted. The Tory leader abandoned her normal habit of covering the entire spectrum of Labour’s shortcomings. She focused on their worst error: economic stagnation caused by the tax-grab Budget. Why, she asked, is the Chancellor holding ‘an emergency budget next week?’ A near fib from Starmer. She’d caught him out Sir Keir gave her a formulaic reply, crowing about his glorious achievements. ‘Record investment… three interest rate cuts…wages going up faster than prices.’ Kemi dismissed this as balderdash. She gave the true reason for the

Eliot Wilson

Who are the contenders to be the next ‘C’?

Somewhere in an office on the south bank of the Thames, a man is writing in green ink and signing himself simply ‘C’. He is doing these things because all of his 16 predecessors have done so since 1909. Sir Richard Moore is Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), more popularly known as MI6, the only employee of the organisation whose name is made public, and he will soon step down after five years in the role. SIS is Britain’s foreign intelligence organisation, collecting and analysing human intelligence overseas to protect the United Kingdom’s national interests, inform the government’s strategic understanding of the global situation and support counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation

Jawad Iqbal

Gareth Southgate has nothing original to say

Football’s most revered promulgator of platitudes is at it again. Sir Gareth Southgate, the former England manager, has warned that vulnerable young men are falling victim to ‘callous, manipulative and toxic influencers’. Delivering the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Southgate said the young are falling prey to an ideology that asserts success is measured by money and dominance. This is just a tad rich coming from a man who owes his wealth and fame to a game that worships money above all else, and in which everyone – football club owners, managers and players – prizes dominance at any cost over their rivals. In a nutshell, a man who used to manage

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

No one will thank Liz Kendall for doing her job

There are three thankless posts in a modern Labour government. There’s the Chancellor, who has to announce the tightening of belts and the hiking of taxes; the Home Secretary, who must busy themselves cracking down, banging up and throwing away the key; and the Work and Pensions Secretary, who is charged with Scroogeing every last penny out of the benefits system. These are the ministers Labour’s grassroots and its graduate liberal voters love to hate, but they likely do more to keep Labour in power than their more popular colleagues. Labour liberals have an outsized influence in policy debates, overrepresented as they are in the BBC, the NGOs and academia,

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Badenoch caught Starmer out at PMQs

Keir Starmer didn’t have to defend his welfare cuts until later in the session at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, because Kemi Badenoch decided to focus on the looming increase to employers’ national insurance contributions. She was right to do so ahead of the spring statement, and her attacks were, for the second week running, much better than they have been previously. Starmer and his whips had clearly anticipated that tax and welfare would be the two hot topics of the session, and they’d found a Labour backbencher sufficiently loyal and self-loathing to ask a totally pointless question just before Badenoch. Andrew Pakes praised Starmer for the ‘welcome boost in the

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why don’t we hear more about Israel’s stunning blow against Hamas’s fascists?

Imagine if, following an Allied raid on Nazi positions, the newspapers the next day told us about nothing but the civilian casualties. No mention of the fascists who were killed. No utterance of their names, no information about their ranks. Instead, just pained commentary on the suffering of the innocents who tragically found themselves swept up in this act of war. This is one of the most blistering assaults on Hamas’s terror army since 7 October We would think that strange, right? We would consider it a reneging on the journalist’s duty to tell the truth about war. Well, that’s how I feel perusing the coverage of Israel’s resumption of

Yossi Melman

A storm is brewing for Benjamin Netanyahu

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is once again plunging Israel into a deeply polarising legal and political crisis. Over the weekend, he announced his plan to dismiss Ronen Bar, the chief of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service. This was followed on Tuesday by his decision to renew the war in Gaza, by violating the fragile ceasefire that had stayed in place for several months, showing disregard for the safety of the 59 remaining hostages in the process. Netanyahu, who is facing three criminal indictments for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, justified his decision to dismiss Bar by stating that he had lost confidence in his security chief. However, there

Steerpike Steerpike

Sturgeon unveils memoir cover

Nicola Sturgeon may be stepping down at the 2026 Scottish parliament election but fear not, the SNP’s Dear Leader won’t be out of the public eye for good. While many might have expected the former first minister to retire to the shadows after the rather tumultuous two years she has faced, it appears the Queen of the Nats is determined to stay in the spotlight. This summer, Sturgeon will release her memoir – which she promised last week would be a ‘candid’ read – and has even teased her fans and followers with a sneak preview of the cover. Taking to Instagram – where else? – the ex-SNP leader unveiled