Politics

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

Wednesday

Sergey Radchenko

Trump was naive to think he could negotiate with Putin

President Donald Trump’s creative diplomacy in the Ukraine conflict – which entails bullying the victim and making unilateral concessions to the aggressor – has achieved its latest non-result. After a telephone conversation that lasted for an hour and a half, Trump failed to convince his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to accept the US proposal for an unconditional ceasefire. The war continues. Putin attempted to dampen expectations shortly before the call. Speaking to a gathering of Russian businessmen earlier in the day, he predicted that sanctions on Russia would not go away. ‘These are not temporary or targeted measures; this is a mechanism of systemic, strategic pressure on our country,’ he

Matthew Lynn

China’s BYD could kill Tesla

Tesla and its hyper-active boss Elon Musk are having a bad month. On both sides of the Altantic, there have been protests against the ‘Nazi-mobile’ and the ‘Swasti-car’. The electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer’s sales are collapsing across Europe, and its stock is in freefall. On top of all that, its main rival, China’s BYD, has just announced a super-faster charger that allows you to ‘fill up’ your EV as quickly as you once could your petrol car. All companies go through bad patches, especially when they are leading a new industry. But Tesla is losing its technological lead to China. That could prove fatal. There is growing evidence that China’s

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Trump’s call with Putin has bought Ukraine time

So who won from yesterday’s phone conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin? Arguably, no one did – but nor did anyone really lose. Efforts to end the fighting live, maybe to die, another day. Putin managed to find a third way between agreeing to an unconditional ceasefire – which the Russians believe would benefit Ukraine, and which would have infuriated the ultra-nationalists – and rejecting Trump’s proposals altogether. The moratorium he called on strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure looks like a concession but actually has little real impact now that winter is past, and the drones and missiles which would have been hitting power stations are still targeting cities.

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Could a headscarf row bring down France’s government?

Might a headscarf bring down France’s coalition government? The question of whether the Islamic garment should be permitted on the sports field has revealed the ideological differences within Prime Minister Francois Bayrou’s fragile government. On the one hand, there are left-leaning ministers such as Elisabeth Borne (Education) and Marie Barsacq (Sport and youth) who see nothing wrong with the headscarf. Others, principally, Gérald Darmanin (Justice) and Bruno Retailleau (Interior), are fiercely opposed. Retailleau recently took Barsacq to task over her stance, saying the headscarf ‘is not a form of freedom, but a form of submission for women’. The headscarf is just the latest attempt by Islamists to destabilise France On

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Labour MP’s cringeworthy Newsnight interview

The Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall announced a range of cuts to benefits payments in the Commons on Tuesday in a bid to save money and get people back to work. On the evening broadcast round that followed, Labour MP and pensions minister Torsten Bell was quizzed on Newsnight about what exactly the reforms would mean. But rather than reassuring viewers, Bell’s tone-deaf interview has left benefits-receiving Brits even more concerned about their futures.  Challenging the Labour minister on how the welfare reforms will affect young people, the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire put it to him that ‘some young people are going to be living on around £70 a week’.

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Merz has paid a high price to pass Germany’s spending package

Yesterday, the German parliament approved a historic amount of debt-funded investment in defence and infrastructure. Over the next few years, Germany may spend up to €1 trillion (£841 billion) on its depleted military and crumbling roads, buildings and train tracks. These eyewatering amounts of money are intended to act as the glue with which to bind the country’s prospective coalition together. But they also give an indication of how much of their own programme the election-winning conservatives are willing to sacrifice in exchange for power. The likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, now starts on a credibility deficit. He’ll have to work hard to get back into the good books of

Jacob Heilbrunn

Cosying up to Putin has weakened Trump’s hand in Europe

Once upon a time, America practiced ping-pong diplomacy to try and improve ties with Mao’s China. Now Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are talking about organising hockey matches in America and Russia to bolster relations. Given that the two sides would be playing in ice rinks, it would be hard to say that Russia, which has been banned from the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup ever since its invasion of Ukraine, is coming in from the cold. But perhaps Putin, who has often taken part in games in Russia, will once more don his ice skates, while Trump serves as master of ceremonies.  Trump has inadvertently weakened his ability

Owen Matthews

Putin has played Trump like a fiddle

And so it begins. Welcome to the first episode of the latest season of Putin’s Theatre of Fugazi – the longest-running drama in global geopolitics. The first takeaway from yesterday’s nearly two-hour phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin seems, at first glance, a positive one. Putin conceded, in principle, strong support for a ceasefire. And in practice, he conceded its first element: a moratorium on strikes on energy infrastructure, issuing orders immediately after the phone call to halt imminent strikes.  Fundamentally, though, Putin is merely cosplaying a willing participant in the peace process. In truth, today’s Trump-Putin phone call merely raised the curtain on what promises to be

Daniel Thorpe

Is Syria heading for a fresh dictatorship?

Syria’s new constitution quickly drew a lot of criticism. Signed by President Ahmed al-Sharaa last week, the document aims to help guide the country through the next five years following the ousting of the dictator Bashar al-Assad. Yet many in the country have already rejected it, claiming it gives the president too much power, promotes an Islamist agenda, and fails to address the concerns of religious and ethnic minorities. The new constitution claims it is ‘based on the principle of separation of powers’, but in practice, this does not appear to be the case. Al-Sharaa as interim president will wield the executive power. But he will also appoint a third

Niall Gooch

Can the social contract survive in Britain?

In the vestry of the church where my father was priest, there was a large wall-mounted plaque commemorating some long-dead worthy of the eighteenth century. I cannot recall his name, but he left a large bequest to the parish for the support of ‘poor persons known to be of good character.’ There are similar inscriptions marking similar bequests in churches up and down the country – though perhaps fewer of them now, in these days of fervent ideological scrutiny of such memorials. As an idealistic young man, I used to find the plaque rather irritating. I thought it was archaic and unchristian, a relic of the Bad Old Days when

Angela Epstein

Save me from Disney’s Snow White feminism

Controversy surrounding the live-action version of Snow White, which is released on Friday, suggests there is little likelihood of a happy ever after for Disney studios bosses. The £210 million remake of the beloved 1937 cartoon classic has been branded too woke and labelled ‘2025’s most divisive film’. It could be a recipe for disaster at the box office. The accusation that Snow White is playing politics is hard to avoid. From the casting of Latina actress Rachel Zegler in the lead role, despite the character being described in the book on which the film is based as having ‘skin as white as snow’, to replacing dwarfs with CGI ‘magical creatures’ in

Abbie MacGregor

A smartphone ban won’t solve our kids’ problems

As a former teacher, I can say with a reasonable degree of confidence that Bridget Phillipson ranks among the worst Education Secretaries this country has ever seen. Yet when Phillipson described the Tories’ attempt to ban phones from the classroom as a ‘headline-grabbing gimmick’ back in January, I found myself nodding along in agreement. She was right. Unfortunately, this moment of optimism about Phillipson was fleeting. The Education Secretary declared this month that headteachers have the government’s ‘full backing’ on removing phones from classrooms. This reversal of good judgement is yet another example of a policy that appears to place conviction over evidence. Giving children unfettered access to a world they are developmentally

Tuesday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Is Putin’s partial ceasefire really a victory for Trump?

It may be taking him longer than the 24 hours he pledged on the campaign trail, but it appears that US President Donald Trump might be getting somewhere on halting the war between Russia and Ukraine: following a call lasting an hour and a half, he has persuaded Vladimir Putin to agree to a partial ceasefire in the conflict.  According to the statements beginning to emerge from the Kremlin and White House, the call appears to have gone well. This is despite Putin seemingly delaying the call by at leat 50 minutes, after speaking at a conference for business lobbyists in Moscow earlier in the afternoon. A classic power play

Monica Porter

Elon Musk is wrong about Radio Free Europe

The termination of US government funding for the two venerable radio stations Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) shows how blindly fanatical the Tesla owner’s axe-wielding has become. Musk claims RFE/RL is run by ‘radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1 billion a year of US taxpayer money’. But that is an ignorant distortion of the truth. For 75 years these beacons of open journalism have provided a lifeline for millions trapped inside dictatorial regimes – a necessary pro-democracy corrective to lies, propaganda and censorship. The stations were originally created to serve audiences behind the Iron Curtain

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Inside Labour’s welfare split

15 min listen

This afternoon we had Liz Kendall’s long-awaited address in the Commons on Labour’s plans for welfare reform. The prospect of £5 billion worth of cuts to welfare has split the party in two, with fears of a rebellion growing over the weekend and into this week. Her announcement was a mixed bag, including: restricting eligibility for the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) so that only those who have the highest level of disability can claim the benefit and – to sweeten the deal for backbenchers – announcing that the government will not bring in vouchers for disability benefit or freeze PIP. One of the new lines that had not been trailed

Steerpike Steerpike

Does Labour believe Israel is breaching international law?

It’s a gaffe a day with David Lammy – but now his latest intervention has ruffled more feathers than usual. On Monday, the Foreign Secretary was firm in his view that, after Israel’s recent suspension of food, fuel and medical deliveries to Gaza, ‘this is a breach of international law’. Leaving no room for error, as pointed out by the Times, Lammy repeated this assertion for the second time in response to Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons. However it seems that this view is not shared by either the Foreign Office or Downing Street. Awkward… Indeed the Labour lot appear rather keen to row back on the Cabinet Secretary’s remarks.

Gus Carter Gus Carter

Pensioners, it’s your turn to cough up

The welfare state is grotesquely unfair. There are people who receive thousands of pounds from the taxpayer with little government oversight, even when they have no genuine need for the cash. They spend it on things like cars, flat screen TVs and other luxury ephemera. And there is a sense of entitlement among these scroungers, a feeling that they are somehow owed the fruits of other people’s labour. These people are of course pensioners. ‘But, but, but,’ I hear them gargle through Wine Society crémant, ‘I’ve paid into the system all my life, I’ve earnt my pension!’ No you haven’t. You very unwisely handed over your taxes to successive governments

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will Labour MPs stomach Liz Kendall’s benefits crackdown?

To underline that there was government agreement on the welfare cuts and reforms she was announcing, Liz Kendall had Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and a slew of other cabinet and senior ministers sitting behind her in the Commons. The Work and Pensions Secretary announced ‘decisive action’ on the benefits system, which she said was ‘failing the very people it is supposed to help and holding our country back’. That ‘decisive action’ was a reform package that Kendall said was expected to save over £5 billion in 2029/30. It included restricting the eligibility for the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) so that only those who have the highest level of

James Heale James Heale

Will Kemi’s anti-net zero campaign bother Labour?

The people’s republic of Holborn and St Pancras is not exactly fertile Tory territory. But it was in a swanky office in Keir Starmer’s north London patch where Kemi Badenoch chose to make her big energy speech this morning. Rather than dwell on her long-awaited policy commissions, the Conservative leader spent the bulk of her speech explaining her decision to drop the party’s commitment to net zero by 2050. In something akin to a Tory TedTalk, she bestrode the stage, clicking through various slides, replete with charts explaining how the UK came to have ‘the highest electricity bills in the developed world.’ Virtually every element of current UK policy making

Ali Kefford

Our nuclear submarines are spending too long at sea

A Vanguard-class submarine used for Britain’s nuclear deterrent has resurfaced after a record-breaking 204 days at sea. Relatives gathered on the Rhu Narrows point yesterday to welcome back their loved ones as the sailors returned to HM Naval Base Clyde, in Scotland. When the submarine departed last year, it was still summer, President Biden was in office and Chancellor Rachel Reeves had yet to deliver her first budget. The boat would have sailed out to open sea, dived and followed a pre-planned route known only to the commanding officer and a handful of others on board, meticulously avoiding any other vessel in her path. She will have remained underwater for the entirety of