Politics

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

Tuesday

Irwin Stelzer

Europe and the death of Pax Americana

If you are still reeling from the shock and awe created by Donald Trump’s foreign policy since taking office, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ as Ronald Reagan once put it. Trump doesn’t just want to reset trading relations with every country in the world. He wants the world to change its foreign policies to suit the end of Pax Americana – and its replacement with a muscular foreign policy that relies very little, if at all, on the kindness of strangers. It is not Trump who is surrendering to Putin, but Europe Start with the war in Ukraine. Trump’s negotiations with Vladimir Putin tell us less about the two men than

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

Thousands splurged on government diversity training in 2024

President Trump has been hard at work scrapping diversity courses stateside and international companies have followed suit – with Goldman Sachs and Deloitte some of the latest corporations to bin off their inclusion schemes. Whether the UK government will take a leaf out of Trump’s book is quite another matter, however. The Tories have called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ‘unshackle’ Britain from equality initiatives while Reform’s Rupert Lowe has been busy quizzing the government on their DEI spend in 2024 – which, Mr S can reveal, has taken a not insignificant sum from the public purse… In 2024, more than £1,000 of taxpayer’s cash was splurged on average

Owen Matthews

British troops won’t help Ukraine

Sir Keir Starmer’s proposal to put British troops on the ground as part of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine is a principled and politically bold move. But the sad reality is that Britain is in no position to act as Ukraine’s peacekeeper. Starmer is playing with an empty deck and singing from obsolete songbook.  Starmer has few options left other than gesture politics Starmer’s offer to put British troops on the ground is, in practical military terms, a very small promise. As former British Army chief Lord Dannatt pointed out last night, the UK’s armed forces are ‘so run down’ that we could not lead any future peacekeeping mission in

Steerpike Steerpike

Psychiatrist shortage could derail assisted dying bill

Uh oh. Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill appears to have hit another bump in the road as it now transpires there may not be enough psychiatric doctors in the profession to make it work. Last week, an amendment put forward by the bill’s sponsor proposed that, instead of having a high court judge investigate each case, a panel of social workers and psychiatrists among others should oversee applications. But experts have warned that there may not actually be enough psychiatrists for this to work. Nice to see the pro-euthanasia crowd has done its research… Professor Allan House, professor of liaison psychiatry at Leeds University, and Professor Gareth Owen, honorary consultant

Andrew Tettenborn

Should burning the Quran be against the law?

There are worrying signs in Britain that a blasphemy law – abolished in 2008 – might be sneaking in through the back door. Last week, a Turkish man allegedly set fire to the Quran as part of a protest against the Turkish government outside its consulate in Rutland Gate, London. He was then attacked by an outraged zealot with a knife, arrested and charged with a similar offence. He has pleaded not guilty and remains to be tried. Earlier this month, a Manchester man filmed publicly burning pages from the Quran in protest at Islamist excesses was also very swiftly arrested and locked up. Two days later, the man pleaded

Oscar Edmondson

Can Starmer be the bridge between Europe and the US?

14 min listen

There is lots to make sense of today in a huge week for European and world politics, with the fallout of the Munich Conference and today’s emergency summit in Paris. European powers are trying to navigate peace in Ukraine in the face of a belligerently isolationist Trump administration. The UK is caught between preserving its privileged position with the US and the desire for a European reset, as well as the need for an end to the war in Ukraine without giving in to Russia. Can Starmer bridge the transatlantic chasm that has opened up? Do the Europeans want us, and do the Americans need us?  Events in Europe will

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Parliament is embarrassing itself

Sidney Low said that ‘government in England is government by amateurs’, and parliament seems to be doing its level best to vindicate that view. The Assisted Dying Bill being rushed through the Commons with sinister alacrity has exposed structural flaws in our legislative procedures, not least the vulnerability of private members’ bills to exploitation by those determined that proper parliamentary process not hinder their legislation’s path to the statute books. Whether through truncated debate, a stacked committee, a lopsided witness list, unreliable undertakings, or the resolute incuriosity of scrutineers unwilling to scrutinise, the bill reminds us that institutions are only as reliable as the fidelity of those who populate them

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Kemi Badenoch is more interested in liberalism than conservatism

Kemi Badenoch made a speech today which mentioned the terms ‘liberal’ or ‘liberalism’ seven times before the word ‘conservative’ got a look in. The liberalism she was extolling in her address at the ARC conference in London was not of the leftist kind, but the ‘classic liberalism of free markets, free speech, free enterprise, freedom of religion, the presumption of innocence, the rule of law, and equality under it’. And there is not much to cavil over in that little list. Although when one person’s desired ‘freedom of religion’ impinges on other people’s basic freedom of expression then clearly there are priorities to be ranked. Since the Brexit vote, the

Coffee House

Read: Kemi Badenoch’s full speech at the Arc Conference

Western civilisation is in crisis. Our ideas and our culture have dominated the world for well over two centuries. This is not a crisis of values. It’s a crisis of confidence that has set in at exactly the same time that we face existential threats on the left. This self-doubt manifests as an embarrassment of the West’s legacy and in extremists, a hatred of western history and even its culture. But what about the right? We know that the West has given the world amazing ideas and values, from democracy and free markets to our banking systems. Yet around us we see so much cultural and economic decline. We doubt

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Can Europe stand on its own two feet against Russia?

The United States is no longer an ‘ally’ of Europe, according to a former high-ranking figure in Nato. In an interview with Times Radio, Stefanie Babst, erstwhile deputy assistant secretary general of the alliance, said President Trump has ‘switched sides’ and aligned the US with Russia, led by the ‘war criminal’ Vladimir Putin. ‘I don’t think that the Trump administration is prepared to really commit any longer to Nato, to the trans-Atlantic alliance as such,’ said Babst, ‘and he couldn’t care really less for European security.’ Babst’s remarks appear to contradict what she said in an interview exactly twelve months ago with a Washington think-tank. ‘With a few exceptions,’ said

James Heale James Heale

What does Kemi Badenoch believe in?

Kemi Badenoch likes a good Thatcher comparison. The current Tory leader is presently reading Patrick Cosgrave’s account of the Iron Lady’s rise to the top. It was another book – John Ranelagh’s Thatcher’s People – that recorded how in one 1970s Conservative policy meeting, a speaker started to argue that the party should adopt a pragmatic middle way. Thatcher removed her copy of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slammed it down on the table and declared, ‘This is what we believe.’ This morning was Badenoch’s attempt to do something similar. Appearing at the Arc conference in London, the Tory leader used a 1,700 word speech to set out

Danny Shaw

Why people kill

Why did he do it? Over the last few weeks, many of us have asked that question following a series of horrifying acts of violence that have been difficult to comprehend. Why was 15-year-old Harvey Willgoose fatally stabbed at a school in Sheffield? Why did Axel Rudakubana slaughter three girls at a children’s dance class in Southport last summer? And why did the father and stepmother of ten-year-old Sara Sharif abuse, torture and murder her?  Violent deaths are so shocking and alarming it’s natural that we search for explanations. But in the early stages, as details are pieced together and information about suspects isn’t known or publicly available, those answers often

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Trump critic cries at Munich

The Munich Security Conference has come to a close, but not before generating global headlines after US Vice President JD Vance’s speech on Friday. Reform MP Rupert Lowe lauded the American as a ‘hero’ after Vance warned that free speech was ‘in retreat’ in the UK and Europe – but not everyone feels the same. In fact, chairman of the Munich Security Conference Christoph Heusgen was positively distraught at Vance’s intervention as he closed the 61st conference on Sunday. Taking to the podium, Heusgen began solemnly: After the speech of Vice President Vance on Friday, we have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore. I’m

Steerpike Steerpike

Ethics tsar must probe Hermer, say Labour MPs

Well, well, well. After a rather rocky ride in the Sunday papers, Lord Hermer is back in the spotlight this week – for all the wrong reasons. It has emerged that Labour MPs are now calling on the Prime Minister’s ethics tsar to probe the Attorney General over potential conflicts of interest. Talk about a bad start to the job, eh? Richard Hermer has only been in post for seven months and yet he’s managed to ruffle a rather lot of feathers. The Attorney General has refused to reveal details of payments he has received since becoming a minister, including any earnings from his list of former clients, in a

John Keiger John Keiger

Starmer must protect Britain’s defence industry

When David Frost led UK negotiations with the EU on a free trade agreement five years ago, he was supported by a 100-strong Cabinet Office team. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘EU reset unit’, also based in the Cabinet Office, is 100-strong too, including two permanent secretaries. Given Labour’s insistence that it is not seeking to renegotiate Brexit, but merely to improve relations with the EU, why appoint such a large, high-powered unit? Setting aside the harsher criticism that the ‘EU surrender unit’ is a machine to reverse Brexit, government ministers and the PM remain tight-lipped about the officially titled ‘European Union relations secretariat’. It does not appear on the Cabinet

Steerpike Steerpike

Sandie Peggie could face sack over ‘misgendering’

Back to Scotland, where the Sandie Peggie v NHS Fife case has sparked outrage across the country. After nurse Peggie questioned a transgender doctor for using the female changing rooms, she was suspended by her health board. The move pushed her to bring a landmark tribunal against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton for harassment and discrimination. While the tribunal case has been adjourned until July, it has now emerged that Peggie could herself face dismissal over the whole thing – after being accused of having ‘misgendered’ Dr Upton by using male pronouns when talking to and about the junior doctor. You couldn’t make it up… Alongside the ongoing employment

John Milbank

We need to return to a politics of virtue

Why, since the 1970s, has liberalism become so virulent? And why is it inclined to break down, or to drastically mutate, as we now see? In answer to the second question, liberalism involves a series of separations between different social aspects that have to be kept artificially apart, and yet which remain in tension, and can ultimately not be kept apart at all.  In each case what one sees is an initial separation of powers, followed later by the illegitimate capture, in liberal terms, of one power by another, and eventually by a fusion of powers which collapses their separation altogether. At this point, the always lurking oligarchy of liberalism

Patrick West

The irony of the backlash against the DEI rollback

It was only a matter of time before the rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies in the workplace provoked a backlash. Following an ongoing reversal on the matter in recent months, seen on a global scale at Google, Facebook and Amazon, and here in Britain at BT and Deloitte UK, the head of the Co-op group has spoken of her alarm at this development. As reported in the Guardian over the weekend, Shirine Khoury-Haq, the CEO of the retailer, warns of the grave implications of this turnaround: The medium-term consequences for institutions that employ DEI policies are already proving deleterious Rolling back on DEI isn’t just an internal business decision, it has real-world

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Ofsted’s chief is wrong about WFH parents

The Chief Inspector of the schools’ watchdog Ofsted, Sir Martyn Oliver, has said he thinks the change in working habits that came about after the Covid pandemic is substantially to blame for the skyrocketing rates of children being absent from school. In 2018-19, persistent absence of pupils from state secondaries ran at about 13 per cent. The most recent figures put it at one child in four. It’s not just a culture of skiving off we’re looking at here Sir Martyn told the Sunday Times that, as he sees it: Suddenly people were used to working from home and, in many cases, I don’t think there was that same desire

Eliot Wilson

Is Starmer about to finally increase defence spending?

There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. Only three weeks ago, Sir Keir Starmer was considering delaying increasing the United Kingdom’s defence budget until the next decade. ‘Whitehall sources’, a catch-all term of varying reliability, said that the Prime Minister regarded the political costs of cutting public expenditure elsewhere as too great: accordingly, defence, which everyone professes to believe is important but few are willing to prioritise, would have to wait. Now the mood music has changed. The Sunday Times reports that Starmer intends to overrule Rachel Reeves and the Treasury in their insistence on no additional expenditure. Instead, the Prime