Politics Archives

Monday

9 Jun 2025

Greta Thunberg should thank Israel for intercepting her Gaza selfie ship

Once again, the Mediterranean has hosted a familiar theatre of self-satisfied spectacle. This time, however, the curtain has come down swiftly. The latest vessel to set sail in defiance of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza – the Madleen, a boat bloated with virtue signalling and the vanity of performative compassion – has been intercepted by the Israeli Navy. The Madleen, a boat bloated with virtue signalling and the vanity of performative compassion, has been intercepted by the Israeli Navy The operation was executed peacefully and without casualties by fighters from Fleet 13, Israel’s naval commando forces. The ship is now making its way safely to the port of Ashdod, its

Sam Leith

Will Donald Trump’s defenders finally admit the truth?

So, there we have it. The President of the United States wants to bypass state governors and deploy the National Guard and the US Marine Corps against his own citizens. This comes after Donald Trump’s administration, apparently impatient with the existing legal immigration process, started bundling black and brown people into vans with a view to summary deportation. Trump wants to be king. He doesn’t even slightly attempt to conceal it Is there some point at which those who like to sneer at the “orange man bad” school of thought will swallow their pride and come round to the realisation that the orange man is, in fact, bad? Come on,

Sunday

8 Jun 2025

Max Jeffery

In Essex, the only way is Reform

The country is slipping away. The whole place, slowly, but London suddenly, blinding glass slabs becoming East End blocks, ‘SPLENDID NEW APARTMENTS!’ turning to marshland, to golf clubs, to small towns and a train station, Laindon, Essex, which has a nice 4×4 Porsche parked outside. Decline is the mood of Britain, and I was going to Essex to talk to people about it. Any political energy left in this country is behind Reform, and lately Nigel Farage has been using a new label for his people. ‘We are the party of workers, but also the party of entrepreneurs,’ he said recently. Did he mean the two simultaneously? The appeal to

Patrick West

Worrying about migration doesn’t make you an extremist

This country still has a problem with a radical ideology. News that the government’s anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent, now classifies concerns about mass migration, or ‘cultural nationalism’, as a potential ‘terrorist ideology’ reveals the magnitude of this problem. And the problem in question is hyper-liberalism, a radical ideology that remains endemic in Prevent and elsewhere in the arms of the state. Far from dying out, this ideology, otherwise known as wokery or radical progressivism, has become normalised and embedded, especially in areas of government. The ideology has literally graduated from the academy and into the state sector. Charges of racism are never far behind According to the reports, an online training course hosted

Stephen Daisley

Is Reform a right-wing party?

If the problem with Labour is that it believes in nothing, the problem with Reform is that it believes in everything. The dispute over the burqa is only the latest example. Few things unite supporters of Reform like opposition to benefits for anyone other than themselves In pushing Keir Starmer to ban the burqa ‘in the interests of public safety’, new MP Sarah Pochin undoubtedly spoke for a significant section of the party’s supporters. For that matter, polling has previously indicated the British public’s backing for a ban. For some, it is indeed a safety issue: presented with a stranger, covered head-to-foot, identifiable only by their eyes, how can we

Brendan O’Neill

Leo Varadkar and the real story of the Imane Khelif gender scandal

Remember when Leo Varadkar egged on someone with male strength who was punching women in the face? It sounds made up, I know. Varadkar, the former Taoiseach of Ireland, is painfully PC. He might have started his political career as a small-c conservative. But he ended up guffawing with Justin Trudeau over their shared penchant for virtue-signalling socks, slamming Israel like a Trinity brat in a keffiyeh, and getting so lost in the weeds of transgenderism that he once said his government had ‘no official position’ on how many genders there are. (Leo, bro: it’s two.) ‘Truth is dying!’, they wailed for years, and yet now they kill biological truth with

Terry Barnes

Erin Patterson’s mushroom murder case is Australia’s Trial of the Century

Since its general election a month ago, Australia’s politics have endured their biggest upheaval in fifty years. Its Labor government was re-elected by a massive majority, when just months ago it was in danger of being tossed out, and the conservative opposition parties are in existential turmoil and even briefly severed their coalition. Erin Patterson is a a frumpy, middle-aged woman, with a mien unfortunately drawn by nature as a mask of permanent misery Yet Australia’s epicentre of interest this past month hasn’t been the nation’s capital, Canberra. Instead, it’s been Morwell, a dying industrial town in the Gippsland region of the state of Victoria. There, Australia’s Trial of the

Saturday

7 Jun 2025

James Heale

Why Zia Yusuf changed his mind about quitting Reform

Well, that was quick. Within 48 hours of his resignation as party chairman, Zia Yusuf has returned to the Reform fold. In a joint Sunday Times interview with Nigel Farage, Yusuf has admitted to making a ‘mistake’. He will now take up a new revised role within the party, focusing on policy formation and leading on the party’s DOGE mission in local government. A new chairman will be named on Tuesday, amid a backroom shake-up focused on sharing the load on Reform’s leadership. ‘Welcome back Zia,’ wrote Richard Tice on one internal Reform WhatsApp group. ‘Hope you enjoyed your holiday!’ What led Yusuf to change his mind? The obvious precedent here is

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas doesn’t hold a monopoly on Palestinian terror

Israeli forces operating inside Gaza have retrieved the body of Thai agricultural worker Nattapong Pinta, bringing to a close one of the many grim and unresolved chapters from the October 7th atrocities. In a joint operation by the Shin Bet and the IDF, based on intelligence gleaned from captured militants, the body was recovered in Rafah. Pinta had been abducted alive from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led assault, only to be murdered in captivity by a lesser-known but no less brutal Palestinian terror group: Kataeb al-Mujahideen. Among the cascade of horrors unleashed that day, one of the most harrowing sights remains etched in my memory Among the cascade of

David Spencer

Why won’t the Met Police deal with Palestine protestors blocking parliament?

Does the Metropolitan Police have more respect for the rights of aggressive protestors than it does for Parliament itself? That’s the unavoidable question after the Met handled the latest demonstrations outside the Palace of Westminster with the usual kid gloves. If the police were not aware of the protestors’ plans, how could such a failure of open-source intelligence occur? For several hours last Wednesday, many hundreds of Palestine Solidarity Campaign supporters gathered on the perimeter of the Palace of Westminster, effectively surrounding the Parliamentary Estate. As has become the norm at such events, the police appeared to be unwilling to enforce free and unobstructed access to Parliament so long as

Danny Scott

The truth about the 1984 miners’ strike

On 6 March 1984, I found myself smack-bang in the middle of the largest industrial dispute in post-war history. As the son of a fifth-generation miner whose bedroom window looked out onto Pye Hill Pit in Selston – the remote Nottinghamshire mining village I called home – I couldn’t help but be caught up in the miners’ strike. And over its 363 days, I watched with bemused anger as a series of nods, winks, slights of hand and outright lies were fashioned into a hard and fast history. So much of what Selston stood for was lost in the strike and its malicious aftermath On one side we had the National Union of Mineworkers’

Jonathan Sacerdoti

What happened to Piers Morgan?

There was great fanfare when Piers Morgan re-entered the world of television three years ago to front a new prime-time show on Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV. Morgan framed the move as a fightback against cancel culture, a return to free speech, and a declaration of independence from the constraints of legacy media. Piers Morgan asks for the truth but refuses to hear it. pic.twitter.com/2LtEgoMJ5h — Natasha Hausdorff (@HausdorffMedia) June 3, 2025 ‘I’m delighted to now be returning to live television,’ he announced in the show’s trailer, promising to ‘cancel the cancel culture’ and to bring ‘lively, vigorous debate’ and even, in his words, the increasingly taboo three-letter word: fun. What began

Jason Pack

What being kidnapped taught me about the struggle for Kurdish independence

Twenty-one years ago, I was opportunistically kidnapped by supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). In light of the PKK declaring last month its intention to discontinue its armed struggle against Turkey, I’ve been reflecting back on my involuntary run-in with the struggle for Kurdish self-governance. As with my kidnapping, the Kurdish cause had always been riven by amateurism, not to mention the petty feuds of the rival Kurdish organisations in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Truces, mass casualty events, kidnappings, and negotiations followed each other haphazardly. The struggle was filled with freelancers, bandits, and entrepreneurs. It embodied contradictory approaches to Americans and Western power in the region. Steve had come to the Levant for a taste

Michael Gove

Rupert Lowe on Reform turmoil, Chagos ‘treason’ and taking the Tory whip

50 min listen

The Spectator’s editor, Michael Gove, and assistant editor, Madeline Grant, interview Rupert Lowe, MP for Great Yarmouth and notorious Westminster provocateur. Earlier this year, Lowe was suspended from the Reform party amid claims of threats towards the party’s chairman, Zia Yusuf and a souring relationship with Nigel Farage. Following his political ‘assassination’, he now sits as an independent MP and continues to be one of the most energetic parliamentarians in challenging the Westminster orthodoxy. During the discussion – recorded before Zia Yusuf stepped down as party chairman on Thursday – Lowe diagnoses the issues that have blighted Reform and its bid to ‘professionalise’; challenges Michael on his government’s mismanagement of

Alex Klaushofer

Tesco’s ‘VAR’-style self-checkout cameras are the final straw

Tesco has followed Sainsbury’s lead by installing cameras above self-checkouts to identify when shoppers fail to scan an item properly, using the footage to provide a live-action replay of their misdeed. Predictably, it’s not gone down well: a video posted on Instagram involving a can of tuna got more than 3.5 million views. When will the supermarkets learn to stop treating their shoppers like criminals? Tesco’s track record with customer data is not encouraging Much of the reaction to Tesco’s VAR (Video Assistant Referee) cameras has focused on Britons’ humorous responses: ‘VAR Decision – Tuna Disallowed,’ joked one person. ‘Clearly off side,’ riffed another. But the growing surveillance in our supermarkets is no laughing matter.

Friday

6 Jun 2025

Svitlana Morenets

Why the Kerch bridge must fall

Vladimir Putin has hit back against Ukraine’s ‘Spiderweb’ operation, which recently destroyed or damaged at least two dozen Russian bombers. Overnight, Russia fired 45 missiles and more than 400 drones at Ukrainian cities and apartment blocks. At least six people were killed, including three rescuers searching for survivors in Kyiv. More than a hundred civilians were injured across the country. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, claimed the mass attack on ‘military targets’ was a response to the ‘terrorist acts of the Kyiv regime’. But Ukraine is far from done; the Kerch bridge, which links the occupied Crimea to the Russian mainland, is high on the hit list. This week, the Ukrainian

James Heale

The Tories are edging towards ECHR exit

Following last month’s local elections disaster, Kemi Badenoch’s team promised a ‘step change’. So just 24 hours after Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride offered a ‘mea culpa’ for the mini-Budget, Badenoch has followed up by suggesting that the UK ‘will likely need to leave’ the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It comes amid a hardening of internal Tory opinion on the subject, following both a number of high-profile rulings by British courts and a surge in illegal migration. ‘I do believe that we will likely need to leave’, Badenoch said Badenoch’s argument is as follows: foreign criminals, convicted of horrific abuse, currently cannot be deported. The ECHR is now being

Yascha Mounk

Trump and Musk was never going to work

Trump’s public breakup with Elon Musk is symptomatic of his failure to hold together the broad coalition to which he owes his re-election. The ‘HUGEst’ political alliance of the century is breaking apart before the eyes of the world in suitably spectacular fashion. For the last few months, the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump, and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, were a political item. Musk donated large sums to Trump’s campaign, lavished the newly re-elected president with praise on his social network, and neglected his companies to pursue his side quest at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In return, Trump

James Heale

Surprise Labour victory as Reform’s fallout continues

14 min listen

Scottish Labour have a new MSP today as Davy Russell won the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, taking the seat from the SNP. Labour won with 31.6% of the vote with the SNP second on 29.4%, Reform close behind on 26.1% and the Conservatives a distance fourth with just 6% of the vote; this marks rare good news for both Keir Starmer and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. Both SNP and Reform will be disappointed not to have won, but Reform have been quick to highlight how close they came, considering how new the party is. Plus, there are signs that Reform took votes away from the incumbent SNP, demonstrating

Ross Clark

Cut the Border Force budget

Whatever happened to the great promise to ‘smash’ the smuggling gangs? When it came to power just under a year ago the Starmer government promised to pour resources into securing Britain’s borders. There was going to be a new Border Security Command – which was actually set up with £150 million of funding, although if anyone can tell me what it has done or what it has achieved, I am all ears. However, it now seems that the UK Border Force is one of the areas which Rachel Reeves has earmarked for spending cuts. The agency has an annual budget of £1.2 billion and employs 11,400 staff, who enjoy extremely