Politics

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

Monday

Jawad Iqbal

Did Keir Starmer’s voice coach really count as a Covid ‘key worker’?

Who knew that being a voice coach qualified for ‘key worker’ status during the pandemic lockdowns? It has been revealed that the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer employed a personal voice coach as a ‘key worker’ during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite strict government guidelines at the time. The rules defined critical workers as those essential to public services – including those on the frontline of health, social care and transport. Nowhere does the official guidance mention the life-saving qualities of voice coaches as worthy exemptions to the lockdown rules. Yet, according to a report in the Times, Starmer appointed Leonie Mellinger, an actress and communications skills specialist, in such a role. Did

Robin Forestier-Walker

Why Donald Trump should care about Georgia

President Trump hasn’t just inherited the problem of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Somewhere in the handover is a memo on Georgia, another troubled country on Russia’s border. Georgians who cherish their freedom have for over two months been protesting on the streets, infuriated by their government’s decision to suspend accession talks with the EU. And they’ve paid a price. Hundreds have been detained, many of them suffering injuries in custody. Others have been beaten by government-affiliated thugs on their own doorsteps. But they continue to chant ‘Russian slaves’, for they are under no doubt whose interests the Georgian authorities now serve. Georgia became a victim of Russian aggression before Russia’s

Sunday

Clemmie Read

Why are we obsessed with Japanese fiction?

Imagine you come across a small café in a back alley of Tokyo where you can travel back in time to talk things over with your ex-boyfriend, as long as you come back before your coffee gets cold. Or you stumble into an enchanted library, where the librarian gives you a book to cure your frustration with your sales job. Or, to ramp it up a bit, you serially murder misogynistic businessmen, tempting them to their deaths with your acclaimed beef stew. Or – and this is a common one – your worries about financial security are calmed by the appearance of a particularly comforting cat. For younger generations who

Joe Bedell-Brill

Yvette Cooper: ‘We’re not returning to the EU. We need to move on’

Ahead of Keir Starmer’s meeting with European leaders tomorrow, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper joined Sky News and reiterated Labour’s ‘red lines’: no return to the customs union, the single market or to free movement. Cooper told Trevor Phillips that Labour wanted to get rid of some of the bureaucracy around customs arrangements, and said that the deal the Conservatives had with the EU ‘was not a good one’. Phillips asked if the government was still negotiating a youth mobility scheme. Cooper said net migration had to come down, and that a youth mobility scheme was ‘not the right starting point… at all’. Phillips also suggested that the government might consider

Nigel Jones

Should the West be worried about DeepSeek’s ‘Sputnik moment’?

My late mother proudly possessed a curious object: a tea cosy decorated with the image of a Sputnik. In 1957, when Russia launched the world’s first satellite, this item would have been a charmingly incongruous mix of old and new technology. But today, younger readers might struggle to identify the functions of both a tea cosy and the shiny, spiked silver ball that was Sputnik 1.  Back in the day, the world was shocked by the news that the Soviets had beat the West in the race to space. The New York Times mentioned the satellite in 279 articles in October 1957, the month of its launch. So profound was

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Donald Trump kicks off the tariff wars

He did it, Joe! Following on from the $79 billion worth of tariffs he implemented in his first term – which went largely untouched by Joe Biden’s Administration –  last night Donald Trump made good on his election promise to opt for another round of tariffs: this time, a 25 per cent tax on imports from Canada and Mexico, with China facing an additional 10 per cent levy on its goods. Despite whispers that the President might water down his plans in the last hours, he carved out very few exceptions for his new tax orders, which include Canadian oil and energy supply. It is now expected that America will

Edward Howell

Kim Jong Un’s North Korean culture war

If there’s one thing that a despot wants, it is to stay in power. North Korea’s totalitarian Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un, is no exception. Not only does he seek to maintain the survival of his ruling regime, but Kim also yearns for North Korea to be recognised as a de facto nuclear-armed state. But whilst revolutions are rare in the nuclear-armed hermit kingdom, Kim wants to ensure that even the slightest seeds of dissent fail to be sown. Whether military elites or the North Korean youth, everyone must be kept in check. And how better to do so than by drafting a 300,000-strong youth ‘shock brigade’ to reconstruct flood-damaged

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Why can’t Germany kick its addiction to Russian energy?

Despite imposing economic sanctions on Russia, the European Union has been importing record amounts of liquefied natural gas (LNG), a report has found. Russian LNG is exempted from the EU’s sanctions. A German state-controlled energy company appears to play a major role in this circumvention of sanctions. It’s not the only indicator that Germany is more reluctant to break its old ties with Russia than it lets on. The clamour for resuming economic ties with Russia comes from many different corners According to data collated by the commodities intelligence firm Kpler and first reported on by the news outlet Politico, the EU imported 837,300 metric tons of Russian LNG in the

Jim Lawley

What Luis Rubiales’s trial will reveal

The trial of Luis Rubiales, former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, starts in Madrid on Monday. After Spain won the women’s World Cup in August 2023, Rubiales kissed player Jenni Hermoso during the medal ceremony. She says that the kiss was not consensual. Rubiales maintains that it was and, along with three of his colleagues, is alleged to have brought pressure to bear on Hermoso to change her story. If found guilty, Rubiales faces two and a half years in prison for sexual assault and coercion. His colleagues, accused only of coercion, could be sentenced to 18 months each.   A few minutes before the kiss, the camera

Daniel Thorpe

Are Syria’s Christians safe?

On a street corner in the old town of Damascus, rugged men with rifles stare sharply at passers-by. Despite their appearance, the long beards and scruffy improvised military fatigues, they are not the militiamen of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), but local Christian volunteers protecting the neighbourhood. When Bashar al-Assad fell and Islamist rebels took over, some of the Christians in the country feared the worst. Though atrocities have and do still happen, the bloodbath many feared never took place. “There was a feeling that the regime may protect us from fanatics,” explains Father Jihad, the head monk The police station nearby was ransacked by angry locals on the night

Saturday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Liz Kendall’s benefits crusade could make or break Labour’s fortunes

Could Liz Kendall turn out to be the most significant figure of Keir Starmer’s government, and a Chancellor in the making? When I wrote on the Work and Pensions Secretary’s proposed reforms here in November, I was sceptical that Labour really had much intention of pushing through benefits cuts, not least because the party had spent the past 14 years shouting ‘austerity’ every time the Tories so much as proposed to cut a bean from the benefits bill. Starmer himself has accused the previous government of “turning on the poorest in our society” when it proposed to end the temporary £20 weekly bonus added to benefits during Covid. Kendall has gained

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Was Peter Mandelson the right pick for ambassador to the US?

22 min listen

‘An absolute moron’ – those were the words used by Chris LaCivita, a senior campaign advisor to Trump, to describe Peter Mandelson. Lord Mandelson is Keir Starmer’s choice for the next ambassador to the US, but Trump may yet refuse his letters of credentials. How wise is this appointment at the dawn of an uncertain era of US-UK relations? Cindy Yu talks to James Heale and Sophia Gaston, UK foreign policy lead at the security think tank ASPI. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Leon Mangasarian

Germany’s crumbling far-right firewall could turbocharge the AfD

Friedrich Merz, chancellor candidate of Germany’s Christian Democrats, stumbled in his bid to end Social Democrat-Greens domination of migration policy. After winning a Bundestag motion to reinstate border controls with votes of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the chamber rejected a law on to clamp down on migration. Merz’s use of the AfD drew the ire of ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, his predecessor as CDU leader. Her stunning public stand against Merz may have convinced 12 members of his own bloc to vote against the law. The bill was defeated on Friday with 350 members voting ‘no’ and 338 in favour. The icy enmity between Merkel and Merz is legendary

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How many more knife attacks can France take?

Each day in France there are 120 knife attacks. On Saturday, one such incident resulted in the death of 14-year-old Elias as he left his football training in central Paris. He was stabbed after refusing to surrender his mobile phone. A 17-year-old has admitted the killing to police. France’s Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, expressed his horror at the death of Elias, and reiterated his determination to make France ‘a country where parents no longer have to fear seeing their child murdered for nothing’. He added that it ‘will be a long and difficult road’ and will require an end to the culture of excuses which ‘has plunged some of our

Benedict Rogers

Myanmar’s plight shames the West

Four years ago, Myanmar’s fragile, nascent quasi-democracy was snuffed out after less than a decade of experimenting with limited reform and opening. In the early morning of 1 February 2021, armoured vehicles rolled down the capital’s absurd 20-lane empty highway. Adding to the surreal quality of the day, an aerobics instructor filming an exercise routine unwittingly captured the unfolding coup d’etat in the background of her video. The army arrested most of the country’s democratically elected leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, General Min Aung Hlaing, seized power, plunging Myanmar into yet another era of repression, poverty and war. Do

Lucy Dunn

Why we should heed warnings about weight loss jabs

Embarking on the quest to lose weight can be a risky business. Yo-yo dieting, compulsive binging, muscle wasting and brain fog are just some of the many challenges that have waylaid dieters over the years. But now, thanks to the arrival of seductive weight loss drugs promising a quick fix, calorie counters are facing more contemporary health problems – from extreme discomfort, organ dysfunction and even death. Just this week, an inquest heard that Breeda O’Donoghue, a 66-year-old grandmother from Cork, Ireland passed away from multiple organ failure after taking Ozempic for diabetes and weight loss. But she’s far from the only person who has experienced devastating – and fatal – complications from the drug.  Most often

Charlie Gammell

Iran’s Donald Trump dilemma

To talk or not to talk? This is the slogan that’s doing the rounds among the Islamic Republic of Iran’s politicians, hardliner and reformist. Donald Trump has made it clear he hopes that Iran might abandon their nuclear programme through a deal with Washington. This will, the President said, lessen the need for Israeli bombs to achieve the same end. Yet for all the attention on Trump’s appointees to Pentagon, State Department and White House roles, perhaps when it comes to Iran, we can infer more by looking at those left out in the cold: Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and former Trump 1.0 Iran Envoy, Brian Hook, all of whom

Druin Burch

Doctor Who fans – and its writers – need to grow up

Doctor Who, which started back in 1963, is often spoken about with a curious reverence as though it were something other than trash TV of varying quality. Unhealthy infatuation is not confined to the show’s viewers, as is obvious from the BBC’s recent announcement about the show’s new writers. Pulp television can be joyful, unless it starts believing it’s art “Scripting the best TV show of all time is truly a dream come true,” says Juno Dawson, who has just been announced as one of them. “I started watching when I was ten in Nigeria,” explains Inua Ellams, another new recruit; “The show invited me to dream, to live beyond

Friday

James Heale James Heale

John Prescott’s legacy, plus Labour & the Tories grapple with migration

15 min listen

Labour heavyweight John Prescott’s funeral took place yesterday with former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown leading the tributes. What is Prescott’s legacy? And does the current Labour Party have politicians that emulate his appeal? Lucy Dunn speaks to James Heale and former Blair adviser John McTernan about how Prescott was the glue that held Labour together during the Blair-Brown years. Also on the podcast, they discuss the borders and migration bill which Labour published this week. The bill sees the government adopt many measures that they voted against when in opposition. Does this show that Labour have what it takes to tackle immigration? Meanwhile the Conservatives still haven’t

Steerpike Steerpike

Channel 4’s diversity hypocrisy

Some good news for the BBC: for once it’s not them causing bad headlines. Today’s latest shining example in public service broadcasting is offered by Channel 4. It seems that in their never-ending quest to boost their flagging ratings, producers have turned in desperation to a TV ‘personality’ with some rather unsavoury views. Go Back to Where You Came From is a new social experiment programme which airs next week. It aims to show ‘a group of Brits experiencing the life-threatening danger asylum seekers find themselves in’. It reportedly will show ‘the terror of small boat crossings’ – will it emphasise the illegality too? One of those featured is Bushra