Politics

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

Thursday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Will Hamas take Trump’s Gaza ultimatum seriously?

‘“Shalom Hamas” means Hello and Goodbye – You can choose.’ So began Donald Trump’s furious social media post, an ultimatum wrapped in a linguistic dagger. The Hebrew word ‘shalom’ has a third meaning – peace – but Trump left that one out. Perhaps we can all agree: that option is no longer on the table in any outcome. Instead, what followed was a declaration of war, at least rhetorically. Trump threatened Hamas with total destruction if they do not release the remaining hostages and return the bodies of those they have murdered. He called them ‘sick and twisted’ for keeping the corpses. He promised Israel everything it needed to ‘finish the job’. He

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Trump’s pausing of intelligence sharing will hit Ukraine hard

The United States’s decision to suspend all intelligence sharing with Kyiv is a less visible but almost as serious and more immediate blow to Ukraine as the pause to arms deliveries. It also raises worrying questions about the future of intelligence sharing amongst Western allies. Ukraine is used to supplies of military materiel coming in fits and starts, and can and does stockpile ammunition, spare parts and the like to cover the dry seasons. It will probably be a couple of months before the pause really begins to have an appreciable impact on their operations. Besides, while some items such as Patriot missiles cannot be duplicated, domestic production and European

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s late-night address will infuriate Trump and Vance

Emmanuel Macron spoke to his people last night in a television address and told them that the future of Ukraine cannot be decided by America and Russia alone. It can, and it probably will, after Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky signalled his intention to sign Donald Trump’s minerals deal, the first step in the peace plan drawn up by the USA. One of the curiosities of Macron’s speech was that he spent most of it warning about war, as America, Russia and Ukraine talk about peace. Putin’s bellicosity ‘knows no borders’, declared the French president, adding: ‘Who can believe today that Russia would stop at Ukraine?’. The martial tone of Macron’s

David Shipley

Could ethnic minority criminals soon find it easier to avoid jail?

Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has accused his Labour counterpart Shabana Mahmood of not believing in ‘equality under the law’ and ‘enshrining’ a ‘double standard’ over who is, and isn’t, sent to prison. The accusations against Mahmood – and the Labour government – came after new guidelines from the Sentencing Council were published, which appear to make prison less likely for ‘ethnic’, ‘cultural’ and ‘faith’ minorities who are convicted of crimes. This shake-up appears driven by a belief that the justice system is biased against minorities The Sentencing Council’s updated rules state that, for a number of groups, the assumption should be in favour of a pre-sentence report (PSR).

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The Huw Edwards BBC pay saga shows how ridiculous the licence fee is

Did anyone really expect Huw Edwards to return the £200,000 he ‘earned’ – or, more correctly, was paid – between his arrest in November 2023 and when he finally resigned from the BBC the following April? The BBC’s chairman, Samir Shah, appeared to think so when he faced the Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport on Tuesday. ‘We’ve obviously asked, and we’ve said it many times, but he seems unwilling. There was a moment that we thought he might just do the right thing for a change, then he decided not to.’ If it was Mr Shah himself doing the asking, he was no doubt impeccably polite. Director-general

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The weakness of Donald Trump

Forgive the mordant tone, but this article was written in a desolate post-industrial nightmare girdled by diversionary roads going nowhere aside from away from places. It is somewhere in middle England, where the West Country merges into the Midlands and the north into the south: it is essentially delocated, it is nowhere. There are 15 or so deserted light industrial units, vast metal hangars for storing stuff, acres of car-parking spaces and a few trees suffering from rickets or polio. There are also huge and very bright lamps shining in through my hotel window, betraying no evidence of their purpose other than to keep me awake, and in the foreground a

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Starmer is the unlikely hero of the hour. Can it last?

When Donald Trump addressed Congress this week, he declared he was ‘just getting started’. His words will not have soothed politicians in the UK, who are still playing catch-up with the President’s first 43 days. This week, Trump proved yet again that he is the biggest force in British politics. His blow-up with Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, threats of a trade war and the disparaging comments by his Vice-President, J.D. Vance, about European countries that haven’t ‘fought a war in 30 or 40 years’ dominated Westminster. Amid all the noise, UK party leaders have been drawn into new positions. Despite his close links to Team Trump, Reform’s Nigel

The Spectator

Trump has shifted the world in Putin’s favour

The verbal pummelling of Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House last week was an ugly moment of bitter truth. We saw the West tearing itself apart thanks to Donald Trump’s vanity and J.D. Vance’s disdain for the Ukrainian leader. If there is anything positive to be taken from the uncomfortable spectacle, it is that Europe now understands it has to take its defence much more seriously. And it is a mercy that negotiations between Zelensky and Trump have not been derailed for good. The Ukrainian President spent the week doing what his US counterpart accused him of failing to do: thanking the US for military and other aid it has

Wednesday

Michael Gove

Could spending cuts herald a ‘winter of discontent for Labour’s left’?

15 min listen

With reports of ‘billions’ of spending cuts earmarked for the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, taking place later this month, Michael Gove and Kate Andrews join Katy Balls to discuss what exactly Rachel Reeves could cut. With little fiscal headroom and sluggish forecasts of growth, Reeves doesn’t appear to have many options. It’s likely that welfare will be targeted, and there are reports that Labour’s opposition to new North Sea oil & gas licences may be relaxed to stimulate growth. One area that appears off the table is defence – following the Prime Minister’s pledge to cut international aid in order to fund new defence spending.  But if all these reports are

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Trump can’t override everything

‘There are judges in Jerusalem,’ Menachem Begin is reputed to have proclaimed, following a court ruling which he believed vindicated one of his policy positions.  The phrase has been appropriated by critics of judicial reform and others keen to see Bagatz, the Israeli supreme court, remain a bulwark against illiberal overreach by the government. ‘There are judges in Jerusalem’ is a reassuring reminder that, whatever the designs of politicians, the law remains the supreme rule of the land.  There are judges in Washington DC, too. The Supreme Court of the United States has denied the Trump administration’s application for vacatur of a temporary restraining order preventing the State Department from implementing the USAID cuts announced by Donald

Lucy Dunn

What does the SNP exodus mean for the party’s 2026 line-up?

There is little over a year to go until the 2026 Holyrood election and Scottish party selection processes are underway. This morning, two of the biggest names yet have said they will stand down at next year’s election: Finance Secretary Shona Robison and Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop have announced they’re off. ‘The decision to retire is entirely personal and I do it for positive reasons,’ Hyslop insisted to reporters today. It is unlikely that will convince cynics who suggest the pair have jumped before they were pushed. The Holyrood selection process is a chance for the SNP to sort the wheat from the chaff The duo joins a long list

Jonathan Spyer

What is Israel’s plan for Syria?

Israeli leaders recently made clear that the IDF’s current military deployment into south-west Syria is not intended as a stop-gap measure until its northern neighbour stabilises. Rather, in a speech last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told IDF officer cadets that the force’s troops would stay on the formerly Syrian side of Mount Hermon, and in the buffer zone carved out to the east of the Golan Heights for ‘an unlimited period of time’. Israel’s incursion into Syria to disrupt a perceived threat resembles other foreign entries into Syria, In a statement appearing to hint at a yet more ambitious Israeli strategy, the Prime Minister added that Israel demanded the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why is the UK economy stalling?

Giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee this afternoon, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey doubled down on a point he has previously made to the committee: the economy is being pulled down by an extraordinary fall in productivity in the public sector. Relative to 2019, he said, productivity across the public sector is now 8 to 9 per cent lower. In the health sector, it is 17 to 18 per cent lower. In what he described as a ‘back of the envelope calculation’ the overall effect has been to reduce GDP by between 1 and 3 per cent. Last year, Bailey added, something extremely unusual happened: UK productivity fell

John O’Neill

As US border crossings fall, UK small boats hit record highs

Small boat crossings since the start of the year are at a record level. Yesterday 326 migrants arrived, bringing this year’s total to 3,224. Last year 2,983 migrants crossed the Channel over the same period. The number who have made the journey since Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, having promised to ‘stop the small boat crossings’, is 24,666. The figures are in stark contrast to the US, where Donald Trump recently announced that ‘the invasion of our country is over’ with attempts to illegally cross the US-Mexico border at a record low. Border agents had 8,326 encounters with migrants in February, Trump said; there were 190,000 in the same month last year.  One of

James Heale James Heale

The Special Forces scandal is not going away

What was the most important moment at Prime Minister’s Questions today? It was not the somewhat pedestrian back-and-forth between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch on support for Ukraine. It was instead a subsequent point raised by David Davis on the subject of Britain’s Special Forces. Davis – a textbook example of a free-thinking backbencher – asked the Prime Minister about a ruling last month by Northern Ireland’s presiding coroner. The government has given no signal that it intends to pursue a judicial review The ruling concerned a 1992 SAS ambush at St Patrick’s Church in Clonoe, County Tyrone. It found that the use of lethal force by British soldiers against

William Schneider

The Chagos deal is a threat to national security

It has been widely reported that, during his meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week, President Trump gave his consent to the UK’s proposed deal to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. However, this is not quite what happened. What he actually said was that he thinks the US ‘will be inclined’ to go along with the deal – but that ‘it is a little bit early, we have to be given the details’. As the saying goes, the devil is indeed in the detail. Once the President and his team are fully briefed on the situation surrounding the Chagos Islands – and the joint UK-US military

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

PMQs was a façade

A bit of a stitch-up at PMQs, or so it seemed. The ‘opposition’ leader, Kemi Badenoch, ignored her duty to voters and spent ten minutes feeding softball questions to Sir Keir Starmer about President Zelensky. At issue was Donald Trump’s decision on Monday to withdraw military aid from Ukraine. Kemi meekly asked Sir Keir if he might help. ‘What is he doing to rebuild their relationship after a challenging week?’ Sir Keir can do nothing, obviously. Trump has lost patience with the leader of an impoverished, war-sick country whose eastern fringes are occupied by a hostile superpower. Britain has no influence either way. But Sir Keir wants to pose as

Stephen Pollard

Are we forgetting the lessons of VE Day?

There is a grim irony in today’s announcement of the commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May – at the very time that the Western alliance is collapsing. The plans include dressing the Cenotaph in Union flags, a military procession and flypast in London and a service of remembrance and thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey, followed by a concert. All good, and all appropriate.  But, according to the government press release, ‘street parties will also be held across the country’. Really? The symmetry is obvious, of course. VE Day was one big street party as the country celebrated the defeat of the Nazis and the triumph of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer avoids criticising Trump at PMQs

Keir Starmer has clearly decided that the only way to disagree with Donald Trump and his administration without angering the US President is to make statements that contradict him without ever mentioning him or J.D. Vance by name. Today he opened Prime Minister’s Questions by paying tribute to six young British soldiers who were killed 13 years ago tomorrow in Afghanistan, and a soldier who was killed 18 years ago today in Helmand. He added: These men fought and died for their country, our country, and across the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 643 individuals died fighting for Britain alongside our allies. Many more were wounded. We will never forget

Steerpike Steerpike

Nandy blasts Beeb over Gaza documentary

It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – which means there’s more bad news for the BBC. Now the government has taken aim at the broadcaster, with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy slamming the Beeb today in a parliamentary statement. In the scathing text, Nandy wrote of how she is ‘deeply shocked and disappointed’ about the Hamas documentary revelations and noted pointedly that she is not yet convinced similar slip-ups won’t happen again. Last week the corporation apologised for the release of a Gaza documentary in which the child narrator was later found to be the son of a Hamas minister. AND the Culture Secretary is far from impressed by how the BBC