Politics

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

Wednesday

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Reform is on the up – but it could easily come unstuck

British politics is in a new place: the combined polling score of Labour and the Conservatives is below 50 per cent for the first time in living memory. The latest polls have Labour averaging 26 per cent and the Tories 23 per cent. This is a nine point reduction on the terrible combined score of 58 per cent that the two traditional main parties obtained on polling day last year – the lowest ever recorded at a general election. The picture becomes even worse for the traditional duopoly if one drills down to public perceptions of them on the main political issues. Looking at YouGov’s regular series of ‘which party

Connor Leahy

DeepSeek shows the stakes for humanity couldn’t be higher

What is DeepSeek, the Chinese AI system that’s shaken the world, and what does it reveal about our future? While DeepSeek has been around since 2023, what shocked the world was the release on 20 January of their DeepSeek-R1 AI model, a Large Language Model (LLM) that is just as intelligent as American giant OpenAI’s latest AI o1, but was far cheaper to create. The increased efficiency comes from the artificial intelligence underlying R1. DeepSeek claims it only cost them a mere $6 million, while US companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have spent more than ten times as much to create comparably smart AIs. DeepSeek’s success is due to many

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The ‘dejudification’ of the Holocaust

Imagine talking about the transatlantic slave trade and not saying the word African. Or discussing the genocidal slaughter in Rwanda without saying ‘the Tutsis;. It would be unthinkable, right? Impossible, in fact. How could you talk about such grave crimes without mentioning the victims, without making at least a passing reference to those whose liberty and lives were ravaged in the barbarism? I worry that we are only half-remembering the Holocaust Well, quite a few people managed it yesterday. They talked about the Holocaust without naming its victims. They talked about this ‘sacrifice by fire’ – to give Holocaust its literal translation – without saying who it was that was

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Is it time to take Trump’s Gaza resettlement plan seriously?

As Donald Trump toys with the audacious idea of relocating Gaza’s population – whether to neighbouring Jordan and Egypt, or even as far afield as Albania and Canada – he touches on one of history’s most contentious and emotionally charged issues: the relocation of peoples. Resettling large populations is never easy. History is full of cautionary tales The concept carries the heavy weight of historical precedent, fraught with both tragedy and necessity. Refugees, displaced by war or persecution, have long been subject to the capricious winds of political interest and international indifference. The Jewish people, exiled and scattered for centuries, endured persecution before reclaiming sovereignty in Israel. Refugee crises in

Steerpike Steerpike

Which MPs have the worst voting record?

They say that sunlight is the best of disinfectants. But MPs haven’t always be so keen on having their voting records online. Some take issue with how their votes are portrayed; others suggest disproportionate weight is given to divisions they do attend. Still, Mr S is always keen to see which Honourable Members are turning up – and which ones look to be checking out. So Steerpike has been taking a look at how many times our elected representatives have voted since the last election in July 2024. In the six months since, there have been 91 divisions. When Sinn Féin and the deputy speakers are excluded, it turns out

Andrew Tettenborn

‘Non-crime hate incidents’ are a threat to free speech

There’s more than meets the eye to today’s story of a leaked Home Office report calling for police to be encouraged to file ever more reports of non-crime hate incidents (NCIHs). The word “report,” suggesting work by scrupulously impartial civil servants, seems a strange description of what looks like a pretty blatantly political document, which at one point castigates suggestions of two-tier policing as a “right-wing extremist narrative.” But while that comment has grabbed most of the headlines, we should not ignore the worrying suggestion that police officers could come under pressure to record more NCHIs. The counter-extremism review suggests there should be a reversal to the Tory government’s move to limit

Sam McPhail

The new Champions League format has been a disaster

Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain could be knocked out of the Champions League tomorrow night. So thank God for the tournament’s new format, or so say the pundits. Yes, there’s the glee that most football fans feel when two of Europe’s petro state-owned superclubs are struggling. But the pundits also see Man City’s scrambling as a vindication of the Champions League’s face-lift. Finally, an end to the ‘bore fest we’ve had for years’, says pundit Jamie Carragher. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype and even easier to forget the great tournaments of the past few seasons. Nevertheless, the suits at UEFA – European football’s governing body –

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Why do Home Office staff think talk of two-tier policing is ‘extremist’?

How do you create a low-trust society? One way to do so is to have an administrative class which seems to treat the views of ordinary people with contempt. Today’s news of a leaked Home Office report on counter-extremism is a classic of the genre. The report, commissioned by the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, in the wake of the August 2024 riots, says that claims of ‘two-tier policing’ are a ‘right-wing extremist narrative’.  This is a rather bold assertion, not least because the widely held and almost certainly correct perception that police obfuscation over the identity of the Southport child murderer Axel Rudakubana was a catalyst for disorder in the summer. Trust in our

James Heale James Heale

Labour’s Richard Hermer problem

13 min listen

Richard Hermer was one of the surprise announcements from Keir Starmer’s first Cabinet, and one of the most controversial since. Starmer’s old pal came with some notable baggage: his former clients include Sri Lankan refugees to the Chagos Islands and ex-Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, as well as British-Bangladeshi Isis bride Shamima Begum. In government, Hermer has played a key role in several contentious decisions, such as the government’s withdrawal of the UK’s objections to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, and his involvement in the Chagos Islands deal. And today he admitted that he has had to recuse himself ‘from certain matters’ due to potential conflicts

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Why Putin is feeling more confident

At a recent closed-door session in Ukraine’s parliament, Kyrylo Budanov, the country’s spy chief, was asked how much longer Ukraine could hold on. His answer reportedly stunned the room: ‘If there are no serious negotiations by summer, very dangerous processes could begin, threatening Ukraine’s very existence.’ Ukraine’s military intelligence rushed to deny the statement, but his warning rings true. Vladimir Putin has every reason to believe he can still break Ukraine into submission later in the year, and plans to stall any peace settlement in the upcoming talks with Donald Trump. Russian troops are advancing faster than they did in 2022. Last year, they captured more than 1,600 square miles

Rupert Lowe

Rachel Reeves can’t ‘regulate for growth’

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) are under pressure to reduce red tape in the financial sector. “We’ve told our regulators they need to regulate for growth, not just for risk,” the Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said. But the idea that tweaking regulations will somehow unlock growth is a fallacy. The idea that tweaking regulations will somehow unlock growth is a fallacy The problem is that these ungoverned and rogue regulators are manned by second-rate lawyers and special interest groups who present their ideas as mainstream. They have never facilitated growth and have created a labyrinth of rules that suffocate the UK’s financial services industry, serving

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will Labour MPs back Rachel Reeves’s growth plan?

It’s ‘growth week’ in government, as the Chancellor Rachel Reeves attempts to convince sceptical business leaders, bankers and voters that she has a plan to get the economy going. After a dismal start to the year in which bond market jitters saw the cost of government borrowing soar, Reeves is hoping to turn things around with a speech on Wednesday setting out the measures and choices the government is willing to make to drive economic growth. Much of the content is already out there with talk of the government supporting a third runway at Heathrow airport amongst other things. Since the reports first emerged, there have been some grumblings among

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Is the UK prepared to welcome one million migrants a year?

One million people will migrate to the UK every year this decade. The result: the UK population will grow by nearly five million. Population projections, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning, show Britain’s population rising from an estimated 67.6 million now to 72.5 million in the middle of 2032 – driven almost entirely by migration.  Whilst the number of births and deaths will be roughly the same (6.8 million) in the next seven years, ONS statisticians estimate 10 million people will migrate to the UK with only five million due to leave. That will put net migration at 340,000 every year from the middle of 2028. 

Sam Olsen

How DeepSeek can help Britain

Sometimes a new technology comes along that immediately shakes the world. The release this week of the new Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) tool, DeepSeek-R1, is one such moment. Despite Washington’s efforts to restrict Beijing’s development of AI, including an export ban on advanced microchips, researchers in China have created an AI tool that not only exceeds the performance of American AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but does so at a fraction of the cost. If we are to believe the hype, it took just $6 million (£5 million) to build DeekSeep-R1, compared to more than $100 million (£80 million) for ChatGPT. This is the equivalent of building the fastest Formula

James Heale James Heale

Home Office: ‘two-tier’ police claims are an ‘extreme right-wing’ narrative

You can tell a government report has gone down badly when ministers are distancing themselves before it has been officially published. Today, it’s the Home Office’s ‘Rapid Analytical Sprint,’ commissioned in the aftermath of the Southport riots last August to determine future counter-extremism policy, that is causing trouble for ministers. The leaked document claims that fears over two-tier policing are an ‘extreme right wing narrative’. It also says that grooming gangs – referred to as ‘alleged group-based sexual abuse’ – are an issue exploited by the far-right to stir hatred against Muslims. Dramatically widening the definition of extremism in this way means significantly de-prioritising Islamism Recommendations include the police increasing

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Councils shouldn’t be allowed to raise tax by 25%

It is easy enough to trace the point at which local authorities embarked on the sad, downwards journey which has led to several going bankrupt. It was when they renamed their town clerks ‘chief executives’. In doing so they started posing as private businesses, with salaries and bonuses to match. But their pretensions were not matched by business acumen. Twenty of them are now weighed down with a combined £30 billion of debt. Several councils have got into trouble by entering the commercial property business at a time other investors were starting to flee. Woking is in difficulty after turning property developer, trying to build a posh high-rise hotel in

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will Rachel Reeves walk the walk on going for growth?

On the face of it, the Chancellor’s big growth speech tomorrow could be one of this government’s most significant interventions yet. If Rachel Reeves is serious about starting the building process for a third runway at Heathrow – she is expected to endorse the idea formally tomorrow – she will be single-handedly overturning more than a decade of Nimby consensus under the Tories that such projects simply were politically impossible to carry out. The same goes for her pledge to finally get some homes built, and to ‘take on regulators, planning processes and opposition’ to the growth consensus. These also seemed like an impossible task for the governments that came

Jawad Iqbal

The hypocrisy of Ed Miliband’s vanity photographer

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, comes across as something of a political nerd, determined to bankrupt the country with his distinctive brand of net zero zealotry. Miliband has devised the answer to this image problem. He is looking to hire a vanity photographer – at considerable public expense – despite previously criticising politicians who did the same thing. In 2010, Miliband condemned David Cameron, then prime minister, for hiring a ‘personal photographer’ at a time when the government was asking everyone in the country to ‘tighten their belts’. Some might think it a touch hypocritical to do the same now that he’s in government – but clearly not our Ed.

Steerpike Steerpike

Kim Leadbeater U-turns again

Another week and another U-turn on Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill. The 23-man committee scrutinising the legislation is supposed to be calling a diverse range of witnesses. Yet Leadbeater’s panel has repeatedly come in for criticism for only inviting those on her side of the argument. Last week it was the Royal College of Psychiatrists, whom the panel initially voted 14 to 8 to not invite to give evidence. That decision was only reversed at the last-minute, thanks to a public outcry online. A week on and no lessons seems to have been learned. The committee appeared yesterday to be doubling down on not hearing from deaf and disabled people’s

Jonathan Spyer

Syria feels close to a zone of anarchy

Travelling from Syria’s Highway 42, which runs from Tabqa to the city of Homs, you can see the corpse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Getting to Homs and from there to Damascus requires driving across 300km of desert. Once, huge and imposing checkpoints festooned with the symbolism of the regime greeted travellers seeking to reach Syria’s west from its tribal and Sunni south east. Now, the last position of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces is 370 km from Damascus. The first roadblock of Syria’s new rulers, the Sunni jihadis of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), is about 100km from the capital. Between the two is an uneasy no man’s land. Ever’