Politics

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

Saturday

25 Jan 2025

Trump may turn on America’s new oligarchy

The word ‘oligarch’ returned to the media lexicon at Donald Trump’s inauguration this week when some of the world’s biggest technology entrepreneurs took their seats while US cabinet ministers were asked to sit dutifully behind them. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg felt the need to demonstrate loyalty to Trump. The President did not insist on them kissing his ring but allotted them places as if they were school prefects listening to their headmaster on speech day. Zuckerberg could not disguise his facial discomfort. The others were better actors. Earlier this century it was Russian big business that was famous for its so-called oligarchs. Under President Yeltsin some of

Michael Evans

Should Britain join an EU defence scheme?

The UK and Europe have had plenty of time to get to grips with the inevitable, that President Donald Trump will demand a substantial rise in defence spending. When he threw this demand at Europe the first time he served as president, the impact was like a fox entering a hen coop. Lots of fluttering wings and squawking. But in the end it worked. More Nato members met the minimum 2 per cent of GDP target for defence expenditure. Now Trump is back and the issue has become an even greater priority. Nearly three years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, every member of the western alliance is fully aware that President

Friday

24 Jan 2025

Stephen Daisley

Against the death penalty, even for Axel Rudakubana

Should the Southport killer swing? Lee Anderson thinks so. The Reform MP posted an image of a noose on X, with the words: ‘No apologies here. This is what is required!’ It’s not the first time Anderson has backed the return of the rope, and not the first time I’ve contended that he’s wrong, but there’s something I want to say before getting into the nitty gritty. Wanting Axel Rudakubana dead is a thoroughly mainstream and entirely understandable view. Among those who have children, I would go further and suggest that it is the natural response. On capital punishment, as on so much else, liberals think of ourselves as cool-headed

Mary Wakefield

The fight against gender madness isn’t over

Too many conservatives are behaving as if Donald Trump’s inauguration has somehow done to wokery what garlic does to a vampire; as if they can now sit back and watch the orange mist vaporise ideological insanity across the West. A study released today by the University of York shows just how crazy this sort of complacency is. Academics analysed GP records and discovered what looks like a 50-fold increase in diagnoses of gender dysphoria in children between 2011 and 2021. They estimate that there were 10,000 diagnoses made in 2021, up from just 200 in 2011. It’s horrifying, especially when you consider all the countless others who currently self-identify as trans and

Steerpike

Reform tops poll for first time

As the new Labour government continues to struggle with voters, support for Reform UK only seems to be growing. New survey results released today by pollsters Find Out Now sees Nigel Farage’s party top the charts – beating both its Tory and Labour rivals. Talk about moving into pole position, eh? The new data – taken from a sample of 2,380 adults quizzed on Wednesday – shows 26 per cent of Brits back Reform UK, an increase of one percentage point since the 15 January. Coming second to the Farage-founded group is the Conservative party, with Kemi Badenoch’s boys in blue on 23 per cent. Meanwhile, in yet another set

Damian Thompson

Could Trump 2.0. herald a new era of religious liberty in America?

36 min listen

Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, director of the US-based Conscience Project and a friend of Holy Smoke, joins Damian to talk about what the incoming second Trump administration could mean for religious freedoms in America. Andrea argues that the Biden administration waged an unprecedented assault on such freedoms during his term. What could happen over the next four years on issues like gender, abortion, adoption and religious discrimination? And what are the nuances between federal and state laws? (2:06) Also on the podcast, Damian speaks to The Spectator’s Will Moore, Lara Prendergast and Freddy Gray about the nomination of Cardinal Robert McElroy to be the new Archbishop of Washington. Far from being a routine

Isabel Hardman

Do Reform want to bring back the death penalty?

10 min listen

Reform MP Rupert Lowe has called for the death penalty to be re-established in the wake of the sentencing of the Southport killer Axel Rudakubana. With the Assisted Dying Bill still making its way through Parliament, it has been decades since the topic of death has been so hotly debated by MPs. Katy Balls speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman about the political reaction to Rudakubana’s sentencing. How popular is the death penalty with both MPs and the public? Should we even be debating the issue? And could Reform officially back its return soon? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.

Steerpike

Bishop compares disgraced Welby to God

The Church of England has received a rather lot of bad press, to put it mildly, after the Archbishop of Canterbury was forced to resign over the handling of a child abuse scandal. Now, rather than let salvation take its course, the Bishop of Dover has decided to wade into the conversation with some rather irreverent comments of her own. The right reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin appeared on Thursday’s episode of the Times’ Off Air podcast with hosts Jane and Fi. But rather than settling into a saintly chinwag with the pod’s presenters, the Bishop of Dover became rather irate over the issue of Welby’s departure. Mr S would remind readers

Leon Mangasarian

Germany is running out of time to reform

Germany’s government after the election on 23 February will likely be led by pro-business Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz. His coalition partner, probably the Social Democrats of failed Chancellor Olaf Scholz, or else the Greens of economy minister Robert Habeck, will torpedo any serious economic reforms. Equally worrying: Merz’s own reform blueprint is far too timid. A new wild card in the vote – up to now dominated by the economy – is spiralling migrant violence and failures of German authorities to lock up people known to pose acute threats. A horrifying knife attack on a nursery school group in a park in Aschaffenburg, in Bavaria, on Wednesday, allegedly by an Afghan

Steerpike

Labour MP: is hair colour a ‘protected characteristic’?

As Donald Trump starts clamping down on diversity, equality and inclusion practices, it’s a shame that the same can’t be said on our side of the pond. In the same week that the new president ordered all of the US government’s DEI staff to go on paid leave ‘immediately’, Mr S has spotted a rather, er, odd question submitted by Caerphilly’s Labour MP Chris Evans on the Equality Act. Indeed, it might have left No.10’s spinners pulling their hair out… It appears Evans seemed to think it was a good use of his time and status to table a parliamentary question about the introduction of yet more protected characteristics to the legislation. The matter that

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray, Tanya Gold, Rose George, Toby Young and Rory Sutherland

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Freddy Gray reads his letter from Washington D.C., and reveals what Liz Truss, Eric Zemmour and Steve Bannon made of Trump’s inauguration (1:22); Tanya Gold writes about the sad truth behind the gypsies facing eviction in Cornwall (7:15); Rose George reviews The Forgotten Sense: The New Science of Smell, by Jonas Olofsson, and explains the surprising link between odour disgust and political attitudes (13:07); Toby Young provides his favourite anecdotes about President Trump, having crossed paths with him in New York City in the 1990s (18:39); and, Rory Sutherland proposes a unique way to solve Britain’s building crisis: ‘Areas of Outstanding Natural Ugliness’ (23:40). Produced

James Heale

John Healey hails Rolls-Royce’s £9bn nuclear submarine deal

A £9 billion deal for nuclear submarine reactors was announced this morning between the Ministry of Defence and Rolls-Royce, the biggest-ever agreement between the two. The eight-year contract, called Unity, is to design, make and provide support services to nuclear reactors that power the Royal Navy’s fleet of submarines. John Healey, the Defence Secretary, says the deal will make British reactors both greener and more efficient. A difficult battle looms between John Healey and Chancellor Rachel Reeves ‘It’s a boost to British jobs, British business. It’s a boost to our nuclear deterrent,’ he told Sky on a visit to the Rolls-Royce plant in Derby. ‘It really shows the way that

Kate Andrews

Trump gives the establishment some respite at Davos

We’ve heard more from the 47th President of the United States this week than we heard from his predecessor over many months. But Donald Trump has always loved the spotlight: especially when he gets to rile up all his favourite people. This was on full display this week when, rather than winding down from his inauguration speech, the President ramped up his message in a video call to Davos. The establishment was on high alert all week, well aware that the annual Swiss gathering of politicians and CEOs kicked off on the same day Trump was sworn in for a second time. They were right to be worried. Trump did

Niko Vorobyov

What’s the real reason Trump pardoned Ross Ulbrich?

US president Donald Trump has pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the cybercriminal mastermind who founded Silk Road and pioneered the drug trade’s move into cyberspace. Ulbricht was serving life without parole after he was found guilty in 2015 of conspiracy to commit drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking. On Wednesday, after over a decade in the dungeons, Ross finally came home. After over a decade in the dungeons, Ross has finally came home “Free Ross” had become a rallying cry for the libertarians and cryptocurrency enthusiasts whose vote Trump had been courting. But his pardon exposes some glaring contradictions in American politics. Ross launched the Silk Road, named after the ancient trade route

Eliot Wilson

Did Axel Rudakubana deserve a harsher sentence?

The murder of three young girls in Southport last July by Axel Rudakubana was an act of extreme savagery and calculated evil. Six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar were victims not only of a brutal killer but also of a system of policing, intelligence and criminal justice which failed at several points: they did not need to die. Rudakubana pleaded guilty at the beginning of his trial this week to all sixteen charges against him: three counts of murder, ten of attempted murder, one count of possession of a knife, one of ricin production and one terror-related charge. But he showed no remorse,

Freddy Gray

What will Trump’s crypto world look like?

19 min listen

Cryptocurrency became a key feature of the American election and the Trump universe. Not only did Trump and Melania launch their own coins, but the President has also appointed venture capitalist David Sacks to be the AI and Crypto ‘czar’. Freddy Gray is joined by podcaster and owner of Bedford FC Peter McCormack to discuss whether Trump can decentralise finance, why voters are turning to the fiat market, and whether Peter is a Bitcoin maximalist.

Matthew Lynn

Two big problems with the Sainsbury’s job cuts

You won’t be able to get a cup of coffee. Nor will you be able to pick up something from the patisserie or the pizza oven. A trip to Sainsbury’s was hardly the most exciting thing in the world, but it is about to get a little bit duller, with the grocery chain set to get rid of its last remaining cafes, as well as speciality counters. And the Labour government is to blame for that. Sainsbury’s had already closed its fresh meat, fish and deli counters, and announced this week that it was closing down the cafes and counters that used to be a regular feature of its stores

Katy Balls

The Rachael Maskell Edition

37 min listen

Rachael Maskell has been the MP for York Central since 2015. With over two decades experience working in the NHS, and as a trade unionist, she has championed causes on the left from improving healthcare to combating climate change. Yet, she has not been afraid to take what she says is an ‘evidenced approach’ to political issues, even when it has put her in opposition to the position of the Labour leadership. Most recently, she was a leading voice against the assisted dying bill as Chair of the Dying Well parliamentary group. On the podcast, Rachael talks to Katy Balls about the influence of politics around the dinner table and

Ross Clark

Why are so many MPs still clueless about the cost of net zero?

Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Change Agreement for the second time and reiterated his desire that America should ‘drill, baby drill’. The US president’s decision exposes the naivety of MPs in Britain who, in 2019, nodded through a legal commitment to reaching net zero by 2050, with the hope that it would inspire other countries to follow our example. The Climate and Nature Bill risks taking Britain back to the dark ages In fact, Britain is pretty well alone in voluntarily choosing to ‘leave it in the ground’, as anti-fossil fuel activists like to put it. The US has been following an unashamed policy

Hamish McRae

Why Starmer needs Trump

Do we have to choose between prioritising European or American trade? Let’s hope we don’t, because we need both. But the question has sharpened this week for two reasons. The less important one is that Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s new trade commissioner, has suggested that the UK might join the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention, a group of 23 countries with economic ties to the EU, including Norway and Switzerland, but also Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and so on. It’s not a free trade area or anything like that, merely an agreement to foster trade by streamlining things like rules of origin. Our relationship with the EU will toddle along, but that is

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