Politics

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

Tuesday

21 Jan 2025

Steerpike

SNP minister admits misleading parliament over Limogate

Well, well, well. Just when the Scottish government thought it had steadied the SNP ship after two rather tumultuous years, another scandal has hit the party. Health Secretary Neil Gray is in the spotlight after it transpired that he had been using taxpayer-funded ministerial cars to take him to sports matches in the latest ‘Limogate’ development. Gray had initially claimed he attended matches in a work capacity and had minutes for every meeting – but this evening the SNP minister has now admitted to inadvertently misleading MSPs over the matter. Between 2022 and 2024, Gray attended nine football matches involving Aberdeen or Scotland using taxpayer-funded, chauffeur-driven cars. His attendance at the 2023

James Kirkup

Southport and the problem with judge-led inquiries

Sir Keir Starmer has promised an inquiry into the events around the Southport murders committed by Axel Rudakubana, saying there are questions about the ‘Westminster system’. ‘I’m angry about it,’ the Prime Minister says. ‘Nothing will be off the table in this inquiry.’ It is not yet clear who will run that inquiry, or how. There will no doubt be an assumption that the inquiry must be on a statutory footing and led by a judge. Such inquiries are generally seen as the gold standard; anything that isn’t a statutory inquiry led by a judge will likely lead to political trouble for the Prime Minister. But is appointing a judge

Steerpike

Will Trump deport Prince Harry?

To the US, where President Trump is busy making the most of his return to the top job. At his inauguration on Monday, the Republican president was keen to hammer home just how much he wants to change during his time in office – even signing a number of executive orders during the event, to the delight of adoring crowds. From leaving the World Health Organisation to renaming the Gulf of Mexico, President Trump has made it clear he’s here to shake things up. And this could spell trouble for one particular Prince. The monarch of Montecito could end up Trump’s next target – after the US President vowed to

Matt Ridley

Why has Biden pardoned Anthony Fauci?

Joe Biden left it until the last minute to issue a pre-emptive pardon of Anthony Fauci for any offence committed since 2014 in his work on ‘the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House Covid-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President.’ Yet surely Covid began in 2019, not 2014? The significance of 2014 is that this was when the Obama administration responded to anxiety among some scientists about a series of experiments that made influenza viruses potentially more dangerous to people – by banning federal funding for any such gain-of-function experiments. Yet from June 2014 money flowed from Fauci’s National Institute for Allergy and

Steerpike

What Rishi Sunak did next

It wasn’t so long ago that political commentators and Tory MPs alike were confidently predicting that Rishi Sunak would leave No. 10 and head straight for California to start a new life. In his final appearance at the despatch box for Prime Minister’s Questions, Sunak made light of the rumours as he teased MPs that he was ‘happy to confirm reports that I will now be spending more time in the greatest place on Earth’… before going on to clarify that he’d be in his constituency in Yorkshire. Today there are more details of how Sunak really plans to spend his time on the backbenches. In a statement from ‘The

James Heale

Can Reeves get Heathrow’s third runway off the ground?

After last week’s bond market jitters, the Chancellor pledged to go ‘further and faster’ to improve the UK’s anaemic economic growth. An early test of that resolve looks now to be looming in the familiar form of a third runway at Heathrow airport. As I reported earlier this month, Reeves is poised to make a swathe of announcements intended to increase economic growth in a speech later this month. Among them includes giving a political green light to Heathrow’s third runway and an expansion of Gatwick and Luton airports, according to Bloomberg. Successive governments – of various stripes – have ducked Heathrow expansion for decades, with the airport’s last remaining

Patrick O’Flynn

When will Keir Starmer tell us everything about Southport?

This morning Keir Starmer implied but did not categorically say that Islamist ideology was not the motivation of the dreadful Axel Rudakubana. The Prime Minister referred several times to the 18-year-old’s heinous crimes as constituting an example of ‘a new threat’ from ‘loners and misfits’, and to Rudakubana having viewed ‘all kinds of material’ online. Much else was left unresolved. Was the man who murdered three little girls in Southport and maimed many others motivated in any way by an Islamist agenda? Are claims that he attended the mosque in Belmarsh prison while held on remand true or false? Whether the material Rudakubana viewed included ‘extreme jihadi videos,’ as Nigel

Steerpike

Burghart warns of ‘overwhelming power’ of Treasury

To London, where the Institute for Government’s 2025 conference is in full flow. This afternoon the think tank hosted a wide-ranging conversation with Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Alex Burghart. The Tory MP discussed everything from the role of the civil service to the glamorous life of an opposition politician. ‘In the Cabinet Office, I had 11,000 people helping me. Now I have four,’ he remarked drily. And when he turned to the issue of the Treasury machine, Burghart pulled no punches. Discussing the centre of government the Tory politician was quick to warn attendees of the ‘overwhelming power of the Treasury in government’. Burghart described his own

Katy Balls

Why wasn’t the Southport killer stopped?

13 min listen

At a press conference this morning, Keir Starmer moved quickly to announce a public inquiry into the Southport murders. This comes after Axel Rudakubana pleaded guilty to murdering three girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift–themed dance class last year. The Prime Minister promised that ‘no stone’ will be ‘left unturned’ when it comes to asking the ‘difficult questions… unburdened by cultural or institutional sensitivities’. Chief among these difficult questions is why – when Rudakubana had been referred to the counter-extremism Prevent programme three times – he wasn’t stopped? And is there any substance to claims by Nigel Farage of a ‘cover-up’? Katy Balls speaks to James Heale

Gavin Mortimer

Why we’ll probably learn nothing from the Southport murders

The PM’s warm words will count for little. Starmer’s pledge is reminiscent of the one made by Theresa May in June 2017 Keir Starmer has pledged to act in light of the revelations about Southport killer Axel Rudakubana. The 17-year-old murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last year, and it has since emerged that Rudakubana – who also pleaded guilty to owning an online version of an al-Qaeda training manual – had been flagged for his radicalism on three occasions between 2019 and 2021. As the Prime Minister explained: ‘On each of these occasions, a judgment was made that he did not meet the threshold for

Ross Clark

Trump exposes the madness of Ed Miliband’s energy plans

Remember how the first incarnation of a Trump presidency was supposed to be pretty well curtains for Planet Earth? Well, don’t worry: we are all going to be just fine this time around. Why? Because Al Gore assures us so. ‘The global sustainability revolution is unstoppable,’ he declared in a statement following Trump’s speech. ‘Now is the time for governors, mayors, business leaders and investors, and activists, to put their heads down and do the work that will advance the climate solutions that our nation and the world so urgently need.’ In other words, don’t worry about Trump. The US president is going to be an irrelevance because all the

Steerpike

Starmer U-turns on US trade deal

It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – so of course Keir Starmer is spinning like a top. Donald Trump’s inauguration this week has sparked a raft of speculation (again) about a long-awaited US-UK trade deal. The Telegraph reports that the Prime Minister is taking this push seriously: so seriously in fact that he has now convened a ‘mini-Cabinet’ of senior ministers to draw up ways to persuade the incoming US president to come to an agreement. Meetings are convened by Jonathan Powell: architect of the Chagos deal. Truly, a government of all the talents. Of course, the newly-elected President might be less keen on a deal: especially when he remembers

Joanna Williams

Donald Trump, feminist icon?

Cast your mind back eight years. The day after Donald Trump’s first inauguration, hundreds of thousands of women marched on Washington in opposition to the incoming president. Adorned in pink ‘pussy’ hats, they were joined by protesters in London, Sydney, Zurich and at least 30 other American cities. As I argued at the time, beyond expressing general distaste for the incoming administration the precise aims of this movement were never particularly clear. But it was feminism and therefore good. In his inaugural address, Trump did more for women’s rights than all the cutesy hat-knitters put together Yet in his second inaugural address last night, Trump did more for women’s rights

Brendan O’Neill

No, Elon Musk didn’t make a fascist salute

We’re not even 24 hours into the second Donald Trump term and already there’s a ‘New Nazis’ panic. Only this time it’s not The Donald who’s being branded Hitler 2.0. It’s his billionaire pal and state-slashing tsar, Elon Musk. The Guardian says Musk did ‘back-to-back fascist salutes’. At yesterday’s wacky inauguration, a giddy Musk gave a speech during which he saluted the crowd. I’ll be honest – it was a weird salute. He slapped his right hand against his chest and then threw his right arm upwards, diagonally and with vigour. He did it twice. His facial expression was an odd blend of love and anger. Within seconds, X –

Steerpike

Only a fifth of Brits optimistic about Labour

Another day, another set of poor poll results for Labour. At the start of its 2025 conference, the Institute for Government think tank has unveiled some rather revealing analysis by Deltapoll of 1,500 adults between the 17th and 20th January. It transpires that just 22 per cent of people believe Sir Keir Starmer’s government is being effective at improving their lives – compared to a third who now think that the previous Tory government was better. How the tables turn… Under the Labour lot, Brits are not optimistic about economic growth. While Chancellor Rachel Reeves joins world leaders in Davos for the World Economic Forum’s meet, less than a quarter

Ian Acheson

Prevent is not solely to blame for Southport failings

The assailant in the Southport massacre has pleaded guilty to the murders of three children in the town last year. Keir Starmer has leapt with unusual speed to authorise a public inquiry into what drove Axel Rudakubana into his frenzy of killing and if it could have been prevented. We now know that the state’s protective agencies crossed Rudakubana multiple times; he was referred three times to the government’s Prevent strategy, which is supposed to spot and stop tomorrow’s terrorists before hateful thought turns into lethal action. Prevent officials can’t be the only agency under scrutiny for their handling of this case The Prevent strategy has been under huge scrutiny

Katy Balls

Starmer: I knew about Rudakubana’s extremist history

After coming under criticism for not announcing a national inquiry over the grooming gangs scandal, Keir Starmer moved quickly on Monday to announce a public inquiry into the Southport murders. Following Axel Rudakubana’s guilty plea to the charge of murdering three girls in a knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last year, the Prime Minister this morning held a press conference promising that ‘no stone’ will be ‘left unturned’ when it comes to asking the ‘difficult questions… unburdened by cultural or institutional sensitivities’: We must make sure the names of those three young girls are not associated with the vile perpetrator but instead with a fundamental change in

Lionel Shriver

‘I’m a Democrat who will give him a chance’ – Lionel Shriver on Trump’s inauguration

23 min listen

Donald Trump has been sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. All the former leaders of the free world were there to watch Trump take the oath – again – but how was this inauguration different to the last? And what signs were there of how Trump intends to govern? Guest hosting for Americano, The Spectator’s Kate Andrews speaks to Freddy Gray, who is on the ground in D.C., and Lionel Shriver about Trump’s speech lamenting the Biden administration, Biden’s last minute pardoning of his family, and why some Democrats could be willing to give Trump a chance this time round. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.

Michael Simmons

Employment suffers largest fall since pandemic

Rachel Reeve’s £25 billion National Insurance rise is beginning to bite. According to the latest data on our labour market, released this morning by the Office for National Statistics, payrolled employment fell by 47,000 last month — the sharpest fall since the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of vacancies in the economy fell for the 30th consecutive period, unemployment rose to 4.4 per cent and there have been 21,000 more redundancies than in the same period a year ago. In a boost to those British workers still in jobs, pay is on the up. The ONS’s figures show that once inflation is removed the average worker experienced a 2.4 per cent pay rise

Michael Evans

Trump professes peace, threatens fury

The new president of the United States believes in fairness, and says the running of the Panama Canal has been very unfair. Even though President Trump’s thunderous ‘Golden Age’ inauguration speech was short on foreign policy objectives, he still managed to slip in his ambitions for the canal. He wants it back in American control, partly because US cargo ships, he complains, are paying over the odds for using it. He is also worried about Chinese encroachment at each end. Inauguration addresses are not generally seen as an opportunity to lay out a blueprint for overcoming America’s enemies or to hint at potential territorial ambitions beyond America’s shores. President Joe

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