Politics

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

Thursday

5 Jun 2025

What James Cleverly gets wrong about net zero

The Conservatives were nearly wiped out at last July’s general election, and the party is currently trailing Nigel Farage’s Reform in the polls. You might think then that the handful of remaining ‘big beasts’ on the Tory benches would decide to try and work together. Instead, a split appears to be emerging in the party over net zero. James Cleverly took a thinly-veiled swipe at Kemi Badenoch’s green policy in a speech to the Conservative Environment Network (CEN) last night. In one of her first major policy interventions as leader, Badenoch abandoned the Conservatives’ support for the country reaching net zero emissions by 2050. But Cleverly has now argued that the party should

Alexander Baker

Is the UK-EU defence pact a threat to Nato?

The Nato meeting of defence ministers in Brussels today will give its participants an opportunity to discuss the issues facing the alliance in perhaps a more cordial, if frank, manner before the inevitably more theatrical leaders’ summit in The Hague at the end of the month. Much of the focus will be on proposed defence expenditure increases, not least in Britain, where following the publication of the government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) this week there were suggestions that Nato would ‘force’ Keir Starmer to raise defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. Next week’s spending review should cast light on how feasible this is, given current plans to reach

Svitlana Morenets

Did Trump just allow Putin to bomb Ukraine?

Donald Trump has had another one of his ‘good conversations’ with Vladimir Putin, this time to commiserate over Ukraine’s drone raid that destroyed dozens of Russian heavy bombers across four airfields on Sunday. Trump wrote on Truth Social that their 75-minute call was a ‘good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace’. Then, sounding more like the Kremlin’s press secretary than the President of the United States, Trump relayed Putin’s plan to retaliate against Ukraine. ‘We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides,’ Trump wrote, as though those very same planes

Rod Liddle

Kemi’s one chance at recovery? Trussonomics

You may have noticed that for some while the BBC News people have stopped referring to Reform UK as ‘far right’ or ‘hard right’. That’s not because Nigel Farage has tacked to the left a little on such policies as nationalisation; one characteristic of the left is that if they consider you ‘far right’, they will not commend anything you say, even if they fervently agree with it. You will never gain their favour, even if you join Greta Thunberg on her stupid and narcissistic boat expedition to Gaza and then pronounce your solidarity with all trans folk. This is one of the mistakes often made by people who are

Charles Moore

The EU can’t resist empire-building

A wearisome aspect of modern political polarisation is feeling forced to take sides. Until recently, I felt I could contemplate last Sunday’s Polish presidential election with friendly neutrality. Both sides, after all, strongly resist Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. In my one visit of any length to Poland, I was most kindly looked after by my publisher, all of whose friends supported the Civic Platform and mostly came out of Solidarity and related anti-communist dissident movements of the 1980s. On the other hand, I liked the way the Law and Justice party (in office at that time) opposed the extension of EU power and appeared to stick up for peasants

Andrew Gimson

Don’t write off Kemi Badenoch

In the great game of musical chairs that is British politics, it’s impossible to foresee which contestant will be left with nowhere to sit when the music stops. Keir Starmer won a landslide victory last July, but has since behaved like a child who has allowed the excitement to go to his head. He agreed immediately to cut the universal winter fuel payment, which made the government look ready to risk short-term unpopularity in pursuit of serious long-term goals. Yet when the unpopularity arrived, he abandoned the measure and with it any claim to long-term thought. As a contributor to one of Lord Ashcroft’s focus groups said this week: ‘He

James Heale

Nigel’s army: Reform’s plans for victory

‘I’ve changed my mind!’ It is a year this week since Nigel Farage uttered those fateful words, marking his decision to return as leader of Reform UK during the general election campaign. Much has changed in those 12 months. The party’s polling has doubled, membership has soared to 235,000 and new faces make up most of the backroom staff. Now that the party has hit 30 per cent in the polls, Reform strategists insist the vote share can go higher: 40 per cent is viewed as a realistic target. Zia Yusuf, the party chairman, likes to describe Reform as a ‘start-up’, breaking apart SW1’s monopolistic cartel. This high-ambition, high-growth strategy

Wednesday

4 Jun 2025

Madeline Grant

It didn’t take Starmer long to morph into Brezhnev

It has taken Sir Keir Starmer just under 11 months to enter his Brezhnev era. Portly, autocratic and reliant on past glories, the Prime Minister began today’s PMQs by reading a list that would make Borat proud of the infrastructural benevolences to make benefit glorious region of Red Wall. In Sir Keir’s world, there is no decay or decline: the economy is booming, pensioners and children are well cared for and the streets are safe. Notable by her absence was the Deputy Prime Minister: those windows of Downing Street won’t measure themselves The praesidium – sorry, Front Bench – lapped this up. Or those who turned up did. Absent was

Lucy Dunn

To spend or not to spend

16 min listen

Rachel Reeves unveiled billions of pounds of investment today for transport and infrastructure projects, as Labour attempts to demonstrate that next week’s spending review is not just about departmental cuts. However, most of the political noise today has centred on her announcement that the winter fuel cut will be reversed by the end of the year. But what does this all mean for the average voter, for the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom – and why is the government still blaming its own ‘fiscal rules’? James Heale and Michael Simmons join Lucy Dunn to unpack the Chancellor’s announcements and explain the economic jargon, plus a look at today’s PMQs. Produced by Patrick

Steerpike

Cleverly splits from Kemi on climate

Tree-hugging isn’t just for the Greens, it seems – as former Tory leadership contender James Cleverly will insist this evening. At a London event tonight, the ex-Foreign Secretary will make the case that Conservatives should care about the climate and urge his colleagues to reject ‘both the luddite Left and the luddite Right’ on green policy. ‘Conservative environmentalism doesn’t mean a choice between growth and sustainability,’ Cleverly will tell the Conservative Environment Network tonight in a dig at both the Labour government and Reform UK. The former Cabinet Secretary will speak this evening at the annual Sam Baker Memorial Lecture – where he will award Tory MP Andrew Griffith for

Lucy Dunn

Winter fuel payments will be reinstated this year, Reeves insists

Labour’s winter fuel payment cut has proven one of the most controversial policies brought in by the party since it got into government last summer – and today Chancellor Rachel Reeves has promised the payment will be reinstated to some pensioners by this winter. Speaking from Manchester this morning, the Chancellor said that ‘more people will get winter fuel payments this winter’ and hinted that changes to the current £11,500 threshold would be set out in her spending review next Wednesday. This doesn’t mean that the universal payment will be making a return, however. Reeves said today that a ‘means test’ would be introduced by the end of the year

Lloyd Evans

Badenoch’s ‘chaos’ attack on Starmer will be less effective than she hopes

Fists flew at Prime Minister’s Questions. The party leaders sprang from their corners and bashed each other repeatedly in the face. It was fun to watch. Kemi Badenoch accused Sir Keir Starmer of performing so many U-turns that ‘his head must be spinning.’ Two weeks ago, he panicked and cancelled his decision to withdraw the winter fuel allowance. ‘The Chancellor is rushing her plans,’ she said, ‘because she’s just realised when winter is.’ Kemi sprang her trap. She leapt to her feet, glittering with triumph Sir Keir shrugged this off. ‘I’m glad to see she’s catching up on what happened two weeks ago.’ Kemi delivered a booby-trapped question disguised as a

Jonathan Sacerdoti

When will the BBC admit it has an Israel problem?

When the White House uses a press briefing to lambast a foreign broadcaster by name, something seismic has shifted. That’s exactly what happened today when Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, publicly accused the BBC of treating ‘the word of Hamas as total truth’ and challenged the White House’s description of the broadcaster rushing out anti-Israel claims only to later bury the corrections. Holding up printouts of BBC headlines that morphed from ’26 dead after Israeli tanks open fire’ to ’31 killed in Israeli gunfire,’ then ‘Red Cross says at least 21 killed’, before publishing another piece admitting ‘claim graphic video is linked to aid distribution site in Gaza is

Laurie Wastell

Lord Hermer and the political prosecution of Lucy Connolly

Was the prosecution of Lucy Connolly in the public interest? That is the question now being asked of the embattled Attorney General, Richard Hermer, following my story in the Sunday Telegraph that Hermer approved the charge of stirring up racial hatred against the mother and childminder last summer, over a hastily deleted tweet on the night of the Southport attack. ‘Lord Hermer of Chagos’ has faced further questions over his political judgement and yet more calls for him to be sacked. In their blinkered appeals to sentencing guidelines and legal procedures, these lawyers seem utterly deaf to the central political and moral question of whether someone should be liable to go

James Heale

Kemi has a new favourite word: chaos

Whisper it, but there was some rather good lines amid the dross of today’s PMQs. ‘Mr Speaker, I asked the Prime Minister what he believes in’, jibed Kemi Badenoch at one point. ‘He had to look in his folder to find out the answer.’ The Speaker responded in kind. ‘Please’, he said, during one of Keir Starmer’s lengthier evasions, ‘Let’s listen to the answer even if you don’t believe you’re getting one.’ But it was one word, repeated more than a dozen times, which emerged from today’s session: chaos. Badenoch hit the PM with it at every chance, pointing to the winter fuel and two-child benefit U-turns as proof of

Matthew Lynn

Starmer doesn’t have long to save his US trade deal

It has only been a few weeks since the UK agreed to a trade deal with the United States that exempted us from the worst of President Trump’s tariffs. There was a grand, if slightly awkward, ceremony in the White House. The deal was sold as a triumph of negotiation and diplomacy for the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and even more for our ambassador in Washington, Lord Mandelson. But it seems Starmer may have got ahead of himself, for this deal appears to only have been a temporary truce. Right now there is a real risk that the government may blow the deal – and that would be hugely

Henry Donovan

Can Germany control its borders?

Two days. That’s how long Friedrich Merz’s signature border policy survived before walking into a perfectly laid ambush. While international economists celebrate Germany’s potential economic resurgence under new leadership, the country’s Chancellor is discovering that electoral victories mean little when faced with opponents who don’t need votes to wield power. The weapon of choice? Legal challenges so precisely timed and coordinated they make Swiss clockwork look amateur. Just as the OECD forecasts Germany’s potential return as Europe’s economic powerhouse, Merz finds himself outmanoeuvred not by coalition partners or opposition politicians, but by advocacy organisations whose resources and coordination capabilities would impress military strategists – opposition far more sophisticated than traditional

Natasha Hausdorff

Israel is not conducting a genocide in Gaza

Since Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the Jewish State’s most vociferous critics have been busy. Their most egregious claim is that Israel is committing a genocide. As is so often the case with Israel, the crimes it is accused of are rooted in an inversion of the truth. Israel’s critics must stop politicising and weaponising international law to spread blood libels Genocide has been committed during this conflict: by Hamas terrorists who rampaged through southern Israel and massacred over 1,000 innocents, targeting Jews. They executed their barbaric atrocities in the hope this would inspire simultaneous attacks on Israel’s other borders. On that day, Yahya Sinwar’s terror

Ross Clark

Labour won’t win back the north with new trams

So now we know how Labour intends to try to head-off the threat from Reform UK. It is going to fight them on the tram lines. Rachel Reeves will announce this morning £15 billion worth of new tram lines in the Midlands and the North as part of a £113 billion package of public investment. There will be £2.4 billion for trams in the West Midlands, £2.1 billion for a new tram system in Leeds, an extension of the Manchester tram system to Stockport and an embryonic tram system between Derby and Nottingham. The idea of a ‘north-south divide’ is 25 years out of date. The gulf now lies more

Steerpike

Watch: White House attacks BBC over Hamas coverage

As ever, these days the Beeb is better at becoming the news than making it. Now the White House has taken a pop at the corporation, with President Donald Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt accusing the BBC of having to correct its reporting from Gaza about aid distribution – and of taking Hamas’s word as ‘total truth’. Ouch. Pointing to a document of screenshots of the BBC’s website, she fumed: The BBC…had multiple headlines: they wrote Israeli tank kills 26, Israeli tank kills 21, Israeli gunfire kills 31. They had to correct and take down their entire story, saying: ‘We reviewed the footage and couldn’t find any evidence of anything.’