Politics

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

Andrew Tettenborn

Starmer must not kotow to the ICJ on climate change

Last week, 15 judges from the International Court of Justice at the Vredespaleis in the Hague, at the request of the UN General Assembly, pronounced solemnly on climate change. Every state, they said, owed duties in international law to take all reasonable measures to suppress climate change; duties, they added, which included exercising control over the activities of private companies. Furthermore, they went on, any state that had broken that duty faced potential claims for compensation from any other state that had suffered damage. Environmental activists went wild. Organisations such as Amnesty and Greenpeace swiftly welcomed the new era where polluting countries (meaning states like such as the US, the

John Foreman

Gagging the military is a mistake

Some weeks ago at an army conference I listened to senior officers discussing the lethal, agile, ‘integrated’ British military of the future as set out in the government’s recent Strategic Defence Review. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what they said. The Chief of the General Staff Sir Roly Walker answered questions on what the SDR meant for the army. I can’t tell you what he said either. Officers attending the conference were apparently told that, if they found themselves in accidental conversation with a journalist, they were to extricate themselves immediately. At a time of increased focus on national defence, it was a poor day for transparency. This was not

Lucy Dunn

Questions remain about Farage’s crime crackdown

As Keir Starmer prepared to meet Donald Trump at his Scottish golf course this afternoon, Nigel Farage kept himself busy with another ‘Lawless Britain’ press conference in London. (‘I had dinner with Donald Trump Junior the other week,’ he said to reporters asking if he had been able to secure an audience with the US President.) Social media dominated. Reform’s new police and crime adviser, retired detective Colin Sutton, told attendees: ‘We need to refocus what police are doing onto homes and streets – not posts and tweets.’ The latest addition to the Reform outfit will stand as a candidate in the next general election and in the meantime use

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The leaked email that blows apart the BBC’s impartiality claims over Gaza

A leaked internal email from a BBC executive editor reveals that the Corporation has issued prescriptive instructions to staff on how to cover the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The memo, titled ‘Covering the food crisis in Gaza’, amounts to a top-down editorial diktat that discards impartiality, elevates one side of a deeply contested narrative, and imposes a specific anti-Israel legal-political framing as settled fact. The existence of this email is a telling sign of how the Corporation works to ensure its journalists stick to its own ideological angles. This latest leaked BBC email suggests it is failing in its duty The email, which was sent to BBC staff on Friday, begins

Today

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Trump slams Sadiq Khan as ‘nasty person’

While relations between Sir Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump have been lauded as ‘unparalleled’ by the President himself, the same cannot be said for Sadiq Khan. In a press conference in Scotland this afternoon, Trump was pulling no punches when London came up in conversation. When quizzed on whether he would visit the UK’s capital, Trump was quick to remark: I’m not a fan of your mayor. I think he’s done a terrible job, the mayor of London, a nasty person. Shots fired! Starmer jumped in to defend the Labour politician, interjecting: ‘He’s a friend of mine.’ Not that the President appeared to care all that much, repeating:

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What should we make of the Starmer-Trump relationship?

It’s often the rotator blades of Marine One that blare over Donald Trump’s voice as he stands near the helipad on the south lawn of the White House. In Turnberry, Scotland, it was bagpipes. Trump, playing host to the British Prime Minister in Britain, performed his now familiar ingratiation ritual as he welcomed Sir Keir and Lady Victoria Starmer to his golf course. “Our relationship is unparalleled,” he said, above the din. He flattered the PM’s wife and even suggested, in his delightful nonsensical way, that she is a well-known figure all over the United States.   Lucy Dunn is joined by US editor Freddy Gray and political editor Tim Shipman to

Madeline Grant

Sadiq Khan will wear his Trump insult as a badge of honour

The Trump Golf Course at Turnberry in Scotland looks like a middle-ranking complex for assisted living. It is all plastic double glazing, unfashionably bright flowers and ornamental balls. It was to here that Ursula von der Leyen and now Sir Keir Starmer had been summoned by the president to pay homage during the Donald’s golfing tour. Mr Trump appeared on the steps of his plastic palace, while Sir Keir and Lady Starmer emerged from their Land Rover to the sound of a piper. I can’t say what he was playing. Traditional options include the Skye Boat Song or – appropriately – Cock o’ the North. Knowing Mr Trump it might

Ross Clark Ross Clark

What Trump gets right about Britain’s windfarms

Donald Trump is often treated in Britain as a know-nothing who speaks off the top of his head on subjects he does not understand. No one is keener to try to make this point than the BBC. Yet not for the first time, it turns out that he is bit more on the ball than some of his critics. After his game of golf at his Turnberry course in Ayrshire, western Scotland on Sunday, the president retorted: ‘It’s probably the best course in the world. And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills at the end of the 18th. I said: ‘Isn’t that a shame?’’. The wind farms which

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Starmer’s disingenuousness on free speech won’t fool Trump

It’s often the rotator blades of Marine One that blare over Donald Trump’s voice as he stands near the helipad on the south lawn of the White House. In Turnberry, in Scotland, it was bagpipes. Trump, playing host to the Prime Minister, performed his now familiar ingratiation ritual as he welcomed Sir Keir and Lady Victoria Starmer to his golf course. ‘Our relationship is unparalleled,’ he said, above the din. He flattered the PM’s wife and even suggested, in his delightful nonsensical way, that she is a well-known figure all over the United States. Finally, the bagpiping stopped and the world could hear as Trump and the reporters rattled through the

Stephen Pollard

The real reason two Jewish comedians had their Edinburgh shows canned

Two Jewish comedians have had shows cancelled by venues hosting the Edinburgh Fringe. Whistlebinkies told Rachel Creeger that she and her show Ultimate Jewish Mother were no longer welcome, while Philip Simon’s Jew-O-Rama, a rotating line-up of Jewish comedians, was also barred. Another venue, Banshee Labyrinth, followed suit, cancelling Simon’s solo show, Shall I Compere Thee in a Funny Way? It could hardly be more blatant: two Jews have been cancelled because they are Jewish The reason? ‘Safety concerns’ for staff. Those of us with the Jewish mothers of Creeger’s title can certainly understand why others might have concerns over our mental safety, but I don’t think that’s quite what the venues had in

Andrew Tettenborn

Kemi has fallen into the Islamophobia trap

Kemi Badenoch this weekend waded into the Islamophobia debate. In a public letter to Keir Starmer she urged the government to suspend the operations of its working group looking for a semi-official definition of Islamophobia. Unfortunately she then rather spoilt the effect by suggesting that the group needed to be supplemented by representatives of grooming gang victims, counter-terror experts and free speech activists. You can see why she did this. Nevertheless it could prove a bad miscalculation, and a missed opportunity to land a serious blow on Keir Starmer. Her message clearly comes across as an acceptance of the existence of the working group and a preparedness to work with

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why couldn’t Britain have dealt with the EU like Trump?

The more you look at the trade deal negotiated between the US and the EU, the more you want to ask: why couldn’t Britain have dealt with the EU like that? Why has every UK Prime Minister since Theresa May acted so feebly in the face of the EU’s tactics and ended up getting such a poor deal out of the EU? Why did UK Brexit negotiators never threaten punitive tariffs on German cars and French wine? Trump has get pretty much everything he wanted. Goods imported into the US from the EU will in future be subject to tariffs of 15 per cent – half the rate that Trump

Yesterday

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Labour is ‘committed to the recognition of Palestine’

James Murray: ‘You can only recognise a state once’ France’s decision to recognise the state of Palestine at the next UN general assembly has put pressure on Keir Starmer to decide whether he does the same, or stays in line with the US, risking a Labour mutiny. On Sky News this morning, treasury minister James Murray played for time, telling Trevor Phillips the UK is ‘committed to the recognition of Palestine’, whilst arguing that the government must use the moment it officially recognises the state to ‘galvanise change’. Murray noted that 140 countries already recognise Palestine, but there’s still ‘unbearable suffering’, and said the UK’s decision must be part of

Matthew Wilcox

The Cotswolds is a Potemkin England

Have you heard the one where the vice president of the United States and a lesbian former talk show host walk into a farm shop in Gloucestershire? No, it’s not the set-up to a joke – it’s just another Tuesday in the Cotswolds in 2025. The Cotswolds still looks like England – hedgerows, pubs selling Sunday roasts – but what it offers now is something different Ellen DeGeneres has confirmed that she’s staying put in the Cotswolds, where she’s been holed-up since the 2024 US presidential election. JD Vance – now vice president under Donald Trump – is also planning on spending part of the summer there too. Two Americans, worlds apart,

Ken Costa

Britain needs to embrace crypto with its own Genius Act

In proposing to sell the government’s £5 billion hoard of Bitcoin – accumulated from confiscating the proceeds of crime – Rachel Reeves has earned some keen supporters. But the Chancellor should resist the temptation. It wouldn’t be an error quite on the scale of Gordon Brown’s sale of half of Britain’s gold reserves in 1999 – that occurred right at the bottom of a bear market in gold, while Bitcoin in recent weeks has been trading at record highs. Nevertheless, Reeves would be missing out on the opportunity to build a Strategic Crypto Reserve which could turn out to be many times more valuable in the future. By backing cryptocurrencies rather than disposing

Charlie Griffin

Falling victim to a hate crime taught me a dark lesson about Europe

As a Brit, and in spite of a little Brexaustion, I hold a certain romanticised view of central Europe. I know I am not alone. It is, I am sure, a place of high culture, animated coffee shop conversations, and romantic walks through cobbled streets. The sun is always warm, and life plays out at a more relaxed pace than here in Britain – as three flags flying in Brussels’ Grand Place confirmed for me, it is a place to ‘love’, ‘live’, and ‘unite’. As they muscled towards us, in mixed Islamic dress, liberally spitting at our feet, we struggled to respond With a weekend to kill in Brussels, I

Catherine Ellis

How Trump helped Venezuela’s Maduro bounce back

For someone widely believed to have lost a presidential election just a year ago, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is looking remarkably defiant – and still firmly in power. Maduro has just pulled off another patriotic spectacle – a choreographed homecoming of Venezuelan migrants with flags, cameras, and emotional reunions. This followed a deal with the Donald Trump administration that secured the return of 252 Venezuelans from CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison. Trump has breathed fresh political oxygen into a regime many thought was on the brink Maduro cast himself as a protector, bringing his people home from what he called ‘concentration camps,’ with the regime launching an investigation into alleged abuses. For

Saturday

David Abulafia

Is Angela Davis’s keffiyeh appropriate for a Cambridge University ceremony?

Cambridge University’s decision to honour the rap artist Stormzy with an honorary doctorate seemed odd. New universities, rather than our ancient ones, like to parade icons of popular culture. When the decision was announced a few months ago, I was asked by a national newspaper to write a piece questioning his nomination. I demurred, because Stormzy was being rewarded for generous benefactions that aimed to bring disadvantaged black schoolchildren to Cambridge University – despite my doubts about reserving scholarships for particular ethnic groups. Stormzy’s honorary doctorate dominated the headlines – and so, none of us really noticed who else was on the list. Looking back, it is almost as if

Mat Whatley

Why Zelensky reversed his anti-corruption overhaul

On Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved a law to gut Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies. On Thursday he backtracked, and said he would put forward new legislation to restore their independence. The original legislation would have stripped both the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sapo) of their independence, bringing them under direct executive control. The official reason for the legislation was to cleanse Ukraine’s investigative bodies of Russian influence. A spy, apparently, was suspected in their ranks. But treason has become the calling card for the consolidation of power in Ukraine. Earlier this year, Petro Poroshenko – President Zelensky’s main declared challenger in the next election – was sanctioned for

Robert Taylor

How middle-class shoplifting swept Britain

Middle-class shoplifting is pushing up high street prices, according to Dame Diana Johnson, the policing and crime minister. Can she be right? If my own middle-class acquaintances are anything to go on, the answer is clear: yes. Many of those pilfering from our shops look just like you and me OK, we know shop theft is on a steep upward trajectory. There are nearly 17,000 incidents every day in corner shops alone, costing £316 million each year. Shoplifting across the whole retail sector costs billions. The reality is that many of those pilfering from our shops look just like you and me. My own experience is that many reasonably well-off

Alex Klaushofer

Is this CS Lewis’ most prescient work?

It’s been 80 years since CS Lewis’ remarkably prescient, That Hideous Strength, was published. The final book in a sci-fi trilogy, the novel recounts the battle for the soul of humanity in the heart of England. Even in 1945, George Orwell saw that: ‘Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that Mr Lewis attributes to his characters [the NICE scientists], and we are within sight of the time when such dreams will be realisable.’ Little did he realise how soon his fears would play out. Little did Lewis realise how soon his fears set out in That Hideous Strength would play out That Hideous Strength focuses

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Lawfare is the SAS’s most dangerous enemy

It might at first glance appear odd that this deeply unpopular government is determined to repeal the Northern Ireland Legacy and Reconciliation Act. Britain’s armed forces are one of the last institutions of which the nation is overwhelmingly proud. Why pursue its veterans at the risk of making itself even more unpopular? ‘We want to be recruiting into the Armed Forces and we have a government who are about to reopen lawfare against our veterans,’ remarked shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge. ‘It is crazy.’ The government say that they will repeal the Act, which was passed by the Tories in 2023, because it is incompatible with human rights legislation. Their other