Politics

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

The closure of Grangemouth’s refinery sums up Labour’s Net Zero muddle

Another grim milestone in Britain’s elective deindustrialisation was reached today: Scotland’s only remaining petrochemical plant, Grangemouth in Fife, ceased refining crude oil after more than half a century of processing output from the Forties field in the North Sea. It was hardly a surprise. PetroIneos, the part-Chinese-owned company, announced last year that Grangemouth was to become a terminal for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imported from abroad. But today’s news is significant because nothing better exposes the contradictory state of British energy policy. Nothing could better expose the contradictory state of British energy policy Despite Britain having substantial reserves of hydrocarbons in the North Sea – approximately 24 billion barrels – the

Ross Clark

Could Torsten Bell be the next chancellor?

Rachel Reeves may have helped run up a £151 billion deficit in the past 12 months (with a little help from Jeremy Hunt), but for some people it is not nearly enough. A snapshot into Reeves’s world is provided by the Resolution Foundation today, which has claimed that Reeves’s plan for £100 billion of additional capital spending over the course of this parliament will not nearly be enough, and that most of it will simply be swallowed up reversing ‘Tory cuts’. In a report entitled Capital Gains, it says that Reeves won’t really have an extra £100 billion to spend in her spending review; when cuts to budgets are taken

James Heale

Revenge of the centrists: Carney wins in Canada

13 min listen

Mark Carney has won the Canadian election, leading the Liberal Party to a fourth term. Having only been Prime Minister for 6 weeks, succeeding Justin Trudeau, this is an impressive achievement when you consider that Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives were over 20 percentage points ahead in the polls earlier this year. Trump’s rhetoric against Canada – engaging in a trade war and calling for the country to become the 51st state – is credited as turning around the fortunes of the Liberals. Are there lessons for conservatives across the anglosphere, including Kemi Badenoch? Patrick Gibbons speaks to James Heale and Michael Martins. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Michael Taube

How will Mark Carney govern?

Canada went to the polls on Monday. The election campaign only ran for 37 days, but it was a wild ride with shifts in political momentum that few could have predicted. Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney, who replaced Justin Trudeau on March 14, won last night. It’s the fourth consecutive Liberal win, but it will be its third straight minority government. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had the best result for the Conservatives since 1988 but ended up losing his seat. Left-leaning parties like the Bloc Quebecois (BQ), Greens and New Democrats (NDP) all lost seats and popular support, too. This could lead to an unusual series of political scenarios

Today

29 Apr 2025

Steerpike

Watch: Labour MP attacks Ed Miliband

Ding ding ding! The gloves are coming off, as Scottish Labour backbencher Brian Leishman today took aim at Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband in the Commons over Grangemouth. First bashing both the SNP and previous Tory governments, Leishman turned the guns on his own government minister. Today marks the day that all oil refining in Scotland has come to an end, after the company that runs the refinery, Petroineos, notified staff that operations had ceased and the first group of redundant workers will be leaving the plant, with 200 to lose their jobs by the end of June. Hitting out at Labour pre-election promises on the future of Scotland’s oil

Stephen Daisley

The Maggie Chapman saga is a new low for the Scottish Parliament

The Scottish Parliament’s equalities committee has voted against removing Green MSP Maggie Chapman as deputy convenor following her attack on the Supreme Court. The fight might not be over At a rally in Aberdeen in the wake of the judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v. The Scottish Ministers, in which Lord Hodge found for a unanimous panel that the term ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 referred to biological sex, Chapman, an outspoken advocate of gender ideology, decried ‘bigotry, prejudice and hatred that we see coming from the Supreme Court’. This prompted the Faculty of Advocates to call for Chapman’s resignation as deputy convenor of the Holyrood committee responsible for equalities legislation, human

Brendan O’Neill

Kneecap’s phoney punk act has been unmasked

If someone pulled on a Ku Klux Klan hood and went up on a stage and shouted ‘Up the KKK!’, what would you think of that person? Call me a literalist but I’d think that person supports the KKK. I would interpret his donning of the pointy hood and his singing of the KKK’s praises as fandom for that monstrous movement. No one gets into a KKK cloak by accident. Kneecap expect us to believe that even though they’ve waved the Hezbollah flag, they don’t actually support Hezbollah And yet Kneecap expect us to believe that even though they’ve waved the Hezbollah flag and hollered ‘Up Hezbollah!’, they don’t actually

Steerpike

Watch: Poilievre concedes defeat before Portillo moment

Dear oh dear. Canada’s election results came in early this morning, revealing that – despite only being leader of the Liberal party for two months – ex-Bank of England governor Mark Carney wiped the floor with Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre. And not only did Poilievre’s party lose the election, he even lost his parliamentary seat. Talk about a double whammy… In the early hours of Tuesday morning, excitement heightened among Canada’s Liberals as Carney’s party was projected to soar to victory in the election. As James Heale wrote for Coffee House this morning, what the economist has pulled off is nothing short of exceptional. At the start of the year,

Matthew Lynn

Why Merz’s free US-EU trade idea is a non-starter

Ever since President Trump started his tariff war earlier this month, the European Union’s response has been surprisingly clear. It should retaliate with tariffs of its own. It should focus on its own economic sovereignty. And it should make sure that targeted American industries feel the consequences. In other words, it should hit back, and hit back hard. And yet the incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz has proposed a very different response: a grand Atlantic free trade pact. But can he convince Brussels to get on board? It is certainly a break from the past for the man who next week will take over as Europe’s most significant politician. As

Steerpike

SNP politicians back anti-gender ruling Green MSP

Despite denouncing the Supreme Court judgment that backed the biological definition of a woman, Green MSP Maggie Chapman has bafflingly managed to survive an attempt to remove her from her role as Deputy Convener of the Equalities Committee in the Scottish parliament. It seems the eco-activists can get away with anything these days… When Chapman took to the streets of Aberdeen some weeks ago to fume about the ‘bigotry, prejudice and hatred that we see coming from the Supreme Court’, women’s rights campaigners, fellow politicians and legal experts were quick to hit out at her remarks. Not only does she hold a leadership position in Holyrood’s equalities committee (a group

Limor Simhony Philpott

This Remembrance Day in Israel, ‘they deserved it’ is in the air

On the eve of Israel’s Remembrance Day, as sirens pierce the quiet of Israeli streets and the nation stands still to honour its fallen, something different will be happening far beyond Israel’s borders. This year, the pain pulses through the hearts of Jews across the diaspora. The grief is no longer distant – it is raw, personal, and inescapable. The surge in anti-Semitism, venomous and unapologetic, has woven our fates together. Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror, has always been a deeply Israeli ritual. The massacre on 7 October, the hostages still held in Gaza, suspended between life and death, and the high death

Steerpike

Kneecap apologises to families of murdered MPs

Well, well, well. The Tories, Labour and even the SNP condemned Irish rap band Kneecap on Monday over a 2023 clip that seemed to show the trio calling for violence against politicians. Now, it transpires, the republican band is attempting to row back. The emergence of video footage – that appeared to show one of the group saying ‘The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP’ – sparked outrage across the UK. The hip-hop trio last night finally issued an apology to the families of Sir David Amess and Jo Cox, the two UK parliamentarians tragically killed in constituency surgery attacks over the last decade, by

Yuan Yi Zhu

Donald Trump was Mark Carney’s greatest asset

This election could have been a lot worse for Canada’s Conservatives. As I write, they have taken 41.7 per cent of the popular vote, their highest share since 1988, and are on track to pick up two dozen seats. They have also managed to make inroads with young people and unionised workers – groups that are famously hard for right-wing parties to win over. Yet the victor of the night was Mark Carney, who will have a thin but real minority to work with as prime minister of Canada, and now the Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is expected to lose his seat. Ill-informed pundits will say that the Tories threw away

Ross Clark

Taxing milkshakes won’t solve the obesity crisis

It was supposed to be the broadest shoulders who were going to fund the government’s overspending. Now it seems to be the broadest bellies, too. The government is to extend George Osborne’s sugar tax to milkshakes and other milk-based drinks. It is also to consult on lowering the threshold at which the sugar tax becomes due on drinks from 5 grams per 100 ml to 4 grams. That will see hundreds of products become liable for the levy – many of whose recipes had already been changed to avoid the sugar tax. A lower threshold of 4 grammes would add an average of 18 pence to the price of a

Jim Lawley

What caused Spain’s blackout?

By six o’clock this morning, electricity had been restored to 99 per cent of Spain. Restoring people’s sense of security and a full return to normality, however, will take much longer. Portugal has been similarly affected as, briefly, were parts of southern France. The sudden outage occurred at 12.33 p.m. yesterday, leaving Madrid without electricity for hours. Where I am in Ávila, seventy miles from the capital, the lights didn’t come on again until 1.30 in the morning. Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez said that an investigation was being carried out into the ‘sudden’ loss of electricity generation. ‘It has never happened before,’ he said yesterday evening. ‘All state resources have

Jane Stannus

Mark Carney won’t change Canada for the better

Apparently Canada hasn’t taken enough punishment yet. After a close, hard-fought race that extended into the wee hours of the morning, Mark Carney and the Liberals came away with enough seats to form a minority government. They will form Canada’s fourth consecutive Liberal government since 2015. The Liberals maintained their edge, in part, thanks to the collapse of the New Democratic party, whose leader Jagmeet Singh resigned. An election day message from Donald Trump on Truth Social, calling for Canadians to join the US, may also have pushed undecided voters towards Carney, whose entire campaign was founded on the idea that he was the best candidate to protect Canada from Trump.

James Heale

Mark Carney pulls off exceptional win in Canadian election

Results are still flooding in from Canada – but Mark Carney looks to have done the impossible. The Liberal leader will return to office as Prime Minister, after his Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre formally conceded. The key question is whether Carney will win a majority of 172 seats of Canada’s 343 electoral districts in the new House of Commons. National broadcaster CBC projects the Liberals to win 163 seats, with the Tories on 149 and the Bloc Quebecois on 23. What Carney has pulled off is nothing short of exceptional. The former Bank of England governor entered the race to replace Justin Trudeau in mid-January, when the Liberals were languishing

Gareth Roberts

How Ian Hislop failed the gender test

Ian Hislop has found someone to blame for Have I Got News For You‘s failure to tackle the Supreme Court’s gender ruling: the programme’s editors. After the BBC show ignored the big story of the month on its Easter edition, Hislop launched into a rant on the latest episode – insisting that he had spoken about the subject: ‘A lot of people said Have I Got News For You was pathetic, because last week nobody answered this question (on the gender ruling). It was asked, actually. And I answered it at some length. I gave my views about John Stuart Mill’s clash of different rights and competitive demands on a

Yesterday

28 Apr 2025

Steerpike

Watch: Reform MP blasts Phillips over grooming scandal

To the Commons, where Reform MP Lee Anderson has taken a pop at Labour over Britain’s grooming gang scandal. First blasting Home Office minister Jess Phillips for not backing a full national inquiry, Anderson went on to question whether she was ‘part of the cover up’. Then the Ashfield MP took to Twitter to slam the lefty lot for their ‘weak’ handling of the matter. ‘Labour MPs shouted “shame” at me today when I asked this question,’ he wrote scathingly. ‘Sorry, minister, but the shame is with you.’ Shots fired! This afternoon Anderson described how ‘thousands of young, white British working class girls have been raped, tortured and abused by

Steerpike

Even the SNP is condemning Kneecap

There’s not much that the Conservatives, the SNP and Labour agree on – but it appears Irish rappers Kneecap have pulled off the improbable and united political opponents against them this week. The republican band has been the source of much outrage after video footage from a 2023 concert emerged, in which one of the trio appears to say: ‘The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.’ In a political environment that has seen two UK politicians murdered within the last decade, the remarks are rather disturbing. Counter-terrorism police are now assessing the clip, while Prime Minister Keir Starmer has suggested that the group’s government funding

James Snell

The Vancouver car attack is all too familiar

A man named Kai-Ji Adam Lo, 30, has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder after 11 people were killed and many more were injured in a car ramming in Vancouver, Canada. He allegedly drove his SUV into a crowd gathered for a festival celebrating Filipino culture. The police say the suspect has no connections to international terror groups such as Isis or al-Qaeda. The suspect’s motive is so far unknown. More dangerous these days, it seems, is the lone attacker Ramming attacks are common because most adults have a car parked outside their home. The 22 March 2017 terror attack on Westminster involved a van striking a crowd

Trevor Kavanagh

When Keir Starmer went to war on journalism

Through the winter of 2011-12, police dragged dozens of journalists from their beds in terrorist-style dawn raids. It was the beginning of a four-year nightmare; a politically motivated witch-hunt triggered, I believe, by a former state prosecutor who today presides as Britain’s Prime Minister. So I was astonished when Sir Keir Starmer popped up in my old newspaper, the Sun, recently to say: “This is a government that will always champion press freedoms.” Starmer did not think twice before putting innocent journalists in the dock. Yet he claims now that journalism “is the lifeblood of democracy” It was news to the men and women he dragged through the highest courts in

Edward Howell

What has Putin given North Korea for its help in Ukraine?

We knew it was happening all along, but it was only a matter of time before both Russia and North Korea confirmed to the world the inevitable fact that their relationship is more than rhetoric. Six months after the first North Korean soldiers were deployed to the Kursk region, the Kim regime has finally admitted that the country’s armed forces have ‘participated in the operations for liberating’ the area, in what marked ‘a new chapter of history’ in relation to the ‘firm militant friendship between the two countries of the DPRK and Russia’. Only days earlier, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, lauded

Lucy Dunn

‘The spring of discontent’

11 min listen

Are we looking at a spring of discontent? It’s the final push ahead of this week’s local elections, and what Keir Starmer wants to talk about is expanding the NHS app – which he says will cut waiting lists and end the days of the health service living in the ‘dark ages’. However, what people are actually talking about is public sector pay. The independent pay review body has recommended pay rises of around 4 per cent for teachers and nurses. Will there be industrial action? Are Labour going to be pushed into another round of public sector pay increases? Meanwhile, after Ben Houchen’s comments this weekend, the murmurs of

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