Politics

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

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Grooming gang row overshadows Keir Starmer’s NHS speech

Keir Starmer spent a significant time this morning arguing that the last thing we need is another review and report when the government just needs to act. Unfortunately, he wasn’t talking about social care reform, but grooming gangs, which ended up dominating the question and answer session after his big NHS speech. The NHS staff who had been plonked behind the Prime Minister looked increasingly weary as question after question turned out to be about the accusations levelled at the government by Elon Musk, rather than the elective recovery plan. As well as being an unfortunate distraction from what Starmer wanted to talk about, it also provided an inconvenient contrast

Steerpike Steerpike

Ex-SNP sex pest slammed after landing top charity role

To Scotland, where outrage is spreading after news that a former sex pest politician has landed a top charity job. It transpires that disgraced ex-SNP MP Patrick Grady has been appointed to a senior role at a Scottish government-funded charity – while his victim claims Grady’s actions ‘ended’ his career. Good heavens… Mr S would remind readers that in 2022, the UK parliament’s standards watchdog ruled that Grady had made an ‘unwanted sexual advance’ to an SNP staffer while ‘under the influence of alcohol’ at a pub six years earlier, where he was found to have stroked the young man’s neck, hair and back. Now the SNP’s former chief whip

Steerpike Steerpike

Starmer hits back at Musk

Elon Musk has had a busy weekend, blasting the UK government over Britain’s grooming gang scandal and even turning on Reform UK leader Nigel Farage in the last 24 hours. It may be a new week, but Musk’s focus remains very much on the British Isles, with the US tech billionaire this morning taking yet another pop at Sir Keir Starmer – and even turning his guns on his predecessor Gordon Brown. The future co-leader of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has now called for the PM to be incarcerated. This morning, Musk quote tweeted an image of the three girls who were tragically killed in the Southport attack

James Heale James Heale

Justin Trudeau’s rule could end this week

The next 48 hours could well spell the end of Justin Trudeau. The Canadian Prime Minister – the last major western leader of the pre-Trump era – is reportedly considering resignation, ahead of a key national caucus meeting on Wednesday. Over Christmas, a growing chorus of Liberal MPs from across the country have been issuing calls for Trudeau to quit. The Globe and Mail newspaper quotes sources suggesting that he will make an announcement before the Wednesday meeting to avoid the appearance that he was forced out by Liberal opponents. Still, no one should be in any doubt: after almost ten years in office, Justin Trudeau’s luck may have finally run out.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Does Nigel Farage need Elon Musk? 

What a difference a month makes. In December, Nigel Farage was tweeting about his meeting with Elon Musk and the world’s richest man’s support for his party. On Sunday, the Reform leader found himself defending himself from Musk’s criticism – after the tech billionaire declared on his platform X that Reform needed new leadership as Farage ‘doesn’t have what it takes’. Musk can clearly change his opinion pretty quickly  The cooling of relations between the two men seems to come down to their differing views of Tommy Robinson, the jailed activist. Thanks largely to the tweets of Musk, the grooming gangs scandal has moved to the top of the news agenda

James Tidmarsh

The EU wants to cripple French farmers

Another year, another protest. French farmers are at it again. France’s Coordination Rurale trade union is calling for another round of massive protests starting this week. Unions say that French farmers ‘won’t die in silence’. Cue tractors clogging motorways, hay bales set ablaze in front of government offices, and manure dumped on city streets. This time, the protests are a direct challenge to France’s new government, barely weeks into its term. But let’s be honest: this isn’t really about François Bayrou, the freshly appointed Prime Minister, nor President Emmanuel Macron. French farmers aren’t just angry about the deal; they’re furious at the impotence of their own government The French press will dance

Patrick West

Why we should be worried about Labour’s ‘Islamophobia’ plans

Is there a problem with Islamophobia? The problem is the word ‘Islamophobia’ itself. What does it actually mean, and what does taking the word and its existence at face value entail? Many do assume that Islamophobia is out there in Britain, and that it needs to be addressed. When it was in opposition, the Labour party adopted its definition as drawn up by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. It states: ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.’  We live in a society that holds people’s identities to be sacrosanct, and their associated feelings to be delicate and inviolable As Steerpike

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why is Gisèle Pelicot a hero but not the girls of Rochdale?

A poll in France has named Gisèle Pelicot as the country’s person of the year for the courage and dignity she displayed during the rape trial that transfixed the West in the autumn. The Independent newspaper argued last week that the Frenchwoman deserves to be named the world’s Person of 2024 – not Donald Trump – and Prospect magazine agreed, saying Pelicot has ‘gifted others with hope for change’. Gisèle Pelicot is certainly an inspirational woman, the word used by President Emmanuel Macron to describe her bravery in court as she sat through the three month trial that resulted in the imprisonment of her former husband and 51 men for rape and assault. Over the course of ten years

Sunday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Elon Musk is wrong to slam Nigel Farage

Elon Musk is a man of tremendous gifts, to put it mildly. He recently caught a rocket between some chopsticks, for crying out loud. But insight into the mood of British politics is clearly not one of those gifts. Having only just learned about Britain’s shameful, grotesque, never-ending grooming-gangs scandal, declaring that Jess Phillips should be in prison for failing to back a full national inquiry into it, Musk has now turned his ire on his erstwhile ally, Reform leader Nigel Farage. This new disagreement seems to have escalated rather quickly. Musk has recently become a vocal supporter of hard-right grifter Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), who is currently

James Snell

Don’t judge Syria’s new rulers yet

Some people went mad when Ahmed al-Sharaa (you might know him as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the now de facto leader of Syria) refrained from shaking the hand of Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister of Germany, when she visited Damascus this week. Not shaking hands with a woman! Al-Sharaa is the same jihadist he always was! Another story which fixates westerners: the bars in Damascus – the centrepieces of the Assad regime’s propaganda tours, where journalists and vloggers were made pleasantly drunk within earshot of concentration camps – do they still serve their favourite poison? If they don’t, my oh my, it’s a terrible

Steerpike Steerpike

Runners and riders: next Reform leader

Well, that didn’t last long. Just 19 days after Nigel Farage and Elon Musk were snapped beaming together at Mar-a-Lago, the bromance is already over. Sad! It seems that the Tesla billionaire didn’t take too kindly to Farage’s (mild) rebuke of his call to release Tommy Robinson from prison. Just hours after Farage praised Musk on the BBC, the latter took to – where else? – X to declare the end of their short-lived friendship. ‘The Reform Party needs a new leader’, Musk declared. ‘Farage doesn’t have what it takes’. So much for loyalty eh? At present, it looks like Musk is out on his own on this one. None

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Tommy Robinson isn’t the story here

Elon Musk’s Twitter attack on Jess Phillips is certainly offensive. It may even deserve to be called a ‘disgraceful smear’, as Wes Streeting put it on the Laura Kuenssberg Show this morning. But the trouble is that every time government ministers bring up Musk’s spat with Phillips, the more they remind people of just how close Labour was to the scandal of rape gangs in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, Telford and other places. Much as Streeting and others might like to bat it away and plead that Phillips, Keir Starmer and everyone else in his government are ‘good people’, who have done masses during their careers to help put child abusers

Steerpike Steerpike

Elon Musk turns on Farage

Oh dear. Is there trouble in paradise? For a few weeks now, Nigel Farage has been basking in a transatlantic glow thanks to the support of his buddies Stateside. The Reform party leader’s meeting with Elon Musk last month led to concern in both Labour and the Conservative party that the world’s richest man will soon give a sizeable donation to his party. This combined with the president-elect’s longstanding friendship with Farage has led to concern amongst Conservatives that 2025 could be Farage’s year. However, in a sign that things may not be quite so simple for the Reform party leader, Musk appears to have gone cold on his new

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Are Premier League fans right to protest ticket hikes?

It takes quite a lot to unite the fans of Manchester United and Liverpool, but it will happen today at Anfield. Some of the most committed supporters will make a joint protest along with the Football Supporters’ Association at what they see as the exploitative ticket price policies of their respective clubs. There will be demonstrations outside the stadium and a banners bearing the message ‘Stop Exploiting Loyalty’ will be unfurled inside the ground. The specific target is the trend in rising prices and the gradual disappearance of concessions, which is making regular attendance for generational fans increasingly unaffordable. Manchester United announced a £66 flat rate tariff for members this

Steerpike Steerpike

Starmer’s corruption minister in spotlight over freebie property

Parliament returns on Monday – and not a moment too soon. For one of the barmy Starmer army has found themselves splashed all over the newspapers this weekend, with the Tories now scenting blood. The Financial Times reports that City Minister Tulip Siddiq was given a two-bedroom flat near King’s Cross, free of charge in 2004. It was donated by developer Abdul Motalif who is connected to Bangladesh’s Awami League party, led by Siddiq’s aunt Sheikh Hasina. Who she you ask? Why, none other than the authoritarian premier of Bangladesh who was forced to flee from power last year, having ruled since 2009. Among Siddiq’s responsibilities is – get this

Joe Bedell-Brill

Streeting defends Jess Phillips from Elon Musk

Wes Streeting: Elon Musk’s attacks are a ‘disgraceful smear’ Elon Musk has spent this week calling for the release of the far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson, and launching attacks at British politicians over a failure to prosecute gangs who groomed and raped young girls over a number of years in the north of England. Musk said Keir Starmer, who was director of public prosecutions when the scandal first came to light, was ‘complicit in the rape of Britain’, and also said safeguarding minister Jess Phillips should be in jail. On the BBC this morning, Health Secretary Wes Streeting told Laura Kuenssberg that Elon Musk and other social media bosses could do

Steerpike Steerpike

Five times Labour said VAT raid would help state school kids

The advent of the new year brings with it a fresh sting: the introduction of 20 per cent VAT on private school fees. Labour repeatedly argued that the move is necessary to improve standards in the state sector. But this week the Telegraph revealed that the Treasury has made no plans to ringfence the funds – meaning they can theoretically be spent on any number of government initiatives. The paper quoted a Treasury source who said: The money is not directly hypothecated in the same way other taxes are. The physical pounds and pence are not directly ringfenced [for state schools]… It’s not physically funnelled from ‘A’ to ‘B’ but

Zoe Strimpel

The tragedy of Jocelyn Wildenstein

When I saw that Jocelyn Wildenstein, aka the Bride of (art dealer Alec) Wildenstein, had died at the age of 84, I began compulsively flicking through the widely-shared galleries of horror photos depicting the three-decade plastic surgery odyssey for which she was known. But the picture that struck me most – more, even, than the hideously gnarled, ferocious face with its pinched eyes looking out at the courtroom at her divorce trial – was the one of her when she was young. Namely, in her 30s, with Hollywood golden-age good looks; wonderful bone structure, bright eyes. And one more: as a gamine 15-year-old who looks like a supermodel in waiting.

Monica Porter

Why Hungary owes a special debt to Jimmy Carter

President Jimmy Carter, who died earlier this week, has been praised for his humanitarian instincts. Not for nothing did he receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, long after his presidency, for his continuing work in promoting human rights around the world. But as a Hungarian-born writer, my warm feelings towards him will always be associated with one of his lesser-known acts of international diplomacy: the return to Hungary of its most valued symbol of Hungarian nationhood, the Crown of St Stephen. The golden jewel and enamel-encrusted crown, topped with its distinctive tilted cross, was crafted in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. According to legend, Pope Sylvester II gifted it

Constantin Eckner

Germany’s year is off to a bleak start

Germany’s politicians have a short list of New Year’s resolutions: to make considerable improvement across the board. As the new year gets underway, the country is staring down the barrel of a federal election next month. Whoever comes to power must combat economic stagnation, get immigration under control, find a way to effectively collaborate with Donald Trump’s administration on trade and the war in Ukraine, and win back the reins of power within the European Union. Last year was a turgid year for Germany. Not only did Germany’s federal government collapse in the wake of ongoing internal disputes between the three ruling parties, but the economy continued to stagnate with