Politics

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

Thursday

13 Mar 2025

How to reform Reform

In early June last year I had a reasonably agreeable meal with a bunch of Reform UK activists at a restaurant in Guisborough – the main town in the seat which I would be contesting for the Social Democratic party, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland. There were four of them, united primarily by one thing – a visceral loathing of the Conservative party. Beyond that they were basically anti-woke and economically dry, as we used to call it. But all that took second place to the animus against the Tories. I have met pink-haired, nose-ringed, utterly vacuous LGBTQI sociology students who were more kindly disposed to the Conservatives than this

Katy Balls

Starmer’s next target: his MPs

Labour MPs these days are experiencing whiplash. When in opposition, the party attacked the Tories’ proposed benefits cuts for ‘effectively turning on the poorest in our society’. Now, Keir Starmer plans to drive through £6 billion in welfare cuts of his own. Labour ministers previously spent much of their time scolding the government for showing insufficient respect towards civil servants. Now, Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has launched a crackdown on poor performers. Since the start of Starmer’s premiership, ministers have announced 27 new quangos – yet this week the Prime Minister scrapped one in a signal of intent, telling his cabinet they cannot do what the

Wednesday

12 Mar 2025

Svitlana Morenets

Losing Kursk is a big blow to Zelensky

After eight months of fighting on Russian soil, Ukrainian troops are pulling back from the Kursk region. This morning, Russian forces raised their flag over Sudzha and are now closing in on the last 50 square miles of Ukrainian holdouts. The retreat couldn’t come at a worse time for Kyiv – just as a ceasefire and potential peace deal are on the table. Zelensky had hoped to trade the Kursk salient for Ukrainian land in negotiations. Now, that leverage is almost gone. Russian troops, reinforced by North Koreans, have been steadily clawing back the 500 square miles of Russian territory seized by Ukraine last August. But the real breakthrough came

Freddy Gray

Can Trump survive a recession?

27 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Fox News broadcaster Deroy Murdock to discuss Trump’s America. They cover what could be the real reason behind Trump’s tariffs, how concerned Americans should be about a recession, the Ukraine-Russia peace plan and what the Democrats can do to recover from the election defeat.

James Heale

What will Nicola Sturgeon’s legacy be?

12 min listen

Nicola Sturgeon has announced her intention to step down at the next Scottish Parliament election in May 2026. One of the original MSPs elected to Holyrood in 1999, Sturgeon has dominated Scottish and UK politics over the past two decades. The Salmond-Sturgeon era began in 2004 and she went on to serve as First Minister for the best part of a decade. Stewart McDonald, former SNP MP for Glasgow South 2015-24, and Lucy Dunn join James Heale on this special Coffee House Scots to discuss Sturgeon’s legacy. She brought Scotland the closest to independence for 300 years, yet resigned in 2023 under a cloud over party management. Attention turns to next year’s

Damian Reilly

Man Utd fans – and Gary Neville – should stop moaning

What exactly is it that the Glazer family has done that makes Manchester United fans whine so endlessly? I ask only because I’ve just finished watching Gary Neville’s frequently ludicrous interview with British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe – who since purchasing a 27.7 per cent stake in the club in 2023 has overseen its football operations – and am none the wiser. After hearing Ratcliffe, very patiently, it must be said, appraise Neville of the truly parlous state of the club’s finances – it seems obvious if the Glazers are guilty of anything, it is of being too trusting. For the last 12 years, the family on the other side of the Atlantic

Mary Dejevsky

Is £250 a year enough for you to have a pylon ruining your view?

As part of its plans to streamline the planning process for much-needed infrastructure, the government has confirmed that it intends to give people a discount on their energy costs if they have new power pylons or other energy infrastructure built near their property. Outlining the plan, the housing and planning minister, Alex Norris, said that the discount could amount to £250 a year – around 12 per cent of the average household’s energy bill – for those living within 500 metres of new or upgraded structures. ‘If you’re making that sacrifice of having some of the infrastructure in your community, you should get some of the money back,’ he said.

Owen Matthews

Why Russia should agree to a ceasefire – and five reasons Putin might not

The main achievement of the US-Ukrainian talks in Jeddah was to produce a ceasefire document that Russia might actually want to sign. A long list of Ukrainian red lines – such as a partial ceasefire in the air and sea only, and security guarantees before any ceasefire was implemented – were swept aside. What’s on the table is essentially an unconditional ceasefire on all fronts, initially limited to thirty days. Putin now needs to decide whether it’s in Russia’s interests to accept. There are six reasons why he should sign the Jeddah deal – and five reasons he may not: Why Putin should agree to the deal: Relations with Washington

Lloyd Evans

Is Kemi Badenoch getting better at PMQs?

If Kemi Badenoch has a plan, she’s keeping it hidden. At PMQs she used her scattergun approach to complain about unemployment, farming, winter fuel payments, council tax, increases in NI, business closures, food-aid for underfed kids and the murder of David Amess. Eventually, she reached the chancellor’s awkward ‘spring statement’ which would have made a much better starting point. There was no shape to her performance, no dramatic climax, no electrifying revelation to dominate the afternoon news. And she’s low on energy. Does she even need six questions? She should sell half of them to the SNP who are adept at concealing illicit financial deals from the auditors. Her best

Sergey Radchenko

Putin can still defeat Ukraine

After Ukraine accepted America’s 30-day ceasefire proposal, all eyes are on Russia’s reaction. Will Vladimir Putin – who, as President Trump has incredulously claimed, has all the cards, and at the same time no cards at all – go along with the US proposal, or choose to snub it? To answer this question, it is important to understand what Putin is trying to do. On the one hand, he did not spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this war, sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives, and put Russia’s entire economy on a war footing in order to claim a devastated strip of territory in eastern Donbas. Putin wants to reassert effective

Niko Vorobyov

Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is catching up with him

I saw my first murder scene in Manila. On the evening of the 22 January 2018, a pair of assassins on motorbikes rode up to the scrap metal dealer Manny ‘Buddy’ Wagan and blasted him twice in the head. I didn’t witness the killing itself but arrived with my fixer just in time to see a passerby lighting a candle in honour of the deceased, the flickering flame reflected in the pool of blood, brain and skull spread across the pavement. Manny’s death was one of up to 30,000 such slayings over the course of President Rodrigo Duterte’s six-year rule of the Philippines between 2016 and 2022. Duterte had declared a war against drugs

Stephen Daisley

Nicola Sturgeon wasted eight years in power

As Nicola Sturgeon announces that she is standing down from the Scottish parliament, it is worth reflecting on what a gilded political life she led – and how she managed to fritter it all away and leave frontline politics with no legacy, or at least none she’d care to be remembered by. The former Glasgow solicitor became Scotland’s deputy first minister at 36 after Alex Salmond invited her to stand as his deputy in the 2004 SNP leadership election. From there, she was handed the health portfolio, then put in charge of infrastructure, and became a household name during the independence referendum. When Salmond quit in the wake of that

Dr Sean Phillips

Will Streeting’s shake-up save the NHS?

Not for the first time, the NHS is facing a major overhaul under a Labour government. A series of announcements in recent weeks – relating to job cuts and changes at the top of the health service – constitute a complete resetting of healthcare governance in England. But will it work? And can this shake-up fix our broken healthcare system? One of the biggest reforms relates to NHS England (NHSE) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), where a cut of around 50 per cent in central staffing (currently numbering 19,000 workers) is planned. This would represent a headcount reduction far greater in percentage terms than that proposed (and delivered) by

Steerpike

Labour MP U-turns on benefit cuts letter

There’s drama in Labourland today as one backbencher appears to have had second thoughts about her stance on benefits payments – after the Get Britain Working group’s open letter went out with her name on it. The letter, which has called upon Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall to introduce a ‘new social contract’ to get disability benefit claimants back to work, has ruffled feathers both with left-wing MPs and, er, one of its own signatories. Allison Gardner has taken to social media today to fume that her name ‘shouldn’t have been added’ to the petition and assure her constituents she has requested its removal. Talk about a reverse ferret,

Isabel Hardman

Is Kemi Badenoch finally getting the hang of PMQs?

Kemi Badenoch made some changes to her strategy at Prime Minister’s Questions today and had a much better time of it. She stuck to one topic, rather than performing handbrake turns from one matter to another, and she didn’t accuse Keir Starmer of not answering the question. Instead, she claimed the Prime Minister was ‘out of touch’ and had no idea ‘what is happening out there’. The Tory leader’s focus was on the national insurance increase, which comes into effect next month. She asked first about job losses caused by the rise in employers’ contributions, and responded curtly that Starmer ‘needs to get out more’ when he argued that Labour

Oscar Edmondson

Has Ukraine called Putin’s bluff?

12 min listen

Last night there was a huge breakthrough in Ukraine peace talks, with Zelensky accepting a US proposal for a ceasefire and placing ‘the ball in Putin’s court’, according to Marco Rubio. While getting Zelensky to accept is a huge diplomatic win, the proposal hinges on Putin agree to the terms of the ceasefire – which will last for 30 days but can be extended by mutual agreement. ‘I’ll talk to Vladimir Putin. It takes two to tango,’ said Donald Trump. Can Putin afford to reject the deal? And could this be the basis for a lasting peace? Meanwhile, Keir Starmer has been getting a lot of credit for his role

Ross Clark

Quangos are forever

So it is goodbye to the Payment Systems Regulator, which will be merged with the Financial Conduct Authority. That is not a huge breakthrough for the nation in itself – it merely means that the likes of Visa and Mastercard will have a different telephone number to ring when they want to organise a bit of lobbying. But it is, Keir Starmer wants us to know, just the beginning. Just as he promised on Monday to chop the benefits bill, the Prime Minister wants us to know that he now has quangos in his sights. To be fair to him, he does seem to appreciate the problem with ‘quasi-autonomous non-government

Steerpike

Parliament splashes £4 million on traffic marshals

If you, dear reader, have visited parliament in recent years, you might have had the misfortune to be confronted by one of the new-fangled orange traffic marshals popping up around the estate. Given the crumbling state of the Commons, Mr S is constantly querying whether this army of apparatchiks is really necessary – given that most cars crawl through the estate at around five miles per hour. But, alas, it seems that the bosses in the Palace of Westminster know best… Still, all that ‘elf n safety shtick does come with a price. Steerpike has done some digging and it turns out that the price tag is quite considerable. An

Iain Macwhirter

Nicola Sturgeon’s dismal legacy

The departure of the former Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, from active politics draws a line under the Scottish National Party’s greatest generation. Her former mentor, Alex Salmond, died suddenly of a heart attack in October. Now, Sturgeon has told her supporters that “the time is right for me to embrace different opportunities and to allow you to select a new standard-bearer”. Sturgeon, of course, relinquished her hold on the standard of government in February 2023 when she resigned suddenly and plunged her party into chaos from which it has yet to recover. When she departed Bute House, in the wake of the scandal over her flagship Gender Recognition Reform

Jane Stannus

Is Canada doing enough to stop the US trade war?

There’s such a thing as cutting off your nose to spite your face, and the tariff war between Canada and the US is beginning to look like a case in point. On Monday, the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford announced a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity exports to the US, with 1.5 million households and businesses in New York, Michigan and Minnesota likely to be impacted. Trump responded with all-caps outrage, raising the March 12 tariff on steel and aluminium coming into the United States from Canada from 25 to 50 per cent — a threat that would mean curtains for Ontario’s auto sector. How, asked the US president,