Politics

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

Tuesday

25 Feb 2025

Amanda Pritchard resigns as NHS boss

Amanda Pritchard is resigning as chief executive of NHS England, after three years in the job. Pritchard’s announcement, in the last few minutes, is not a huge surprise given there had not been a great deal of confidence among ministers and aides in the leadership of the NHS – though it is worth pointing out that this lack of confidence was not solely focused on Pritchard. Pritchard’s departure leaves Streeting and colleagues more exposed Pritchard had been very anxious to show that she was ready and willing to implement the reforms that Labour wanted to introduce, particularly the shift from acute, hospital-based care to preventive and community services. But she

Gavin Mortimer

Trump and Macron’s backslapping masks a rocky relationship

It would be a stretch to describe Emmanuel Macron’s meeting with Donald Trump as a ‘bromance’, but there were plenty of warm handshakes and even warmer words, with the French president at one moment addressing his host as ‘Dear Donald’. Macron had flown to Washington on Monday to press the case for Europe in the upcoming negotiations between the USA and Russia over the war in Ukraine. The two presidents had a two-hour virtual meeting with leaders from the G7 along with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Macron and Trump then held a press conference during which the President of France declared that ‘after speaking with President Trump, I fully

James Hanson

The endless entitlement of Waspi women

In this godforsaken era of feigned victimhood, is there any group less worthy of our sympathy than the Waspi women? Having been, rightly, denied compensation by the government in December, they are now threatening legal action unless they are given a payout. Will their entitlement never end? It’s hard to know where to start with this dreadful campaign. Their name alone should be considered a breach of the trade descriptions act. ‘Women Against State Pension Inequality’ suggests they’re campaigning against some great disparity. Except they’re not. They’re just angry that the inequality from which they historically benefited has come to end. ‘Women Against State Pension Equality’ would be a more

Steerpike

Watch: Trump and Macron share awkward handshake

Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron have some odd history. The US president and his French counterpart don’t particularly see eye to eye and their strained relations have, over the years, been reflected in a series of rather intense handshakes – with one lasting for a full 29 seconds during a 2017 encounter. Crikey. Their meeting on Monday was similar. The duo met to discuss European plans for peace in Ukraine, including the possibility of deploying western troops in Kyiv, after joining a call with other G7 leaders on the matter. The meet followed the US president’s claim that Britain and France had ‘done nothing’ to end the war in Ukraine –

Sam Meadows

The reason Javier Milei is releasing Argentina’s secret Nazi files

In the Oscar-nominated movie The Holdovers, one of the characters says in a moment of frustration: ‘I thought all the Nazis ran away to Argentina.’ This line got a big laugh in cinemas in Buenos Aires. But while the events this joke alludes to now lie far enough in the past for today’s Argentines to chuckle at, the flight of Nazis to its shores remains an extremely uncomfortable period in the history of the South American country. Many former Nazi officers and party members fled Europe for South America in the years after the war and Argentina became a popular destination. Estimates for how many Nazis settled in the country

Jonathan Miller

Donald Trump humiliated Emmanuel Macron

The orca killer whale is known for playing with its prey before killing it, always with a smile. An image that came to mind on Monday when French President Emmanuel Macron arrived at the White House to plead the cause of Ukraine to a grinning President Donald Trump. The French media is dutifully repeating the Elysée line that Macron had rekindled a bromance with the American president, but this is disconnected from reality. Macron returns to Paris today with, as far as I can tell, nothing but platitudes. This was nothing like Macron’s visits to Washington during the Biden administration, when the French president used to deal with Biden’s sympathetic secretary

Chas Newkey-Burden

Is ‘catch and release’ fishing really ethical?

Ask anyone if they think that cruelty to animals is OK and they’ll say no – but are they being truthful? If they eat meat, they’ll insist that the meat they eat is ‘high-welfare’, but 85 per cent of the UK’s farmed animals endured their shortened lives on brutal factory farms, so nearly everyone who says their meat is ‘high welfare’ is telling porkies. Fishing is growing in popularity and there are similarly hollow boasts from those who sit by the riverside. According to the Angling Trust, thousands of young people have been awarded rod licences over the last couple of years and angling influencers now share drone footage

Gareth Roberts

Why Brits keep getting a tongue lashing from Team Trump

So much for the Special Relationship. Since Donald Trump took office in January, Brits have been taking quite a tongue-lashing from the US president’s team. Keir Starmer, who touches down in Washington on Thursday to meet Trump, has been nicknamed “two-tier Keir” by the president’s consigliere Elon Musk over his handling of grooming gangs. JD Vance, the vice president, also seems to have it in for Brits: Vance has mocked Rory Stewart (not something we need help with but thanks anyway, Veep); ‘The problem with Rory and people like him,’ wrote Vance, ‘is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130’. Vance spluttered

Monday

24 Feb 2025

Steerpike

‘Orwellian’ Commons in MPs’ bar crackdown

Happy freedom day! Yes, that’s right – after more than a month closed, the Strangers’ bar in the Palace of Westminster has today finally re-opened. Peers and MPs piled in to celebrate the return of their beloved watering hole. But, alas, already there are reports that Strangers’ will no longer be the fleshpot, following allegations of a spiking incident. First, there was PoliticsHome reporting that new rules means that the bar will now have a maximum capacity of 50 with a doorkeeper using a tally counter and unaccompanied guests being kicked out after 15 minutes. And this evening Mr S brings more sad news: pass readers are going to be

Gavin Mortimer

France’s National Rally has lost its way

Jordan Bardella flew to America last week on a trip he had long boasted about. The president of the National Rally – and all his party – had been a little put out that the only French politicians invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration were Eric Zemmour and Sarah Knafo of the right-wing Reconquest. It was with relish, then, that Bardella boarded a flight to Washington to attend the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Here was his party’s chance to announce itself to America, while rubbing shoulders with the representatives of the new zeitgeist: JD Vance, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, Giorgia Meloni, Argentine President Javier Milei, Blighty’s own Nigel

Owen Matthews

How the Ukraine conflict has changed the nature of war

Three years ago today, Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border in a massive surprise attack. Russian unit commanders and soldiers were told to prepare for a three-day campaign – and indeed by the end of the day parachute units were fighting for control of the vital Hostomel military airport just a few miles from the centre of Kyiv. But over a thousand days later, many of the fundamentals of war and politics have been changed forever. For one, Europe found its conscience. In the run-up to the full-scale Russian invasion, some European countries – including Britain – were training Ukrainian infantry units in scattered partisan warfare and supplying man-portable anti

James Snell

Why the Foreign Office shouldn’t save Brits abroad

One of the perils of working in or even travelling to the Middle East and Central Asia is that there is a high risk of being taken hostage by autocratic states or terrorist groups. Peter Reynolds, 79, and Barbie, his 75-year-old wife, are the latest Brits to find this out the hard way. The couple, who have been running projects in Afghanistan for 18 years, were detained by the Taliban in Afghanistan on 1 February. Their children have heard nothing from them for a fortnight. The grim reality is that they might be left languishing as hostages for some time. A former colleague of mine at the New Lines Institute, Elizabeth Tsurkov, has been a hostage of either

James Heale

Ukraine war, three years on

13 min listen

Today marks three years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. From early fears of a swift Russian victory to the Kharkiv offensive and the slow war of attrition that has played out since, each stage of this war has been hard to predict. None more so than this stage, with the USA drastically changing tack and tearing up the transatlantic alliance by pursuing back-channel peace talks with Putin. Europe has been left scrambling. Where do we go from here? And with an isolationist USA, the breakdown of the European consensus on Ukraine and the UK’s armed forces being hollowed out, who is left to defend Europe? James

Martin Narey

In defence of short jail sentences

Mike Amesbury, the former Labour MP who has been sent to prison for ten weeks for punching a constituent in the street, is rather unlucky: the truth is that very few first-time offenders get locked up. It’s probable that those convicted of similar offences in the future may still be imprisoned. But the use of short prison sentences for non-violent offences, however numerous and persistent, are under threat. Very few first-time offenders get sent to prison David Gauke’s Sentencing Review, which is due to be published in full over the coming months, is likely to make it harder for magistrates to hand out short jail sentences. Shabana Mahmood, the Justice

Ross Clark

Is Britain’s ‘net zero economy’ really booming?

If you live opposite the vacant site in Northumberland that was supposed to become the Britishvolt ‘gigafactory’ pumping out batteries for the electric car industry, or near the Vestas wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight where half the 600 workers have been told they face redundancy, you might just struggle to believe that Britain is in the midst of a net zero jobs boom. Yet that is the striking claim that is being made by CBI Economics and the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU). The net zero sector, it says, grew by 10.1 per cent last year, added £83.1 billion in gross value added (GVA) and accounted

Steerpike

Ex-Reform Wales leader accused of taking Russian bribes

Uh oh. The ex-leader of Reform UK in Wales has appeared in court after being accused of accepting Russian bribes. Nathan Gill, 51, is facing eight counts of bribery alongside one count of conspiracy to commit bribery – to make statements, it is alleged, that would benefit Russia in the European parliament. Good heavens… Initially a Ukip member, Gill became a Brexit party MEP between 2014 and 2020. The ex-Reform leader has been accused of receiving money from the Ukrainian politician – and his co-defendant in the case – Oleg Voloshyn in return for making specific statements on at least eight occasions. The court heard that Gill’s remarks, made both

Steerpike

Energy bosses lose faith in Miliband’s net zero goals

When it rains for the Labour lot, it pours. Now Ed Miliband is in the firing line after a new global survey revealed a sharp fall in confidence about net zero among top energy bosses. The Energy Industries Council polling found just one in six energy chiefs believe the world can achieve net zero by 2050 – compared to nearly half of bosses who thought the same last year. Dear oh dear… Miliband’s Tory counterpart Andrew Bowie was pulling no punches about the results, telling the Daily Mail: When nearly half of senior energy executives lose faith in it, the government’s energy policy isn’t working. Instead of backing British industry,

James Heale

Reform fancies its chances in Mike Amesbury’s seat

This afternoon Mike Amesbury was sentenced to ten weeks in prison. The ex-Labour MP for Runcorn and Helsby was handed a custodial sentence at Chester Magistrates’ Court for assaulting a man in his constituency last October. Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram said the immediate custodial sentence was ‘necessary both as a punishment and a deterrent’. The sentence means a recall petition will be triggered in Runcorn and Helsby, unless Amesbury chooses to appeal.A recall petition means voters in the MP’s seat have six weeks to sign requesting a by-election; if 10 per cent sign the by-election goes ahead, but if the threshold is not met, the MP can stay in

Patrick West

Sam Fender is right about white privilege

Teaching working-class young men that they benefit from ‘white privilege’ is having a detrimental effect on a generation of boys, leading to feelings of negativity and worthlessness, and driving them into the hands of dangerous influencers such as Andrew Tate. This is the claim made by Sam Fender, the best-selling, 30-year-old musician from North Shields. As the singer told the Sunday Times yesterday, this teaching has resulted in boys from poor white backgrounds being ‘made to feel like they’re a problem’, with those from ‘nowhere towns’ being ‘shamed’ and told they weren’t underprivileged because of their skin colour. Consequently, this constant disparagement is leading many to seek consolation in misogynist

David Christopher Kaufman

Hamas’s hostage shows evoke a haunting comparison

Another weekend, another grotesque spectacle in Gaza. Hamas released its latest handful of Israeli hostages as part of the fragile ceasefire agreement which is expected to expire next week. As on many Saturdays before, Hamas paraded a trio of Israelis – Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, and Eliya Cohen – onto makeshift platforms emblazoned with multilingual propaganda declarations and decorative nationalistic flags. The Hamas production feels like nothing less than a slave auction in America’s South As cheering crowds looked on, the trio were then forced onto the stage, made to smile and wave as heavily-armed militants milled about, before finally being led to freedom by the Red Cross officials