Politics

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

Tuesday

Limor Simhony Philpott

‘Capturing’ Gaza could backfire spectacularly

Israel’s cabinet has given a green light an audacious plan to retake Gaza, signalling a serious shift in its approach to the war on the Hamas-controlled enclave. Approved on 5 May, the operation aims to seize the entire Strip, hold key territories, and maintain a long-term military presence – a stark departure from the hit-and-retreat tactics of the past.  With a timeline pegged to begin after Donald Trump’s regional visit from 13-16 May, the IDF are mobilising tens of thousands of reservists for what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls an ‘intensive’ campaign. But this high-stakes strategy, driven by the twin goals of crushing Hamas and freeing hostages, is fraught with

Monday

Lucy Dunn

Ash Regan: Scottish politicians have been gaslighting the public for years

Ash Regan quit Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP government almost three years ago in protest at the former first minister’s controversial gender reform bill. Regan rose to prominence after she left her role as community safety minister over the legislation and then stood, unsuccessfully, to be leader of the party in 2023 after Sturgeon stepped down. Fast forward about six months and Regan ditched the SNP altogether, defecting to the late Alex Salmond’s Alba party. Now, the pro-independence party’s Holyrood leader speaks to The Spectator about the changing state of politics north of the border, the first in a series of special Coffee House Shots episodes in the run-up to the 2026

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

My apology to Reform

I have read countless commentaries explaining why we shouldn’t take Reform’s victories last Thursday too seriously. They are all wrong. I have the distinct impression that these were the most significant election results for a good few decades. Up here in the north, everyone I know voted Reform. More importantly, when I used to ask people how they voted, they would beckon me to one side and, through a cupped hand, whisper ‘Reform’. Now they say it out loud and proud. And the apology is because I had doubted Reform’s ability to climb above 30 per cent – the crucial figure. I also doubted that they were serious enough about

Lucy Dunn

Ash Regan on the rise of Reform in Scotland, what is a woman and why ‘no-one resigns anymore’

21 min listen

In this special edition of Coffee House Shots, Lucy Dunn speaks to the Holyrood leader of the pro-independence Alba party, Ash Regan. Regan was formerly a member of the SNP and even ran to be the party’s leader after Nicola Sturgeon resigned in 2023. She defected to the late Alex Salmond’s Alba party 18 months ago and ran for party leader after his death. On the podcast, she talks to Lucy about the difference between Alba and the SNP, the threat of Reform in Scotland, the ‘performative’ nature of Scottish politics, the Supreme Court ruling over what is a woman, and why she was right to resign over the Gender Recognition

Lana Hempsall

The Motability scheme needs to be put into reverse

Keir Starmer’s government has taken some important first steps to bring the welfare budget under control. But expenditure on disability and incapacity benefits is still set to increase to almost £100 billion by the end of the decade, so more changes are needed. Every aspect of the welfare system must be examined to see if it is actually helping those it was designed to assist. The Motability scheme should be Starmer’s next target. Britain cannot afford a gold-plated scheme providing a subsidised car to many who simply do not need one Introduced in 1977, Motability was set up with admirable intentions: to provide vehicles, scooters and powered wheelchairs to disabled

Samuel Rubinstein

Cambridge can do better than Gina Miller

Oxford, said Matthew Arnold, was “the home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs”. Now Cambridge is giving it a run for its money. Oxford’s chancellor election last year was widely billed as a two-horse race between the elder statesmen Lords Mandelson and Hague; the latter in the end won handily. They both had their hang-ups and lost causes too, of course, but they were also men who matter. Fortunately for Gina Miller it is customary for Cambridge chancellors to be lacking in political acumen Does Gina Miller – who in her latest attention-seeking stunt wants to be the next chancellor of Cambridge University – matter? She did once. “I was

John Foreman

Don’t forget Bomber Command

There were many tributes when John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway, the last surviving fighter pilot of the Battle of Britain, died in March. Prince William said he was saddened about the death of the ‘last of The Few’ while the prime minister saluted Hemingway’s ‘extraordinary life’. There were no such statements in February on the death of Jack Harris, believed to have been the last surviving Lancaster bomber pilot. Official indifference to those who served in Bomber Command is not new. Churchill said little about the bomber offensive in his war memoirs, seeking to distance himself politically from the widespread destruction wrought by his own decision to focus on bombing as a way

Sunday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Tehran’s cruelty is closer than we think

The arrest of eight men – seven of them Iranian nationals – across the United Kingdom in two separate counter-terrorism operations is a chilling reminder that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not a distant threat. It is here, embedded within our cities, probing the limits of our law, our patience and our willingness to defend our democratic integrity. Scotland Yard has revealed only sparse details: a suspected plot to target a ‘specific premises’, and a parallel but unrelated investigation into national security threats. But while the particulars remain classified, the pattern is anything but new. The Islamic Republic has waged a campaign of covert hostility against the UK, Europe and

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Merz’s plan to reclaim Germany’s place on the world stage

‘Germany is back,’ said Friedrich Merz, the man likely to be elected as the new German Chancellor this coming week. What sounds like a promise to some and a threat to others is certainly a sign that the new German leadership will aim to take a more assertive role in European and world politics. Merz isn’t even chancellor yet, but he’s already keen to signal that he will take a more active interest in foreign policy than his predecessor. The outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz has gained a bit of a reputation for his reluctance to respond to international events, particularly the war in Ukraine. Shortly after the invasion began in

Nigel Jones

How great political parties die

Though local polls and by-elections are notoriously unreliable guides to general elections, and a week is indeed a long time in politics, what happened at last week’s local elections could portend one of the greatest changes in our political system in over a century: the permanent presence of Reform UK, and consequently the demise of our oldest political party, the Tories. The Tories have been around in various forms since the reign of King Charles II, when party politics emerged as a rivalry between the Tories and the Whigs over the issue of whether to exclude James II from the throne on the basis of his Catholic faith. The two

Elisabeth Dampier

Germany is dangerously close to banning the AfD

Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been declared ‘right-wing extremist’ who are ‘against the free democratic order’ by Germany’s domestic intelligence service. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) can now increase its investigation of the AfD, including tapping their phones, intercepting their electronic communications, and recruiting informants within the party. Public servants, especially those in the police or military, may find themselves fired unless they leave the party. Members of the party may find themselves barred from gun ownership. Some in public sector television are calling for the AfD to be kept off the airwaves. The AfD is being treated as though it were a dangerous fringe group,

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Streeting calls Reform a ‘real threat’ to Labour

Wes Streeting admits that Reform UK might become Labour’s ‘main challengers’ Thursday’s local elections were bruising for both main parties, and a huge success for Reform UK, who won 677 seats. On Sky News this morning, Trevor Phillips asked Health Secretary Wes Streeting if Reform were taking votes away from Labour’s working class base. Streeting described Reform as a ‘real threat’, and suggested they might be the government’s main opposition by the next election. The health secretary called for Reform to receive more ‘airtime and scrutiny’, arguing that Farage’s healthcare policies are ‘a real threat to the NHS’, and added that Labour had to demonstrate ‘real improvement to people’s lives’

Michael Murphy

What Micheal Martin gets wrong about the 1916 proclamation

As thousands of protesters thundered through central Dublin over Easter weekend, waving a sea of tricolour flags, Ireland’s anti-immigration movement staked a bold claim. The legacy of the Easter Rising martyrs – who underwrote with their lives the founding of the Irish state – was theirs. ‘We will be a true following on from our forefathers in 1916 who had a workers’ revolution,’ declared Malachy Steenson, a Dublin councillor and nationalist leader.  This fusion of grassroots nationalism and potent revolutionary symbols powered the largest demonstration yet. A genie was out of the bottle, and the establishment took notice. It provoked a bitter historical tug-of-war as the government, mindful of the symbolic power of

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The ugly truth about Lucy Powell’s grooming gangs comments

This week Lucy Powell, leader of the House of Commons, did something unusual for a politician: she spoke from the heart. Her dismissal of the rape gangs as a ‘dog whistle’ was no gaffe. It was not a ‘blunder’. It was a brutally honest expression of the government’s exasperation with this pesky scandal. It was savagely candid, pulling back the curtain on Labour’s gross and haughty indifference to this outrage in which thousands of working-class girls suffered the most unspeakable abuse. Powell has essentially scoffed at thousands of working-class women by calling the scandal that ravaged their girlhoods a ‘little trumpet’ It was on Any Questions that Powell gave voice

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Jordan Bardella’s moment has arrived

It is time to take seriously the possibility that the next president of France will be Jordan Bardella. His star power was persuasively demonstrated at Thursday’s May Day rally of the Rassemblement National (RN) in Narbonne, the heartland of the French right. It was part political rally, part disco. The demographic was startling. The party stalwarts, aging boomers who have been voting for Le Pens for forty years, were heavily outnumbered by young people, dancing in front of the stage, waving tricolours. The French political establishment has long portrayed the RN as extremist, but Bardella threatens that characterisation Marine Le Pen, 56, spoke first and was rapturously applauded by her

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Are Protestants free to criticise Catholicism?

The death of a Pope is a time for assorted reflections on the Catholic Church. Protestants can be wary of speaking up. Even the word ‘Protestant’ is not a very familiar one these days. Sure, most of us know that the Church of England is Protestant, and that Luther was Protestant and that the Reformation was the birth of the Protestant movement. But the Church of England doesn’t draw attention to its Protestant identity. There’s a vague sense that to do so would be bigoted. For doesn’t Protestant mean anti-Catholic? The last proud Protestant was Ian Paisley – and even he softened in old age. It is now widely felt

Robin Ashenden

Are the Tories really mad enough to change their leader again?

To no one’s surprise, this week’s election results make miserable reading for the Tories, and the attacks on Kemi Badenoch have now begun. In an article in The Spectator, William Atkinson lambasts her as ‘an active barrier to the party’s saving itself,’ adding that she ‘had her chance to prove herself and has been found wanting.’  Meanwhile, there are stories in the press of senior Tories angling for her close rival, shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick, to take over as head of the Conservatives. Badenoch herself was prepared for this, declaring in advance that the results would be ‘challenging’ but denying they would be a comment on her leadership: ‘We

John Curtice

Who can knock out Mr Farage?

David Cameron’s promise of an EU referendum in 2013 was designed to head off the apparent challenge to his party’s election hopes that was being posed by Nigel Farage’s Ukip. Although Ukip still did well in the 2015 election, the Conservatives won an overall majority. Unfortunately for Mr Cameron, he lost the subsequent referendum, and his party was then tossed into years of turmoil over how the decision to leave should be implemented. Still, in 2019, Boris Johnson’s promise to deliver his ‘oven-ready’ Brexit deal headed off the threat from Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and paved the way to another overall majority. Brexit was duly delivered and, it seemed, the

Ed McGuinness

What Kneecap won’t tell you about growing up in Belfast

The three members of Irish rap band Kneecap are ‘ceasefire babies’: they grew up on the streets of Belfast around the time of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. So did I. But the similarities between me and the band end there. Despite what some of Kneecap’s fans might think, there was nothing glamorous about life as a ‘ceasefire baby’ On a November night in 2001, I was at the cinema with my brother. In Belfast, one of the best cinemas at the time was in Yorkgate. Unfortunately, it was situated at what is known as a ‘flashpoint’, where the Catholic New Lodge estate abutted the fiercely Protestant Tigers Bay. Riots were common. A

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour minister: rape gangs are a ‘dog whistle’ 

Uh oh. Commons Leader Lucy Powell has found herself in hot water after making some rather careless remarks on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions yesterday. The Labour politician sparked outrage over her reaction to a point by Tim Montgomerie – the founder of Conservative Home who has since aligned himself with Reform – who brought up a recent Channel 4 documentary on grooming gangs.  Cutting across him, Powell replied: ‘Oh we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we?’ ‘No,’ Montgomerie responded. ‘There was a real issue…’. Not that Powell appeared willing to listen, interrupting again: ‘Let’s get that dog whistle out, shall we?’ Oo er. Talk about flippant!