Politics

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

Friday

21 Nov 2025

We don't need white saviours to rescue us from St George's flags

Trends in society always come and go, but one that shows no signs of abating is the propensity among many to take offence at words or symbols. Just because that derisive word of the last decade, ‘snowflake’, has fallen out of fashion, it doesn’t mean that these hypersensitive souls have disappeared. Being compassionate in a patronising fashion from afar is mandatory behaviour for white liberals and our aloof, elite classes Emily Spurrell, chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, is a case in point. Spurrell hit out at the surge in St George’s and Union Jack flags being hung on lamp posts, motorway bridges and street signs across

Lara Prendergast

Labour's toxic budget, Zelensky in trouble & Hitler's genitalia

39 min listen

It’s time to scrap the budget, argues political editor Tim Shipman this week. An annual fiscal event only allows the Chancellor to tinker round the edges, faced with a backdrop of global uncertainty. Endless potential tax rises have been trailed, from taxes on mansions, pensions, savings, gambling, and business partnerships, and nothing appears designed to fix Britain’s structural problems. Does our economics editor Michael Simmons agree? Host Lara Prendergast is joined by co-host – and the Spectator’s features editor – William Moore, alongside associate editor Owen Matthews and economics editor Michael Simmons. As well as the cover, they discuss: the corruption scandal that has weakened Ukraine’s President Zelensky –

Michael Gove

Q&A: Is it time to abolish the Treasury?

36 min listen

To submit your urgent questions to Michael and Maddie, go to: spectator.co.uk/quiteright This week on Quite right! Q&A: Is the Treasury still fit for purpose – or has ‘Treasury brain’ taken over Whitehall? Michael and Maddie dig into the culture and power of Britain’s most influential department, from the Oxbridge-heavy ‘Treasury boys’ to a ‘visionless’ Chancellor. Then: after Michael’s suggestion that Piers Morgan should be the next director-general of the BBC – why, in his view, could cnly a disruptive outsider could shake the organisation out of its complacency. Plus: the rise of ‘Mar-a-Lago face’ in US conservative politics, and whether Britain has its own aesthetic quirks – from Ozempic-thinned

Thursday

20 Nov 2025

Madeline Grant

Creasy’s opposition is the best advert for Mahmood’s migrant crackdown

One must say this for the Home Secretary, she is a Parliamentary Pugilist. While the general demeanour of the government in which she serves has a Sir Robin the Chickenhearted attitude to parliamentary spats (one can imagine the adenoidal cry of ‘Run Away’ ricocheting around No. 10 every Wednesday), Shabana Mahmood seems to enjoy a fight with all and sundry. Nobody epitomises the arrogance and intellectual expiration of the Labour party better than Stella Creasy She had fun at the despatch box earlier this week, trolling Green MPs into lengthy tantrums. There was unfinished business for the Home Secretary from one particular bout. Step forward Max Wilkinson, the smarmy Lib

Steerpike

Covid report: governments acted ‘too little, too late’

Back to the Covid inquiry, where chair Baroness Heather Hallett has presented the findings of its report. The conclusions don’t particularly paint anyone in a good light and the report even claims that acting ‘too little , too late’ cost the country as many as 23,000 lives in England – although this figure is already being disputed given that, um, ‘modelling’ doesn’t establish anything. The report also suggests that lockdown could have been avoided altogether had social distancing and isolation been introduced earlier. Good heavens… Former prime minister Boris Johnson has been dragged back into the limelight too, after the report claimed that BoJo failed to tackle a ‘toxic and

Oscar Edmondson

Is Labour turning blue?

12 min listen

While we wait for the findings of the Covid Inquiry into the decision-making during the pandemic, Shabana Mahmood has given a statement in the Commons outlining further details of Labour’s migration crackdown. The headline is that those who arrived during the so-called ‘Boriswave’ will have to wait up to 20 years before achieving settled status. Figures within Reform are having fun with the suggestion that the Home Secretary is more aligned with them on migration, but it is perhaps fairer to say that Shabana is taking her cues from the Blue Labour movement. What is Blue Labour? And is Shabana Blue Labour? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Isabel Hardman and Paul

Tom Mangold

How the BBC covered up the Bashir scandal

When, as a snivel-nosed provincial reporter, I arrived at the Sunday Pictorial (now the Sunday Mirror) the news editor gave me a lengthy briefing, a huge unlit cigar rolled around his mouth: ‘This not the Croydon Advertiser Tom’, he advised. ‘I don’t want reporters. I want operators. When you do the big story for me, you don’t cover the story you inhabit it. You wear it like a coat; it becomes your entire life. Forget your marriage, holidays, private time, weekends off… You become the chauffeur, the buyer of drinks and dinners and bunches of roses. Then, slowly you become the dry shoulder, helpful adviser, the trusted confidante. Soon you know more about

Steerpike

Ex-Labour MP joins Greens

Zack Polanski’s Green party has experienced a membership boom in recent months, after the new leader was elected at the end of summer. Under the eco-populist’s rule, the party has seen its membership figures soar and its accounts are looking healthier than ever with recent reports suggesting that party has, er, too much money to know what to do with. One of the new sign-ups is no stranger to the House of Commons – as onetime Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown and Peaceheaven Lloyd Russell-Moyle has jumped ship. How interesting… Discussing his move, Russell-Moyle gushed: For almost ten years I worked alongside Caroline [Lucas] as the MP next door. My

Lisa Haseldine

The Ukraine peace proposal raises more questions than it answers

Volodymyr Zelensky is meeting US officials today for the first time since the news of a US-Russia peace plan for Ukraine emerged yesterday. The Ukrainian president, fresh from a trip to Turkey, is due to meet with the American army chiefs Dan Driscoll and General Randy George – the most senior Pentagon representatives to visit Ukraine since Donald Trump’s return to the White House – who are in the country on a ‘fact-finding’ mission. The purpose of the meeting is for Trump’s representatives to discuss ‘efforts to end the war’. While the agenda has not been made public, it is highly likely the trio will discuss the new 28-point peace plan,

Steerpike

Home Secretary slams 'car crash' leadership bid briefings

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has dominated the headlines this week after she announced her plans to crackdown on asylum seekers in the UK. Mahmood’s tough talk has earned her criticism from some of her own colleagues about the Labour party’s stance on immigration, while some of her opponents in the Conservative and Reform parties have praised her position. But the issue of immigration is not the only area in which Mahmood is prepared to ruffle feathers – on the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast, she had some pretty harsh words for some in her own party. Last week, some rather extraordinary briefings came out of Downing Street. No. 10 warned anyone

Stephen Daisley

Northern Ireland's Christian RE crackdown should trouble us all

Schools in Northern Ireland which teach pupils that Christianity is true are breaking the law. That is the ruling of the Supreme Court, which finds that religious education lessons and collective worship which aren’t ‘objective, critical and pluralistic’ are a form of ‘indoctrination’. It also finds that allowing parents to withdraw their children from these activities, which is already a statutory right, is not enough because doing so might place an ‘undue burden’ on parents or stigmatise the child. By its very nature, Christianity is an absolute truth claim: Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God who died for our sins The case involves a girl who, between 2017

Steerpike

Burnham dodges questions on Westminster return

Well, well, well. Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is back in the spotlight. Earlier this week, Norwich South MP Clive Lewis offered up his seat to allow Burnham to make a leadership challenge. Left-winger Lewis announced on the Beeb’s Politics Live that he would be happy to let Burnham take his seat to allow the Manchester mayor to return to the Commons and put ‘country before party, party before personal ambition’. How interesting… But when quizzed on whether he would take Lewis up on the offer, Burnham dodged the question. Speaking to the BBC this morning, the Manchester man remarked: I appreciate the support. But I couldn’t have brought forward

Debbie Hayton

There’s no easy way to manage single-sex spaces

Transgender people could be banned from single-sex spaces based on how they are perceived by other people according to the Times. The newspaper reports seeing a copy of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s transgender guidance that was handed to ministers in early September. The EHRC was never going to please both sides of what has become an impassioned debate. Now it seems that they have come up with a code of practice that will please neither. The gender identity lobby will hate it because it will require transgender people to put on some sort of performance to access spaces designated for the opposite sex. Meanwhile, those who have championed

Katja Hoyer

Why can’t Friedrich Merz just say sorry?

‘We live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world,’ began a seemingly innocuous speech by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last week. The words that followed earned him the wrath of the largest state in South America. Just back from the Cop climate summit in Belem, Brazil, Merz declared that his delegation had been ‘glad to return from that place’. When he’d asked the accompanying journalists if anyone would like to stay, ‘nobody raised their hand’. Appearing to compare their country unfavourably to Germany, Merz’s remarks offended many of Brazil’s leaders. President Lula hit back by suggesting Merz should have gone out to a bar or dancing in Belem before passing judgment

Jim Lawley

Spain's post-Franco democracy is on the rocks

‘Fine weather in Malaga’ proclaimed the banner headline of a Spanish newspaper in 1974 – that was the day’s big story. There was nothing about the country’s social and economic problems or the Carnation Revolution bringing democracy to neighbouring Portugal. After almost four decades in charge, the dictator Francisco Franco had effectively depoliticised Spain. ‘A century and a half of parliamentary democracy,’ Franco said, ‘accompanied by the loss of immense territory, three civil wars, and the imminent danger of national disintegration, add up to a disastrous balance sheet, sufficient to discredit parliamentary systems in the eyes of the Spanish people.’ Yet once Franco died – fifty years today – a

David Goodhart

Is Shabana Mahmood Labour's Iron Lady?

Has the Labour party finally found its answer to Margaret Thatcher? Shabana Mahmood’s withering response to Lib Dem MP Max Wilkinson’s po-faced complaint about her language in the asylum debate this week must rank as the most devastating, and justified, playing of the race card in recent parliamentary history. Opposition to using every legal means to stop the boats, she implied, is a kind of luxury belief enjoyed only by those who aren’t at risk of being called a ‘F***ing P***’ in the street. Has the Labour party finally found its answer to Margaret Thatcher? Turning the tables on the racial justice panjandrums on her own side by citing her

Douglas Murray

Trump’s Epstein gamble

It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was a time during President Trump’s first term when Steve Bannon fitted the role – and relished playing it. Back then most days brought another media profile of the dark genius of the MAGA movement. The Guardian, New York Times and others were obsessed. Vanity Fair would send reporters to follow Bannon as he conquered America and, er, Europe. Documentary crews were perennially in tow. Indeed one documentary following Bannon around included a scene in which they followed him to the showing of another documentary about him from a crew who

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: an immigration overhaul, Budget chaos and doctors’ strikes

Home Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, proposed that refugees would only be granted a temporary right to stay and would be sent home if officials deemed their country safe to return to. They would not qualify for British citizenship for 20 years. To avoid drawn-out appeals, a new appeals body would be created. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects migrants’ ‘right to family life’, would somehow be weakened. Digital ID was invoked for the enforcement of checks on status. Opponents seized upon the possibility that, to pay for accommodation, migrants’ jewellery would be confiscated. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, offered her party’s support if the

James Heale

Labour may have lost the countryside forever

Before the last election, Keir Starmer promised that his party’s relationship with the countryside would be ‘based on respect, on genuine partnership’. But, 16 months into his premiership, the government is shedding rural votes after Rachel Reeves’s changes to inheritance tax. Protesters wearing flat caps and riding tractors have become a familiar sight in Westminster, such is the outrage about the effect on family farms. At the most recent protests, Labour MPs in rural seats were reduced to begging the Treasury to pause the changes ahead of the Budget. ‘So many of my farmers are pleading with me,’ admitted Samantha Niblett, MP for South Derbyshire. In the words of Ribble

Tim Shipman

It’s time to dispose of the Budget

Denis Healey’s ‘caretaker Budget’ on 3 April 1979 is an odd focus for Labour nostalgia. It came a week after Jim Callaghan’s government had lost a vote of no confidence, paving the way for Margaret Thatcher’s arrival in No. 10. Healey was reduced to merely introducing the finance bill to maintain normal tax collection functions, and made no other announcements at all. But as chaos surrounds Rachel Reeves’s second Budget next week, one senior figure fondly recalled that simpler time. Healey began his 27-minute ‘non-Budget’ (as Geoffrey Howe called it) speech by confessing: ‘I feel a little bit like a man who turns up to play the leading role in