Politics

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

Saturday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The slippery slope to the return of the death penalty

Parliament has voted to proceed with Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill, which will see the NHS offer terminally ill people the opportunity to kill themselves and the lethal drugs with which to do so. The debate over assisted suicide is complex and often heated, with sincere and well-intentioned people approaching its profound moral and ethical quandaries from very different but passionately held perspectives. I would like to set those questions aside for now and ask a different but related one: if the state can help end the lives of terminally ill people, why shouldn’t it end the lives of murderers? The state can now be a party to the premature

Charles Lister

Syria’s conflict is heating up once more

Since March 2020, Syria’s conflict lines have been frozen, as Russia, Turkey, Iran and the United States held together a series of ceasefires and security understandings. That all changed this week, when a broad coalition of armed opposition groups launched a surprise and daring offensive west of Aleppo city. As ‘Operation Deter Aggression’ was launched on Wednesday morning, the goal was to expand opposition control of Aleppo’s western countryside, from where Syrian regime forces had been indiscriminately shelling civilian areas for years. Many would have assumed that goal was ambitious, but within three days, more than 80 villages and towns had been captured. Syrian regime forces and their Iranian proxy

Andrew Tettenborn

Is there really a human rights crisis in the Highlands?

It’s grim up north in Scotland, we’re told. A mission from Edinburgh has produced a report about the woes of life in the Highlands and Islands, and a demand for measures to deal with them. Problems include a high incidence of poverty; a lack of affordable housing and public transport; long trips to the nearest hospital or surgery; limited social care; cultural desertification; a lack of local places of worship suitable for refugees; limited childcare and access to fresh food; and a good deal besides. Highlanders aren’t cowering at the feet of some megalomaniac dictator in Lochaber So far, so predictable. But this report comes not from some progressive think-tank, but from

Robert Service

How to negotiate with Russians

Russians are notorious for an aggressiveness at the negotiating table. In 2017 I met a group of diplomats from eastern Europe who highlighted this. They made the point that western commentary understates, if anything, the Russian habit in official talks to insult and intimidate. Apparently Putinite finger-wagging is the least of it and street-language curses and threats are completely normal. Countries to the east of the river Elbe are still regarded in the Kremlin as Russia’s eternal zone of influence. But Russian politicians also know how to diversify their table manners. They can recognise an opportunity when they see one, and Vladimir Putin expects to deploy gentler manners with Donald

Patrick West

Is DEI dead?

The triumph of Donald Trump and the defeat of a Democratic party beholden to identity politics has prompted many to conclude that woke ideology is dead. The problem here is that people have been writing this obituary for some years now, ever since the ideology reached its apex of insanity in the summer of 2020. Still, it has refused to die. Corporations have come to realise that feigning voguish positions on social matters is not good for business However, the hyper-liberal dogma does now display tangible signs of retreat in one area: the business sector. If woke is not quite dead yet, then its opportunist capitalist offshoot, does at least

Friday

Yuan Yi Zhu

History will not be kind to the MPs who backed assisted dying

Before MPs voted to support the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, Kim Leadbeater, who has sponsored the bill, rose on a point of order. There were murmurs in the House. Then Leadbeater said, a little sheepishly, that she wanted to correct the record. She had wrongly implied that serving members of the judiciary had indicated they support the bill. The Judicial Office had written to her, telling her off; and now she was repenting at the eleventh hour. It was a fitting conclusion to a debate that has been, from beginning to the end, characterised by falsehoods. Still, MP after MP stood up and thanked Leadbeater for the way

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What’s going on in Mar-a-Lago?

45 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Tara Palmeri, senior political correspondent for Puck. They discuss how the presidential transition is going. Is the breakneck speed with which he appointed his cabinet even more chaotic than last time? Is the process rife with backstabbing? And are your really ever ‘in’ or ‘out’ when it comes to Trump?

Charlotte Henry

Ed Davey needs to grow up

Sir Ed Davey has released a Christmas single. No, really. Called ‘Love is Enough’, it is, of course, all in aid of a good cause. The Lib Dem leader has joined forces with the Bath Philharmonia’s Young Carers’ Choir to raise awareness of the difficulties encountered by young carers – something Sir Ed has personal experience of. You’ll forgive me for not reviewing the track itself because, as a heavy metal fan, I barely made it through the first 90 seconds. The issue, though, is not the lack of shredding guitar riffs but the ongoing lack of seriousness from a man who now leads the third-biggest party in the House

James Heale James Heale

Assisted dying bill passes second reading – what next?

14 min listen

The controversial assisted dying bill has passed its second reading in the House of Commons with a majority of 55 after just hours of debate. It now heads to committee stage for further scrutiny. What does the bill’s passing at this stage mean for its likelihood of eventually becoming law? And will Labour’s front bench unify behind the bill given the deep-seated opposition from figures such as Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood? James Heale discusses with Katy Balls and Michael Gove. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Cindy Yu.

Steerpike Steerpike

New MPs were more likely to back assisted dying

Does wisdom come with age? MPs have just voted by a margin of 55 to back a bill to legalise assisted suicide. In what was the first Commons vote on assisted death for a decade, MPs voted 330 to 275 in favour of the bill.  The new intake of parliamentarians – those first elected in 2024 or returning after an enforced absence – were nearly twice as likely to back assisted suicide than any other intake. You might think this is just because most of the new MPs sit on Labour’s benches. Well, perhaps. But this was a free vote on an issue of conscience so we wouldn’t necessarily expect

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will the assisted dying bill become law?

The assisted dying bill has passed its second reading. After an emotionally charged debate, MPs have voted 330 to 275 in support of private members bill – a majority of 55. It means that Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater will now take her bill to committee stage for further scrutiny as parliament edges closer to giving some terminally ill people the right to end their lives in England and Wales. This comes after weeks of debate and criticism, including within Keir Starmer’s own cabinet – with both the Health Secretary Wes Streeting and the Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood voicing concerns over the bill, which would allow those with just six months to

Coffee House

Full list: how the cabinet voted on assisted dying

This afternoon the House of Commons voted to support assisted dying for the first time. By a majority of 55, MPs decided to back Kim Leadbeater’s Private Members’ Bill, with 330 recorded ‘Aye’ votes against 275 ‘Nays.’ More than a third of the cabinet were against the move which the Prime Minister, Chancellor and Home Secretary all decided to support. Some 234 Labour MPs voted for the measure, with 147 against. By contrast, 92 Tories voted against it, with 23 – including Rishi Sunak – backing the measure. The party most in favour was the Liberal Democrats, with 61 of their 72 MPs supporting Leadbeater’s legislation and just 11 against.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

MPs back assisted dying, but was the debate long enough?

The debate on assisted dying, which culminated in a victory for those in favour, hasn’t been long enough – we knew that from the start – but it has been a very good one. There have been some very powerful arguments on both sides. There has also been a division between those who think that voting for the legislation at this stage is merely a qualified agreement to let it receive further scrutiny, and those who see it as an endorsement, both of the principle and of the detail.  A number of MPs who spoke in favour, including David Davis and Liz Saville-Roberts, nonetheless raised concerns with the drafting, with

Alexander Kolyandr

Russia’s tanking ruble spells trouble for Putin

Russia’s ruble is in trouble. The currency has plunged to its lowest rate against the dollar since the weeks after the outbreak of war against Ukraine. On Wednesday, the ruble hit 110 against the dollar for the first time since 16 March 2022. The currency has recovered slightly, to 108 against the dollar this morning, but in Moscow people are worried. There are no good remedies for the Russian economy’s malaise apart from ending the war Russians who lived through the tumultuous years after the collapse of the Soviet Union know all about the dangers of currency devaluation. While, clearly, things aren’t as bad as they were in the 1990s,

Barry O’Halloran

Ireland has been living beyond its means for far too long

Today, an Irish election takes place which has seen parties from the left, right, and centre seek to outbid each other in making extravagant electoral promises.  While Irish government over-spending on vanity projects is nothing new, recently public service profligacy has risen to entirely new heights. €350,000 was forked out on a bicycle shed for parliamentarians. It seems it won’t even protect their bicycles from that most common form of Irish weather: rain.  Irish political leaders are extremely concerned that the incoming US President could kill the golden goose A children’s hospital that was scheduled to cost €650,000 is now running at €2.2 billion, and it’s still not finished. And the daddy

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Are MPs rising to the assisted dying debate?

What are MPs actually debating today? Some of them seem a bit confused. We have had two hours so far of the debate on the second reading of Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, and a number of them seem to be talking about entirely different  things. Some are poring over the detail of the legislation, with Leadbeater pointing to the safeguards she has had written into it, and Danny Kruger arguing that some of the definitions of the people who can act as a proxy for patient are too loose, meaning that there is still a risk of abuse of the legislation. But then, there have been others who have wanted

Ross Clark Ross Clark

What if assisted dying turned out to save lives?

Who would envy being an MP today when called upon to vote on a matter of conscience: the assisted dying bill? The issue cuts across party lines, and so whichever way they vote they will offend a good proportion of their own voters. But on the other hand, for once they are being trusted to use their own judgement rather than hiding behind party whips. That, surely, must be liberating. Might the comfort of knowing that assisted suicide were available at a later date dissuade able people from taking their lives? And which of us can say we haven’t found ourselves feeling that we must come down on one side or the other? I

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Does anyone know how many people live in Britain?

Can Britain trust its economic statistics? The nation’s arbiters of numerical truth, the Office for National Statistics, yesterday released what on the face of it was good news for the Home Office and a vindication of the previous Conservative government’s policies to reduce worker visas and the number of dependants of migrants arriving in the UK. But in truth – and in the same data dump – the previous year’s figure had been revised up so much (by 307,000) that had it not been, the net migration figure published yesterday would have matched the previous record high. These revisions matter. Douglas McWilliams, founder of the Centre for Economics and Business

James Heale James Heale

Louise Haigh’s resignation raises questions for Keir Starmer

11 min listen

In the small hours of this morning Louise Haigh resigned as Transport Secretary following the revelation that she had pleaded guilty to a criminal offence in 2014. Haigh admitted fraud by false representation at a magistrates’ court after she incorrectly told the police that a work mobile had been stolen in 2013. She was then convicted and received a conditional discharge. The incident occurred six months before she became an MP. Haigh had been in hot water just a month ago after her comments nearly cost the government a one billion-pound investment deal with P&O. Is her resignation a little too convenient for the Prime Minister?  James Heale speaks to

Polly Billington

Why I voted against the assisted dying bill

Why would anyone vote to prolong the suffering of others? That is the question that bears heavily on me and my colleagues as we prepare to vote on the private members bill to legalise assisted suicide today. It is with a heavy heart as a progressive that I will be voting against the bill. Reducing suffering is part of the reason people take part in public life. This is especially the case, if you believe as I do, in enabling people to have more control and autonomy over their lives.  This is not just about those with loving families and friends – we also have to protect the vulnerable from bad