Politics

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

Saturday

Steerpike Steerpike

JCB hand £200k to Reform and Tories

The battle on the right is well underway, with competition between Reform and the Tories for attention, ideas and personnel. One front where the Conservatives have had more success to date is on donations, with Kemi Badenoch’s party comfortably outstripping Nigel Farage’s forces in the first quarter of this year. But with Reform topping the polls for the past seven months, it is no surprise that some Tory donors are now sniffing around and keeping their options open. One donor of particular note is Lord Bamford, the chairman of JCB. A former Boris backer, he gave Badenoch £150,0000 at the beginning of June. But Farage has been building his own

Nigel Jones

James Watson deserved better

James Watson has died at the great age of 97. Obituaries of the American scientist, who, with his late British collaborator Francis Crick, first proposed the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, after paying due tribute to his earth-shattering discovery, inevitably included the information that his later years were clouded by his ‘controversial’ views on race and intelligence. The Nobel Prize-winning biologist was in fact one of the earliest victims of cancel culture in 2007, when, in an interview with the Times, he stated that he was ‘pessimistic’ about the future of sub-Saharan Africa because its inhabitants were genetically less intelligent than white Europeans. Immediately, Watson was condemned to

Tim Shipman

What the heck is Rachel Reeves up to?

Welcome to my first Evening Blend. Unless there are earth-shattering events each Friday, my intention is to try to cut through the events of the week and say what really mattered over the past five days. This week, it was the Treasury’s relentless efforts to ‘roll the pitch’ for the Budget. But the frenetic pace of the briefings and leaks is such that you have to ask: what the blithering heck is Rachel Reeves up to? The Chancellor gave a speech on Monday in which she explained that the parlous state she finds herself in was the fault of the Tories, Brexit, the pandemic, foreign wars and the like. She

James Heale James Heale

James Heale, Margaret Mitchell, Damien Thompson, Rebecca Reid & Julie Bindel

26 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale considers the climate conundrum at the heart of British politics; Rebecca Reid explains why she’s given up polyamory; Damien Thompson recounts the classical music education from his school days; Margaret Mitchell asks what’s happened to Britain’s apples; and Julie Bindel marvels at the history of pizza.  Produced and presented by James Lewis.

Tim Shipman

What Trump II can teach Britain

18 min listen

What lessons does America have for our politics? While progressives look to Zohran Mamdani for inspiration on how to get elected successfully, the really important question is how to govern effectively. And here it is the Trump administration which is setting the standard, writes Tim Shipman in this week’s cover story. On day one, Donald Trump stepped into the Oval Office ready to ‘move fast and break things’, signing a flurry of executive orders with the backing of unflinching loyalists. Brits who may have been appalled by Trump in his first term are now envious of his administration’s lack of infighting and success in bringing illegal migration to a halt, as well as

Rory Hanrahan

Britain has imported Ireland’s sectarian strife

At times, I still hear my late father, Sean O’Callaghan’s, voice echoing in my mind. Sean died in 2017 but there’s no doubt what he’d make of Britain today: that the sepsis of sectarianism is slowly, but surely, poisoning our bloodstream. We’re entrenching extremes and sidelining moderates. Northern Ireland’s lesson is stark: entrench extremes, and moderation dies; let sectarianism fester, and democracy becomes zero-sum The ugly scenes outside Villa Park this week as pro-Palestinian and Israeli protesters faced off are a shameful reminder of how British politics is changing for the worse. Britain’s new Islamo-socialist alliance is gaining ground: from Corbyn’s Your Party, to pro-Gaza independents. Voters are prioritising religion

Alan Allport

No, Elon Musk: we Brits aren’t hobbits

‘When Tolkien wrote about the hobbits, he was referring to the gentlefolk of the English shires, who don’t realise the horrors that take place far away,’ Elon Musk wrote on X in response to the news of the fatal stabbing of Wayne Broadhurst in Uxbridge. ‘They were able to live their lives in peace and tranquility,’ Musk explained, ‘but only because they were protected by the hard men of Gondor.’ ‘When Tolkien wrote about hobbits, he was referring to the gentlefolk of the English shires,’ Elon Musk said The billionaire X owner was employing this literary allusion, he said, to propose a new breed of Tolkienesque ‘hard men’ – he

Hamish McRae

The October Budget was Reeves’s original sin

With hindsight, Rachel Reeves’s first Budget in October last year looks even worse than it did at the time. It wasn’t exactly cheered to the rafters then, even by Labour’s own mass of backbenchers, but a year on it has become clear that those early decisions have damaged the country’s economic performance and blighted Reeves’s time in the Treasury. The Chancellor has been somewhat unlucky, to be fair, but she made three crucial errors in the October Budget. First, she did not give herself enough slack if the economy took a turn for the worse. Second, she forgot that economics is not only about numbers but also about mood. Third,

Friday

Danny Scott

Is Labour trying to make life harder for poor kids like me?

Bridget Phillipson and I have a lot in common. Like the Education Secretary, who started life in a council house in Tyne and Wear, I grew up on a tough estate. Mine was in Selston, a rural East Midlands mining village. Home life was hard; my mam was blind and illiterate. But against the odds – like Phillipson – I achieved outstanding results at my local state school. Decades on, I’m still proud that my grade As in physics, maths and English were O-Levels, not wishy-washy GCSEs. Labour’s mooted education review would almost certainly kick the ladder out from under kids like me Yet while our backgrounds are similar, I

David Spencer

When will the prisons minister face up to the jail crisis?

The latest episode in the rolling farce that is His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service was this week revealed to be yet another foreign-born sex offender released in error. Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, an Algerian sex-offender, was let out by mistake from HMP Wandsworth over a week ago. He was only recaptured today after nine days on the run. What steps has the Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson, taken following this most recent incident? But now that one of the big questions in Westminster doesn’t concern the whereabouts of the latest pervert erroneously released by the Prison Service, attention is turning to what steps the Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson, has taken following this most recent incident? Before this

Ghaffar Hussain

Prevent’s purpose is drifting from terrorism

When I was a Prevent counter terror officer a decade ago our case load was largely focused on Islamist terrorism – clear, defined ideological extremism. Today the picture looks very different. The majority of cases involve ‘mixed, unclear or unstable ideologies’ or a simple ‘fixation with violence’. In other words, many people being referred no longer seem to have any specific ideology. The programme is looking at behaviours that are ‘violence-oriented’, which risks blurring our understanding of the real terror threat in the UK. According to the Home Office, there were 8,778 referrals to Prevent in the latest reporting period, up roughly 27 per cent on the previous year. At first

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Can Ukraine afford Zelensky’s winter giveaway?

Since taking office in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky’s decisions have often been a mix of blatant populism and good intentions. Today, however, a number of his domestic policies are seen in Ukraine less as acts of genuine support for the war-weary public and more as attempts to shore up his approval ratings. This year, just as last, Zelensky has announced a round of ‘winter support’, under which every Ukrainian can receive 1,000 hryvnias – around £18 – from the state. The money can be used to pay utility bills, buy medicine or books, or be donated to the army. The scheme was tested last December, when more than 14 million Ukrainians

Tim Shipman

Pain is inevitable for Rachel Reeves

A year ago, the Chancellor called her £38 billion tax rise a ‘one-and-done’ move. Now she looks set to rinse and repeat, with reports that a 2p increase in income tax is on the table. According to The Times, she has informed the Office for Budget Responsibility that a rise in personal taxation is one of the ‘major measures’ she will announce. This is the strongest signal yet that she will break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax rates. What does this mean for the Chancellor, and taxpayers? Elsewhere, David Lammy suffered a disastrous Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions after dodging questions on whether there had been another prisoner

James Heale James Heale

Reeves set to break manifesto pledge – and hike income tax

Rachel Reeves billed her £38 billion in tax increases last year – the biggest tax-rising Budget since Black Wednesday – as a ‘one and done’ approach. As she prepares to deliver her second Budget in three weeks’ time, the Chancellor is set for a ‘rinse and repeat’ strategy, as she tries to wring similar sums from taxpayers. Reeves is increasingly expected to hike income tax by 2p next month. The Chancellor has informed the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that a rise in personal taxation is one of the ‘major measures’ that she will announce later this month, according to the Times. The Budget watchdog will assess the impact of her

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is it only left-wing leaders who are allowed to be young?

There was a time when the French left turned its nose up at all things American. Too low-brow for them. Not now. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race has caused much joie de vivre in left-circles. For Mamdani, his youth is a virtue, but with Bardella it’s a weakness Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Gallic Bernie Saunders and the leader of the far-left La France Insoumise, described Mamdani’s win as ‘very good news’. The general secretary of the centre-left Socialist party, Olivier Faure, posted a smiley face on X above a headline in Le Monde, hailing Mamdani as ‘the youngest mayor in New York history’. Mamdani referenced his

Steerpike Steerpike

Top Tory team suffer bad night

After a decent conference speech, there was some hope among the Tories that Kemi Badenoch had finally turned the corner. Her PMQs performances are much more assured and there have been some notable Labour scalps secured by the party’s fabled ‘dark arts’ team. But this improvement appears not to have been recognised by the electorate, who continue to turf out Tories in various elections across the country. Last night represented a continuation of this trend. Three Tory ‘big beasts’ suffered poor results in each of their respective patches. In Devon, Sir Mel Stride’s Conservatives saw the third Lib Dem gain in his seat in recent months. Across the country, Badenoch’s local branch

Iain Macwhirter

The SNP’s useless land revolution

Few would argue that Scotland’s present pattern of land tenure is ideal. Around half of private land is owned by fewer than 500 individuals, corporates or pension funds. The vast estates date from two centuries ago when landlords, often clan chiefs, expelled the Scottish peasantry from their villages in the interests of ‘improvement’ – mainly to create sheep walks, deer-hunting estates or, latterly, forestry. Had we had a French Revolution, landed estates might have been broken up. But we didn’t, and they weren’t. The idea that a group of pen-pushers in Edinburgh is going to create a new generation of small private landholdings is fanciful As a result, the Scottish

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The looming threat to Israel

In the aftermath of war, a new front opens. Not in the ruins of Gaza’s cities, but in the corridors of diplomacy, where maps are redrawn with words and allegiances. Israel now finds itself encircled not by tanks but by treaties, resolutions, and incentives: a web of international manoeuvres that promises ‘stability’ while redefining the terms of its own strategic freedom. At the centre of this recalibration is the United States, whose post-conflict blueprint projects a pacified region steered by pragmatism, compromise, and multilateral oversight. But beneath the rhetoric of reconstruction lies a more perilous logic: one that treats deterrence as destabilising, ambiguity as maturity, and the survival instincts of

Michael Day

Is it too soon to say the truth about Dick Cheney?

Long before Donald Trump arrived on the political scene to warp all international diplomacy and finance around him, there were US administrations creating greater calamities. George W Bush’s first government, from 2001 to 2005, was one of them. Dubya wasn’t a sleazy grifter or a weapons grade narcissist. But on his watch the United States did, with its war on Iraq, bring chaos to the Middle East and spark an explosion of Islamic terrorism for which we’re still paying the price. Cheney was a man devoid of empathy, who used US superpower to slay hundreds of thousands of people and smash things Of course, the Iraq invasion wasn’t his idea.

Michael Gove

Q&A: Boris, Cameron or May? Plus, our most left-wing beliefs revealed

35 min listen

To submit your urgent questions to Michael and Maddie, go to: spectator.co.uk/quiteright This week on the first ever Quite right! Q&A: What’s your most left-wing belief? Michael & Maddie confess their guilty liberal secrets on the Elgin Marbles, prison reform and private equity – or ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’. Also this week: who would you trust to save your life on a desert island – Boris Johnson, Theresa May or David Cameron? And finally, a literary turn: from John Donne to Thomas Hardy, Michael and Maddie share their favourite poems, and make the case for learning verse by heart. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.