Politics

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

Thursday

25 Sep 2025

The cult of Obama is over

Everyone wanted to get close to the president. For three hours outside the O2 Arena in London, a queue of admirers pawed at and posed with a fifteen-foot-tall billboard of his face. All of the marketing for yesterday’s event, titled ‘An Evening with President Barack Obama’, had used his official presidential portrait from 2012 in the Oval Office. It was a reminder of the good old days – before Trump ever happened. ‘I’m just looking forward to being in the same room as him,’ said a woman called Fran who had taken a photo with the billboard, leaning on it for support. She started crying. ‘I’m looking for a little

Matthew Lynn

Reeves needs to save the London Stock Exchange

Flutter, the gambling giant that owns Paddy Power, has already London, and the British chip designer ARM decided to float in New York. There have been reports that AstraZeneca may move its listing too. Now we learn that even Goldman Sachs may be giving up on the City, as it delists Petershill, the majority-owned investment vehicle it launched almost 20 years ago, from the London Stock Exchange. The City is facing extinction, but there is still no sign that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves will do anything to rescue it. It is a slow-moving car crash Petershill was launched in 2007, and listed on the stock market in 2021, to offer

Lucy Dunn

Starmer’s spin doctor quits in latest No. 10 departure

Another one bites the dust: Steph Driver, Keir Starmer’s head of communications, has announced she will leave No. 10 – making her the latest Starmer aide to quit. Driver was a loyal companion to the Prime Minister even before his election, spending five years as his chief of communications when he was in opposition. She became deputy director after Labour’s 2024 landslide victory before more recently being promoted to director of communications in Downing Street. Her resignation, which follows a period of bereavement leave, will come as a huge loss to the PM whom, it is understood, was one of many senior figures who tried to persuade her to stay

Michael Simmons

What is Andy Burnham talking about?

Andy Burnham is worried about becoming Liz Truss. In an interview deemed so important it currently appears on the New Statesman’s website three times, he said: ‘We’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets.’ His worry, it seems, is that the main economic policy he’d like to introduce, nationalisation of everything, would require so much borrowing that it would cause the markets to freak out á la Truss and collapse a nascent Mancunian ministry. Since the interview one or two people have pointed out that we can’t really just choose to ignore the bond markets – much as Burnham might like to. And so

Steerpike

Labour splits as cabinet minister slams Burnham

Dear oh dear. Labour conference is just days away but as the party prepares to come together it would appear its politicians are coming apart. Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham gave a rather revealing interview this week in which he called for ‘wholesale change’ to prevent an ‘existential’ crisis, set out his own brand of lefty politics – Manchesterism – and refused to rule out a return to Westminster. Now communities secretary Steve Reed has hit back in a defence of Prime Minister Keir Starmer – dismissing Burnham’s ‘potshots’. Ouch. Speaking to Sky News, Reed remarked: [Burnham] is entitled to his view, but we’ve heard these kinds of comments before.

Luke Tryl

Starmer’s make-or-break conference

13 min listen

Labour conference kicks off this weekend in Liverpool – but the mood going in is far from triumphant. On today’s Coffee House Shots, Lucy Dunn is joined by Tim Shipman and More in Common’s Luke Tryl to take the temperature ahead of Labour’s big set-piece. They discuss why some voters already see Starmer as ‘just as bad as the lot that came before’, and whether Labour can turn things around with new policies aimed at revitalising local communities – from saving libraries and pubs to giving residents more power over development. There is also a fascinating hypothetical poll in which an Andy Burnham-led Labour party outpaces Reform UK, turning a

Michael Simmons

The problem with removing the child benefit cap

Despite having a £30 billion fiscal hole to fill Rachel Reeves might be about to splash the cash. If reports are to be believed, in the coming weeks the lifting of the two-child benefit cap will be announced. The cost is £3bn every year. The cap was introduced under George Osborne to stop families claiming the child element of UC for three or more children. A committee of ministers and officials are due to make a series of recommendations to tackle child poverty before the November Budget, and it’s now widely expected that this will include scrapping the cap. But will lifting it do anything to improve child poverty? There

Steerpike

Watch: Boris defends the Boriswave

Reform continues to top the polls as Brits remain concerned about migration to the UK. At the start of the week, Nigel Farage held yet another London press conference in which he announced his plans to abolish indefinite leave to remain, make foreign nationals ineligible to claim benefits and introduce an English standards test – which would be retaken every five years. Crikey! Former prime minister Boris Johnson was in the firing line too, despite the defection to Reform of his onetime ally Nadine Dorries. Farage’s party took aim at the ‘Boriswave’ – slamming the rise of immigration to the UK seen under Johnson’s premiership and accusing the ex-PM of

Piotr Wilczek

No, Nigel Farage: Eastern Europeans like me aren’t eating swans

The Royal Parks have spoken: no, London’s swans are not being roasted for supper. Their cygnets are intact, their lakes tranquil, their wildlife officers alert. Yet for a moment this week the nation was asked to imagine Eastern Europeans stalking Hyde Park by moonlight, stuffing swans into shopping bags. Nigel Farage, on LBC, suggested as much. It is a fine fantasy. One can picture Henry VIII applauding from the bank of the Serpentine, fork in hand, as the birds are borne aloft like Tudor delicacies. But times have changed. The swan has slipped the spit and become untouchable: a symbol, a ballet, a subject for poetry rather than pies. The

Steerpike

Afghan granted asylum returned home for holiday

New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is settling into the job: laying out her firm no-nonsense approach to migration and ruffling feathers just days into the job after she suggested that some people were abusing the justice system in order to avoid deportation from Britain. Now she has a new challenge on her hands: it transpires that an Afghan refugee is being investigated by the Home Office after he was granted asylum but appeared to go back to his home country on, er, holiday. You couldn’t make it up… DG Usama came to the UK in April 2022 after crossing the English Channel on a dingy. On arrival, he claimed asylum,

Ross Clark

Let Jaguar crash

‘Copy nothing,’ implored Jaguar’s weird advert featuring multicoloured changelings swivelling their heads on a car-free planet. That includes, it seems, copying other large multinationals in taking out insurance to cover themselves against cyber attacks. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), it turns out, had none. Now, following such an attack, it finds itself in the soup. It has had to close its factories and send its workers home as it tries to repair the damage. The government is now reported to be thinking of stepping in with state aid to ensure that the company and its suppliers do not go bust. Why should our taxes be used to bail out a woke

Patrick West

Starmer’s ‘reclaim the flag’ mission is doomed

Does Sir Keir Starmer love his country or not? It’s been hard to tell this year. His infamous ‘island of strangers’ speech in May seemed to suggest that he did, only for him to recant the following month after a backlash from the left in his party, saying that he regretted using those words. But now Sir Keir wants us to believe once more that he really is a flag-waving patriot. Literally. Can you imagine a burgher of an affluent part of North London draping the St George Flag from the window of their house? Later this week the Prime Minister will announce an outline to ‘reclaim the flag’ from

William Moore

Labour’s Terminator, Silicon Valley’s ‘Antichrist’ obsession & can charity shops survive?

37 min listen

First: who has the Home Secretary got in her sights? Political editor Tim Shipman profiles Shabana Mahmood in the Spectator’s cover article this week. Given Keir Starmer’s dismal approval ratings, politicos are consumed by gossip about who could be his heir-apparent – even more so, following Angela Rayner’s defenestration a few weeks ago. Mahmood may not be the most high-profile of the Starmer movement, but she is now talked about alongside Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham as a potential successor to Starmer. But – it all depends on what she can achieve at the Home Office. So, who does she have in her sights? Tim joined the podcast Next: why

Nigel Biggar

Reparations: the tyranny of imaginary guilt, with Nigel Biggar & Katie Lam

19 min listen

The past few years have seen growing calls for countries in the global west to pay reparations to former colonies for their role in the transatlantic slave trade. The debate over reparations was already part of the so-called ‘culture wars’, but became louder following the Black Lives Matter movement, as many groups sought to re-examine their histories. Calls for reparations have been embraced by the Church of England which set up a £100 million fund, with the aim of raising £1 billion, to pay reparations for the role the Church played in the slave trade. But do the arguments in favour of reparations really stand up? Conservative peer Nigel Biggar,

The Spectator

This is Shabana Mahmood’s moment

What is the point of Keir Starmer? He was the means by which the Labour party could suffocate the hard left and assume the mantle of respectability and, in due course, power. But he lacked, and has never acquired, a governing philosophy. He was handed a landslide by an electorate determined to eject the Conservatives from office with ruthless force. Yet he has contrived to forfeit the authority it lent him and now rivals the government he supplanted in unpopularity and lack of direction. The men and women who engineered his ascent to the leadership, and delivered the majority he has acquired but does not command, have always known his

Laurie Penny

Don’t cure my autism

I admit that when Donald Trump announced he had found the answer for autism, I was curious. As an autistic person, I was hoping that whatever medieval quackery he came out with would require us to do something fun, like carry a hedgehog at all times or take heroic quantities of cocaine, both of which would certainly make the world more interesting for those of us who struggle with social cues. Leading the hunt for this miracle cure has been US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jnr, a man whose grip on reality has softened since a worm quite literally ate part of his brain. You’ve got to wonder if

James Heale

What’s really behind Reform’s rise

It is the question dominating bars and fringe debates this party conference season: what exactly is driving Reform UK’s popularity? Various explanations are proffered: the collapse of the two-party system, fickle voter tastes, the rise of populism across the West. But these are symptoms of a much greater shift: the new information age, unleashed by the internet. In a nation whose politics have long been characterised by venerable institutions, Reform, born in 2020, can claim to be Britain’s first successful e-party. Like most apparent overnight successes, Reform has in fact been years in the making. For much of the 2000s, Nigel Farage struggled to get anywhere with his Eurosceptic messaging.

Tim Shipman

Who does Shabana Mahmood have in her sights?

After a fortnight in which Keir Starmer lost both Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson but also reshaped his cabinet and his Downing Street team, one of the Prime Minister’s senior aides remarked to a friend: ‘Would I swap the last two weeks? Probably not, because the cabinet we’ve got and the No. 10 we’ve got are exactly what we need to turn the country around. Shabana will do really great work in the Home Office.’ Shabana Mahmood, the new Home Secretary, may not be the best-known figure in the Labour firmament, but the Downing Street official is far from alone in pinning the party’s hopes for re-election on her. Another

Wednesday

24 Sep 2025

Brendan O’Neill

Who were the real bigots in Epping?

Imagine if, following the rape charges against Harvey Weinstein, a mob of angry people had rallied to his defence. Imagine if this smug, seething crowd had raged against the women who accused Weinstein of sexual offences. Imagine if they wagged their fingers in the women’s faces. Imagine they branded the women troublemakers. Imagine they went so far as to taunt the women by displaying banners saying: ‘Rich movie producers welcome here!’ Local women rallied around a girl, just 14, who had accused a man of sexually assaulting her. And those women were demonised We would have been appalled, right? Well, that very thing happened in Epping. Local women rallied around

Michael Evans

Has Trump really turned on Putin?

Donald Trump has been doing his homework. Much has been written about Russia’s war economy, painting the picture that the military-industrial infrastructure is booming. But Trump is discovering that the war in Ukraine has wrecked Russia’s finances, and made any prospect of a straightforward return to a civilian economy unlikely. It has taken Trump a long time, but he has come round to the view repeated endlessly by European leaders: provided military and economic support for Kyiv is maintained, Putin at some stage will be forced to call it quits. If that backing is not guaranteed, the Russian president will continue to believe that aggression pays. The recent launching of