Politics

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

Thursday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Who’s on top in the Tory leadership contest?

In recent years, the Conservative party conference has become something of an irrelevance. Often it is little more than a networking event, filled with dull speeches, all carefully stage-managed by No. 10. But next week’s gathering in Birmingham will be one of those rare Tory conferences that decide the party’s future. The leadership race has gone on for so long that the conference will be a political talent contest, with the four remaining leadership candidates – Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly and Robert Jenrick – setting out their stalls. ‘We know each other’s lines so well now that we could imitate each other,’ says one leadership contestant. ‘There is definite

The Spectator

Why the Tories lost – by the Tory leadership candidates

As the four candidates prepare to make their pitch at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, we quizzed them about their ideas and ambitions. Why did the Tories lose the general election? JAMES CLEVERLY: We lost the ear of the British public. They stopped listening to us. We over-promised and under–delivered on a load of issues so our election promises were met with real cynicism. People had literally closed their ears – and minds – to our arguments. Even if we had had the best policy platform in the world, people weren’t willing to give us the time of day. If we make fewer promises but make sure that we

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer tells Israel ‘no more excuses’ on Gaza aid

Keir Starmer has moved on rather quickly from Labour conference, pitching up in New York to tell Israel that it can use ‘no more excuses’ and must allow more aid into Gaza. In his speech to the UN General Assembly, the Prime Minister also called for an immediate ceasefire, and said there needed to be a ‘credible and irreversible path to a viable Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure state of Israel’. He added: ‘That is the only way to provide security and justice to both Israelis and Palestinians.’ He also turned on Russia, saying he didn’t know how the country could ‘show its face in the building’. This

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Michael Gove is the new editor of The Spectator

13 min listen

We’ve had quite the day at 22 Old Queen Street.  All Westminster politics seem small in comparison to the news that Fraser Nelson will step down as editor of this publication, with Michael Gove taking charge on October 8th. Hear Fraser’s thoughts on what this new chapter will mean for The Spectator, on the podcast.  Elsewhere, Labour conference has wrapped up in Liverpool and this has coincided with an update on growth from the OECD. Having predicted in May that the economy would grow by 0.4 per cent this year, the policy organisation now expects the economy to grow by 1.1 per cent. This lifts the UK from the bottom

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP is not ‘Labour with a saltire’, fumes Sarwar

The general election may have been and gone but north of the border another fight is shaping up. The SNP has lost both members and support in the wake of Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, the police probe into party finances and the party’s inability to find a new indyref strategy. Meanwhile, Scottish Labour under Anas Sarwar has seen its fortunes markedly improve – and even ex-SNP MPs have confessed to Mr S they see the group leader as the country’s next First Minister. How very curious… Sarwar spent a lot of his time at Labour conference making moves around the 2026 Holyrood election. Speaking in Liverpool in conversation with Andrew Marr,

Jawad Iqbal

Why is Sadiq Khan trying to restart his fight with Donald Trump?

London mayor Sadiq Khan, whose official day job is running the capital, is in New York this week, where he has denounced Donald Trump and urged Americans to vote for Kamala Harris. Trump would set the wrong tone for the rest of the world, Khan declared. ‘What I’d say in a respectful way to Americans is: I don’t think you realise that the rest of the world is watching because we’ve got skin in the game,’ he said. Come again? Trump would set the wrong tone for the rest of the world, Khan declared Americans are choosing a leader for their country. What the world thinks about this – least of

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why are we deceiving ourselves about Britain’s obesity problem?

Is it really true that obesity rates in England have stabilised or fallen, as has been reported today – and that, according to the Obesity Health Alliance, this may be down to things like junk food being removed from supermarket checkouts and calories being provided on menus?  While obesity rates have ballooned, smoking rates have collapsed On the face of it there is one remarkable statistic in the latest figures provided by NHS England for 2022: 13 per cent of 2-15 year old boys were recorded as obese, down from a fifth in 2019 and the lowest figure since 1998. There were no figures produced for 2020 and 2021 owing

Julie Bindel

Fewer women should be in jail

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is right about one thing: when it comes to addressing crimes committed by women, prison doesn’t work.  Mahmood said at the Labour party conference on Tuesday that she is looking at alternatives to custody, such as community-based sanctions and programmes. Having campaigned on behalf of numerous women in prison over the decades, I have seen the reality of what life is like behind bars. There is very little rehabilitation, drugs are usually available – and pretty much every woman, with a few rare exceptions, has previously been subjected to horrendous male violence, including domestic abuse and rape. A significant number grew up within the care system,

Matthew Lynn

Donald Trump’s tariff talk is just bluster

Donald Trump is campaigning hard on protectionism, promising to bring skilled manual jobs back onshore. What will that look like? Huge tariffs on imports, foreign companies unable to ‘steal’ American jobs, a re-industrialisation of the heartlands of the United States. But here’s the catch: a trade war on the scale that Trump is promising is simply not feasible. He is bluffing.  There is no question that Trump is ramping up protectionist rhetoric. ‘American workers will no longer be worried about losing their jobs to foreign nations,’ he told a rally yesterday. ‘Vote for Trump, and you will see a mass exodus of manufacturing from China to Pennsylvania, from Korea to

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour conference votes to reverse Starmer’s winter fuel cuts

Keir Starmer’s first Labour conference as Prime Minister has ended in humiliation after delegates backed a motion condemning cuts to winter fuel payments. The Prime Minister has faced a backlash over his plan to scrap universal payments to help elderly people with their fuel bills. Starmer’s changes mean that only those who get pension credit will continue to receive the payments. Now Labour delegates have voted against the plan to means test the handout. What a fitting way to conclude a conference mired in endless scandal, eh? Unions teamed up in Liverpool to put forward a motion against cuts to the winter fuel allowance, with the Communication Workers Union joining

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Liz Kendall’s difficult task of defending the winter fuel cut

Arguably the most difficult speech of the whole of Labour conference came from Liz Kendall. The Work and Pensions secretary not only had the winter fuel payment cut to deal with, she is also responsible for welfare reform to get people off sickness benefits – one of the most fraught areas of policymaking – and will oversee what are likely to be cuts to benefits enforced by the Treasury in the next few months. Kendall’s aim was to argue to Labour members that the party is still staying true to its principles while doing all of this.  Kendall’s aim was to argue to Labour members that the party is still staying

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Britain is growing. Can Rachel Reeves start spending?

The OECD’s interim Economic Outlook report has landed this morning and its forecast for the UK has been revised significantly upwards. Having predicted in May that the economy would grow by 0.4 per cent this year, the policy organisation now expects the economy to grow by 1.1 per cent. This lifts the UK from the bottom of the pack of advanced economies and ties it in second place – alongside France and Canada – for the fastest growth in the G7. The news comes as the OECD declares that the global economy is ‘turning a corner’ (the name of today’s report), as global GDP looks set to ‘stabilise’ at 3.2 per

Steerpike Steerpike

Starmer uses son’s exams as excuse for freebies

Labour’s freebie fiasco isn’t going away. Sir Keir Starmer has prompted more headlines by suggesting he took thousands of pounds of donations from millionaire donor Lord Alli because of, um, his son. Excuses, excuses… The Prime Minister was speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about the ongoing frockgate scandal when he claimed that he had accepted £20,000 in donations for accommodation – including a the use of an £18 million Covent Garden penthouse – from the Labour peer to avoid disrupting his son’s study sessions. In an emotive plea to the broadcaster about the matter, the Labour leader insisted: My boy – 16 – was in the middle of

Owen Matthews

How Wagner mercenaries abused HSBC and JP Morgan

Whatever happened to the Wagner Group, Evgeny Prigozhin’s shadowy army of prisoners and mercenaries? In the wake of Wagner’s abortive mutiny in June 2023 – and of Prigozhin’s own not-so-mysterious death two months later in a plane crash near Moscow – most of the Russia-based units of the group were rolled into the Kremlin’s official armed forces. In Africa, however, where Wagner built an empire not only of guns-for-hire but also of murky mining and oil concessions, Prigozhin’s former henchmen continue their bloody and lucrative business. And according to a new report by the US-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) part of that business relied on the unwitting assistance of international banks

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Wes Streeting is convincing, but where’s his plan?

This Labour conference has largely been about Keir Starmer and his ministers making the argument for what they are doing, rather than giving any details of how they plan to achieve it. Wes Streeting’s speech to the hall in Liverpool this morning fitted that pattern. He didn’t announce anything new. Instead, he set out quite how big the challenge was, and made the argument for what Labour planned to do. He told members: We can only deliver recovery through reform. Without action on prevention, the NHS will be overwhelmed. Without reform to services, we’ll end up putting in more cash for poorer results. That’s the choice. Reform or die. We

Michael Karam

Is this the end for Hezbollah?

The recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is a war that’s not yet officially a war, initiated by a political party without a mandate that takes its orders from Tehran, in support of a Palestinian party that few Lebanese care about. Hezbollah was the jewel in the Mullah’s turban It is a decades-old conflict, an exhausting, deadly stalemate, but this recent escalation could prove to be decisive. There’s a chance Israel could finally deliver a dagger blow to Hezbollah. This would be a staggering achievement because the Iranian-backed Shia militant group controls many, if not all, of the levers of power in Lebanon, and has been a constant irritant to

Eliot Wilson

Evacuating Lebanon would test Starmer’s mettle

As the security situation in Lebanon deteriorates, the British government is accelerating plans to evacuate its civilians. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has advised British nationals in the country to leave while commercial flights were still operating. It also said that British nationals should have an evacuation plan, and warned that they should ‘not rely on FCDO being able to evacuate you in an emergency’. It is believed there may still be 10,000 British nationals in Lebanon. As things stand, most major airlines have now cancelled or suspended services to Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport, and many of the remaining flights have sold out. Sir Keir Starmer has said bluntly:

Ian Williams Ian Williams

While Xi reigns, China’s economy is unreformable

It was presented as a bold stimulus to boost China’s ailing economy – but while it excited stock markets in Asia, Western economists were underwhelmed. At a rare press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, the usually gnomic governor of the People’s Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, unveiled a range of measures designed to ‘support the stable growth of China’s economy’ and see that it hits this year’s target of five per cent growth. There was a time when such measures, which included an interest rate cut and more funds to support the stock and property markets, would have quickened the pulse of investors. But this is unlikely to reverse their

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Would scrapping the monarchy really save us money?

Britain’s republicans won’t give up. In spite of trying to use the coronation of Charles III as an opportunity to push their campaign to abolish the monarchy, support for the institution has remained stubbornly high. It is our elected politicians – on both sides of the political divide – who seem to have lost support rather than the new King.       Not to be put off, however, the campaign group Republic has this week published its latest Royal Finances Report, claiming that the royal family is really costing us £510 million a year, nearly five times as much as the sovereign grant.      How does it arrive at such a figure? It claims

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Reform exodus continues in professionalisation drive

The ravens really are leaving the tower. In recent months, Reform has been turbo-charging its professionalisation drive, working to set up branches across the country as part of their efforts to elect enough MPs to form the next government. There’s been a big back office clear-out and tonight it sounds like there has been another casualty: this time one of the fledgling party’s best-known faces. Gawain Towler – the last great amateur in British politics – has been fired from Reform after two decades spinning for its previous iterations Ukip and the Brexit party. Towler is a long-standing veteran of the Eurosceptic movement and is a familiar face to anyone