Politics

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

Thursday

21 Nov 2024

Can anything stop benefits spending hitting £120bn?

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) forecasts on Budget day included the startling figure that spending on health and disability benefits is set to pass £100 billion in five years’ time. Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) today, which are based on a broader range of benefits and recipients, put the amount even higher: £120 billion. The DWP’s figures include housing benefit for health and disability benefit recipients. In real terms, spending on this definition is forecast to rise by 20 per cent (or £18 billion) over the next five years. The share of government spending that goes on these benefits will be at a record level this year,

Freddy Gray

The ‘experts’ who enabled RFK Jr’s rise

22 min listen

The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr to be secretary of health and human services in the second Trump administration has horrified ‘experts’. A left-wing Democrat who admires the late Venezuelan Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez, hates big business, rails against the ultra-processed food that Donald Trump likes to eat and wants climate sceptics jailed. But in the magazine this week Matt Ridley explains how the experts who now bash him have contributed in putting him where is, and that official Covid misinformation has contributed to his rise. So what could he do in office? Will he release these Covid files? Matt joins Freddy to discuss.

Charles and David Goodhart

GDP has lost its usefulness as a measure of real growth

Paul Samuelson, the famous American economist and author of the bestselling textbook Economics, gave the now quaintly old-fashioned example of the pitfalls in GDP accounting by pointing out that if a man married his maid, GDP would fall. The example was dropped after the third edition. A more relevant example today would be if a middle aged person stops working full-time to look after an elderly relative at home. The GDP economy loses part of the contribution of the middle aged person plus the demand of the elderly person for care in a private care home. Yet in most cases that elderly person is much happier staying in their own

Matthew Lynn

The Trump Bitcoin bonanza has only just begun

One of the main trading platforms collapsed, and its founder ended up being sent to jail. Two years ago, in the wake of the failure of the FTX, it looked as if Bitcoin had finally been exposed as a flimsy bubble, with the price plunging to just $16,000 in the middle of November 2022. And yet, it turns out that the critics of the digital currency, as so often, had celebrated its demise too soon. This week, Bitcoin hit $97,000 per unit, a fresh all time high. And in reality it will go higher still – because the Trump Bitcoin trade has only just started. Trump is nothing if not a

Eliot Wilson

Russia’s rumoured ICBM launch is raising the stakes in Ukraine

A Russian attack on the city of Dnipro earlier today included the use of an intercontinental ballistic missile, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. The RS-26 Rubezh was reportedly launched from Astrakhan Oblast on the Caspian Sea, although some analysts remain sceptical. Russia has made no official comment, but it would be the first use of an ICBM in the conflict in Ukraine, representing a deliberate raising of the stakes and a clear signal to Kyiv’s allies. Using an intercontinental ballistic missile to strike Ukraine is performative overkill On Tuesday, which marked the 1,000th day of the war, Ukrainian forces launched American-supplied MGM-140 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles at an ammunition depot near Karachev

Steerpike

Watch: Six of the best Prezza moments

RIP John Prescott. The Labour heavyweight kept much of Fleet Street in business throughout the noughties, indulging in various antics that inspired endless tabloid headlines. ‘Two Jags’, ‘two jabs’, ‘two shags’ and even ‘two lavs’ were some of the nicknames bestowed upon him – with the latter being a reference to the multiple toilet seats he claimed on parliamentary expenses. A true working class socialist, caught in an age of 24/7 media, Prezza delighted the cameras throughout his time in office. Below are six of John Prescott’s best moments, caught on camera for all to enjoy… Punching a protester We start with the most famous moment of all: the political

Rod Liddle

I liked John Prescott enormously

There was a time we all looked forward to on the BBC Today programme, back in the early years of Tony Blair’s first term as Prime Minister. Late July, early August. Blair had scooted off to San Gimignano, Mandelson was probably on a yacht with an oligarch, even Campbell was away battling his weird inner demons somewhere. And for about three or four weeks the country was run by John Prescott, as deputy PM. As you are aware, there is a dearth of political stories in the dog days of summer. But with John in charge, all you had to do was ring up and suggest that a Labour Spad had said

Andrew Tettenborn

Why shouldn’t schools encourage middle class aspirations?

Education Minister Bridget Phillipson wants to make our schools engines of ambition and social mobility. Good for her. Unfortunately, some of the the advice she has received as to how to do this demonstrates one thing more than anything else: when it comes to class prejudice, it’s earnest bourgeois reformers who habitually head the pack. Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility, has told her that the answer lies in schools’ downplaying of middle class institutions. Out with visits to museums and theatres and references to skiing, jam-making or house-buying, which the underclass can’t connect with. And in with football club tours, graffiti workshops (local culture, don’t you know) and lessons

James Kirkup

There was more to John Prescott than his working class roots

John Prescott has died, leading to a flood of tributes and comments about the working class hero of the New Labour project. That framing of Prescott is good for headlines but the reality was inevitably more complicated than that. It’s too shallow and narrow to describe Prescott as the lone working class voice in an essentially middle class political enterprise. Was Prescott really working class? Not in his own words. As early as 1996, before he became deputy prime minister, he said he no longer regarded himself as working class: ‘I was once, but by being a Member of Parliament, I can tell you, I’m pretty middle class.’ The idea that your

Nigel Jones

John Prescott was the embodiment of old Labour

The death of Labour’s former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at the age of 86 also marks the passing of the old Labour party. Prescott was a bruiser both in the physical and the political sense. He was unashamedly working class, contemptuous of the effete intellectuals who had taken over Labour, and ready to hit out at the party’s enemies with both fists and tongue. Prescott will be most remembered for the moment during the 2001 general election campaign when his left hook connected with the jaw of a 29-year-old protester, Craig Evans, who had thrown an egg at him as Prescott arrived at an election meeting at Rhyl in

James Heale

John Prescott: a titan of the Labour movement

John Prescott, Britain’s longest serving Deputy Prime Minister, has died at the age of 86. For 40 years he variously enlivened, enraged and entertained the Commons as the Honourable Member for Hull East. But his demeanour and public image belied a canny political judgement that took him from Merchant Navy seaman to holding some of the highest political offices in the land. From 1994 until 2007, he served as Tony Blair’s deputy, serving as the yang to his leader’s yin. With his capacity for beer and brawls, Prescott sometimes seemed an unlikely moderniser among the metropolitan liberals of the New Labour elite. But he was key to securing the triumph

Ross Clark

Britain is addicted to spending beyond its means

Imagine what the government could do with an extra £9.1 billion a month. It could build HS2 in its entirety within the space of a year. Or better still, it could double the defence budget and still have some money left over to build the 40 new hospitals which the Conservatives promised – as well as a few schools, too. That sum – £9.1 billion – is what the government paid in debt interest in October alone, according to the figures on public finances released by the Office for National Statistics this morning. Overall, it was forced to borrow £17.4 billion over the course of the month – only just

Mark Galeotti

How will Putin respond to Ukraine’s Storm Shadow attack?

The air raid sirens sounded yesterday, the American embassy in Kyiv closed, as did the Italian and Greek. The British and French embassy warned nationals to take care and encouraged staff to work remotely. The Ukrainian air force warned residents of the city to seek shelter from an incoming massive air attack. And then nothing happened. It’s not clear which is more embarrassing. That the Russians seem to have been able to perpetrate a nerve-jangling hoax, not least by circulating messages on social media and messaging apps seeming to come from HUR, Ukrainian military intelligence. These claimed that a ‘particularly massive’ airstrike was on the way involving more than 300

Joanna Bell

‘We want to put common sense into Irish politics’: inside Ireland’s new populist party

When the Taoiseach Simon Harris called a snap election for 29 November, Ireland’s electricity board asked political parties not to put election posters on telegraph poles. They might as well have asked them to take the time off on holiday. As I drive through the Irish countryside on my way to County Cork, I notice plenty of posters on poles, but the usual suspects – Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Sinn Fein and Labour – are now joined by a new force in Irish politics – a grouping dedicated to a punchier, more populist, anti-immigration and pro-family agenda. ‘Irish politics is different to British politics and American politics, which are very

Martin Vander Weyer

What does the City really think of the Chancellor?

Regular invitations to Mansion House banquets petered out after I asked a shifty-looking waiter for a glass of champagne and he told me he was a deputy governor of the Bank of England. So I can’t report firsthand whether last week’s speech by Chancellor Rachel Reeves was greeted by assembled financiers with napkins on their heads or cries of ‘By George, I think she’s got it!’. What I can say is that – her text having been largely leaked beforehand – she was well upstaged by Governor Andrew Bailey’s unexpected attempt to reopen the Brexit debate; and that she seems to ‘get’ the City a lot better than she understands

Douglas Murray

Britain’s failing statecraft

I mentioned some weeks ago that one of the great points of interest – not to say enjoyment – in our era will be seeing how Keir Starmer’s government copes with the incoming Donald Trump administration in Washington. It is fair to say that many Labour MPs, not to mention the mayor of London (who spends more time grandstanding abroad than he does addressing violent crime in his own city), have been wildly impolitic. If there are two candidates in the running to lead your most important ally it would seem prudent for a wise man to keep his diplomatic options open. Alas, Westminster does not appear to be flooded

Rod Liddle

Labour’s Chinese takeaway

I was thrilled to learn that our government intends to enjoy an ‘open’ relationship with China – one of my favourite countries, as I am sure it is yours. Sir Keir Starmer announced this intention when he bumped into Xi Jinping at the G20 beano in Rio de Janeiro. He also said: ‘We want our relations to be consistent, durable, respectful, as we have agreed, avoid surprises where possible. The UK will be a predictable, consistent, sovereign actor committed to the rule of law.’ Those agreeable adjectives are all Keir’s – I didn’t slip any in, surreptitiously, Not even ‘predictable’, which I assume was there to reinforce the earlier commitment

Katy Balls

Wild Wes: Streeting is causing trouble for Starmer

Avote on assisted dying was supposed to be one of the easiest reforms for Keir Starmer’s government. To many, including the Prime Minister himself, a law allowing terminally ill patients to choose to die would be a self-evidently progressive and historically significant change. It would mean Britain could transcend the objections of a religious minority and join Canada, the Netherlands and other countries in a modern, more enlightened era. In the assisted dying debate, the PM appears a mere onlooker, while Streeting is taking the lead Starmer didn’t want to have to order his MPs to vote for assisted dying. The strategy instead was to use a private members’ bill, brought

Gill Furniss

Do no harm: the progressive case against assisted dying

Next week, parliament will have its first opportunity to vote on assisted dying in almost a decade. This is a matter of conscience; it supersedes party politics and each MP is rightly given the freedom to make up their own mind. I sympathise with many of the views expressed on both sides of this debate, which are put forward in good faith and built from a genuine desire to achieve the best outcomes for patients. While I disagree with my colleagues who have come out in support of this bill, I do not doubt for a second that they do so in accordance with their genuinely held beliefs. I sincerely

Freddy Gray

Musical chairs at Mar-a-Lago

Welcome to the United States of Disruption. From his ‘Winter White House’ in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Donald Trump has been busy lobbing hand-grenade cabinet appointments in the direction of Washington and watching on happily as each one blows up in a variety of stunning ways. Explosiveness is the point. ‘Personnel is policy,’ Trump’s transition team like to tell reporters with a wink. What they mean is that the second administration is setting itself up to be even more radical and incendiary than the first. The outsiders are in, the insiders are out, and the old world is driving itself mad trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s a mistake to