Politics

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

Wednesday

John Ferry John Ferry

The SNP can only blame itself for its budget mess

Higher-than-expected public sector pay deals, social security reform and the SNP’s freeze on council tax have all contributed to putting pressure on the Scottish government’s budget, according to a new report from Scotland’s fiscal watchdog.  In a statement accompanying its latest fiscal report, the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) seems keen to remind Scots that the Scottish government bears most of the responsibility for the budget challenges it now faces. ‘While UK government policies contribute to the pressures on the Scottish budget, much of the pressure comes from the Scottish government’s own decisions,’ says the SFC. The SFC did not set out to put a spanner in the works of the SNP’s grievance machine but has

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Ofcom can’t be trusted to censor social media

It’s boom time at Ofcom. In the past few years, what was until recently the government-backed regulator for broadcasting, telecoms and postal industries (already an absurdly broad range of responsibilities) has seen its remit expanded beyond all recognition. Following the passage of the Online Safety Act 2023, Ofcom has been handed the famously straightforward task of regulating social-media companies – compelling them to clamp down on illegal speech and activity on their platforms. The Media Act 2024, which gained royal assent in May, has extended its reach to streaming services, too. Now, a think-tank has essentially suggested we should cut out the middleman and turn the Office of Communications into a full-blown Ministry of Truth.

Tuesday

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Zelensky says Kursk offensive is collateral in a victory plan

At a press conference in Kyiv today, Volodymyr Zelensky spoke about his strategy to end Russia’s war. He has a plan which he says he will present next month to Joe Biden and to the two contenders to succeed him: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. He also confirmed The Spectator’s report that the objective of the Kursk operation is ‘one of the key points’ as collateral in a negotiation which, he says, will ‘force Russia to end the war through diplomacy’. Zelensky’s peace plans have often seemed overly ambitious We’re now in week four of the battle in the Kursk region, with Ukrainian forces taking control of about 100 Russian

Steerpike Steerpike

Tories fire starting gun on voluntary chair race

It’s the Tory race on everyone’s lips. No, not the battle to be the next party leader but rather the contest to chair the Conservatives’ National Convention. The body effectively serves as the parliament of the voluntary party and is contested annually, with chairmen elected for three year terms and subject to re-selection every year. Some 850-odd association chairmen and various bigwigs vote to decide which of their number takes the prize. But with voting opening tomorrow, this time there is actually something of a contest for the role. Former Hackney candidate Joanna Reeves has thrown her hat in the ring, pitching herself as an outsider railing against the ‘failed’

Eliot Wilson

What’s the real reason Starmer axed his national security adviser?

Keir Starmer is making a big mistake by cancelling the appointment of one of Britain’s top generals as national security adviser. General Gwyn Jenkins, the ex-vice-chief of the armed forces, was picked for the role by Rishi Sunak in April. Jenkins is a widely-respected military man and was a perfect choice for the job. But Starmer has reportedly axed Jenkins’s appointment and opted instead to re-run the application process. We can only guess at the motivation, because Downing Street has made no official announcement Jenkins is, technically, entitled to apply a second time. He is a formidably qualified candidate: a Royal Marines general who was vice-chief of the Defence Staff

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Just how ‘painful’ will Starmer’s October Budget be?

15 min listen

Winter is coming. That’s the message from Keir Starmer’s set-piece speech this morning from the No. 10 rose garden. After a tricky few weeks for the new Prime Minister on cronyism claims and anxiety about cuts to the winter fuel allowance, Starmer and his team attempted seize the agenda with a speech looking ahead to the months to come. However, anyone hoping for optimism will be disappointed, with Starmer warning things can only get worse. How bad can they be? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson. 

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Keir Starmer can’t blame the Tories forever

Keir Starmer’s rose garden speech today should be seen as a companion piece to last month’s melodramatic Commons statement by Rachel Reeves on the condition of the public finances.  In each case the purpose was clear – to lower expectations and buy the government more time by heaping extra blame on the last Conservative administration for the state of the nation. So there we have it – any union that can bring a key industry to a standstill now knows there is a PM in office who will always seek to buy it off How much validity there is in a pitch saying things are much worse than they expected

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The Next equal pay victory is a dark day for British business

Who would bother to create jobs in modern Britain? Clothing retailer Next has done plenty of job-creation over the past few years – only to be whacked by an equal pay claim brought by 3,500 shop assistants. An employment tribunal has ruled that the company was wrong to pay them less than it paid staff at its warehouses. With back pay it could cost the company £30 million. The cost of this kind of case goes far beyond the potential legal liability itself Equal pay is one thing where it concerns men and women working alongside each other in the same jobs. It is quite another when it is extended

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Just how ‘painful’ will Starmer’s October Budget be?

Winter is coming. That’s the message from Keir Starmer’s set-piece speech this morning from the No. 10 rose garden. After a tricky few weeks for the new Prime Minister on cronyism claims and anxiety about cuts to the winter fuel allowance, Starmer and his team attempted seize the agenda with a speech looking ahead to the months to come. However, anyone hoping for optimism will be disappointed. While Tony Blair was associated with the D:Ream anthem of ‘things can only get better’, Starmer warned that things can only get worse – at least in the short term: Frankly – things will get worse before we get better. I didn’t want

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Labour minister squirms on ‘passes for glasses’

At long last, it’s finally here. After five days of media trails, Keir Starmer’s equivalent of the Gettysburg Address will be made later today. The scintillating socialist will be doing a press conference in the Downing Street garden, with his address expected to feature such hard-hitting lines as – gasp – he will people ‘at the heart’ of his government and – stop the presses – under Labour it will no longer ‘be business as usual’. Riveting stuff. But before we are treated to the oratorical prowess of our Dear Leader, there comes the morning round: the much-fabled media ritual in which a hapless frontbencher is savaged by various broadcasters.

Monday

Jonathan Spyer

Iran and Hezbollah don’t want a war with Israel

Hezbollah’s response to the killing of senior official Fuad Shukr, when it finally came, was a more minor event than anticipated. For weeks, both the Lebanese Shia Islamist group and its Iranian patron have been threatening a terrible revenge for the recent assassinations in Beirut and Tehran. It is now clear, however, that neither Hezbollah or Iran wishes to risk a descent to all put war at the present time. Iran appears to have relegated its response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran to some point in the future. Hezbollah, meanwhile, sought to target two sites of high significance – the Mossad headquarters, and the HQ

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

John Mearsheimer on Ukraine, Israel-Gaza and the US election

44 min listen

Professor John Mearsheimer joins Freddy Gray to discuss the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza, and the influence of both on the US election. The Israel-Gaza conflict has led to internal divisions within the democratic party, how will Kamala Harris deal with this? And as the Russia-Ukraine conflict shows no signs of ebbing, what does he see as the west’s role in the war?  Produced by Natasha Feroze and Patrick Gibbons.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How serious is the Starmer sleaze row?

Another week, another accusation of sleaze in relation to the Labour party. After initially winning some plaudits over the summer recess for his handling of the riots, the new Prime Minister is now fighting fire on several fronts – from growing unrest over the Treasury decision to limit the winter fuel allowance to questions over the wisdom of the party’s approach to settling trade union pay disputes. But the most striking of the criticisms is the ongoing standards row. In opposition, Starmer regularly promised to ‘clean up’ politics and launch a ‘total crackdown on cronyism’. This pledge makes up a chunk of Labour’s election manifesto with the promise of a

David Abulafia

Labour’s outrageous attack on academic free speech

In an extraordinary outburst, a government source has described the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, introduced by the Conservatives, as a ‘hate-speech charter’. This is an outrageous distortion of the new laws that aim to guarantee free speech within universities. The best that can be said about that phrase is that, so long as we retain free speech, people are free to describe it that way. But doing so raises worrying doubts about what the new government thinks free speech means.   Universities have a special role in the promotion of free speech. They are, or should be, places where those teaching and those taught can try out ideas,

Jim Lawley

Is anti-tourism becoming Spain’s Brexit?

Believing that membership of the European Union was undeniably beneficial for the UK economy, many Remainers struggled to understand why the majority had voted against it. One hypothesis was that ‘Leavers’ felt they’d missed out on the benefits – that perhaps people who thought the wealth hadn’t been spread around fairly had voted for Brexit in order to teach the greedy elite a lesson. Here in Spain, it’s tourism that, to the authorities’ surprise, has suddenly proved unpopular. It’s easy to see why they considered tourism to be undeniably beneficial. After all, it accounts for about 13 per cent of GNP and a quarter of the new jobs created in

Klaus Dodds

The race for Arctic dominance has entered space

In the years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the west has been forced to tackle the question of national defence with a renewed sense of urgency. As Cold War strategic planners appreciated in the last century, hostile forces can approach not just from underwater, land, sea and air, but also through space. On 9 August in the US, Elon Musk’s Space X launched a Falcon 9 rocket from a space force base located in California. Dubbed the ‘Arctic satellite broadband mission’ (ASBM), the rocket itself was transporting two Northrop Grumman-built satellites, built for Space Norway in collaboration with the Norwegian Ministry of Defence and designed to orbit above the North

David Loyn David Loyn

Ignoring the Taliban won’t end their reign of terror

The Taliban have always had a strange misogynist world view, weirdly preoccupied by sex. The first time they were in power in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, the governor of the western province Herat banned women from walking or talking in the street outside his office, in case he was distracted by footsteps ‘or hearing the sound of their laughter’. The Taliban attempted to control every aspect of life. But it has taken until now, three years into their second period of power, for them to impose the full set of restrictions they imposed then.  The last three years have been bad enough, particularly for women and girls, banned from

Sunday

Owen Matthews

The arrest of Pavel Durov raises awkward questions

Pavel Durov, Russian-born founder of the Telegram messaging and social media app, has been arrested in France for failing to comply with official demands to regulate content posted by users on his app. According to a warrant issued by France’s Ofmin – an office tasked with preventing violence against minors – Durov’s alleged offences include abetting fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organised crime, child pornography and the promotion of terrorism. The arrest of the 39-year-old Durov – a French, Saint Kitts and Nevis and United Arab Emirates citizen – is set to become a battle royal between advocates of free speech and those who seek to regulate it. Elon Musk, owner

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Are Labour about to u-turn on the winter fuel payment?

Could Labour be about to water down its removal of the winter fuel payment for pensioners? The chorus of muttering is getting louder in the party about restricting it to those on pension credit or other means-tested benefits, with backbenchers saying they have been shocked by the volume of letters from pensioners about it. This week, Rachael Maskell called on the government to think again about the policy after the new energy price cap went up, and now Harriet Harman has intervened with her own suggestion. Baroness Harman politely offered a compromise in which ‘they decide to make a different cut-off point’. Harman doesn’t tend to criticise her party in

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Israel’s strikes on Lebanon bring Jerusalem one step closer to regional dominance

As the dust literally settles across southern Lebanon in the aftermath of the Israeli airstrikes, we are starting to see an answer to the question of whether this will be the escalation that leads to all-out war. Hezbollah has declared an end to the first phase of revenge for Israel’s assassination of its most senior military commander Fuad Shukr, who masterminded the killing of 241 marines and 58 French soldiers in 1983, in Beirut last month. Its planned attack on the headquarters of Mossad and Unit 8200, Israel’s fabled military intelligence directorate, has been averted. Casualties appear to have been very limited. Jerusalem’s spy chiefs have flown to Cairo to