Politics

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

Monday

Danny Shaw

How to stop the riots

For five days at the beginning of August 2011, it felt like we were on the brink of anarchy. Over the last few days, similar scenes have played out on British streets: shops have been smashed and looted; people attacked; and police officers on the front line have been injured. There is nothing more frightening than losing control of the streets Labour’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has vowed that ‘there will be a reckoning’ for those involved in the violence. In order to stop the riots, the authorities will have to adopt a similar approach to that taken 13 years ago. Lessons from that period must be applied now if

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The FTSE fall will upset Rachel Reeves’s October Budget

For a while it looked as if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were going to be lucky: they had walked into an economic recovery. The anaemic growth and market turmoil of the past few years – which Labour liked to blame entirely on ‘Tory chaos’ and absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic or energy crisis which followed the invasion of Ukraine – were going to be replaced by a period of stability and prosperity. Some governments are fortunate in their timing: Tony Blair walked into a decade of non-inflationary growth thanks to globalisation and the emergence of China as a major economy. But Starmer, it now looks, will not

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Can our prisons take these thugs?

The last comparable period of civil disorder in this country happened in 2011. Then as now, the courts acted with speed and severity to try to quell five days of rioting in multiple locations, which traumatised the nation, caused hundreds of millions in damage and injured more than three hundred officers. The head of the Crown Prosecution Service at the time was one Keir Starmer. Now, as prime minister, he seeks again to confront the horrific street violence with the same apparent energy and determination. But can a punitive response work to stop violence that has at times threatened to overwhelm the police? Times have changed, and our criminal justice

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Even France is surprised by Britain’s riots

The riots that have erupted across Britain in the last week have been reported extensively in France. The centre-right Le Figaro describes a ‘whiff of civil war’ in the air. The French media are well-versed in covering riots of their own, but the trouble on the other side of the Channel is unusual in that the troublemakers are regarded as far-right. The violence that has been a regular feature in French streets in recent years comes from elsewhere. Far-left mobs regularly smash up shops and banks and battle the police, and last summer, there was a week of rioting across France after a teenage French-Algerian driving without a licence was shot dead

Sunday

Jawad Iqbal

Starmer needs to get a grip on the riots

Hundreds of angry protestors have attacked a hotel in South Yorkshire that has been used to house migrants and asylum seekers. Videos posted on social media show the police retreating under a hail of objects thrown by anti-immigration protesters outside the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham. There are pictures of protestors hurling pieces of wood and chairs at riot police The scenes are some of the worst so far as unrest across Britain enters its fifth day, after three young girls were stabbed to death in Southport on Monday. The Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, in responding to the events in Rotherham, vowed ‘to bring these thugs to justice as quickly as

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Starmer blasts ‘far-right thuggery’ in wake of weekend riots

After a weekend of violent disorder breaking out across the UK, the Prime Minister has this evening issued a statement from Downing Street. ‘I utterly condemn the far-right thuggery we have seen this weekend,’ Keir Starmer says. ‘Be in no doubt: those who have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law.’ The Labour leader goes on to say that ‘the police will be making arrests’ and he can ‘guarantee you will regret taking part in this disorder’. It comes as the Home Office announces that emergency security will be provided to mosques immediately – which have already become a target for the mob violence. While there have

Ed West Ed West

Is Britain falling apart?

My brand is pessimism so I’m wary of flogging it to death or becoming a parody of myself, but it’s hard not to feel a bit downcast about the direction of the country. Perhaps it’s just been an especially grim couple of weeks for Britain, with riots in Leeds, a soldier stabbed in Kent and the unimaginable horror in Southport, followed by the ugly mob scenes that followed. That this happened on the same evening as screaming crowds were seen in Southend running from a machete fight added to the sense of national fragility. This was followed, yesterday, by horrific scenes of widespread mob disorder across the country in which policemen

Steerpike Steerpike

Violent mob comes to Rotherham

Protests are spreading across the UK. In Hull, protesters gathered outside a hotel housing asylum seekers and chanted ‘stop the boats’, and in Belfast a Syrian cafe owner had his business targeted. Now the action has spread to Rotherham. This afternoon, a mob has set fire to a hotel, used to house migrants. Footage appears to show masked rioters assembling outside a Holiday Express as they clashed with police. It comes after earlier demonstrations in the area from a mix of anti-racist and anti-immigration supporters. On Thursday, Keir Starmer used a Downing Street press conference to address violent disorder following the Southport stabbing attacks. Following reports that more protests and

Eliot Wilson

There’s no excuse for this thuggery

On Friday night, I watched the news with a sick heart. I watched masked men in Sunderland throw bricks and beer cans at the police and chant racist slogans. I recognised the setting. I grew up in Sunderland: I spent 15 years of my life there and still have family there. I was in Keel Square, where the disorder began, in the early hours of New Year’s Day this year. There is no justification for the violence we have seen in towns and cities across the country this week. To attribute it to the tragic murder of three young girls in Southport on 29 July is mistaken, misleading and grotesque,

Limor Simhony Philpott

Israel’s coming war against Hezbollah might be necessary

A full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah now seems closer than at any point since 7 October. Recent escalations, including the killing of twelve Druze children by a Hezbollah rocket and the assassination of the organisation’s armed forces commander, mean that war is now a more likely scenario. A war in Lebanon would look very differently to the war in Gaza. Hezbollah has always been bigger and more powerful than Hamas. Much of Hezbollah’s extensive weapons come from Iran. According to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), these include long, medium and short-range precision missiles, more than 150,000 rockets, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, and drones used for reconnaissance and attacks. Its tens

Andrew Tettenborn

24-hour courts are risky, but right

Yesterday evening, the government instituted a little-known procedure called the Additional Courts Protocol. Set up following the 2011 London riots, this involves emergency ad hoc magistrates’ courts sitting 24 hours a day to deal swiftly with the troublemakers.  This was the right decision. But it still may come back to bite the people who made it. It’s not difficult to see the advantages. Quick justice, bypassing the usual bureaucracy and reducing the scope for suggestions that witnesses’ memory may have faded, may well give offenders a salutary shock: the prospect of it can concentrate minds in future.  It also must be admitted that in the present case, invoking the Protocol

Nigel Biggar

The risk of ‘loaning’ the Elgin Marbles to Greece

Sir Keir Starmer’s government looks ready to smile upon the British Museum’s apparent desire to by-pass the legal prohibition of the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens by negotiating a ‘long-term loan’ instead. Since Greece believes that the Marbles were stolen, that ‘loan’ is bound to be permanent.   The first hint of this came four days after the general election, when Dennis McShane, Labour’s Europe minister from 2002 to 2005, published an article in the Times on 8 July: ‘It would be smart politics to return Elgin Marbles now’. Waxing romantic in his love for the Greece of Lord Byron and Paddy Leigh Fermor, he decried Elgin’s ‘crime’

Rakib Ehsan

Anjem Choudary is in jail for life – but is that enough?

Radical preacher Anjem Choudary – the Bexley-born godfather of homegrown Islamist terrorism in modern Britain – has finally been imprisoned for life. Found guilty of directing the banned group al-Muhajiroun after an international investigation involving Scotland Yard, the MI5, the New York Police Department (NYPD) and Canadian police, Choudary was given a minimum term of 28 years at Woolwich Crown Court this week. The jail sentence means the 57-year-old will not be eligible for release until he is at least 85 years old. It’s unlikely he will ever leave prison alive. Choudary doesn’t speak for British Muslims like me This has been a long time coming for Choudary. Counter-terrorism sources have linked

Adam LeBor

Remembering the Roma Holocaust, 80 years later

On 16 May, 1944, as the first full trainloads of Hungarian Jews trundled towards Auschwitz, the SS decided to clear out the area known as the ‘Gypsy family camp’ to make room for the new arrivals. The family camp housed several thousand Roma and Sinti (Roma with German roots) people. Like the Jews, they were classified as racially inferior and enemies of the Third Reich. But while Jewish arrivals were immediately removed from their loved ones, Roma families were often allowed to stay together. Their numbers were much smaller and they refused to be separated. Claimant 3102250 finally received the standard compensation for her ordeal That day, the Roma and

Julian Brazier

The Army is obsessed with safety

Last week, the new head of the Army, General Sir Roly Walker, warned that war may be much closer than we think. Is our military ready? Two years ago, a syndicate of young officers published an article on the extreme shortage of division and brigade-level training in the British Army. Since then, the amount of larger-scale training has improved somewhat, despite a general resource shortage, but a form-filling safety regime has developed in our armed forces in the past decade which makes our army less combat ready. It’s worth first understanding how safety works in the British Army. In recent years, several fatal accidents have been reported in its operations. Statistics are no

Ralph Outhwaite

How Islamic State makes money

As if the French hadn’t enough on their plates, with turbulent elections and an underwhelming Euros performance, they’ve now had to contend with the prospect of terrorism blighting the Olympic Games. At least one major terror plot has been foiled by the French authorities, and pro-Islamic State channels are issuing threats to stadiums and fans. The main concern comes from the Afghanistan-based ‘Islamic State of the Khorasan Region’ (IS-K), and for good reason too. Back in March 2023, US Army General Michael Kurilla warned Congress that IS-K could launch an attack against European targets with ‘little to no warning’. A year later, the group took responsibility for the attack on the Crocus City Hall

Saturday

Coffee House

Police clashes and violence spread across Britain

It has been a weekend of riots. They began on Friday night in Sunderland, and were repeated in Bristol, Stoke, Hull, Belfast, Leeds, Manchester, Blackpool and Liverpool on Saturday. People threw bricks and bottles at the police, who put up their shields and wielded batons in response. In Hull, a Greggs and a Specsavers were smashed up and a Shoezone was set on fire. Some cities, such as London, saw protests that did not escalate. The Sunday Telegraph says that courts could be open for 24 hours a day in order to dampen the chaos. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that ‘criminal violence and disorder has no place on Britain’s

Jonathan Spyer

What will Iran do next?

Following the killings of Hezbollah’s Fuad Shukr and Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, Israel and the Middle East are poised and waiting for the next move. The two killings represent a significant humiliation for the Iran-led regional axis, which until this point had been projecting a sense of achievement and satisfaction.  Is Israel prepared to up the ante to the point of regional war? The October 7 massacres and the subsequent war may not have come at the express order or at the precise time wanted by the regime in Tehran. But events have proceeded largely in a way satisfactory to it. Israel appeared to be isolating itself diplomatically, unable to deliver a deathblow

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Keir Starmer’s riot crisis

Just a month into the Labour ascendancy and its first major political crisis has already taken shape. It is not the looming tax-raising Budget Rachel Reeves is preparing in contravention of assurances made during the election campaign about her party’s plans being fully funded. It is instead something much more visceral and basic: a breakdown in law and order. On the first BBC Question Time programme after the election, Andrew Marr gave his thoughts on what the new Starmer administration would mean. ‘For the first time in many of our lives, actually Britain looks like a little haven of peace and stability,’ he declared.  He was referring to parliamentary stability

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

James Heale, Lara Prendergast, Patrick Marnham, Laura Gascoigne and Michael Simmons

32 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale interviews Woody Johnson, the former American Ambassador to the UK, about a possible second Trump term (1:19); Lara Prendergast reflects on the issue of smartphones for children and what lessons we could learn from Keir Starmer’s approach to privacy (6:35); reviewing Patrick Bishop’s book ‘Paris ’44: The Shame and the Glory’, Patrick Marnham argues the liberation of Paris was hard won (12:37); Laura Gascoigne examines Ukraine’s avant garde movement in light of the Russian invasion (20:34); and, Michael Simmons provides his notes on venn diagrams (28:33).  Presented by Patrick Gibbons.