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Politics

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

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Treasury holds the key to fixing the NHS

The most interesting thing about Lord Ara Darzi’s report on the health service, expected to be published this Thursday, is how ministers decide to use it. The former health minister from the last Labour government was commissioned to carry out a rapid review of how well the NHS is functioning. He is expected to conclude that it really isn’t: yesterday, Keir Starmer said that Darzi was ‘really clear that the NHS is broken but not beaten’.  The Health Secretary is likely to call for higher capital funding in the next spending review A lot of the pre-briefing so far has been that Darzi will say that the NHS is going

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Why does Scholz want to speed up peace talks for Ukraine?

Is German chancellor Olaf Scholz giving in to pressure to reduce support for Ukraine and improve relations with Russia? Scholz declared during a televised interview with the German network ZDF broadcast last night that any fresh peace talks to bring an end to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine should also include Russia.  ‘I believe that now is the time to discuss how we can arrive at a peaceful resolution from this war, at a faster pace than currently appears to be the case,’ Scholz said. ‘The [Ukrainian] president and I are in agreement that any talks should include Russia.’ Securing Russia’s attendance at future peace negotiations is, of course, another

Steerpike Steerpike

MPs swap booze for soft drinks

Whither the future of parliament’s pubs? It was less than three months ago that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray reportedly wanted to close permanently all of Westminster’s watering holes – including the famous Strangers’ Bar – to stop novice MPs falling prey to the House of Commons’ historic drinking culture. But eight weeks after Labour’s stonking election, Mr S hears that the new boys and girls are demonstrating something of a puritanical streak themselves. Among long-time veterans of the Strangers’ Bar, there is consternation and surprise at the new-found popularity of alcohol-free replacements in place of old favourites. Pints of Estrella Galicia 0.0 per cent and Guinness 0

James Heale James Heale

Will Rachel Reeves soften the winter fuel cut?

14 min listen

Tomorrow MPs will vote on Rachel Reeves’ decision to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners who aren’t eligible for pension benefits. We spoke on this podcast on Friday about the pressure that Labour is under from all sides on this, but the temperature has increased over the weekend with the trade unions getting involved. What’s the latest?  Also on the podcast, there have been some allegations of ‘dark arts’ during the first round of voting in the tory leadership contest, and possible vote sharing. Is there any truth to these rumours?  James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Andrew Tettenborn

Labour is in denial about our bad universities

Our universities are in a mess. Too many degrees lack intellectual quality and utility, and leave those doing them with little but disappointment and debt. Nor is the debt limited to students. Foreign student numbers, on which many institutions rely, are drastically down, and it is an open secret that three big names (Cardiff, York, and Goldsmiths) and at least three less prestigious institutions (notably Lincoln, Kingston, and Middlesex) are making cuts or haemorrhaging money. We clearly need to think radically, both about the purpose of university education and how many institutions a government with limited funds should support We clearly need to think radically, both about the purpose of university education and how many

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Michel Barnier puts the French left to shame

The French left took to the streets on Saturday to protest against the appointment of Michel Barnier as prime minister. The 73-year conservative was nominated by Emmanuel Macron on Thursday, sixty days after the left-wing New Popular Front coalition won the most seats in the parliamentary election. There were dozens of demonstrations across France. The one I attended in Paris was the largest: the organisers, the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) claimed that 160,000 people descended on the Place de la Bastille. The police put the figure at 26,000. I’d say the police had it right. Barnier understands that insulting or ignoring Le Pen won’t magically make her voters disappear

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will Rachel Reeves hold her nerve over the winter fuel cut?

Will Rachel Reeves hold her nerve over the winter fuel payment? That’s the suggestion inside government ahead of a Commons vote tomorrow on the proposed cut that will see only pensioners eligible for benefits receive the £300 payment. Already this morning, government sources have had to play down the idea that there could be a change in course after a Home Office minister appeared to imply the plans could be watered down. Addressing MPs on Monday evening at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party, Reeves urged her colleagues to get behind her: ‘There are more difficult decisions to come. I don’t say that because I relish it. I don’t

Mary Dejevsky

This could be far worse than axing the winter fuel payment

You won’t find me mounting the barricades in defence of the winter fuel payment, though I’ll miss the pleasant surprise when it landed in my bank account sometime before Christmas. I do, though, have a bit of a bone to pick with those well-heeled and often still lucratively-employed pensioners who dusted off their metaphorical loud-hailers (in the form of letters to newspapers and social media posts) every autumn to protest that they didn’t need it, that it was a waste of taxpayers’ money, and that they a) gave it to charity, b) spent it on Christmas presents or c) ordered another case of good wine.  Ending the single occupier discount

Danny Shaw

Thousands of prisoners are about to be released early. Is probation ready?

I met Anthony by the gates of Thameside prison in south-east London. A skinny, gaunt-looking man in his 40s, he’d spent much of his adult life in and out of jail for offences linked to his mental health problems and addiction to drugs. His latest spell inside had lasted eight months. He was hugely relieved to be out and vowed, like so many other newly-released prisoners, never to go back. Seventy-five per cent of probation staff are women but 91 per cent of those they supervise are male Over the next few hours I joined Anthony and a support worker from a charity on a car journey across London as

Steerpike Steerpike

Will David Lammy apologise to the Grenfell judge?

In the fall-out from last week’s devastating report on the Grenfell report, it seems one question has not been asked of the various Labour spokesmen out on the airwaves. In a 1,700-page report that apportioned blame for the 2017 tragedy widely, retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick spared no one in his excoriating judgements. Ministers, officials and the cladding companies were all lacerated for the disaster which claimed the lives of 72 people. Such findings must have come as a surprise to the man who is now our Foreign Secretary, David Lammy. As Dominic Lawson notes in today’s Daily Mail, Lammy’s reaction to the appointment of this distinguished judge

Sam Leith Sam Leith

We should hunt down the companies responsible for Grenfell

I am suffering – and I hope readers will bear with me – a failure of imagination in the aftermath of the Grenfell report. Not a total failure, mind. It is all too easy to imagine how failures of regulation, of maintenance, of oversight, contributed to the Grenfell catastrophe. It’s easy to see how, here and there, and without malice, but with disastrous consequences, amid fraying budgets and overworked bureaucracies, the people and systems which should have ensured that the tenants of Grenfell Tower were safe did not. A cascading series of small failures, missed opportunities and rules honoured in the breach. That, we can all picture.  What is nearly

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Keir Starmer is falling into the same trap as Francois Hollande

There has been no honeymoon for Keir Starmer after his election victory in July. That is hardly a surprise as it was a ‘loveless landslide’ that Labour achieved, winning just 34 per cent of the popular vote. In the two months since the general election, Starmer’s approval rating has dropped still further, with two-thirds of Brits sceptical that he is a force for the good. Starmer should use Francois Hollande’s presidency as a case study in hubristic failure Yet Starmer appears to be deluded about his popularity. The same delusion afflicted Francois Hollande when he was elected president of France in 2012. Like Starmer, he didn’t understand that his victory

Sunday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The Greens are turning on the SNP

The SNP hasn’t wanted for its woes lately but now there is fresh trouble on the way. Lorna Slater, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, tells the BBC it is ‘unlikely’ that her party will vote for the next Scottish government budget after the Nationalists unveiled £500 million in cuts aimed at balancing Holyrood’s books. Many of the services reduced or scrapped in SNP finance minister Shona Robison’s announcement last week were originally put in place by the Greens when they were in coalition between 2021 and 2024. Humza Yousaf’s decision in April to end the governing pact brought a vote of no confidence and the announcement of his resignation four

Joe Bedell-Brill

Keir Starmer: ‘We are going to have to be unpopular’

In his first major interview in Downing Street, the Prime Minister told Laura Kuenssberg that his government had to do ‘difficult things now’ in order to bring about change. Starmer’s plan to take away winter fuel allowances from most pensioners has drawn criticism, and he faces a potential rebellion in parliament next week over the decision. Starmer claimed the Tories had ‘run away from difficult decisions’, and said he was ‘determined’ to deliver change. The Prime Minister admitted he was ‘worried’ about the rise of the far right, and said ‘delivery in government’ was the only way to tackle the ‘snake oil of the easy answer’. Starmer: The US ‘understands

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

The remarkable success of the Allied occupation of Germany

‘We came as adversaries, we stayed as allies, and we leave as friends,’ British prime minister John Major told crowds in Berlin on 8 September 1994, thirty years ago today. The last 200 British, American and French soldiers withdrew from Berlin that day, leaving the city without a foreign military presence for the first time since the Second World War. This was supposed to be the end of history. In reality, a new chapter had already begun. The presence of the Western Allies in post-war Germany is still remembered fondly today. There are events marking the 30th anniversary of their departure, and many traces of their occupation remain. Take the

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

No, Joe Biden is not a latter-day George Washington

George Clooney this week praised Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 election as ‘the most selfless thing that anybody has done since George Washington’. We heard this idea echoing throughout Democratic circles even before Biden stood down in late July – that he was nobly standing aside, in the manner of America’s first president, relinquishing power to save democracy for the greater good. Step forward the 21st century answer to John Adams: Kamala Harris.  It’s all such obvious rubbish. George Washington wanted to retire (for the third time) to Mount Vernon after his first term but was persuaded to run again in 1792 by Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison and

David Cohen

How does New Zealand solve a problem like China?

New Zealand’s most important trading partner is also the nation’s biggest security headache, according to a new risk-assessment report produced by the country’s security intelligence service, or SIS. The government agency sees espionage activities orchestrated by Beijing as a ‘complex intelligence concern’ for a country that has become highly dependent on China for its economic health. The baleful assessment appears in the SIS’s latest annual security threat environment report. While the 48-page briefing highlights a raft of other related issues such as Moscow meddling in the lives of Russian-born New Zealand residents or else officially banning local journalists (including this writer) from travelling to the Russian Federation, a lion’s share of

Alexander Kolyandr

The sneaky way that Russia is still evading western sanctions

The leaders of the European Union can give themselves a pat on the back. They have, on the face of it, delivered on a promise made following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to end the export of European goods, machinery and parts critical to Russia’s war effort. Yet things are not quite as straightforward as they seem. Exports from the bloc to Russia in June plummeted to a mere €2.4 billion (£2 billion) – a third of the €7.5 billion (£6.3 billion) shipped during the last peacetime June of 2021 before the war, according to data from the EU’s statistical body Eurostat. The figure for June this year is the lowest

Iain Macwhirter

Why the SNP keeps failing in its war on child poverty

The poor are always with us, Jesus said, and that has never been more true than in Scotland over the past 25 years. One in four children is still languishing in poverty, according to the Scottish government’s own statistics. This ratio never seems to change, whoever is in power and however much is spent on it. First Minister John Swinney recommitted himself to the Quixotic objective of eradicating poverty in his programme for government this week. He said ending child poverty will be the ‘single greatest priority’ of his government – just as it was for Humza Yousaf and Nicola Sturgeon and all first ministers since the dawn of devolution. The only certainty is that he will fail – even though

Ian O’Doherty

Enoch Burke is no free speech martyr

This week, when he was returned to Dublin’s Mountjoy jail for the third time in two years, Irish schoolteacher Enoch Burke was hailed by his many supporters as a martyr for free speech.  He was, according to some, a very modern victim of a tyrannical ‘woke’ establishment riding roughshod over an individual’s right to religious liberty. The row between Burke, his school and the Irish state began in June 2022 when staff at Wilson’s Hospital School in County Westmeath were instructed by the head teacher that one of their students was transitioning and wanted to be referred to as ‘they/them.’ Burke, who comes from a well-known evangelical Christian family based