Politics

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

Tuesday

James Heale James Heale

Labour’s winter fuel woes are a sign of things to come

On paper, the result was a success for Labour. Despite excited reports, government whips managed to keep their party’s great winter fuel revolt down to 40-odd abstentions and a single rebel. Poor Jon Trickett was the only government MP to troop into the Opposition lobby; given the treatment meted out to the child benefit rebels, he could now face a similar punishment of losing the Labour whip. By 348 to 228, MPs voted down the Conservative motion today to reverse the cut, with the government’s majority dropping from 167 to 120. Yet today’s victory is a sign of worse to come in the future. The ninety-minute debate in parliament was

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The EU’s Apple tax ruling is a bleak day for Ireland

For those of us who grew up singing songs about Irish nationhood, today is a depressing day. As youths we crooned about how Ireland, ‘long a province’, will one day be ‘a nation once again’. We stood in stiff attention to the Irish national anthem with its promise that Ireland will never again ‘shelter the despot or the slave’. Now we switch on the news and what do we see? A foreign court bossing Ireland around. Ireland must now go after Apple and demand billions of euros from it Today, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Ireland granted Apple ‘unlawful aid’ and must now badger Apple for £11

Constantin Eckner

Germany’s border crackdown is a gamble

From next week, Germany will enforce controls at its borders once again. The decision, announced by interior minister Nancy Faeser, comes only a little more than a week after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieved major successes in several regional elections. Faeser said that border controls would be applied to tackle irregular immigration as well as to strengthen internal security against the threat of Islamic terrorism and international criminality. These permanent controls will replace the usual spot checks common at borders within the European Union for six months, although it is possible that they could be extended. The government may hit the panic button if the rise of the

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The state pension system is unfair. Reeves is right to change it

Rachel Reeves is cutting £1.4 billion of pensioner welfare payments with her winter fuel payment means-test. It sounds like a big number, but it’s not. £152 billion is a big number. That’s the total value of welfare payments to pensioners in 2024/25. It’s more than we spend on the NHS. Taking the £1.4 billion annual cut into account, by 2027, that total bill will be around £166 billion. Relative to the wider economy, pensioner benefits are currently around 5.4 per cent of GDP. That will rise next year to an all-time high of 5.6 per cent, before dropping back to 5.4 per cent in 2027/28 – unless policies like the

Steerpike Steerpike

Keir Starmer’s prisoner endorsement

Happy prisoner release day, one and all! Today’s move to let out the lags is all part of the Ministry of Justice’s efforts to ease the pressures on Britain’s overburdened prisons. To mark this auspicious occasion, hacks across the country have descended on various prisons to interview inmates being released to the outside world. And after doing time at His Majesty’s pleasure, the hardened ‘crims certainly seem to have a way with words… Quote of the day surely has to go to the Daily Mail for this dispatch from HMP Isis, a Category C young offenders institution in Thamesmead. The paper writes evocatively that ‘as the sun rose in London today’

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Does Starmer know what to do with the unions?

Before coming into government, Keir Starmer would use his battles with the unions, particularly Unite, as a way of defining himself against the parts of the Labour movement resistant to change. His speech to the Trades Union Congress this morning was more about suggesting that the unions could be part of that change. I say ‘could’. Parts of the speech made it clear that Starmer still thinks some union bosses need to face up to reality. He told the hall in Brighton that ‘I do have to make clear from a place of respect that this government will not risk its mandate for economic stability under any circumstances. And with

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Can Labour get young people back to work?

The UK still looks set to get another interest rate cut (or two) by the end of the year, but is that now the main indicator of a healthy labour market? This morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics shows average wage growth slowed to 4 per cent in the three months leading up to July. Wage growth is still outpacing inflation, but it is moving in the right direction – for the Bank of England anyway, which is watching closely to see if its first rate cut is going to have any major impact on wages, risking a secondary round of inflation spikes. Adjusting for inflation, overall wages

Alexander Larman

Has King Charles finally run out of patience with Prince Andrew?

While the nation basks in the good news about the Princess of Wales in her battle with cancer, the Royals’ troubles are not entirely over. The not-so-grand Duke of York, Prince Andrew, remains a baleful, apparently ungovernable character. Andrew is no longer a working royal, and is rarely, if ever, seen in public (not even at the Pizza Express in Woking). Instead, he prefers to entertain his remaining friends in the seclusion of Royal Lodge in Windsor. Yet even that Edenic existence might be about to come to an end; Andrew faces being expelled from his current residence, should he be unable to pay the substantial costs associated with it.

Julie Bindel

Women will pay the price for Labour’s early release prison scheme

For women trying to escape domestic abuse, the government’s early prison release scheme spells further misery. Around 1,700 prisoners will walk free today. A ‘high proportion’ of them will be domestic abusers, according to Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner, who said survivors of domestic violence were ‘paying the price’ for prison overcrowding. Make no mistake: Jacobs is right. Some women will lose their lives as a result of prisoners being released prematurely. A man who was in jail for breaking his partner’s jaw is amongst those to be freed Perpetrators of domestic violence often know where their victims live, where they work and where their kids go to school.

Matthew Lynn

Starmer’s social contract with the unions won’t work 

There may be a few warnings about pay, and the inevitable references to the ‘black hole’ that has mysteriously appeared in the government’s finances since Labour won the election in July. And yet despite that, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will deliver the most positive speech a Labour leader has delivered to the Trades Union Congress in more than half a century later today. ‘I call now, as before the election, for the politics of partnership. With us in government, with business, and most importantly of all, with working people… the mood is for partnership,’ he will tell the comrades. ‘And not just on pay – on everything.’ In

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

We’re being ruled by a 1980s left-wing student elite

We are now governed by people who were left-wing students in the 1980s and early 90s. This is one of those facts that you try to forget, like getting older in general, but which – occasionally, suddenly – hits you in the mush. It’s fine in the normal run of things but every so often I remember that these left-wing students are in power and I get a rush of panic and horror, and emit an (internal) scream.  Eighties student Tory haters have matured into Labour politicians and Labour’s useful idiots I was a student then as well you see. Gold Label at 50p a bottle in the Union bar.

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Hot springs have doomed Japan’s net zero ambitions

Most people know that Japan is a country cursed with considerable seismic activity; frequent, and very occasionally devastating, earthquakes and tsunamis are a fact of life – and death. Less well known is the blessing the country’s position along the Ring of Fire brings – or potentially brings: abundant geothermal energy. It is estimated that Japan’s geothermal resources, a sort of natural subterranean cauldron, could meet 10 per cent of the country’s energy needs. At the moment though, geothermal makes up just 0.3 per cent of energy consumed, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). This makes it a massively, and some would say bizarrely, underexploited resource for a

David Shipley

Probation officers won’t be able to cope with 5,500 prisoner releases

Today the government is releasing an estimated 1,700 prisoners early, under the scheme (SDS40) in which most inmates will only serve 40 per cent of their sentence. By the end of October, some 5,500 prisoners will have been released early. The idea is to take pressure off the prison system, and buy enough time to build more capacity. Life may become a little easier in our jails, but for the probation service, this means yet more pressure. Probation is a crucial part of the justice system. It is responsible for supervising people who are serving community sentences, and those who have been released from prison ‘on licence’. Probation officers are

Monday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What Rachel Reeves told Labour MPs

Who was Rachel Reeves more worried about tonight when she addressed the Parliamentary Labour party? The Labour MPs who will rebel against the government tomorrow in the vote on restricting winter fuel payment to those on pension credit – or the ones who are staying loyal? No one spoke out against the cut when the Chancellor spoke this evening, but others have made their displeasure clear in broadcasts, or by signing the early-day motion calling for the government to U-turn. Reeves told the party: ‘I understand the decision that this government have made on winter fuel is a difficult decision. I’m not immune to the arguments that many in this

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Andrew Neil and Piers Morgan ask – has Trump lost his mojo?

It’s less than 60 days to go until polling day in America and the race could not be closer. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are due to debate on Tuesday night in what could be one of the most consequential clashes of modern times. So, with all eyes on the National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia, who better to ask about Trump’s mindset than the Brit who knows him best? Step forward Piers Morgan, who appears on today’s Americano podcast with Andrew Neil and Freddy Gray. After the shocking assassination attempt in July, Gray asked, has The Donald now softened and changed? Not a bit of it says Morgan, who says

Jawad Iqbal

How fake news thrived in the aftermath of the Southport stabbings

It has fallen to Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of state threat legislation, to say the obvious in pointing out that the recent riots following the attacks in Southport show ‘why the public must be told more’ when such attacks happen. Hall, speaking at a conference organised by the Counter Extremism Group, highlighted the dangers posed by the ‘information vacuum’ in the immediate aftermath of the stabbings. He said: ‘I think we are at a point in time where trust in public institutions should not be taken for granted and when matters of high importance in the public mind happen that, as far as is possible, the police, the

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