Politics

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

Friday

Arash Azizi

Who will lead Hamas now?

It took more than a year of waging war, but Israel has finally succeeded in killing its top target in Gaza: Yahya Sinwar. Alongside Mohammad Deif, who is thought to have been killed by an Israeli strike in July, Sinwar was the man most responsible for organising the horrific attacks of 7 October. At the time of those attacks, Sinwar was the head of Hamas’s Gaza branch, but since August he had been promoted to the group’s overall leader, replacing the Qatar-based Ismayil Haniyah who was assassinated on 31 July while on a trip to Tehran. The group must now pick a new leader.  Having led Hamas’s Gaza branch since

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Benjamin Netanyahu has been vindicated

The death of Yahya Sinwar, the top military commander of Hamas, is an important and symbolic moment in Israel’s ongoing war against the terror group. His elimination was finally made official by an evening statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following hours of rumours fuelled by the circulation of unmistakable pictures of his corpse. Yet not one rocket was fired into Israel by Hamas in response. This is what progress looks like. The man who threatened to ‘take down the border with Israel and tear out their hearts from their bodies’ is now dead, marking a critical juncture in the conflict that reverberates beyond the battlefield and carries profound implications

Georgia L. Gilholy

Robert Jenrick can change the Tories’ fortunes

If you speak to anybody unfortunate enough to have spent time canvassing for the Conservatives during the general election, they will tell you that one issue came up on the doorstep: immigration. The failure to control our borders using Brexit powers led voters to defect en masse to both the Liberal Democrats and Reform. Any attempt to forge a right-wing party capable of entering Number 10 again must begin with contrition, followed by a long period of working to regain trust. Much has been made of the fact that Jenrick is a former Remainer This year’s leadership debate marks a welcome change from 2022. Two years ago, the unprecedented movement

Thursday

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

The Tory leadership contest is Kemi Badenoch’s to lose

Were Kemi Badenoch not to be unveiled as the next Conservative party leader in a couple of weeks it would now go down as a very notable upset. Exposed to a demanding hour of cross-examination on the GB News leadership special, Badenoch landed her pitch almost perfectly. As the strong favourite with the bookies, Badenoch probably only needed a draw against her sole remaining opponent, Robert Jenrick. But for all his fluency, she did rather better than that. A show of hands at the end among the audience of several hundred Tory members broke overwhelmingly in her favour. Trust me, I’m an engineer, she told her party Perhaps Jenrick blundered

Oscar Edmondson

Did Labour make its own Budget trap?

15 min listen

A scoop from Bloomberg has revealed that a number of Cabinet ministers have written formally to the Prime Minister to complain about the budgetary decisions they are being asked to make in their respective departments. Rachel Reeves seems to have an impossible task ahead of the Budget – but was this a trap of Labour’s own making? Oscar Edmondson talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.

William Moore William Moore

Reeves’s gambit, a debate on assisted dying & queer life in postwar Britain

52 min listen

This week: the Chancellor’s Budget dilemma. ‘As a former championship chess player, Rachel Reeves must know that the first few moves can be some of the most important of the game,’ writes Rupert Harrison – former chief of staff to George Osborne – for the cover of the magazine this week. But, he says, the truth is that she has played herself into a corner ahead of this month’s Budget, with her room for manoeuvre dramatically limited by a series of rash decisions. Her biggest problem is that she has repeatedly ruled out increases in income tax, national insurance and VAT. So which taxes will rise, given that the easy

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory councillor’s wife jailed over social media riot post

The wife of a Tory councillor has been jailed for 31 months over a social media post during the riots. Lucy Connolly, married to Raymond Connolly on the West Northamptonshire Council, took to social media in July with some rather controversial words in the wake of the killing of three children in Southport. In her Twitter tirade, Connolly called for ‘mass deportation now’, adding: Set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the b******s for all I care. While you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. Good heavens. The wife of the Tory councillor previously admitted to intending to stir up racial hatred, and was

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Tories to raise MP threshold for confidence vote

How long will the next Tory leader last? As I write in this week’s issue of The Spectator, it’s the question being asked in the shadow cabinet after no candidate managed to muster more than a third of parliamentary support. ‘It would have been healthier had one of them bombed’, says a shadow minister of the final rounds of the contest. It means parallels are being drawn between the 2024 contest and the 2001 leadership election where Michael Portillo, Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Clarke all had support of around a third of the MPs – and Portillo was knocked out by one vote. The eventual winner, Duncan Smith, was

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Jenrick backer suggests Badenoch ‘preoccupied with children’

As the two finalists for the Tory leadership race are preparing to go head-to-head in tonight’s GB News special, more Tory MPs are speaking up for their favoured candidates. In an interesting interview, veteran politician Sir Christopher Chope has revealed who he is backing – and for rather curious reasons. The Christchurch MP told ITV News’s viewers that he was throwing his weight behind Jenrick – before going onto explain exactly why: I myself am supporting Robert Jenrick because I think he’s brought more energy and commitment to the campaign, and being leader of the opposition is a really demanding job. As much as I like Kemi, I think she’s

Debbie Hayton

JK Rowling deserves a peerage

Kemi Badenoch has suggested that JK Rowling deserves a seat in the House of Lords. The Tory leadership contender said in an interview with Talk TV: ‘I don’t know whether she would take it but I certainly would give her a peerage’. Rowling certainly deserves credit for her tireless stand against the transgender madness. For more than four years, she has spoken out courageously, sometimes in the face of dreadful abuse, to say things that we once all knew to be true: that being a woman is far more than an assertion of a supposedly female gender identity. The Harry Potter author has been a key voice in a debate

Andrew Tettenborn

It’s shameful that an army veteran was convicted over a prayer for his dead son

Adam Smith-Connor was this week convicted of a heinous offence, slapped with a conditional discharge and a costs order for £9,000. The actual crime in question? The 51-year-old army veteran was praying silently, on his own, for the soul of a child which he had, now much to his regret, aborted many years earlier. The reason this affair reached Poole Magistrates’ Court was that he had been doing this near a Bournemouth abortion clinic, and that clinic was the subject of a buffer zone order. This episode should worry all of us, pro-life or pro-choice, if we believe in the idea of liberty. The by-law Smith-Connor was convicted under (not

Matthew Lynn

Let’s see if ‘Patriotic Millionaires’ really want more tax

Dubai, Italy or perhaps the Bahamas? Many multi-millionaires are discussing where they should flee to as the Rachel Reeves prepares to raid their bank accounts in the ‘Horror Budget’ scheduled for the end of this month. But not, as it turns out, Patriotic Millionaires, the group that campaigns tirelessly for higher taxes on the rich. Its members want Reeves to take more of their money. The papers are dominated by reports of wealthy entrepreneurs, and the few remaining non-doms, securing a bolt hole somewhere where Reeves will not be able to reach them, but Patriotic Millionaires has a very different message. A report out today, written by IPPR (a think

Steerpike Steerpike

Badenoch: I’d give JK Rowling a peerage

The Tory leadership contest is heating up and, from today, members can vote for their favoured candidate. Just hours before her appearance on tonight’s GB News leadership show, Kemi Badenoch has sparked discussion by declaring that she would give renowned writer and women’s rights campaigner JK Rowling a peerage. Praising the Harry Potter author, Badenoch said, after being asked whether she would make Rowling a peer in an interview with TalkTV, that: ‘I would. I don’t know whether she would take it, but I certainly would give her a peerage.’ The Tory leadership contender blasted those ‘oddballs and bad people’ who campaigned against sex-based rights, before lauding the work of

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’ is unlikely to impress Europe

After confidentially briefing it around various Western capitals, President Zelelsnky has unveiled – to a degree – his much-trailed ‘victory plan’ to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. His statement on the plan came ahead of today’s meeting with the European Council. Along with three additional secret codicils shared only with certain partners, the plan has five main points. In and of themselves, none of them are implausible, and all would certainly strengthen Ukraine’s security. However, they also embody certain assumptions that likely make them unworkable, simply because they are asking from Nato, the EU and the West in general a great deal more than they seem willing to offer. One

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Reeves’s Budget is looking increasingly messy

The tragedy of the coming Budget is that it could have been a great reforming Budget. Instead, it now looks like being an extremely messy one, with the Chancellor buffeted by political winds into coming up with tax changes which are bizarre, punitive and which end up pleasing no-one. The latest symptom of this is the suggestion, reported in the Times today, that Rachel Reeves may increase capital gains tax on shares but not on property. Why should you pay more tax when you sell your shares than when you sell an investment property? Reeves was right the first time, when she hinted that she was going to equalise capital

David Cohen

The strange timing of Jacinda Ardern’s damehood

Jacinda Ardern has been made a dame for her services to politics during the five turbulent years she spent as prime minister of New Zealand. An ‘incredibly honoured and very humbled’ Ardern was officially recognised by the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle. This week’s investiture came more than a year after she was first appointed a Dame Grand Companion in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours. That was four or so months after she abruptly stepped down from the position she had held since taking office in 2017 at the still-tender age of 37, later winning plaudits around the world for her leadership during Covid. Ardern’s departure was anything but

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How much trouble is Rachel Reeves in?

The countdown to Labour’s first budget for 14 years continues. Unfortunately for Rachel Reeves, the mood music is not particularly promising. While the Chancellor was offered a ray of light on Wednesday with the news that inflation has fallen to 1.7 per cent (therefore leading to speculation of rate cuts sooner rather than later), Reeves’ party is growing increasingly concerned about what she will say at the despatch box come October 30th. As first reported by Bloomberg, several cabinet ministers have written to Keir Starmer to raise alarm over real term cuts they have had to model for their departments. While last minute wrangling between ministers and the Treasury is

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The slippery slope of assisted dying

Critics of the Assisted Dying Bill have been warning for a while that it would lead to a ‘slippery slope’. Their fears are looking increasingly legitimate. The bill, introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, had its first reading in the Commons yesterday. In the last few days, some of those with conditions that might not qualify under the proposed legislation are voicing their concern about not being included. Is there already a danger that the scope of the bill will be expanded to include them? The relationship between doctors and patients would change forever Sir Nicholas Mostyn, a retired judge, set up a feisty group of Parkinson’s sufferers who produce

Charlie Falconer and Charles Moore

‘Not all suffering can be relieved’: A debate on assisted dying

As Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill comes before the Commons, the former justice secretary Lord Falconer (who introduced a similar bill to the Lords) and The Spectator’s chairman Lord Moore debate assisted dying. ‘When people talk about the moral overreach of the state, they are blind to the fact the state is already there’ CHARLIE FALCONER: The law has effectively broken down. If you assist anybody to take their own life, you’re immediately guilty of an offence, irrespective of motive, and you can be sent to prison for a maximum of 14 years. Even the authorities no longer think that’s enforceable. The Director of Public Prosecutions, the chief prosecutor in