Politics

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

Wednesday

16 Oct 2024

No, Israel isn’t deliberately killing children in Gaza

In every war, children perish. It’s the worst thing about conflict, this dragging of innocents into the swirling maelstrom of tensions they don’t even understand. In Iraq, almost 10,000 kids were maimed or killed between 2008 and 2023. In the war in Syria, a child was injured or killed every eight hours for ten infernal years. So unimaginable was the suffering of kids in the Congo wars of recent years that that benighted nation came to be called ‘the epicentre of child suffering’. The echoes of past libels against Jews are deafening now And so it is in the clash between Israel and Hamas. Children in Gaza are dying in

Kate Andrews

Will falling inflation save Rachel Reeves’s Budget?

Inflation slowed to 1.7 per cent in the twelve months to September, taking the inflation rate to its lowest levels since spring 2021. While markets and forecasters had expected the inflation rate to drop below the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target at some point this year (market consensus for September was 1.9 per cent), the bigger-than-expected fall has come as a surprise, as core inflation also slowed to 3.2 per cent in the 12 months to September – down from 3.6 per cent in August. The largest contributions to the slowdown came from falling transport costs, while overall services fell to 4.9 per cent on the year, down

Matthew Lynn

Does Kamala Harris think black men can’t be trusted with crypto?

There have been plenty of accusations made against crypto currencies such as Bitcoin over the years. It is too flimsy, you can’t buy anything with it, and it is wildly volatile. All fair enough. But is it racist? That appears to be the view of Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for US president. The US vice president has unveiled a set of policies designed to help black men, an important group of voters who have been showing worrying signs of drifting towards her rival Donald Trump. It included pledges to improve healthcare, education, and to legalise marijuana, presumably on the grounds they think that black guys smoke a lot of

Lisa Haseldine

Russian spies are intent on wreaking havoc in Germany

If ever the West needed confirmation that we have become firmly entrenched in a new Cold War with Russia, this month’s warnings from intelligence services across Europe should do it. Just a week after MI5’s Ken McCallum said that Russia’s military intelligence service is ‘on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets’, the German security services have also raised the alarm. They have warned that the coming months would see the Russian secret services crank up the heat on acts of espionage and sabotage in Germany ‘without scruple’. Appearing for their annual grilling at the Bundestag’s parliamentary control committee on Monday, the heads of Germany’s three

Freddy Gray

Trump’s Chicago interview was magnificently weird

Kamala Harris has been criticising Donald Trump for ducking interviews. Today, however, she avoided a sit-down with the Economic Club of Chicago. Trump, by contrast, showed up and spent an hour facing difficult questions from Bloomberg News’s editor-in-chief John Micklethwait. It was, like all the best Trump appearances, a magnificently weird occasion. Who needs LSD when you can watch him as a presidential candidate, eight years in, still melting reality live on YouTube? If Kamala Harris speaks in confusing word salads, Trump speaks in even more baffling fruit jellies Micklethwait is a brilliant man: polished, Ampleforth and Oxford, highly successful. His hair is coiffed and his loafers look expensive. For the

Steerpike

Sir Keir faces scrutiny over Taylor Swift policing fiasco

Dear oh dear. The Home Secretary, the London mayor and even Sir Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff have all been in the firing line over the Taylor Swift security row – and now the Prime Minister is under the microscope. It transpires that after Labour figures pushed police to give special protection to the star during her London shows – on the orders of her manager and mother – the PM was not only given free tickets to her Wembley gig but even accepted backstage access to Swift at the event. Good heavens… The latest update, broken by the Sun newspaper, comes after the news that singer’s mother insisted

Ross Clark

Should the UK copy Europe on standardised chargers?

You probably know the frustration: you are sitting there trying to stuff a charging cable into your phone before realising that no, it’s the wrong one: it is left over from your last phone, or belongs to some other device. Just how many kinds of near-identical cables and sockets is it possible to produce? It was this frustration, together with the wastage which arises when old chargers are thrown away purely because they won’t fit a charging port, which led the EU to announce in 2022 that phone companies will have to use a common charging cable: the USB type C port. Apple protested that iPhones would no longer be

Hamish McRae

Working people will pay for Reeves’s NI hike

Who would pay for Rachel Reeves’s increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions? Well yes, in the first instance it is the companies that would have to hand over the cash, but the real burden would be much more widely shared. To see why, start with the simple question: what does a company do if it finds its labour costs have suddenly gone up? It can do nothing, in which case its profits fall (or even less agreeably, its losses rise) and it pays a bit less in corporation tax. It can trim its workforce to hold costs down, which will cut the government’s take from income tax, and – of

Francis Pike

Tesla is in trouble if Kamala Harris wins

In the third century BC the city of Rhodes, in celebration of the defeat of Demetrius I of Macedonia, built the Colossus, a 30-metre-high statue of the sun god Helios. It became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Now there is a new Colossus to wonder at, not a statue but a supercomputer, reputed to be the most powerful in the world. So which American tech company built it? Apple, IBM, Google, OpenAI? Actually, none of the above. The new Colossus has been built by a US auto company… Tesla. How come? In the space of 14 years, Tesla has risen from being the manufacturer of an

Mark Solomons

Alex Ferguson was brilliant, but did he deserve £2m a year?

Manchester United have axed Sir Alex Ferguson’s contract as an ‘ambassador’ for the club, and it is not clear whether the most shocking part of this news is that he has been put out to grass by new owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe or that he was getting £2.16 million a year to shake hands with executive box customers (the ones Roy Keane famously called ‘the prawn sandwich brigade’). Sir Alex is a club legend, of course. He will be 83 at the end of this year, and is said to not be in the best health these days. He also lost his wife, Cathy, a year ago. He’s also had

Tuesday

15 Oct 2024

Jawad Iqbal

Thomas Tuchel would be a divisive choice for England manager

Thomas Tuchel, the former Chelsea and Bayern Munich manager, has emerged as the favourite to succeed Gareth Southgate as England manager. The Times reports that he could be unveiled later this week. It is believed that negotiations could proceed quickly, bringing to an end the FA’s search for a successor to Southgate, who quit after England’s defeat to Spain in the Euro 2024 final in July. Tuchel is attractive, in part simply because he is available. He has been out of work since leaving Bayern Munich at the end of last season. Appointing him would mean no lengthy or expensive negotiations to prise him away from a club contract. Exact

Freddy Gray

Why are Indian Americans so successful?

26 min listen

Indian Americans are the second-largest immigrant group in the United States. They’re also one of the most successful. That includes the election campaign; Kamala Harris, Usha Vance, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy. Freddy Gray is joined by Shruti Rajagopalan, economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. They discuss the buzz around Indian Americans in politics, and ask why they’re so disproportionately successful. You can find Shruti’s website here: https://shrutiraj.com/cv-and-bio/ and her substack here: https://srajagopalan.substack.com

Oscar Edmondson

National Insurance: Starmer’s first big U-turn?

14 min listen

The Budget is not due for a fortnight, yet with every day that passes its contents seem to become clearer. This morning Keir Starmer gave an interview to the BBC where he twice refused to rule out a rise in employer’s national insurance contributions in the Budget. Instead, he repeatedly stressed that Labour’s manifesto promise was specifically that it would ‘not raise taxes on working people’. Can Rachel Reeves afford a national insurance hike? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Michael Gove. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Steerpike

Watch: Farage blasts Labour over Elon Musk snub

Sir Keir Starmer’s investment summit may have concluded, but the row over its invite list certainly has not. Now Nigel Farage has taken to Twitter to lambast the Labour lot for not inviting US tech billionaire Elon Musk to its big business bash. In a video post on the platform, the Reform leader questioned: ‘Why was the world’s richest man Elon Musk not invited to Labour’s UK investment summit?’ Going on, the Clacton MP raged: A huge investment summit going on Labour government and businesses all over the world. But they’re all big corporates. They don’t really invite entrepreneurs and the one person they have’t invited is the world’s most

Samuel Rubinstein

Britain doesn’t know how to remember the Holocaust

On 27 January next year, the world will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. ‘The commemoration will be the last of its kind’, says Michael Bornstein who, having hidden for six months in his mother’s bunk, aged only four, was among the youngest survivors. What lies ahead regarding Holocaust memory – and anti-Semitism – when Michael Bornstein is no longer with us? Lily Ebert’s death last week week feels like an important moment: the most famous Holocaust survivor, at least to the TikTok generation, is also now gone. So far, Britain has met this historical moment in bizarre ways. The D-Day anniversary that Rishi Sunak left a few months ago was

Katy Balls

Can Reeves get away with a national insurance hike?

The Budget is not due for a fortnight, yet with every day that passes its contents seem to become clearer. This morning Keir Starmer gave an interview to the BBC where he twice refused to rule out a rise in employer’s national insurance contributions in the Budget. Instead, he repeatedly stressed that Labour’s manifesto promise was specifically that it would not raise taxes on working people. Asked for clarity on whether employers could face a national insurance hike later this month, Starmer would only say that his government would ‘keep promises we made in the manifesto’ and not ‘raise tax on working people’. He also warned that the budget would

Kate Andrews

Could Ozempic actually boost Britain’s labour market?

Is Ozempic the miracle fix for Britain’s labour market woes? This morning Health Secretary Wes Streeting has announced a £280 million investment into the UK from US pharmaceutical giant Lilly, which will include the first ‘real-world trial’ to give weight-loss jabs to people out of work. The news coincides with the publication of the latest labour market overview by the Office for National Statistics, showing the number of people out of work due to long-term sickness is still at a near-record high: 2.75 million in the three months to August. As Streeting highlights in the Daily Telegraph today, obesity is creating both a strain on the health service and on the economy. As

Edmund West

Is Kemi Badenoch right about autistic people being advantaged?

Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has been criticised for endorsing ‘Conservatism in crisis’, a pamphlet put out by her campaign team that says autistic people like me get ‘economic advantages and protections’. Is this right? The report says that: ‘Being diagnosed as neuro-diverse was once seen as helpful as it meant you could understand your own brain, and so help you to deal with the world. It was an individual focused change. But now it also offers economic advantages and protections. If you have a neurodiversity diagnosis (e.g. anxiety, autism), then that is usually seen as a disability.’ The document suggests that other ‘perks’ we’re entitled to include getting ‘better

Jonathan Campbell-James

Iran has the most to lose if it closes the Strait of Hormuz

Following the mass ballistic missile attack on Israel at the beginning of the month, speculation is rife once again that Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz should it be subject to the reprisal attack promised by Israel. The thinking is that this is particularly likely if Israel were to attack Iranian oil facilities. Iran certainly has the capability to close the Strait, at least in the short term. Recent experience in the Red and Black Seas shows clearly that not every ship attempting passage needs to be attacked: the increased risk – and heightened insurance premiums – following a small number of attacks will be enough to persuade owners to

Steerpike

Sue Gray under fire over Taylor Swift security fiasco

Despite all the free concert tickets the Labour lot received to her gigs, Taylor Swift seems to be causing Sir Keir Starmer’s top team rather a lot of trouble. The US singer’s mother demanded special security measures for her daughter while she performed in London – and Starmer’s crowd capitulated. Today it has emerged in the Sun that, according to Whitehall insiders, Sir Keir’s former chief of staff Sue Gray played a crucial role in convincing police to provide taxpayer-funded protection to the American pop star. Talk about being the Anti-Hero, eh? Gray’s name cropped up following reports that police were concerned about the request to grant Swift a blue-light