Politics

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

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Streeting declares: ‘the NHS is broken’

Wes Streeting has just given a striking statement on arrival at the Department of Health and Social Care in which he announced that ‘from today, the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken’. Parties make campaign threats that there are ‘24 hours to save the NHS’, but this description of Labour’s sacred cow as ‘broken’ goes far beyond that. It recognises the seriousness of the situation for the health service and is a declaration of Streeting’s intent to reform. Streeting has become health secretary during an existential crisis. Voters are still committed to the principles of free healthcare but increasingly losing satisfaction with the way the NHS

Debbie Hayton

How Keir Starmer can make it up to Rosie Duffield

Congratulations to Rosie Duffield, who has won re-election for a third time as Labour MP for Canterbury. For many women – and men, indeed – Duffield’s courageous stance on sex and gender has been a beacon of sense, and a reason to vote Labour. She increased her majority from 1,800 to almost 9,000, an astonishing success in a county where she had previously been the sole Labour MP. It started with LGBT+ Labour’s demand for ‘an apology and reparations’ Duffield’s success owes little to Keir Starmer who couldn’t even be bothered to invite her to his election campaign launch just up the road in Gillingham. Perhaps he is still smarting

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Keir Starmer channeled Obama in his first Downing Street speech

In his first speech from the Downing Street lectern, Sir Keir Starmer was setting out to reaffirm those qualities that won him the election. That was a relatively low bar to clear – he just had to give the impression that he was neither a crook nor a maniac – and he cleared it with ease. Here was a solid, sensible, ostentatiously humble speech delivered with persuasive but unshowy emotion.  Starmer was punctilious about showing grace in victory. Just a few days ago, he was deriding Rishi Sunak as a selfish chancer who had enriched himself ‘betting against Britain’ in his financial career; today, he was keen to ‘pay tribute’

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Meet Labour’s elite Scottish MPs

Scottish Labour has won 37 of the 57 seats north of the border, an increase of 36 on the 2019 result. This is the party’s best showing in Scotland since 2010 and comes nine years after losing all but one of their seats to the SNP. Labour will be sending its most impressive crop of Scottish MPs to Westminster in a generation. Leading the pack is Douglas Alexander, the new MP for Lothian East. A protege of Gordon Brown, he was MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South from 1997 to 2015, serving as transport and later Scottish secretary under Tony Blair and international development secretary under Brown. After 14 years

Eliot Wilson

The election has left Irish unionism in crisis

The voters of Northern Ireland are used to being an impenetrable afterthought to most mainstream commentators in Britain. The general election has, however, delivered a series of enormous shocks, many of which are in danger of being overlooked. One of those is that Sinn Féin has seven Members of Parliament and is, for the first time in Northern Ireland’s history, the largest party at Westminster. But that is at best nuanced, and at worst misleading. The deeper story is the crisis facing unionism. Sinn Féin, founded in 1905 when A.J. Balfour was still prime minister, and for many years the political wing of the Provisional IRA, held the seven seats

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What Keir Starmer’s first Downing Street speech reveals

Keir Starmer has given his first speech as prime minister. Labour’s seventh leader to make it to 10 Downing Street walked up the pavement to his new home to cheers from supporters and campaigners gathered on the street. He and his wife Victoria made an effort to stop, thank and hug their friends and family on the way up. Given Starmer has won a majority close to Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide, he could be forgiven for striking a slightly triumphalist tone. Instead, Starmer treaded carefully. He said: ‘With respect and humility I invite you all to join this government of service… our work is urgent and we begin it today.’

Keir Starmer

Full text: I’ll govern ‘unburdened by doctrine’

I have just returned from Buckingham Palace, where I accepted an invitation from His Majesty the King to form the next government of this great nation. I want to thank the outgoing prime minister, Rishi Sunak. His achievement as the first British-Asian prime minister of our country – the extra effort that that will have required should not be underestimated by anyone, and we pay tribute to that today. And we also recognise the dedication and hard work he brought to his leadership. But now our country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal and a return of politics to public service. When the gap between the sacrifices made

Robert Tombs

How the Tories changed Britain

The late Roger Scruton (whose wrongful sacking as a housing adviser by a Tory minister in 2019 was a sign that things were badly wrong) defined the fundamental issue: ‘There can be no democracy without a demos, a “we” united by a shared sense of belonging.’ How has the demos changed over 14 years of Conservative government? The ‘we’ is weaker than when David Cameron and Nick Clegg were promoting a Big Society. We are in a pessimistic mood in which saying that ‘nothing works’ has become a catchphrase. Politicians are despised. The party that has governed for so long cannot avoid responsibility.  The government seemed scared to defend their only truly historic

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Starmer’s ruthless efficiency has risks

A couple of years ago, an anecdote about Keir Starmer did the rounds at Westminster. The story was that when asked about his time leading the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), he said that his proudest achievements involved overhauling IT systems, or procurement rules, or some other highly procedural aspect of the organisation’s bureaucracy. The story was generally told with a mildly mocking tone, proof that Starmer was a bit of a plodder, not the sort of glibly agile PPE debater that generally dominates Westminster life. In essence, Starmer was seen by much of the political village as a manager, not a leader – and the village always prizes dashing leadership

Andrew McQuillan

The triumph of Sinn Fein

Sinn Fein has consolidated its position as the biggest political party in Northern Ireland. It retained its seven seats and, as a result of DUP reversals, is now Northern Ireland’s largest party at Westminster. Sinn Fein were very close to winning the East Londonderry seat from the DUP – which went to various recounts – but the DUP held on with a majority of 179. So the result could have been even better for them.  Northern Ireland now has an alphabet soup of parties representing it Already the largest party at the Stormont Assembly and on Northern Ireland’s councils, it is quite the hat-trick for Sinn Fein and its leader Michelle

Charlotte Henry

Why the Lib Dems did so well

It has been quite a 14 years for the Liberal Democrats – from the coalition in 2010 to near total wipe-out in 2015. Things barely improved in the two elections after that. They even managed to lose then-leader Jo Swinson’s seat in 2019. Five years on, the party has secured 71 seats, a gain of 63 and the party’s highest ever total. They haven’t quite managed to become the official opposition but return to the new parliament as the third-largest party. The Lib Dems have benefited from ruthless targeting One of their gains includes David Cameron’s old seat of Witney on a swing of over 15 per cent. They also

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sunak’s perfect resignation

Rishi Sunak’s resignation speech was classy, generous and a model of the British system at its best. He started by taking personal responsibility for the election disaster, saying (as expected) that he’d resign as party leader as well as prime minister. His next move was not back into No. 10 but into the car and to Buckingham Palace to ask the King to accept his resignation and recommend that he appoints Keir Starmer. The contrast to America’s last change of power is striking. It’s time to learn the lessons of the campaign, Sunak said. As he spoke, his wife stood in the background with an umbrella as if to illustrate

Rishi Sunak

Full text: I will resign as Conservative leader

Good morning. I will shortly be seeing His Majesty the King to offer my resignation as Prime Minister. To the country, I would like to say, first and foremost, I am sorry. I have given this job my all. But you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change, and yours is the only judgment that matters. I have heard your anger, your disappointment, and I take responsibility for this loss. This is a difficult day at the end of a number of difficult days To all the Conservative candidates and campaigners who worked tirelessly but without success, I am sorry that we could

Jawad Iqbal

Why Muslim voters turned their backs on Starmer’s Labour

In an otherwise jubilant night for Labour, the party has performed badly in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. So far, Labour has lost five seats with large Muslim populations – four to independent candidates and one to the Conservatives. The party’s vote is down on average by 11 points in seats where more than 10 per cent of the population identify as Muslim, with pro-Gaza candidates making significant inroads. Labour has been wary throughout this campaign of the impact that the Middle East crisis would have on its vote in urban areas with significant numbers of Muslim voters. It followed comments last year by the Labour leader, Sir Keir

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Labour passes its first test with the markets

Markets don’t like surprises. And the election results, while explosive, are not a surprise – or at least the winner isn’t. Labour has secured a substantial majority, as markets had been expecting the party to do from the start of the election. No surprise this morning means no immediate jitters, as the result was already priced in. Sterling is slightly up, by 0.1 per cent, hovering around $1.28. The FTSE 100 is up 0.4 per cent since markets opened this morning. Most notably, housebuilding stocks are on the up. The strong speculation that Labour will use its first days in power to announce a planning overhaul has given the market

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Why conservatives should get behind Starmer

The Conservatives are going down to one of their worst defeats ever. The opposition has come from nowhere to absolutely destroy them. It ought to be one of those rare moments in British history when the centre-left can celebrate crushing a Tory party, that drives us to despair and rage in equal measure.  Speaking at a victory rally at 5 a.m. this morning, Keir Starmer told his supporters, ‘We can look forward to walk into the morning, the sunlight of hope, pale at first, but getting stronger through the day’. It was not quite as poetic as Wordsworth’s greeting of the French Revolution ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corybn and the rise of the Gaza independents

A counterpoint to the main story of Labour’s election victory is the way Gaza has cost the party at least five seats – and ran it very close in others. Jon Ashworth’s shock loss to independent Gaza campaigner Shockat Adam in Leicester South was the most high profile but there were three other losses to independents standing on a similar platform. Jeremy Corbyn was returned as an independent in Islington North, referencing Gaza in both his campaign literature and acceptance speech. It won’t just be on Gaza that Starmer now comes under pressure to move Khalid Mahmood, a Labour MP who has campaigned against Islamist extremism, was beaten in Birmingham

William Atkinson

Rishi Sunak should do the honourable thing – and stay put

A record number of cabinet ministers gone. A wipeout in Wales. Only 22 per cent of the vote, with Reform and the Liberal Democrats snapping at the Conservatives’ heels. A generation of Tory talent mowed down by an unearned Labour landslide. Rishi Sunak is the only one of the last four Tory leaders whose seat is still Conservative. The Tory party is looking for someone to blame for its election wipeout. Members might currently be staggering across the battlefield, shellshocked and stunned. But the Conservative party loves nothing more than an uncivil war of finger-pointing and blame-shifting. Each tribe and family will have their own explanation for the defeat. Each

James Heale James Heale

Labour wins by a landslide

15 min listen

Where to start with an historic election night. Keir Starmer has got his 1997 moment, winning an enormous majority. Elsewhere, eleven cabinet ministers have lost their seats, including: Grant Shapps, Gillian Keegan and Penny Mordaunt. Former prime minister Liz Truss has lost her seat, as have senior Tories Jacob Rees-Mogg and Miriam Cates. The Lib Dems have made massive gains, the SNP were decimated in Scotland and Nigel Farage is the MP for Clacton.  But it’s not a clean sweep for Labour. Two Labour frontbenchers have lost their seats and Starmer will enter government on a vote share of 35 per cent, the lowest of any postwar governing party. Will this hinder him in government?

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Labour’s Potemkin landslide

Something pretty big is missing from Labour’s historic landslide: the voters. Keir Starmer has won 63 per cent of the seats on just 33.8 per cent of the votes, the smallest vote share of any modern PM. Lower than any of the (many) pollsters predicted. So Labour in 2024 managed just 1.6 percentage points higher than the Jeremy Corbyn calamity in 2019 – and less than Corbyn managed in 2017. ‘But for the rise of the Labour party in Scotland,’ says Professor John Curtice, ‘we would be reporting that basically Labour’s vote has not changed from what it was in 2019.’ And that’s on the second-lowest turnout in democratic history. So