Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
14 min listen
With the news that the Home Office has spent billions of taxpayers’ money on asylum hotels – and following the accidental release of the Epping sex offender – Tim Shipman and James Heale discuss this most shambolic of government departments. Is it fit for purpose? Can Shabana Mahmood fix the cursed department? And, if not, who will voters turn to instead? Produced by Megan McElroy and Patrick Gibbons.
There’s less than a month until Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveils her autumn budget and speculation is abounding about what taxes will make the cut. This morning, Housing Secretary Steve Reed came under pressure on LBC, as interviewer Nick Ferrari grilled him on the introduction of a possible mansion tax. Anxious homeowners will not be reassured by Reed’s response – after the Labour man refused four times to rule out a mansion tax. How curious… There have been suggestions that that the Chancellor could impose a 1 per cent tax on the portion of property values over £2 million. Those owning homes worth £3 million would pay £10,000 a year, with
This month, a Sunday Times headline dubbed the 34-year-old MP for Weald of Kent, Katie Lam, the ‘Tories’ new hope’. The piece described the new parliamentarian as a ‘shiny presence’ that, in some circles, is already being touted as ‘ potential leader-in-waiting and saviour of conservatism’. But Lam is more than a politician: as the Kent MP discussed with the Spectator’s Tim Shipman on Coffee House Shots, she has written five plays and is currently working on a sixth. ‘None of them are political,’ she assured him – but that hasn’t stopped eyebrows being raised at revelations one of these is a ‘joyful trans story’. How interesting… Lam has written
Just before graffiti-gate in Canterbury Cathedral kicked off a few weeks ago, it hosted the announcement of the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury-designate: the Rt Revd Dame Sarah Mullally. Or ABCD, as it is rumoured she is being called at Lambeth Palace. Lord knows, we love an acronym in the Church of England these days. It helps, at least, make the CofE seem accessible. But has the push to make our new Primate seem like just a regular Joe (or Jo!) gone too far? Lord knows, we love an acronym in the established church these days It was confirmed this morning that our new Archbishop will finally take up her role, in a service also
Barely a month ago, the received wisdom was that the Javier Milei experiment in Argentina had effectively collapsed. The self-styled ‘anarcho-capitalist’ president was elected in December 2023 after a campaign in which he waved a chainsaw at rallies, symbolising his promise to slash public spending and destroy the ‘political caste’. But with the peso on the slide, unions leading effective campaigns against the spending cuts and corruption allegations around his sister, the wiseacres – and polls – suggested that it was all about to cave in around Milei. Milei’s La Libertad Avanza won 40.8 per cent in the midterm elections, widely seen as a referendum on his term so far
Rachel Reeves is reportedly considering a 2p increase in income tax, taking the basic rate from 20 to 22 per cent. That might seem modest by historic standards, yet it would be a clear breach of Labour’s manifesto promise, made just over a year ago, not to raise any of the big three taxes. More importantly, it underscores the scale of the structural pressures facing Britain’s public finances – pressures that cannot be addressed by minor tax tweaks alone. If Reeves truly wants to strengthen Britain’s economic foundations, she should turn her attention to welfare reform – not as a matter of cruelty but of common sense. Britain’s welfare state
37 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Max Jeffery examines Britain’s new hard left alliance; Sam Leith wonders what Prince Andrew is playing; Michael Henderson reads his letter from Berlin; Madeline Grant analyses the demise of the American ‘wasp’ – or White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant; and, Julie Bindel ponders the disturbing allure of sex robots. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.
Recent years have not been kind to the politics of George Monbiot. The journalist’s column records growing dismay at the inexorable march of neoliberalism, the growing list of Brexit benefits, and the West’s reluctance to disarm Israel and leave it to the tender mercies of its neighbours. But contra Labour’s favourite party tune, things can always get worse. And faced with the prospect of Nigel Farage entering 10 Downing Street by 2029, Monbiot has come up with a canny solution. Writing in the Guardian, he has pleaded with the government to change the constitution so that the deplorables at the gate cannot implement their agenda. The irony is that nothing
Imagine if a government had set out deliberately to stir up the public over illegal migration, or perhaps to do as one former Tony Blair aide said of his government’s policy, to ‘rub the noses of the Right in diversity’. Could it have done a better job than the past two governments have managed by putting up thousands of asylum seekers in hotels, at an average cost of £145 per person per night – hotels whose owners, some owned by companies linked to the Chinese Communist party – have raked in a fortune thanks to poorly-negotiated contracts? If we haven’t already passed a watershed of public opinion on the issue
Well, well, well. It seems Kamala Harris has finished licking her wounds after her defeat in last year’s presidential race and she, er, wants to do it all over again. Speaking to the BBC, the Democrat told Laura Kuenssberg that she might run again for the White House: ‘I am not done.’ Whether the polls are quite as optimistic about her chances is another issue… In her first British interview since losing to current US President Donald Trump, Harris told the Beeb: I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones… If I listened to polls I would have not run for my
The war in Gaza has not ended; it has changed its shape. What began as a brutal confrontation has now hardened into a political and geographic experiment, one whose contours may define the region’s next decade. Beneath the surface of ceasefires and reconstruction plans lies a deeper transformation: the reappearance of the Palestinian question, after years of deliberate absence, as a central axis in the regional and global conversation. For nearly two decades, Israel and much of the Arab world succeeded in marginalising that question. Strategic normalisation, economic incentives, and the pursuit of calm made it possible to sustain the illusion that the conflict could be frozen indefinitely. That illusion
The wall-to-wall chorus of condemnation of Sarah Pochin’s remarks last week about woke advertising has been hysterical even by the left’s standards. ‘Sarah Pochin’s comments were a disgrace’, fulminated Labour’s X account, ‘and Nigel Farage’s silence is deafening.’ David Lammy said the remarks were ‘mean, nasty and racist’ and wants her sacked. Health Secretary Wes Streeting used his weekend media rounds to repeatedly barrack the Runcorn and Helsby MP, even arguing her intervention proves Reform are ‘not fit to govern’. Backbenchers no one has ever heard of are calling for Pochin to lose the whip. Pochin’s intervention began with what was admittedly rather poorly chosen language. On Friday, Reform’s second
Query: what kind of electoral landslide is it when most of the electorate doesn’t turn up? Not quite a landslide, I’d say – more the shifting of shingle. To put it another way, in the Irish presidential election, fewer than half of voters turned out (45.8 per cent). Three in four electors did not vote for Catherine Connolly, the United Left candidate. There wasn’t much of a turnout in the previous election, of course, but that was because the sitting president, Michael D. Higgins, was such a shoo-in. This time, the stay-at-homes, at 55 per cent of voters, were way ahead of those who could be bothered. It was a
Rachel Reeves is reportedly looking at a 2p increase in income tax. The hike to the basic rate – paid on earnings between £12,571 and £50,270 – would take it from 20 per cent to 22 per cent. That’s still quite low by historic standards, despite the overall tax burden heading towards record highs. But it would also mean a clear and significant breach of Labour’s manifesto commitment, made just 14 months ago, not to raise the big three taxes. Would it be enough to get the Chancellor out of her fiscal hole? The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently put the size of that hole – that needs to be
What’s more scary? A gaggle of old UKIP voters gathering to vent their spleen about mass immigration? Or a march of hulking young men, all masked and clad in black, hollering ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Zionist scum off our streets’? At the risk of being branded with that cheap and meaningless slur of ‘Islamophobe’, I’m going to say it’s the latter. Something extraordinary happened in London this weekend — there was a ‘counter-extremist’ protest that felt more extremist than the thing it was countering. Their target was UKIP, around 75 of whose supporters had assembled in Whitehall to agitate for remigration. Yet it was the anti-UKIP side that felt properly menacing.
‘I will be an inclusive president for all of you,’ Catherine Connolly declared as she was announced the winner of Ireland’s presidential election – a landslide victory over Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys. The independent TD received 63 per cent of the vote (with spoiled ballots excluded) to become Ireland’s tenth president. The result was officially confirmed early yesterday evening, but Connolly’s victory was clear from the moment counting began. ‘Catherine will be my president,’ Humphreys conceded, having received just over 29 per cent of the vote. Connolly defeated Humphreys in Ireland’s first head-to-head presidential race since 1973. Jim Gavin had entered the race but withdrew after revelations of a decades-old
Lord Dick Taverne, a one-time Labour Minister turned Lib Dem peer, has died at the great age of 97 – and with him has passed the once leading force of social democracy in British politics. A Charterhouse and Balliol College Oxford educated intellectua, Taverne was a barrister who entered Parliament as Labour MP for Lincoln at a by-election in 1962, and quickly rose to be a minister in Harold Wilson’s government of the late 1960s, serving as a Home Office minister and chief secretary to the Treasury. Taverne had the distinction of being both the first social democrat to leave Labour because of its swing to the left, and (apart from
As predicted, the radical far-left has emerged victorious from Ireland’s farcical presidential election, leaving the ruling coalition parties humiliated and obliterated in a shambles of their own making. Catherine Connolly, Ireland’s 68-year-old answer to Jeremy Corbyn, will be Ireland’s next head of state. But large swathes of middle and rural Ireland who feel disenfranchised by this two-horse derby are seething. The number of deliberately spoiled votes reached a historic high, and in some constituencies, outpolled the Fine Gael candidate. This points to a dangerous polarisation for which the Taoiseach Micheal Martin and Tanaiste Simon Harris are entirely responsible. The backlash, when it came was as swift, harsh and deserved. Peadar
14 min listen
We thought when we organised this podcast that there would just be the newly announced deputy Labour leader to discuss – Lucy Powell beat Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson by 87,407 votes to 73,536. But instead we also have evidence the Prime Minister may have lied to Parliament over the collapse of the China spy case, and there is a manhunt under way to recapture a dangerous criminal released by mistake. Bad news clearly comes in threes for No. 10: Lucy Powell was not their pick for the job; lying to Parliament is the kind of thing that the ministerial code is quite clear on; and the criminal in question is
Lucy Powell has won Labour’s deputy leadership election, beating her rival Bridget Phillipson. The result was announced this morning after a low-key, five-week contest. Having led in each of the various membership polls, Powell duly triumphed with 54 per cent of the vote to Phillipson’s 46 per cent. A worryingly low turnout of just 16 per cent of the 970,000 eligible Labour members and affiliate voters speaks to the level of discontent and dissatisfaction among the party faithful. In her victory speech, Powell delivered a textbook mainstream soft left script. ‘My politics have always been shaped as a proud Mancunian’, she said ‘and Labour through and through’. Setting out her