Politics

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

Friday

3 Oct 2025

What can we expect from the first female Archbishop of Canterbury?

19 min listen

Dame Sarah Mullally has been announced as the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Previously the Bishop of London, she becomes the first woman to lead the Church in its almost 500 year history. She also had a 40 year career as a professional nurse, rising to be the most senior nurse in England and Wales. The Rev’d Marcus Walker, rector at St Bartholemew the Great in the City of London, joins Damian Thompson to react to the news – what can we expect from her leadership? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Steerpike

Watch: Lammy heckled at Manchester synagogue vigil

In Manchester, a vigil is taking place after Thursday’s horrific terror attack left two people killed and three seriously injured in hospital. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to do ‘everything’ in his power to protect Jewish people in Britain, condemning the ‘horrific’ terror attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has also paid her respects to the victims and their families – before, this morning, turning on pro-Palestine protestors. And while new Justice Secretary David Lammy has also urged pro-Gaza protestors to ‘stop and stand back’ instead of joining planned marches this weekend, he has not been well received in Manchester.

Ross Clark

Kemi is right about the Climate Change Act

According to Theresa May, Kemi Badenoch’s promise to repeal the Climate Change Act is a ‘catastrophic mistake’. Writing for The Spectator today, Ed Shackle, who works for a market research firm called Public First, was adamant that the policy change won’t just degrade the planet or obliterate Lady May’s thin political legacy – it is a bad electoral error, too. Quoting one of his polls, he claims that 37 per cent of Conservative voters say they wouldn’t vote for a party which is not committed to reaching net zero. He also claimed: “The British public consistently backs energy infrastructure – even when it’s close to their homes.’ Not round my way, in Cambridgeshire. It

Paul Stott

We’re making the same mistakes after the Manchester attack

The terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue – on the morning of Yom Kippur – can be described as a lot of things. Horrific, shocking, vile, but it was a not a surprise. Britain has been heading in this direction for many years. Jews in Manchester already knew they were potential targets While the 7/10 attacks, the worst slaughter of Jews since the Second World War, brought antisemitic terrorism into global focus, Jews in Manchester already knew they were potential targets. In 2012 a husband and wife from Oldham were jailed for an Al-Qaeda inspired plot to bomb Jewish buildings in Greater Manchester. In May 2024, three men appeared in court charged

Michael Gove

Manchester attack: Michael Gove on the rise of antisemitism

24 min listen

On today’s Coffee House Shots, Tim Shipman is joined by Michael Gove to reflect on the terrorist attack at Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, which left two people dead. They discuss how the Jewish community has long warned of rising anti-Semitism, often forced to fund its own security, and how inflammatory rhetoric on recent pro-Palestinian marches has deepened the sense of vulnerability. Michael warns that Britain remains naive about Islamist ideology and risks only ever reacting to violence, rather than preventing it. While there are capable people in government and the security services, he says, real leadership is needed to confront the ideology that fuels attacks before more tragedies occur.

Adam James Pollock

Kemi’s Northern Ireland Brexit blunder will continue to haunt her

Ahead of the Conservative party conference this weekend, party leader Kemi Badenoch has, once again, demonstrated her lack of suitability for the role she has found herself in. Speaking on the topic of Brexit in an interview with BBC News Northern Ireland, Badenoch mistakenly said that ‘last time I checked, Ireland, Northern Ireland did vote to leave’ the European Union. Badenoch may want to ‘check’ a little better next time, as Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union at the 2016 referendum, with only 44 per cent of the population voting in favour of leaving. Of course, the United Kingdom as a whole voted in favour of Brexit,

Robert King

What was Jeremy Corbyn doing in South Africa?

Jeremy Corbyn has spent a lifetime attaching himself to lost causes abroad and failed movements at home. Now, as the still-unnamed ‘Your Party’ continues to tear itself apart, Corbyn quietly slipped away from the domestic drama to South Africa and neighbouring Namibia, where he has been doing what he does best: surrounding himself with trade unionists, pro-Palestinian activists and any podcaster willing to lend him a microphone. For Corbyn, South Africa has long been a stage on which to project his political fantasies For Corbyn, South Africa has long been a stage on which to project his political fantasies. In the 1980s he was a fixture of the anti-Apartheid movement

Steerpike

Humza Yousaf: Manchester attack had ‘nothing to do with Islam’

What was your reaction to the attack on a synagogue in Manchester yesterday? Most right thinking people, you’d hope, simply recoiled in horror and dread on hearing the news that two Jews had been killed and three seriously injured in a terrorist attack on British soil. For the ‘The Centre for Media Monitoring’ (CfMM), an offshoot of the Muslim Council of Britain, though, it seems now is the perfect time to examine how the media is covering the attack. Last night, the body’s social media account tweeted out the front page of the Daily Mail, headlined: ‘He was an Islamic terrorist’. The paper pointed out that the attacker, Jihad Al-Shamie,

Philip Patrick

Japan’s Asahi cyber attack is a national embarrassment

Could Japan be about to run out of beer? Or at least of one of its favourite brands Asahi, whose ‘Super Dry’ is the number one best seller in this nation of hop heads? This is the alarming and looming prospect in the country after a cyber attack on Asahi forced the company to close its production facilities. There are rumours of only a few days’ supply left in the convenience stores and izakayas (Japanese style pubs). If true, and if Asahi can’t solve the problem quickly, panic buying is a distinct possibility in a country with a per capita consumption of 34.5 litres a year. Then, with no indication

Steerpike

Shabana Mahmood slams ‘un-British’ pro-Palestine marches

The country is still reeling from the horrific attack that took place at a Manchester synagogue on Thursday morning. The car and knife attack left two victims dead and three seriously injured in hospital, while the suspect was shot and killed by police. More details have come to light since then: police have said they believe the attacker was Jihad Al-Shamie, a British citizen of Syrian descent. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to do ‘everything’ in his power to protect Jewish people in Britain, condemning the ‘horrific’ terror attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has also paid her respects to

Naomi Firsht

Starmer’s Manchester attack response is hard to take seriously

Do you know someone Jewish? Then they were probably at synagogue yesterday. I was there with my husband. My parents and my sister were at another one. Almost all of my Jewish friends will have been in attendance at their synagogues. Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, is the solemnest day in the Jewish calendar and one of the holiest. Jews fast for 25 hours and they go to synagogue to repent for their sins of the past year in an attempt to do better in the new one. Even the Jews who don’t attend on the other 364 days of the year make a visit on this day.

Theo Hobson

A female Archbishop of Canterbury changes everything for the CofE

Dame Sarah Mullally’s appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury is not a normal story about a woman being appointed to a certain position for the first time. The difference is that the Church of England never made a clear decision about the legitimacy of women clergy. Here, at last, is its clear decision. The word decision has ‘cut’ or ‘kill’ in it. It means killing off the alternative course of action. This the Church failed to do. Over thirty years ago, it chose to allow opponents of women clergy to stay, and to effectively form a sub-church, with its own bishops. It has always spun this as a brave and open-minded

Alexander Larman

Prince William wants to ‘change’ the monarchy. Oh dear

Of all the people who might be expected to get revelatory public comments out of the Prince of Wales, the beetle-browed actor Eugene Levy would not be high on the list. Yet during the Schitt’s Creek and American Pie thespian’s new show, The Reluctant Traveler, Levy ticks off a series of ‘bucket list’ experiences – one of which was getting close to the royal family. While it would, presumably, have been fairly easy to get an audience with Prince Harry, Levy’s intentions instead lay with the actual royal family, and so the encounter took place between him and Prince William. ‘I like a little bit of change,’ said William. ‘I

Stephen Pollard

The Free Palestine mob’s shameful response to the Manchester attack

As so often, the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis hit the nail on the head over yesterday’s terror attack in Manchester. It was, he said, the result of ‘a tidal wave of Jew hated’. Jews have spent the past two years highlighting the danger posed by the authorities’ refusal to take more than perfunctory action against the regular hate marches and gatherings. We have warned what was coming – and yesterday it came. It will, I dread to write, not be the last terror attack. Palestinian statehood is a decent and worthy cause. It is no more intrinsically poisonous than the push for a Scottish, Welsh or Catalan state, or indeed

Ed Shackle

Badenoch’s vow to scrap the Climate Change Act won’t win back voters

Kemi Badenoch has pledged to repeal the Climate Change Act 2008 – and made a lot of noise in the process. This marks the Tory party’s biggest step yet away from the establishment consensus on Net Zero. It also represents another significant step away from voters. Voters don’t choose Reform because of their policy position on net zero The leader of the opposition is in an unenviable position. Her dire poll ratings, in contrast to Nigel Farage in the ascendant, make the prospect of a Reform-lite policy platform alluring. The problem with this strategy though is that Badenoch and her advisers have fundamentally misread what voters care about and why

Ryan Shorthouse

Cutting Britain’s giant welfare bill would be an act of kindness

Does having money really matter that much? There are those, usually with quite a bit of it, who want us to care less about materialism. But, unequivocally, money really does matter – not because of any status it supposedly brings, but for the freedom it buys: freedom to choose how we live and how we look after others. Considering this, it seems that the deep disillusionment with mainstream politicians in recent years stems from a protracted and ongoing period of stagnant living standards over which they have presided. But the truth is that the average person has not got poorer since the global financial crisis. They have got a little

James Heale

James Heale, William Atkinson, David Shipley, Angus Colwell and Aidan Hartley

25 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale says that, for Labour, party conference was a ‘holiday from reality’; William Atkinson argues that the ‘cult of Thatcher’ needs to die; David Shipley examines the luxury of French prisons; Angus Colwell provides his notes on swan eating; and, Aidan Hartley takes listeners on a paleoanthropological tour from the Cradle of Mankind. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

2 Oct 2025

Eliot Wilson

Will Europe put its money where its mouth is for Ukraine?

Shortly after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the West prohibited transactions with the Bank of Russia and the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Finance. This effectively froze around $300 billion (£223 billion) of sovereign assets in foreign currency and gold reserves, mostly held in Euroclear, the central securities depository in Brussels. Since then there have been ongoing discussions in Europe and the United States about the possibility of somehow accessing this enormous pool of money to help fund Ukraine’s defence and perhaps to use some of the assets for reconstruction and development once the conflict comes to an end. Western leaders would not be human if they

Steerpike

MI6 boss signs off in style

Out with old and in with the new. MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore is packing in the clandestine activities for a less secret but perhaps more diplomatic life – hopefully not following too closely in Lord Scandelson’s footsteps. After five years in the role, Moore is stepping aside for Blaise Metreweli – or ‘C’, as all her predecessors have been known since 1909 – who will be the first female in the role in the 116 years of the Secret Intelligence Service. But while his career may have been top secret, Moore wasn’t going to leave on a dull note. First he gave a farewell speech in Istanbul last month

Tim Shipman

Kemi Badenoch’s plan to save the Tories

18 min listen

The Prime Minister was set to announce his crackdown on the existing rights of refugees at the European Political Community meeting today; however, he has flown back to chair a Cobra meeting after a terror attack in Manchester. Two people have been killed and at least two others injured after a driver allegedly rammed a car into pedestrians outside a synagogue and attacked them with a knife. The suspect, who was shot by police, is also believed to be dead. Also on the podcast, Tim Shipman interviews Kemi Badenoch for the magazine this week. As she enters conference season with the Tories running third in the polls behind Reform and