Politics

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

Wednesday

Charlotte Henry

The Liberal Democrats should be more liberal

The Lib Dems have had a much more enjoyable campaign than their rivals. Sir Ed Davey has been splishing and splashing all over the country. On Monday he jumped off a crane attached to a bungee cord while imploring people to ‘do something you’ve never done before: vote Liberal Democrat!’ A few days before he was at a theme park. We will see in the early hours of Friday morning if his stunts have paid off. We can see where the Lib Dems’ comfort zone is, and the party still retreats there when it can It hasn’t all been bungee jumping and rollercoasters. Alongside all that, the Lib Dems have remained

Jay Mens

How Trump and Starmer could form an unlikely alliance against Iran

The incoming Labour government has pledged a more robust Iran policy than the Conservative party has had over the last decade. The bar is low. Somehow, nothing new came of Iran’s women’s movement, support for Russia, assassination attempts on British soil, and attacks on all our regional partners – or the unprecedented cross-party consensus this all generated. Tehran may never have a better window for building a bomb Labour is apparently planning a pivot that includes proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), cracking down on Iran’s domestic networks, and more robust deployments to the Middle East and Mediterranean. Whether Keir Starmer’s party will implement these plans is another question. The key difference is that

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Boris swoops in late to help out Tories

Boris Johnson has tonight made a surprise appearance at a ‘stop the supermajority’ Conservative rally to warn of the dangers of Keir Starmer. The former prime minister, who has spent most of the election campaign on holiday, came on stage in Central London to chants of ‘Boris! Boris’ and told the crowd of party activists that: ‘I’m really, absolutely clear that I was glad when Rishi asked me to help. Of course, I couldn’t say no, and I’m here for one reason and one reason only, which is the same reason as all of you, all of us are here. We’re here because we love our country.’ He warned that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

How will Starmer handle reshuffles?

Will Keir Starmer keep David Lammy on as foreign secretary? That sort of question would not normally be at all relevant until about midday on the day after an election, but the result has become such a foregone conclusion that everything has sped up. The Labour leader was today asked whether Lammy would go into the Foreign Office after the election, given there have been persistent rumours that he won’t.  Starmer replied that: I’m not going to be lured through your question into naming cabinet if we get that far. But I’m absolutely clear that we will return to stability and ensure that we have the right people in the

Steerpike Steerpike

Deepfake porn site targets female politicians

Just when you think the election campaign can’t get any madder, it does. Now it transpires that a ‘deepfake’ porn site has posted a slew of doctored images bearing the likenesses of 30 female politicians – including deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner to senior Tory Penny Mordaunt. You couldn’t make it up… The targets of the dodgy photos – produced using artificial intelligence – are not confined to one particular party. As well as Rayner and Mordaunt, an investigation by Channel 4 News found that outgoing Tory Dehenna Davison and left-wing Labour candidate Stella Creasey were also featured. Davison has slammed the revelations as ‘disturbing’ and ‘violating’, while vocal feminist

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Has Reform peaked too soon?

14 min listen

The election campaign was going well for Nigel Farage’s Reform… until it wasn’t. A series of controversies have been difficult for the party to shake off. Will the distractions cost them votes and MPs? How will it affect their momentum – and who’s to blame? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Heale.

Limor Simhony Philpott

Will the IDF ever leave Gaza?

Israel has started another round of strikes in Khan Younis, having left the Gazan city in April. This isn’t the first time that Israeli forces had to return to areas from which they’ve already withdrawn. As Hamas terrorists flee current fighting zones, such as Rafah in southern Gaza, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) need to stop them from re-establishing fighting capabilities elsewhere. Having advised Palestinian civilians to leave areas in which terrorist infrastructure and activity exist in Khan Younis, the IDF has carried out several strikes last night and today. This was also in response to a barrage of rockets fired from the area into Israel by the terrorist organisation

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The BBC’s Miriam Cates hit job doesn’t add up

This morning we witnessed BBC cant at its finest. It came in the form of an exposé of the Tory candidate Miriam Cates. This self-styled voice of conservative reason was once a trustee of a church that promoted ‘conversion therapy’ for gay people, the Beeb reports. It spares no detail. Ms Cates’ old church carried out ‘exorcism’ rituals designed to drive out the ‘demon of homosexuality’ from those in its wicked grip, we are told. The political undertone of the Beeb’s handwringing is unmistakable: are we sure we want religious oddballs like Cates in parliament? The BBC attack on Cates is thin gruel But here’s the thing: the BBC’s alarm

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Nigel Farage is not the future

Nigel Farage is the most misunderstood politician in Britain. Vilified by the liberal media as ‘far right’ and mistaken by nationalists as a kindred spirit, the Reform party leader doesn’t fully comport with the pub bore caricature sketched by his enemies nor with the blokey everyman persona lapped up by his admirers. He is a wilier, more elusive beast, as his comments on the French elections remind us. Speaking to UnHerd ahead of the first results, Farage warned that victory for the RN would be a ‘disaster’, saying the party would be ‘even worse for the economy than the current lot’.  Dis-moi que ce n’est pas vrai, Nigel! It’s a statement sure to

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour will ‘destabilise’ Reform, Badenoch warns

Election day is just around the corner and politicians across the country are pulling out the stops. Now Kemi Badenoch has taken to the fine pages of the Telegraph to urge voters not to back Reform – after new analysis splashed across today’s papers (detailed by Katy here) suggests that 130,000 voters across 100 seats could result in a very different election outcome. The Business Secretary has opined on the threat posed by an incoming Labour government – which she suggests is Reform’s favoured outcome. ‘Reform leaders have been clear about their aim in this general election,’ Badenoch writes. ‘Not to win it, but to ensure that the Conservatives lose

James Heale James Heale

Is it going wrong for Reform?

Has Reform peaked too soon? In the wake of Rishi Sunak’s D-Day debacle, the party was riding high in the polls. Successive surveys suggested that they were neck-and-neck with the Tories. After one poll even showed Reform ahead, Nigel Farage hailed it as a ‘crossover moment’. He jokingly referred to himself as the ‘Leader of the Opposition’, declaring he ‘absolutely’ believed Reform would win more votes than the Conservatives. A fortnight on, things now look a little less rosy for Reform. Following Farage’s interview with Nick Robinson – in which he suggested the West helped provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – the party faced an onslaught of cross-party criticism. Reform’s

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Can Sinn Fein win the UK’s most marginal constituency again?

It’s Monday afternoon and I’m walking through the estate where I was born on the outskirts of Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. Here in the United Kingdom’s most westerly and most marginal constituency, politics continues to be war by other means. The Unionist marching season beckons and as well as the usual red white and blue bunting, there are a sea of Israeli flags fluttering in the drizzle. Across town, in nationalist estates, Palestinian flags abound. These adopted tribal identities epitomise the immutable sectarian character of the competition for the seat in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. While Northern Ireland is slowly becoming a more homogenous society and progressive politics makes progress

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Who cares what Keir Starmer does with his Friday nights?

As part of their vote-Tory-or-the-kitten-gets-it final push, the Conservatives have spent the past 12 hours pushing the idea that Keir Starmer would ‘clock off’ at 6 p.m. as prime minister. This was based on a radio interview the Labour leader gave where he said he would try to protect Friday evenings for his family: his wife is Jewish and they raise their children in that tradition. Labour has been pushing back pretty hard against the Tory attacks on this matter, saying Starmer didn’t suggest in the interview that he would refuse to take important calls on a Friday night, and pointing to the full transcript where he also argued that

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The shame of Royal Mail’s postal vote delay

Britain’s creaking infrastructure and frequent paralysis of public services deserved to be a bigger factor in the election campaign than it has been. But could it now actually affect the result by disenfranchising some voters? A growing number of voters have complained about failing to receive their ballot papers in the post. Given that many people requested postal votes because they knew they were going to be away from home this week, it will now be too late for them to vote, even if delays are sorted out at the last moment. Come Friday, and the late arrival of postal ballots threatens to become a major scandal It is not

Andrew Tettenborn

How Hungary’s presidency could shake up the EU

Life in the Berlaymont building, the Brussels headquarters of the European Union, just got a bit more surreal. A striking feature of the EU is its rotating presidency, under which the 27 member states take it in turns to do a six-month stint running its technically supreme political body, the European Council. This week, Hungary, the bad boy of Europe, took over the hot seat. It keeps it until the end of this year. The difficulty is that the government of Viktor Orbán in Budapest, albeit still popular at home, is at loggerheads with the EU. Politically, its scepticism over Ukraine’s war effort and its open dislike for liberal social

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will there be an election upset on Thursday?

In just two days, voters will head to the polling booth to cast their vote in the 2024 general election. Will there be any surprises in store? So far, there has been little movement when it comes to the gap in vote share between Labour and the Tories. While Labour’s has fallen during the campaign, the Tories have failed to benefit too much from it thanks to the Reform party – which is eating into their vote share. A poll by Savanta for today’s Telegraph finds that the Tory campaign has steadied things since their mid-campaign D-Day gaffe: the party is now at its highest level since the debacle with

Iain Macwhirter

Scottish independence could be the biggest loser on election day

As the hours tick down to polling day, Scottish nationalists are beginning to assess the damage this election campaign has inflicted on the cause of Scottish independence. Far from being a springboard to a second independence referendum, as Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf had forecast, it looks set to draw a line under the wave of Scottish nationalism that has dominated Scottish politics for most of the last two decades as the SNP’s new leader, John Swinney fails to stop the party’s relentless slide in voter support. If the SNP leader is living the dream his party looks set to inherit the nightmare It’s a hard lesson in the vicissitudes

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Giorgia Meloni will enjoy taking revenge on Macron

The German government has expressed its ‘concern’ at the prospect of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally forming the next government of France. Poland’s PM Donald Tusk – the man who said Brexiteers deserved ‘a special place in hell’ – responded to the result by saying ‘this is all really starting to smell very dangerous’. Not in Italy, where the odour wafting down from France after the first round of the parliamentary election was rather to the liking of Giorgia Meloni. ‘I congratulate the Rassemblement National and its allies for the clear success,’  she said. No EU leader will have enjoyed Macron’s humiliation at the hands of Le Pen more than Meloni As in

Steerpike Steerpike

Reform candidate called for Sturgeon to be shot

Oh dear. Just two days to go until polling day and Reform is once again in the limelight after yet more controversial comments by a candidate have come to light. It transpires that the party’s Orkney and Shetland choice, Robert Smith, is responsible for a series of damning social media posts – in which he takes aim at JK Rowling, Nicola Sturgeon and Ursula von Der Leyen amongst others. Between 2016 and 2023, Smith took to social media to post about a number of political and public figures using rather derogatory language. The Times reports that Smith targeted journalist and broadcaster Andrew Marr, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and London

Roger Kimball

What the Supreme Court immunity ruling means for Donald Trump

Yesterday, reviewing last week’s Supreme Court decisions, I noted that the court would probably issue its final opinion of the season, on the question of presidential immunity. So it turned out to be. Yesterday, ‘Trump v. United States’ dropped. For the first time, the Court pondered the question, ‘Does a president have immunity from prosecution?’ or, to use the language of the opinion, ‘Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.’ The answer was more or less what I predicted. I wrote that, while no one outside the hallowed halls of the Court really knew how the