Politics

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

Wednesday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why won’t Dawn Butler show solidarity with Kemi Badenoch?

Behold the exquisite hypocrisy of the Labour MP Dawn Butler. This is a politician who has raised the alarm over the verbal abuse received by female MPs. And yet now she’s gleefully telling anyone who will listen that she agrees with the preening luvvie David Tennant who said Kemi Badenoch should ‘shut up’ and, better still, disappear off the face of the Earth entirely. So sexist barbs are fine if they’re aimed at Tory ladies, Dawn? Is it acceptable again for men to tell women to pipe down? Yes, Ms Butler, the MP for Brent Central, has weighed in with her usual tact to the Tennant-Badenoch showdown. It was at

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The problem with Reform’s plan to scrap Net Zero money

Never mind net zero – let’s spend the money on the NHS instead. That, in an echo of the infamous promise on the side of the Vote Leave battle bus, is what Reform chairman Richard Tice announced this morning at the party’s latest press conference. Achieving net zero, he said, would cost £30 billion a year. Drop that and the party would be able to spend more money on the NHS. Reform’s plans, he said, would involve spending an extra £5 billion a year on extra NHS staff, £7 billion a year on commissioning independent treatment for NHS patients and £3 billion on tax relief for people using private healthcare. With

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Kemi Badenoch shouldn’t stoop to David Tennant’s level

David Tennant’s acceptance speech at the British LGBT Awards was replete with all the telltale signs of ‘Celebrity Activist Syndrome’. He didn’t feel he deserved an award; his views were just ‘common sense’ and ‘human decency’. He has found a cause that just happens to confirm that he is a really great guy, which is the best kind of cause if you ask me. The cause in question is gender identity ideology, for which Tennant has become a prominent activist, though his activism mostly seems to involve wearing a variety of T-shirts with surly slogans. And while trans lives matter, it seems others don’t, for Tennant also used his gong show gushfest to

John Keiger John Keiger

Macron’s ‘civil war’ warning might be closer to reality than he realises

Of the 20 or so opinion polls since France’s president Emmanuel Macron announced a snap election this month, the vast majority put Marine Le Pen’s right-wing party ahead. The Rassemblement National and its allies are predicted to get around 35 per cent of the vote, with the left-wing coalition Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) on 29 per cent and Macron’s centrist coalition Ensemble pour la République trailing on 20 per cent. Barring a black swan moment, Jordan Bardella’s RN will win the most seats in the chamber. But no one party is likely to have an absolute majority. Bardella announced on 18 June that, without a working majority, he will turn down the premiership, which he has

William Atkinson

The betting ‘scandal’ has gone too far

Thomas Macaulay, the 19th-century historian, said there is ‘no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality’. Two hundred years on, the sentiment holds true, as the farce of ‘betgate’ – a stupid name for a stupid scandal – descends into ever greater absurdity. This is not to say there is nothing serious about a politician using insider knowledge to place a bet. Hoping to cheat the bookmakers like that is a criminal offence, and it is only right that the Gambling Commission investigate anyone, of any political stripe, accused of doing so. Two weeks ago, nobody considered this an issue of note

James Heale James Heale

Labour member arrested in connection with Westminster ‘honeytrap’ affair

Bet-gate is dominating the headlines – but an old scandal has now reared its head again. The Metropolitan Police this morning arrested a man in his mid-20s in connection with the Westminster ‘honeytrap’ affair. He was taken into custody in Islington, London on suspicion of harassment and committing offences under the Online Safety Act. The man has been identified as a Labour party member, and has been suspended by the party. Labour has said it cannot comment due to the police investigation. The arrest comes three months after nearly two dozen men, mostly working in politics or journalism, revealed in April that they had received unsolicited, flirtatious WhatsApp messages from people calling

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The bookies must learn from the Westminster betting scandal

Nothing excuses the behaviour of the Conservative MPs, party officials and police protection officers who took a flutter on the date of the general election, but honestly, what did the bookmakers expect? If you are going to offer odds on events which come down to the decision of one individual or organisation you can hardly be surprised when you receive a flurry of bets which might be traced back to inside information. The past fortnight has been one big advert for political betting The political betting scandal has similarities to the spot betting scandal of 2010 involving the Pakistan test cricket team, three members of which were later convicted of

Terry Barnes

Many Australians are revolted by Julian Assange’s return

Convicted spy Julian Assange has come home to Australia. Assange’s chartered private jet touched down in Australia’s capital, Canberra, early in the evening local time to a hero’s reception. That the plea-bargaining deal ensuring his freedom was executed in a remote courthouse on the American territorial island of Saipan, in the isolated western Pacific but satisfying American demand that Assange be convicted on American territory, added a bizarre touch of the exotic to the whole tawdry business. It was a rubber stamp stopover en route from London to Canberra. Assange is a figure of whom we are ashamed to call our own It’s appropriate the deed was done on Saipan.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why is Mel Stride always doing the broadcast round?

It’s a day ending in ‘y’, so it must be time for Mel Stride to make one of his appearances on the broadcast round. Stride is one of the few ministers who have been prepared to go out and about for the Tories during this campaign, alongside Grant Shapps. They seem to perform slightly different functions. Shapps will walk into the studios with a striking warning about how badly the election is going for the Tories, while Stride is the genial character who tries to mollify everyone and exit the interview without creating any news.  This morning, Stride’s job was to try to move on from the gambling row. He

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

French football is suffering from election fever

If England’s excuse for their inept performances is Gareth Southgate, what explains France’s failure to come to life at this month’s European Championships? World Cup winners in 2018 and runners-up in 2022, the French were one of the pre-match favourites going into the tournament. They’ve been even worse than England, finishing second in group D having won once and drawn twice against mediocre opposition. They’ve scored just two goals, and one of them was an own goal from an Austrian. Something is clearly not functioning within the French team Yet this is a settled squad under the same coach, Didier Deschamps, who led them to World Cup glory six years

Steerpike Steerpike

Green candidate advocates ‘Climate Nuremberg’

The Greens like to portray themselves as the party of hope and change. But what exactly does that entail? An enlightening answer perhaps comes from Joe Taylor, the Green candidate for Battersea. In his zeal to save the planet, he advocates using legal action against those whom he holds responsible for climate change. But not just any ordinary legal action – Taylor has previously argued that ‘Conservative politicians’ have ‘already cast their die and booked their places at the climate Nuremberg.’ Quite the incendiary claim, given that the Nuremberg trials obviously concerned the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime before and during the Second World War… Having previously tweeted about a

Alexander Larman

What happened to all the celebrity election endorsements?

JK Rowling’s denunciation of Labour leader Keir Starmer marked a rare moment in the election – a campaign in which the celebs have fallen quiet. At the 1997 election, Labour’s landslide was accompanied both by explicit endorsements from the great and the good. Noel Gallagher and Geri Halliwell, those two Britpop icons, both appeared alongside Blair in public. In New Labour’s later years, Gordon Brown had Rowling, and Ed Miliband spent time and dignity in courting the once-influential Russell Brand, leading to the much-ridiculed Guardian headline: ‘Russell Brand has endorsed Labour – and the Tories should be worried.’ The resulting Conservative majority disproved his point. Even Jeremy Corbyn could count

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour dragged into betting probe

Uh oh. On the same day that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his party would be dropping the two Tory candidates caught up in the election betting scandal, now Labour is facing problems of its own. It transpires that Sir Keir Starmer’s party has suspended Central Suffolk and North Ipswich candidate Kevin Craig after the Gambling Commission launched an investigation into the Labour man. Craig was placed under investigation by the gambling regulators after he allegedly gambled against himself winning the race for his constituency. Talk about hedging your bets… The Gambling Commission is already looking into the gambling history of former Sunak aide and candidate for Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr

Steerpike Steerpike

Badenoch blasts David Tennant over trans debate

With only nine days left until the general election, tensions are flying high and parties are under more scrutiny than ever. Labour’s muddled messaging on the gender debate has ignited heated discussions on the treatment of gender-critical feminists by Sir Keir Starmer’s party – namely one of his own colleagues Rosie Duffield – and has prompted the likes of renowned author and women’s rights activist JK Rowling to speak out. Now Conservative politician Kemi Badenoch, who is also the women and equalities minister, has hit out at Labour – and former Doctor Who actor David Tennant. On receiving a prize at the British LGBT Awards, Tennant took aim at Badenoch

Lara Brown

Will Starmer have the courage to stand up for women’s rights?

Gender ideology was perhaps the last topic which Labour wanted to be front and centre of the election campaign but public opinion and JK Rowling are forcing them to address it. While their proposals on tax and spend have attracted much scrutiny, until the bestselling author intervened this weekend sex and gender had been consigned to the periphery of the campaign. Close analysis of Labour’s manifesto reveals that it is on ‘the culture wars’ – from transgenderism to restitution to a proposed new ‘Race Equality Act’– where they will be the most distinctive, even radical.  There can be no doubt that the landscape surrounding the thorny issue of gender ideology has shifted

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Joe Biden has failed Israel

Another week, another confirmation that when it comes to jihadism, the Biden administration’s foreign policy occupies the nexus between incompetence and moral vacancy. We’ve observed the President’s strategic genius when it comes to the Taliban (withdraw), Iran’s nuclear ambitions (appease) and Hamas (thus far but no further). Now we are seeing it when it comes to Hezbollah. With the conflict in Gaza winding down, Israel is being forced to turn its mind to its restive northern border. Over the last eight months, with the eyes of the world fixed firmly on Palestine, the parallel war – for that is what it has been – with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah has

Gray Sergeant

How Edinburgh kowtowed to Beijing

Zhang Biao, Beijing’s man in Scotland, warned earlier this month that a proposed friendship agreement between Edinburgh City Council and Taiwan’s southern city of Kaohsiung would ‘hurt the feeling[s] of the Chinese people’. The people of China, from Shenzhen to Harbin – all 1.4 billion of them – can sleep easy tonight: the proposal has been pulled from the council’s agenda. Whether it will reappear is unclear. The city’s leader, Cammy Day, has announced that ‘more discussion is required before taking this agreement forward’. Discussions which could presumably, if necessary, go on indefinitely.  Edinburgh Airport feared the agreement could harm work to increase the number of direct flights to China Anyone with

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Steve Baker speaks as though the Tories have already lost

It’s pretty unusual to hear a minister speaking during this election campaign: other than Mel Stride, the rest seem to have gone to ground entirely, either because they want to save their own seats or because they don’t want to be associated with the campaign at all. So when Steve Baker popped up on Andrew Neil’s show on Times Radio this lunchtime, that in itself was pretty remarkable. The Northern Ireland minister then accepted that the Tory betting scandal looked ‘terrible’, and did not bother to defend the delay in suspending the two Tory candidates who are alleged to have placed bets on the election date. He merely said:  The

Steerpike Steerpike

Which cars are stolen most often in London?

As the election campaigns continue to pick up pace ahead of the national poll in nine days’ time, Mr S has been digging into some of the problems facing voters across the country. One issue stood out: crime. Sir Keir’s party has insisted it will cut down on antisocial behaviour and has this morning pledged to ‘take back our streets’. Steerpike would also point Starmer’s lefty lot focus in the direction of car theft – as it’s a growing epidemic in Britain’s capital city… The number of stolen cars logged in London has increased at a rather alarming rate since 2021, according to figures obtained via a Freedom of Information request

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Labour already know what public finance horrors await them

Over the weekend, a leaked document revealed by the Guardian outlined different tax hikes the Labour party could impose, including changes to capital gains tax and inheritance tax. It’s evidence of what has long been suspected: that what’s been left out of the party’s manifesto (almost every tax) remains on the table. How might Labour justify not being more upfront about this ahead of the election? As I have noted on Coffee House before, Labour has gone to great lengths to insist all its plans are costed by tax increases that have already been announced. The lack of specificity in the manifesto, we’ve been told, is evidence that the party isn’t planning to