Politics

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

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Nothing gives Keir Starmer joy like banning things

Power hasn’t altered Sir Keir Starmer. His frosty and unamused demeanour remains. No hint of warmth or joy has penetrated his defensive outer rind. He still looks like a mourner-for-hire at an oligarch’s funeral.  Today at PMQs he was faced by a quick-witted and forceful Rishi Sunak who clearly relishes the role of battering ram. The Tories may start to question the wisdom of replacing him. Which of their leadership candidates could match this masterclass in how to grill an incumbent PM? Rishi selected a single issue and hammered away at it until he got a useless reply. Then, having described how useless it was, he moved onto a new

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The two winners from the first Tory leadership round

Priti Patel is out of the race to be the next Tory leader. In the first knockout round of the contest, the former Home Secretary received the lowest number of votes at 14, behind Mel Stride who was in fifth place with 16 votes. It is Robert Jenrick who has the most to celebrate – after coming out on top in the ballot with 28 votes. His supporters have said this week that they believe he is ‘nailed on’ to make the final two, who are then picked by the membership. While he still needs to gain more support, this result will add to the sense that Jenrick is a

Graham Watts

The vital lesson that must be learnt from the Grenfell inquiry

Today’s long-awaited publication of the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry provides a forensic account of the ‘root causes’ of the tragedy that led to the loss of 72 lives. More than seven years since those awful early morning hours of 14 June 2017, Sir Martin Moore Bick’s 1,694 page report represents another traumatic reference point for the victims and their relatives. First and foremost, it is important to recognise their continued suffering and to extend heartfelt sympathy to all those impacted by the tragedy.  Six weeks after the fire, I assisted the choreographer Arlene Phillips in arranging the Gala for Grenfell at the Adelphi Theatre in the West

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP health secretary slammed over Oasis ticket fiasco

To Scotland, where the SNP’s newest health secretary has found himself in a rather large, Oasis-sized mess. At the weekend, Neil Gray was called out by the Sunday Mail for taking his eye off his day job and attempting to buy tickets to see the newly-reformed band during a conference event on Alzheimer’s disease. Mr S is rather unsurprised to learn Gray knows a thing or two about the Importance of Being Idle… The initial story reported how, after Glasgow University’s Terry Quinn had finished a heartfelt speech on dementia, Scotland’s health secretary looked up from his phone to confess: ‘I’m in the queue to buy Oasis tickets on multiple

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Grenfell report: why did it take so long?

16 min listen

Seven years after the tragedy, the inquiry into the Grenfell fire has published its report. What did we learn from it and who bears responsibility? And, with thousands of buildings still believed to contain flammable cladding, what should happen next? With such important lessons to be learnt, why do British inquiries take so long? Also on the podcast, a look at the first PMQs following summer recess and the Tory leadership election. James Heale speaks to Isabel Hardman and Liam Halligan, Telegraph columnist and author of Home Truths. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer is acting like he’s still in opposition

Keir Starmer made a couple of verbal slips at Prime Minister’s Questions. Both were quite telling. The first was that he repeatedly referred to Rishi Sunak as the ‘Prime Minister’. An easy mistake to make, perhaps, when both are still getting used to the job swap they performed after the election. But the reason it was an appropriate slip was that Starmer was still largely in opposition mode, complaining about mistakes that the Conservatives had made.  The pair started by sparring on the winter fuel allowance, with Starmer making the argument that he and Rachel Reeves have made repeatedly since the Chancellor announced she was restricting this universal benefit to

Sam Meadows

Why is Javier Milei spending more on Argentina’s army?

Bitter austerity is biting in Argentina as the new president enacts the brutal cuts he promised in a bid to reign in one of the world’s worst inflation rates. Entire government departments – including the Culture Ministry – have been canned and consumer spending has slumped across the board as Argentines find their stacks of pesos aren’t going as far as they once did. In a stark sign of the times, consumption of beef – reared by the country’s rural gauchos – slumped in the first quarter of 2024 by the biggest margin seen in 30 years. Milei is still attempting to hold things together in Congress However, one area

Matthew Lynn

Why London must get back to work

The commute is often unreliable, expensive and crowded. It is easy enough to understand why so many of London’s 5 million strong workforce are so reluctant to go back to the office. There is a catch, however. Working from home is costing the British economy a huge amount of lost output. In reality, the UK can’t afford for Londoners to carry on WFH for much longer.  According to a study just published by the Centre for Cities, London is one of the slowest major cities in the world to go back to the office full-time. Of the six cities it studied, London had the second lowest attendance rate, with full-time

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The ‘path to disaster’ that led to Grenfell

There are very few people who emerge from the Grenfell Inquiry’s final report with much credit today. Certainly very few who had a formal responsibility to ensure that those living in Grenfell Tower were safe. The local community stepped up in the aftermath of the disaster, but even then the institutions set up to ensure victims would be cared for failed them. Institutions including local and central government failed to act on warnings which could have prevented the fire from spreading, meaning the 72 people who lost their lives could still have been with us today. It wasn’t just institutions though, of course: it was construction firms, the architects and

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Starmer defers to ‘prime minister’ Sunak at PMQs

They say old habits die hard, and Sir Keir Starmer is finding that out for himself today. It’s the first PMQs back after recess and it seems as though some in the Commons are rather struggling to adjust to the change of guard. Mr S notes that the Labour leader has today referred to his opposite number Rishi Sunak multiple times as, er, ‘prime minister’. The Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has also been caught making the same rather impertinent mistake. Talk about a slip of the tongue… And it hasn’t taken long for the Tories to use the PM’s blunder to their advantage. Just minutes after Sir

Catherine Ellis

The US is turning the screws on Nicolas Maduro

Actions often speak louder than words. In the case of the United States seizing Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s multi-million dollar luxury aircraft this week, that perhaps rings true. The international tip-toeing around how best to respond to Venezuela’s election result – considered fraudulent by many – and the turbulent repression that has ensued, has had global leaders scratching their heads for over a month. But the seizure of the airplane could hit Maduro where it hurts. Strongly-worded statements condemning the lack of transparency around the election and the antiquated measure of throwing dissenters in jail have fallen on deaf ears. So the taking of the Dassault Falcon 900EX from the Dominican Republic,

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why did the Grenfell Inquiry take so long to tell us what we know already?

Predictably enough, and not unreasonably, the 1700-page final report into the Grenfell disaster apportions the bulk of the blame with the companies who manufactured and sold the flammable cladding and insulation.  The report doesn’t spare the London Fire Brigade What has emerged from this inquiry is astonishing: you hardly need a degree in engineering to work out that it is not a good idea to wrap a tower block in combustible material. That manufacturers seem to have ‘deliberately concealed’ the risk that their products posed is something which is almost inevitably going to be picked over further in the courts. Why it has taken seven years to produce this report

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

There’s no shame in being ‘weird’

Are Conservative politicians ‘weird’? A series of focus groups carried out by More in Common suggests that voters – particularly in seats won by the Lib Dems – find elected Tories increasingly strange. It’s hard to disagree, but this isn’t the party’s only problem. Who cares if a politician is weird? As the Tories battle it out to elect their new leader, the reality is that hardly anybody out there recognises any of the candidates. The one that rings the most bells is Priti Patel. This is because, as anybody who has ever worked in marketing will tell you, she possesses an alliterative name. Tom Tugendhat also scores here, but

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP government finally accepts Cass review findings

Well, well, well. After all of the SNP’s sniping at Dr Hilary Cass’s review into UK gender clinics, it transpires that the Scottish government has – finally – accepted the findings of a gender clinic report in full. The revelation comes months after Cass found ‘remarkably weak evidence’ to support gender treatments for children and concluded that the ‘toxicity’ of the gender debate meant professionals were ‘afraid’ to openly discuss their views. Oh dear… After much ado, the SNP government has now said it will implement a gender treatment review’s recommendations, with public health minister Jenni Minto confirming that a second report – entitled ‘The Cass Review: Implications for Scotland’

Jonathan Spyer

Netanyahu faces an unenviable dilemma on Gaza

The murder of six Israeli hostages by Hamas in Gaza earlier this week led to an outpouring of grief and fury in Israel. For a considerable and vocal section of the public, the anger was directed – in a way perhaps surprising to outsiders – not against the Islamist group responsible for the murders, but against the Israeli government. Large and stormy demonstrations took place in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Histadrut, Israel’s trade union federation, organised a (partially observed) one-day general strike. The demonstrators’ demand was a simple one: a deal to release the 97 remaining hostages now. At least 33, by the way, and possibly more of the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer’s honeymoon is unquestionably over

Keir Starmer is back at the despatch box for Prime Minister’s Questions today and his honeymoon period is unquestionably over. He will face hostile questions on the winter fuel payment, on arms export licences to Israel, and on whether Labour plans to raise taxes in the autumn budget. And he will want to talk about the Grenfell Inquiry, which is publishing its report shortly. That report will be uncomfortable reading mainly for Conservatives, but the recommendations will be Labour’s to implement – or not  –and the pressure will be on the Prime Minister to accept them in full.  Starmer has made public injustices and the system not working for ordinary people

Niall Gooch

Stop trying to make ‘weird’ happen

Where American left-liberal rhetoric leads, British left-liberal rhetoric invariably follows. Hate speech, reparations, decolonisation, white fragility; there is no intellectual fad so inane that it will not be enthusiastically mimicked, with childlike credulity, by journalists, academics, civil servants and broadcasters, regardless of whether it even makes sense in a British context. The impression you get is of status-conscious provincials seizing, herd-like, on the latest fashions and conventional wisdom from the imperial centre.  The accusation of weirdness is a striking example of the decline of political rhetoric So it is that barely a month after the Democrats and their allies in the US media adopted ‘weird’ as their attack line on

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How long can Macron ignore French voters?

It was way back in the first week of July that the French went to the polls to elect a new government. Fifty-nine days later and there is no new government and it’s anyone’s guess who will become the fifth prime minister to serve under Emmanuel Macron. As one left-wing politician, Mathilde Panot, quipped on Monday: ‘If Macron could nominate himself, he would.’ Macron and Scholz, Europe’s two most important leaders, seem determined to turn a blind eye to voters In the parliamentary election, Macron’s Renaissance party finished third, receiving 6.3 million votes. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won the biggest slice of the popular vote with 10.1 million votes,

Jawad Iqbal

When will the Channel migrant horror end?

Twelve migrants, including six children and a pregnant woman, have died after their overcrowded dinghy capsized while they were trying to cross the Channel. Two people remain in a critical condition. Some 53 people were rescued, with several requiring emergency medical attention. Local French media reported that rescue workers are still searching for other migrants feared lost at sea. The disaster is the deadliest loss of life in the Channel this year. The boat, believed to be carrying 70 people, got into difficulties off Cape Gris-Nez, near Boulogne-sur-Mer, on the northern French coast. The Channel is one of the world’s busiest shipping routes and currents are strong. Crossings on small boats

Tuesday

James Heale James Heale

Inside the 1922 hustings for Tory leader

This evening Tory MPs filed into parliament’s Committee Room 14 to hear from the six hopefuls aspiring to lead their party. Each candidate had up to ten minutes to make a final pitch to colleagues, followed by questions. Robert Jenrick went first, followed by Kemi Badenoch, Tom Tugendhat, Mel Stride, Priti Patel and, finally, James Cleverly. ‘Tired’ is how one describes his performance Jenrick has spent the summer campaigning heavily on migration and the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights), so opted to focus much of his speech about the economy and public services: ‘Making the NHS work for our constituents’ was a theme in his remarks. Three of the