Politics Archives

Tuesday

9 Sep 2025

Is this the end of the Murdoch drama?

So at last, the vexed question of who is going to succeed the now 94-year-old Rupert Murdoch has been settled. A deal has been announced that reveals that Murdoch’s eldest son Lachlan, the chairman of News Corp and CEO of Fox Corporation, will now be taking control of the family business. His siblings – sisters Prudence and Elisabeth and younger brother James – will each surrender their shares and any influence in the company to him, in exchange for a pay-out estimated at just over a billion dollars each. This concludes a torrid saga that was widely believed to be the major inspiration behind Jesse Armstrong’s acclaimed show Succession – and has

Ross Clark

Is this the real reason Brits are taking so many sick days?

Are Britons getting sicker and sicker – or is our health improving? There seems to be something of a paradox. According to figures from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) the number of sickness absences has increased from an average of 5.9 days per worker in 2019 to 9.4 days in 2024. Interestingly, the sharp increase in the number of sick days has coincided with a rise in working from home Remarkably, it has increased by 1.6 days in a single year – it was 7.8 days in 2023. This is based on a survey of 1,100 employers, which also found that the most common reasons for work

James Heale

Bridget Phillipson stands to replace Angela Rayner

The resignation of Angela Rayner on Friday created two vacancies. The first was in her formal role as deputy leader of the Labour party; the second was her unofficial status as the next leader-in-waiting. Bridget Phillipson’s decision to stand to replace her can be seen as a bid to seize both mantles. The Education Secretary announced her bid this morning, declaring that she’s a ‘proud working-class woman from the north east.’ In a statement, she said that ‘I’ve shown we can beat [Nigel] Farage in the north-east, while staying true to the Labour party’s values of equality, fairness and social justice.’ Her role in cabinet means she will, rightly or

Rob Crossan

Disabled people don’t need BBC do-gooders sticking up for them

Jamie Borthwick is an uncommonly fine young actor who, frankly, is far too good for the increasingly strained and schlocky scripts that are churned out to him and the other residents of Albert Square. If you haven’t heard of him, then all you need to know is that he’s been a major character in EastEnders for the last two decades, playing Jay Brown, until very recently the manager of a (much in demand) funeral home in Walford. But no longer: Borthwick has been axed from the show after he used a slur once commonly used against disabled people, but in this occasion aimed at the people of Blackpool in general.

Gareth Roberts

Emily Thornberry for deputy!

They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but I have a better serving suggestion. How about revenge plated up simmering, every single day, again and again, inescapable and eternal? For surely that is the intended outcome of Emily Thornberry’s plan to – maybe, possibly – run for the position of deputy leader of the Labour party. Even that ‘possibly’ caveat has the air of somebody turning the knife. How she must delight in dangling this ‘I might, I might not’ eventuality before Keir Starmer. Because it was Starmer, after all, who stabbed her in the front after the 2024 election, chucking her unceremoniously out from her shadow position of

Monday

8 Sep 2025

Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s France is descending into chaos

As expected, the government of François Bayrou has lost its vote of confidence in the National Assembly. Three hundred and sixty-four MPs voted to bring down the centrist coalition government, ten months after Michel Barnier’s administration collapsed in similar circumstances. On that occasion 331 MPs cast their ballots against the Prime Minister. Bayrou has been a marked man since he unveiled his budget proposals in July, the objective of which was to slash €44 billion (£38 billion) in spending by 2026 in order to reduce France’s huge public debt. MPs from across the political spectrum condemned his budget. During an afternoon of impassioned debate in parliament, Bayrou had warned MPs:

Lucy Dunn

Shabana Mahmood sets out her stall

Shabana Mahmood wasn’t given long in her new gig before facing the media. She became Home Secretary on Friday afternoon, after former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner resigned over an ethics probe into her tax affairs, and this morning set out her stall on immigration. Positioning herself as a ‘whatever it takes’ minister, Mahmood says she is prepared to suspend visas for workers coming to the UK from nations that will not enter into returns deals – bringing Labour into closer alignment with the Conservatives and Reform on its immigration policy. Mahmood promised she would go ‘further and faster’ than her predecessor Yvette Cooper on the small boats crisis, adding

Philip Patrick

Who will succeed Shigeru Ishiba?

Here we go again. In what appears now to be an annual event, the Japanese prime minister has resigned. In a press conference on Sunday evening, Shigeru Ishiba, who had only been in the job since last October, explained that he was leaving because his continuation in post would prove divisive for his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). It is time, he said, for the ‘next generation’ to take over. Ishiba had lost his party’s majority in both lower and upper house elections (he headed a minority coalition government) and is now irredeemably tainted by failure. He has no faction or support group to stand up for him and couldn’t have

Lucy Dunn

Reform MSP: We’ll never have a pro-indy candidate

As of late August, Nigel Farage’s Reform party now has representatives in local government, Westminster, the Welsh Senedd and the Scottish Parliament. The group’s only MSP is Graham Simpson, a frontline Conservative politician for almost ten years, who defected just under a fortnight ago. I caught up with him at the Reform conference – amid deafening tannoy announcements, last-minute timetable shifts and an ongoing government reshuffle – to hear more about the party’s plans for next year’s 2026 Holyrood election. What exactly attracted Graham Simpson to Reform? ‘I saw the party as something of a blank canvas,’ he explained. The period following his defection was ‘a bit rough’, Simpson told

James Heale

Labour’s deputy leadership race could tear Starmer’s party apart

The rules have been fixed and the timetable agreed. So, who will be the key players in the race to be Labour’s next deputy leader? That is the question all Westminster is asking this lunchtime, following Angela Rayner’s resignation last Friday. The party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) met this morning and confirmed that nominations will open this Saturday and close on 27 September. Candidates need to be nominated by at least 20 per cent of MPs (80) and either five per cent of local parties or three affiliates including two trade unions; they are then put to members in a preferential ballot. Voting will open on 8 October and run

Steerpike

More disruption for Starmer as strategist quits after two weeks

It’s all change in Sir Keir Starmer’s government. After his former deputy Angela Rayner resigned from both her government and party positions on Friday following an ethics probe into her tax affairs, the Prime Minister reshuffled his cabinet and his junior ministers. Those weren’t the only changes Starmer made, however – new appointments to the PM’s team at the start of last week saw Darren Jones MP move from the Treasury to No. 10. And even before that, the Prime Minister recruited another strategist in a bid to turn his government’s fortunes around after an, um, difficult first year in office. But it wasn’t a match made in heaven, with

Tim Shipman

Reform conference review: is this ‘British MAGA’?

16 min listen

Reform UK’s annual conference wrapped up this weekend – and it was anything but dull. From Andrea Jenkyns belting out her original song ‘I’m an Insomniac’ on stage to Nigel Farage trying to keep a sometimes chaotic movement united, the mood was more rally than conference. Despite the optimism in the room, there were obvious cracks under the surface: mainly, do Reform have enough experience in their ranks for the business of serious government? On Coffee House Shots, Oscar Edmondson is joined by Tim Shipman and James Heale fresh from the conference floor. They discuss Farage’s role as ringmaster of a broad – and sometimes unruly – coalition, Reform’s hopes

Nigel Jones

Bring on the driverless Tube

London’s entire underground tube system – apart from the Elizabeth Line – is being paralysed for almost a week by a rolling series of strikes called by the RMT union to which the Tube drivers belong. The Tube is not due to return to ‘normal’ until 8 a.m. on Friday. The disruption is the first all-out strike on the Underground since March 2023. There is a solution to the stress and strain that Tube drivers suffer which would remove the need for such massively disruptive stoppages permanently: the driverless train The union has called the strikes despite only 57 per cent of its 10,400 London members having bothered to vote in

Steerpike

Will Rayner take her £17k handout?

On Friday, Angela Rayner resigned as Deputy Prime Minister after a probe into her tax affairs by Sir Laurie Magnus, the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser. In a rather extraordinary scandal, Rayner was investigated after it emerged she had underpaid stamp duty when purchasing a seaside apartment in Hove, East Sussex. Sir Keir Starmer hinted on Thursday that he would move to sack Rayner pending the results of the investigation, but Rayner jumped before she was pushed. Her departure triggered a cabinet reshuffle, while Labour’s NEC will meet at noon today to discuss the timeframe for a deputy leadership election. But as Rayner moves to the backbenches, one big question about

Gavin Mortimer

For the good of France, Macron must go

This evening Emmanuel Macron will almost certainly be searching for his fifth prime minister since January last year. Francois Bayrou’s decision to call a vote of confidence in his government looks like a calamitous misjudgement, one that will plunge France into another period of grave instability. Comparisons are being drawn with the tumult of the Fourth Republic when, between 1946 and 1958, France went through more than twenty governments. The French are fed up with their political class Bayrou’s coalition government has limped along this year, achieving little other than creating more disenchantment and contempt among the long-suffering electorate. The French are fed up with their political class. Above all, they’re

Alexander Larman

Prince Harry returns, but does Britain want him back?

“Success”, Winston Churchill was once reputed to have said, “is the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” By this metric, Prince Harry must be about the most successful figure in public life today. Despite a series of myriad embarrassments and humiliations, which have included his Sentebale charity descending into chaos, his well-publicised legal shenanigans (which, apparently, cost him over a million pounds, for little reward) and a consistent ranking as Britain’s third most unpopular royal (ahead only of his disgraced uncle and perennially disliked wife), he is returning to Britain this week, for his first significant visit to 2022. Harry is “determined to press the

Stephen Pollard

Why do so many Brits hate Jews?

If you’re a Brit who doesn’t hate Jews – a smaller number than you might think – then you may be surprised by a poll published over the weekend by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, to coincide with its protest march through London. The CAA’s YouGov poll found that the number of people who admitted – perhaps a better word is boasted – they hate Jews has doubled since 2021. The reaction to the Holocaust did not destroy Jew hate. It merely buried it They didn’t put it like that, of course, but it’s what they meant. Respondents were shown a dozen different statements, as prescribed in the ‘Generalised Antisemitism Scale’,

Sunday

7 Sep 2025

David Cohen

Is Jacinda Ardern hiding from Covid scrutiny?

During the five years Jacinda Ardern led New Zealand, much was made of her ‘transparent’ style of touchy-feely leadership and willingness to deal with thorny questions. Yet on the biggest issue of her record – her zero Covid policies – the former Prime Minister has gone missing. A planned week-long public hearing at an inquiry in New Zealand into the nation’s Covid response was abandoned last month, after Jacinda Ardern and other senior figures from her government unexpectedly refused to testify. Ardern’s no-show came as a surprise to many, including the country’s prime minister, Christopher Luxon, who said his predecessor’s decision was ‘not right’. Summarising her decision not to speak

James Heale

Starmer’s reshuffle has Morgan McSweeney’s fingerprints all over it

After 48 hours, the final appointments have been made to complete the government’s reshuffle. A raft of rising stars from the 2024 intake like Josh McAlister, Josh Simons and Kate Dearden have all been handed junior ministerial posts. Kanishka Narayan, a tech enthusiast and Labour’s only Old Etonian, has gone to the Department for Science. Blair McDougall, who ran the Better Together campaign in 2014, is now in Business and Trade. These have been balanced with appointments for more long-serving colleagues too. Chris Elmore joins Yvette Cooper in the new-look Foreign Office team, while Anna McMorrin has replaced Nia Griffith in the Welsh Office. It is instructive to look at

Lucy Dunn

Starmer clears out Home Office in reshuffle

On Friday, former Deputy Prime Minister and housing minister Angela Rayner resigned after an ethics probe into her tax affairs was published. The move prompted Prime Minister Keir Starmer to begin a mass reshuffle of his government, with his new cabinet appointments here. Starmer’s timing made it a rather coincidental coup, with the news overshadowing the first day of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK conference in Birmingham. And if Farage thought day two of his conference would pass uninterrupted, he was mistaken. Today the PM is reshuffling his junior ministers and the first set of appointments have just been published. The most significant changes are in the Home Office which is