Politics

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

Monday

David Bergman

The terrible error that ended Sheikh Hasina’s rule over Bangladesh

A month ago, no one in Bangladesh could ever have imagined that the country’s authoritarian prime minister Sheikh Hasina could be forcibly removed from power and sent by military helicopter out of the country to India. Least of all Hasina herself, as her party, the Awami League, controlled the police, the judiciary, and all other state institutions. But that is exactly what happened today. Sheikh Hasina, the aunt of the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq, had been in power for a 15-year stretch. Though the 2008 elections which first made her prime minister were free and fair, all three subsequent elections in 2014, 2018 and earlier this year were beset with allegations

Eliot Wilson

It’s not surprising Russia wants to spy on Britain

The British Army’s Field Army Threat Handbook has warned soldiers of potential Russian espionage at UK sites where Ukrainian military personnel are being trained. Possible methods identified include ‘the use of remotely piloted aircraft systems, mobile and foot surveillance, virtual and physical approaches to training providers and interest from investigative journalists’. This is a threat we should take seriously, but it should also serve to clarify the United Kingdom’s current adversarial relationship with Russia. There is no shortage of gloomy Jeremiahs in the public arena at the moment, arguing that we are unprepared for a potential major conflict, that the armed forces do not have the resources needed to meet

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP under fire over handling of sex scandal complaints 

To Scotland, where the Nats are facing accusations of not dealing with sex offender complaints properly. Cameron Downing, former SNP equalities officer, was last month jailed for six years after being convicted of sexually assaulting six young adults and physically assaulting two women. Between 2016 and 2021, the ex-equalities officer was found to have attacked seven people and has been convicted of 10 charges – including sexual assault and domestic abuse. He resigned from the equalities post after his tweets from 2022 about how he wanted to ‘beat the f*** out of some terfs and transphobes’ emerged – but only had his SNP membership formally removed in January 2023. And

Oscar Edmondson

Can our prisons take these ‘thugs’?

16 min listen

Keir Starmer will be chairing his first Cobra meeting, as the government continues to grapple with the rioting that has broken out across the country. The weekend saw numerous examples of violence, including at hotels thought to be hosting asylum seekers. We had a statement from the prime minister condemning the ‘right wing thuggery’, but do we need a more complete approach to extremism? And will our prisons and our courts be able to accommodate the huge influx of offenders?  Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Ian Acheson, senior advisor to the Counter Extremism Project.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Met Police boss grabs mic after ‘two-tier policing’ question

As Britain braces itself for further outbreaks of violence, questions are being asked about the UK’s police response and how effective it has been. While a number of officers have been injured over the past week as they work to contain rioters, accusations have been levelled at officers for ‘two-tier policing’ – amidst fears that some protests are dealt with more harshly than others. So when Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, was spotted leaving the Cabinet Office by reporters today, it seemed only natural that he be quizzed on the matter. But when one journalist questioned Rowley about whether the UK would ‘end two-tier policing’, the Police Commissioner

Jay Mens

How will Iran seek to ‘punish’ Israel?

It was never just about Gaza. Since October, the Middle East has been in a regional war that, over the next few weeks, is likely to break into the open. After Israel’s airstrike on Beirut and assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week, Iran is promising a different approach. Following the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020, and the Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, they promised enteqam: revenge. Today, they say mojazat – punishment, or khun-khahi: literally ‘a desire for blood’. Israel has three outstanding blood debts accumulated over the past few weeks from across the self-styled ‘Axis of Resistance’. It bombed Hodeidah, the Houthi-controlled port in Yemen,

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What will Biden do about Venezuela?

17 min listen

Venezuela’s leader President Nicolas Maduro is still manoeuvring to stay in power, following disputed election results and hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to protest. The opposition maintains that the result is fraudulent. Biden is facing increased pressure to intervene. What will his next move be? Freddy Gray is joined by Eli Lake, reporter for The Free Press.

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Ed Balls interviews his Home Secretary wife on ITV

Good heavens. Now it’s ITV under fire after the broadcaster was accused of bias for allowing ex-politician-turned-presenter Ed Balls to interview Yvette Cooper, who also happens to be his, um, wife. Talk about keeping it in the family… The Home Secretary was across the airwaves this morning doing the media round after horrific riots – which included two attacks on hotels housing asylum seekers – spread across the country at the weekend. But her appearance has been slammed by viewers who were outraged to see her husband conducting part of the interview. Balls first quizzed his wife about what the government, police and social media companies can do to combat

Steerpike Steerpike

Trump’s son blasts Lammy for ‘clickbait’ comments

Donald Trump’s second son Eric made a visit to Scotland this weekend, for a round of golf and a rather interesting media interview. While Eric Trump insisted that the Trumps have ‘tremendous respect’ for the country, the ex-president’s son was, however, a little less complimentary about David Lammy… The Foreign Secretary has a history of making rather, um, heated remarks about the former president – even calling Donald Trump a ‘neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’ as a backbench MP in 2018. That wasn’t the only criticism Lammy levelled at the presidential candidate. In 2017, Lammy slammed Theresa May’s invitation to Trump and his wife to the UK, writing: ‘A state visit to suck

Robert Tombs

Why talk of civil war is overblown

Are we really on the brink of civil war in Britain? Is it ‘inevitable’ in the foreseeable future? So thinks Elon Musk. It would be easy to dismiss this as absurd. Indeed it is absurd. But those of a nervous disposition might point to certain circumstances in 1642 – the start of what most English people think of as the Civil War – that might cause us worry today. In 1642 hardly anyone wanted civil war. Hardly anyone expected one. Most people didn’t want to get involved. And yet it happened: what one Parliamentary officer called poignantly ‘this war without an enemy’ was to be England’s worst internal conflict. It was not, in fact, the United Kingdom’s

Danny Shaw

How to stop the riots

For five days at the beginning of August 2011, it felt like we were on the brink of anarchy. Over the last few days, similar scenes have played out on British streets: shops have been smashed and looted; people attacked; and police officers on the front line have been injured. There is nothing more frightening than losing control of the streets Labour’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has vowed that ‘there will be a reckoning’ for those involved in the violence. In order to stop the riots, the authorities will have to adopt a similar approach to that taken 13 years ago. Lessons from that period must be applied now if

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The FTSE fall will upset Rachel Reeves’s October Budget

For a while it looked as if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were going to be lucky: they had walked into an economic recovery. The anaemic growth and market turmoil of the past few years – which Labour liked to blame entirely on ‘Tory chaos’ and absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic or energy crisis which followed the invasion of Ukraine – were going to be replaced by a period of stability and prosperity. Some governments are fortunate in their timing: Tony Blair walked into a decade of non-inflationary growth thanks to globalisation and the emergence of China as a major economy. But Starmer, it now looks, will not

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Can our prisons take these thugs?

The last comparable period of civil disorder in this country happened in 2011. Then as now, the courts acted with speed and severity to try to quell five days of rioting in multiple locations, which traumatised the nation, caused hundreds of millions in damage and injured more than three hundred officers. The head of the Crown Prosecution Service at the time was one Keir Starmer. Now, as prime minister, he seeks again to confront the horrific street violence with the same apparent energy and determination. But can a punitive response work to stop violence that has at times threatened to overwhelm the police? Times have changed, and our criminal justice

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Even France is surprised by Britain’s riots

The riots that have erupted across Britain in the last week have been reported extensively in France. The centre-right Le Figaro describes a ‘whiff of civil war’ in the air. The French media are well-versed in covering riots of their own, but the trouble on the other side of the Channel is unusual in that the troublemakers are regarded as far-right. The violence that has been a regular feature in French streets in recent years comes from elsewhere. Far-left mobs regularly smash up shops and banks and battle the police, and last summer, there was a week of rioting across France after a teenage French-Algerian driving without a licence was shot dead

Sunday

Jawad Iqbal

Starmer needs to get a grip on the riots

Hundreds of angry protestors have attacked a hotel in South Yorkshire that has been used to house migrants and asylum seekers. Videos posted on social media show the police retreating under a hail of objects thrown by anti-immigration protesters outside the Holiday Inn Express in Rotherham. There are pictures of protestors hurling pieces of wood and chairs at riot police The scenes are some of the worst so far as unrest across Britain enters its fifth day, after three young girls were stabbed to death in Southport on Monday. The Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, in responding to the events in Rotherham, vowed ‘to bring these thugs to justice as quickly as

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Starmer blasts ‘far-right thuggery’ in wake of weekend riots

After a weekend of violent disorder breaking out across the UK, the Prime Minister has this evening issued a statement from Downing Street. ‘I utterly condemn the far-right thuggery we have seen this weekend,’ Keir Starmer says. ‘Be in no doubt: those who have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law.’ The Labour leader goes on to say that ‘the police will be making arrests’ and he can ‘guarantee you will regret taking part in this disorder’. It comes as the Home Office announces that emergency security will be provided to mosques immediately – which have already become a target for the mob violence. While there have

Ed West Ed West

Is Britain falling apart?

My brand is pessimism so I’m wary of flogging it to death or becoming a parody of myself, but it’s hard not to feel a bit downcast about the direction of the country. Perhaps it’s just been an especially grim couple of weeks for Britain, with riots in Leeds, a soldier stabbed in Kent and the unimaginable horror in Southport, followed by the ugly mob scenes that followed. That this happened on the same evening as screaming crowds were seen in Southend running from a machete fight added to the sense of national fragility. This was followed, yesterday, by horrific scenes of widespread mob disorder across the country in which policemen

Steerpike Steerpike

Violent mob comes to Rotherham

Protests are spreading across the UK. In Hull, protesters gathered outside a hotel housing asylum seekers and chanted ‘stop the boats’, and in Belfast a Syrian cafe owner had his business targeted. Now the action has spread to Rotherham. This afternoon, a mob has set fire to a hotel, used to house migrants. Footage appears to show masked rioters assembling outside a Holiday Express as they clashed with police. It comes after earlier demonstrations in the area from a mix of anti-racist and anti-immigration supporters. On Thursday, Keir Starmer used a Downing Street press conference to address violent disorder following the Southport stabbing attacks. Following reports that more protests and

Eliot Wilson

There’s no excuse for this thuggery

On Friday night, I watched the news with a sick heart. I watched masked men in Sunderland throw bricks and beer cans at the police and chant racist slogans. I recognised the setting. I grew up in Sunderland: I spent 15 years of my life there and still have family there. I was in Keel Square, where the disorder began, in the early hours of New Year’s Day this year. There is no justification for the violence we have seen in towns and cities across the country this week. To attribute it to the tragic murder of three young girls in Southport on 29 July is mistaken, misleading and grotesque,

Limor Simhony Philpott

Israel’s coming war against Hezbollah might be necessary

A full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah now seems closer than at any point since 7 October. Recent escalations, including the killing of twelve Druze children by a Hezbollah rocket and the assassination of the organisation’s armed forces commander, mean that war is now a more likely scenario. A war in Lebanon would look very differently to the war in Gaza. Hezbollah has always been bigger and more powerful than Hamas. Much of Hezbollah’s extensive weapons come from Iran. According to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), these include long, medium and short-range precision missiles, more than 150,000 rockets, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, and drones used for reconnaissance and attacks. Its tens