Politics

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

Thursday

1 Aug 2024

Keir Starmer’s plan to soften Brexit

42 min listen

This week: Keir Starmer’s plan to soften Brexit Katy Balls writes this week’s cover piece on Labour’s plans to establish close ties with the EU. Every member of Starmer’s cabinet voted Remain, and the government is trying to ‘reset EU relations through a charm offensive’. Brussels figures are hopeful: ‘There was no real goodwill for the Conservative government.’ There are tests coming: the first deal, Katy writes, could be harmonisation on veterinary standards. But will the UK have to abide by the European Court of Justice? Then there’s the issue of Chinese electric cars: will Starmer accept cheap imports, or follow the EU in raising tariffs on them? For now,

Jake Wallis Simons

Israel is assassinating its way to victory

This piece was originally published in a different form on 16 July. If the Pimpernel was damned and elusive, he had nothing on Mohammed ‘the guest’ al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s military wing. The ‘guest’ moniker – ‘Deif’ in Arabic – was gained by decades of moving from house to house nightly to avoid assassination. Despite reportedly losing an eye and a leg in attacks, he continued to evade the missiles as if charmed. The 58-year-old shadow was by far the longest-surviving senior leader of Hamas. This morning, one day after the sensational assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the IDF has finally confirmed his death. On 10.29 a.m. on Saturday 13 July, the

Steerpike

Beeb faces questions after Huw Edwards’ guilty plea

After Wednesday’s news that BBC veteran Huw Edwards pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children, the Beeb is facing a period of reckoning. And the institution is very much under the spotlight after it transpired last night that despite knowing Edwards had been arrested last November, it employed him on his top salary for five more months. Crikey. The broadcaster’s star newsreader was paid a whopping £480,000 between March 2023 and April 2024, according to the BBC’s annual accounts. Yet on Wednesday evening, the Beeb admitted it had been ‘made aware in confidence’ that the former News at Ten presenter had been ‘arrested on suspicion of serious offences’. Edwards

Katy Balls

From the archives: the Rachel Reeves Edition

40 min listen

Women with Balls will be back in the Autumn with a new series. Until then, here’s an episode from the archives, with the new Chancellor Rachel Reeves. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about being a teen chess champion, going to a school where her mum worked and what Labour needed to do to turn its losing streak.

Martin Vander Weyer

Give us a pubs tsar – but spare us Tim Martin

More than a third of UK universities are in financial doo-doo: staff cuts, cancelled courses, slashed research budgets and possible bankruptcy beckon. Behind this is the fact that domestic students paying £9,250 in fees (way behind inflation since that figure was last raised in 2017) cost £11,750 to teach, representing a collective annual £5 billion loss hitherto made up by international students paying £20,000 each. But the last government’s ban on foreign students bringing dependants with them has provoked dramatic falls in non-EU recruitment: bizarrely, the straw that’s breaking some universities’ backs is a 49 per cent decline in Nigerian students applying for one-year Master’s courses. ‘Anything short of an

The Spectator

Rachel Reeves has proved that strikes pay

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were adamant that economic growth would be their first priority in government. It is hard to square that with the decisions the Chancellor has announced this week. The Chancellor claims to have discovered a £21.9 billion ‘black hole’ in the nation’s finances, yet she has created the largest part of that sum by deciding to spend £9.4 billion on inflation-busting pay settlements for public-sector workers without asking for reforms in return. This, it seems, is the first Reeves doctrine: pay now to avoid strikes later Junior doctors are to receive a rise of more than 20 per cent, spread over two years. But it is

Kate Andrews

Who’ll be blamed for Rachel Reeves’s tax hikes?

Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt entered Downing Street with one mission: to clean up the public finances after Liz Truss’s mini-Budget debacle. They posed as the fiscally credible option. All bills would need to be covered, even if the tax burden had to rise. If the Tories were to lose power for being disciplined and truthful, then so be it. Reeves would like to pin any rise on the Conservatives: an extension of ‘Tory austerity’ rather than her own Rachel Reeves has sought to demolish their responsible reputation in her first weeks as Chancellor by announcing that she has discovered a £21.9 billion ‘black hole’ in the public finances this

Peter Mandelson

Things can always get worse for the Tories

Before migrating to Wiltshire where I will be for August, I had a friendly dinner with a clutch of Conservative aficionados. Inevitably the conversation turned to the leadership contest and, having disposed of the poison pill, Suella Braverman, they asked me which candidate, as a Labour person, I would fear most. This was quite a challenging question. James Cleverly is clearly a nice chap but his fondness for blokeish chat may prove career-shortening. Robert Jenrick’s views seem to depend on who he is talking to. Ditto the vanilla Tom Tugendhat. Mel Stride is inoffensive and otherwise undefinable. I doubt Priti Patel’s appeal will reach beyond a segment of her party.

Katy Balls

Keir Starmer’s plans to soften Brexit

Anew political bromance is brewing on the continent. Keir Starmer has met Olaf Scholz, his German counterpart, three times since he entered Downing Street last month. Already the two men have found plenty in common. Both are social democrats, both are lawyers from similar backgrounds and both went through a socialist phase before selling themselves on competence. ‘Charisma is largely alien to them,’ said Der Spiegel after the two met recently at Blenheim Palace. ‘Perhaps this is why they like each other so much.’ Most importantly, Starmer and Scholz are both very keen for a new, closer relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Under the strategy, it

Wednesday

31 Jul 2024

Katy Balls

How should Starmer respond to the Southport riots?

13 min listen

Rioters in Southport have clashed with police after three young girls were fatally stabbed outside a Taylor Swift themed dance class on Monday. The crowd was heard chanting ‘English til I die’ in the violence, which took place outside a mosque. The police have confirmed a 17 year old was arrested over the attack, and he was born in Wales. Is this quickly becoming a major test for the new Prime Minister? What sort of political tensions are becoming apparent following the incident? What role has social media played in spreading disinformation? Megan McElroy speaks to Katy Balls and Paul Brand, UK Editor of ITV News, who has been reporting

Steerpike

How many stars got the Huw Edwards case wrong?

Dear oh dear. The news that ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards has pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children has come as a shock to a nation which spent years watching the veteran TV star fronting the public service broadcaster’s biggest stories. And it will serve as a warning to those journalists who were rather quick to make sweeping judgements on Edwards’ innocence. Mr S has been looking back at some past remarks made by a certain group of stars – and it’s rather awkward for all involved… First was the ever-online Owen Jones. The Graun columnist slammed the idea that Edwards might have done anything wrong, tweeting furiously that Edwards was

Brendan O’Neill

Condemning the Southport riot is not enough

Will Southport’s suffering never end? First, the Merseyside town was rocked by the barbarism of a frenzied knife attack that left three girls dead and others critically injured. Then it was beset by unrest. Just hours after yesterday’s vigil for the slain girls, thugs clashed with cops. They set a police van on fire and threw bricks at a mosque. It was a grim orgy of destruction that insulted the quiet dignity the good people of Southport have shown since evil visited their town on Monday. Double standards have crept into the discussion of Southport’s disorder Everyone of good conscience will condemn yesterday’s riotous events. Thirty-nine officers were injured, eight

Steerpike

Listen: BBC say Haniyeh considered a ‘moderate’ Hamas leader

Uh oh. The BBC has come under fire once again after listeners took umbrage with Radio 4’s news reporting this morning. News came today that the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli attack after a strike hit a building in Iran – just hours after Israel claimed to have killed a senior Hezbollah militant in Lebanon. Iran has vowed to get revenge for Haniyeh’s death as fears about escalation in the Middle East grow, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has insisted: ‘This is something we were not aware of or involved in’. Yet despite Haniyeh’s longstanding involvement and senior position in the Hamas

Ross Clark

The inconvenient truth about ‘rewilding’

Angela Rayner has announced that the government will aim to build 370,000 new homes, up from the 300,000 a year implied in the party’s manifesto. But if the deputy prime minister really thinks that all she needs to do to achieve that target is to take on Nimbys – as Rayner and chancellor Rachel Reeves have suggested in recent weeks – she needs to take a trip to a slice of the ‘grey belt’ in Essex. There, a 206 acre farm at Harold’s Farm near Epping is to be turned over to rewilding. Why is the cost of encouraging rewilding being lumped on new housing? Some locals have announced themselves

Steerpike

Huw Edwards pleads guilty to making indecent images of children

Ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards has pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children. The former TV star appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court earlier today, where he admitted having 41 indecent images of children, which had been sent to him by another man on WhatsApp. The former Six O’Clock News host was suspended from the Beeb in July 2023 after sex scandal allegations emerged. He was arrested in November and charged in June. It transpires he had seven category A pictures, 12 category B and 22 category C. Of the most serious kind, category A, the court heard the images were of children aged between 13 and 15

Patrick O’Flynn

Does it matter if Kemi Badenoch was mean to civil servants?

Kemi Badenoch has been accused of being an unpleasant bully who targeted civil servants for unconscionable treatment. The allegations – which Badenoch has strongly denied – centre around her time at the Department for Business and Trade and emerged in the Guardian. Pippa Crerar, who is exceptionally good at her job and is arguably now the most effective left-of-centre journalists in the country, was bylined on the story. When she was at the Daily Mirror, Crerar was a central mover in the bringing down of Boris Johnson via her relentless coverage of the ‘Partygate’ furore. But this latest story is not likely to result in a similar fate for the

Ben Lazarus

Will Iran respond to Israel’s assassinations?

The Israelis were busy last night. First, Fouad Shukur, Hezbollah’s top military commander was, in the words of Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant, ‘eliminated’ in Beirut. Shukur was targeted for his role in a rocket attack on the Golan Heights on Saturday which killed 12 Druze children and teenagers playing football. Hours later, Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, where he was visiting for the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian. For now, Israel and Hezbollah say they both want to avoid total war It’s a huge blow for Hamas and their Iranian paymasters. Haniyeh was the face of Hamas’s international diplomacy, and is the most senior Hamas

Catherine Ellis

Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro doesn’t like losing

There are sore losers and then there’s Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. The socialist president has ruled the South American country for 11 years, and despite opinion polls – and now physical vote tallies from the presidential election – proving that he’s not as popular as he wants to be, he seems to really want to stay in his job. So much so, that there are reports Maduro’s regime may be plotting the arrest of the man who is not only beating him in the popularity contest, but appears to have thrashed him at the polls: Edmundo Gonzalez. A similar scheme is reportedly being hatched against Maria Corina Machado, the woman whom Gonzalez

Limor Simhony Philpott

Hamas and Hezbollah leaders killed in strikes on Iran and Lebanon

Israel has been accused of killing Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a strike on Iran overnight. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack but Hamas said Haniyeh was ‘killed in a treacherous Zionist raid’ and vowed revenge. If indeed Israel did target Haniyeh in his Tehran residence it could mark a major escalation in the conflict. Iran will be humiliated that, even in the heart of its capital, Haniyeh was not safe. Hamas said Haniyeh was ‘killed in a treacherous Zionist raid’ Israel is yet to respond or issue a statement, but the country did say that it carried out a separate strike on Beirut yesterday in response to a

Gareth Roberts

Just Stop Oil and the secret power of the middle class

Just Stop Oil isn’t what it was. When a handful of protestors from the environmental group tried to block a departure gate at Gatwick Airport this week, they failed miserably. It wasn’t much of a protest: they just plonked themselves down and adopted the traditional JSO expression: a stance of neutrality aimed at looking noble and martyrish but, in reality, comes over as suggesting they are mildly constipated. Embarrassed air travellers merely stepped over them, although one traveller did speak for the nation by suggesting that they reconvene elsewhere, using a two-word expression, one of them composed of four letters. The power of the middle class to charm officers of