Politics

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

Thursday

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Watch: Farage’s plans to reunite the right

There may only be three weeks of election season left but there’s still a new development every day. Now Nigel Farage has made waves on the airwaves this morning in conversation with LBC’s Nick Ferrari. Quizzed about what the future if the opposition could look like, the Reform party leader hinted he was open to a new kind of cross-party working… ‘I’ve intervened,’ he told Ferrari, ‘because we need a coherent voice of opposition in parliament and in the country. Do you know what, Nick? I believe I can do that better than the current Conservative party.’ His interviewer pressed him again: Ferrari: Can you tell me that one day

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The staggering dullness of Sunak and Starmer

We’re now about halfway through the election campaign. I don’t know how we’re going to keep our excitement from bubbling over if this level of stimulation keeps up in the second half. The staggering mediocrity and dullness of Sunak and Starmer has lent this contest – despite its inevitably very different final outcome – the air of a no-score draw played between non-league Tier 11 teams. What terrible cosmic sin did the British public commit that we are lumbered with this pair of tailors’ dummies? This was made even more apparent by last night’s Sky interviews. Sunak and Starmer shied from confronting one another head-on – perhaps mindful of anaesthetising

Daniel DePetris

Expect tension and clashes at Italy’s G7 summit

Another year, another G7 Leaders’ summit. The confab between the world’s wealthiest democracies has long since become one of those boring events etched into the global diplomatic landscape, a more intimate and picturesque version of the UN General Assembly meetings held every September. Speeches are given. Private dinners are arranged. Handshakes and hugs proliferate. And group photos are taken, where the well-dressed leaders smile as if they’re at a family reunion. But this year’s session, which begins today, will entail a significant amount of weighty business. It comes at a particularly fraught moment for Europe’s centrist politicians, who were dealt an embarrassing blow by far-right political parties during the European

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Starmer wants to go for growth – but will he end up like Liz Truss?

Keir Starmer, it turns out, was a secret Liz Truss fan all along. Launching his party’s manifesto this morning he is going to tell us that growth will be the overriding preoccupation of his government. That, if you remember, is what the Truss premiership was going to be all about: ‘growth, growth, growth.’ How is he going to generate growth, and in a way that doesn’t have him landing flat on his face like Truss herself? Starmer has decided that he is going to take the levellers and the greens head-on. ‘Some people say that how you grow the economy is not a central question – that it’s not about

Rana Mitter

China’s ‘soft siege’ of Taiwan

‘There is only one China in the world,’ Wang Wenbin, the spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, declared at a press conference late last month. ‘Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory.’ The previous day, on 23 May, Beijing carried out major military exercises around the island under the title ‘Joint-Sword 2024A.’ The Chinese Communist party (CCP) said it wanted to practise how to ‘seize power’ in Taiwan, and to ‘punish’ its new leader, Lai Ching-te, and his supporters in the US. J-16 aircraft and Type 052D destroyers – some of China’s best military assets – led the exercises, surrounding Taiwan and practising bombing runs. In recent months, as China’s

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The return of Douglas Alexander

It’s a sunny Friday afternoon in Gullane, an affluent seaside town on the Firth of Forth. For political campaigners, golden hour is the perfect time to speak to middle-class locals working from home at the end of the week. A huddle of Labour campaigners go door to door, ticking off names on a clipboard and shouting numbers to one another. ‘Eight,’ says one canvasser, smiling. She’s reporting back an undecided voter’s answer to the question ‘From one to ten, how likely are you to vote Labour on July 4?’ ‘We are getting a lot of“I have always voted SNP but am now voting for you”’ The candidate is Douglas Alexander,

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Can Macron still outplay Le Pen?

Petulance, panic and performance. President Macron’s broadcast following the evisceration of his party in last weekend’s elections for the European parliament had elements of all three. Wearing a black tie as if in mourning, he looked shocked, exhausted and angry. ‘The rise of the nationalists and demagogues,’ he said, ‘is a threat not only to our nation but also to our Europe and to France’s place in Europe and in the world… The extreme right is both the impoverishment of the French people and the downfall of our country. So at the end of this day, I can’t pretend that nothing has happened. I decided to give you the choice.

George Osborne

How the Tories lost their way

Do you pack up the flat or not? That’s the question that everyone who lives in Downing Street faces as an election approaches. In 1997 my job was to brief John Major each morning on the newspapers. We’d pick up the first editions from Charing Cross at midnight and young researchers would beaver away in the early hours working out how to respond. At 6 a.m. I’d then go to the flat above No. 10 and brief the bleary-eyed premier. I remember the chintzy sofas, the family photos and the awkward moments: ‘Prime Minister, your sister has told the Sun newspaper you can’t win.’ The day before polling, I crept

Wednesday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Keir Starmer needs a better answer to the Jeremy Corbyn question

Keir Starmer looked baffled by tonight’s questions. Rishi Sunak looked resigned. Separating the two candidates – having them face Beth Rigby and the audience, rather than each other – led to far more defensive performances: Starmer on tax, and Sunak on the Tory record. Both spent the majority of the time looking deeply uncomfortable.  Sunak did not have an easy ride. The audience, all warmed up by the Labour leader’s interview, was more likely to jump in and heckle. Asked questions about his ‘five promises’ made in January 2023 – only one of which he has made good on – Sunak tried to move the goalposts, insisting that those promises

Steerpike Steerpike

Sunak’s aide under investigation after betting on election date

Oh dear. Now it has transpired that the Prime Minister’s closest parliamentary aide, Craig Williams, placed a £100 bet on there being a July election — just three days before a rain-drenched Rishi Sunak announced the date to the public. The Guardian has tonight revealed that the Gambling Commission has launched an inquiry into the PM’s private secretary after Williams placed a bet with Ladbrokes on Sunday 19 May. With odds of 5/1, Williams was set to receive £500. After the bet was placed, it is understood that a red flag was raised by the gambling company, as Williams’ was flagged as a ‘politically exposed person’ and the bookmaker was

Damian Reilly Damian Reilly

The wonderful guilelessness of Rishi Sunak 

Could Rishi Sunak’s emergence as this nation’s greatest gaffe machine since Prince Philip come in time to endear him to the electorate? At this point in his campaign, you’d have to say it’s a tactic he might as well lean into. After all, one of the best things about being British is the manner in which virtually everything becomes a funny and heart-warming story if you give it enough time. Another day, another gaffe. This morning ITV began trailing the interview our increasingly hilarious prime minister so famously abandoned the D-Day commemorations in Normandy for by releasing a clip in which he seems to claim that despite now being a

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Listen: Andrew Neil schools Green co-leader on wealth tax

Another day, another campaign disaster. Now it’s the turn of the Green party’s co-leader Adrian Ramsay, who was this lunchtime interviewed by Andrew Neil for Times Radio. Ramsay’s first mistake was to turn up late to the interview — while his next was to, er, not fully answer his interviewer’s questions. Introducing the Greens as an ‘anti-growth or no growth party’, Neil first asked Ramsay whether he was in that case ‘pretty pleased with this government’, given the UK has had almost no economic growth since Covid. Next, Ramsay was quizzed on the Green party’s ‘wealth tax’ — which would involve introducing a new tax of 1 per cent on

Andrew Liddle

The SNP shouldn’t celebrate being tied with Labour

It is a measure of the extent of the SNP’s decline that nationalist activists have seized on a new Ipsos poll that shows the party is now neck and neck with Scottish Labour. After all, it was only 18 months ago that the same company suggested the SNP enjoyed the support of more than half of people in Scotland, with Anas Sarwar’s party languishing on 25 per cent. Two resignations, a campervan and several unpopular policies later, however, and the SNP is now regularly recorded as being behind Scottish Labour, in one recent poll by as much as 10 points. Hence the excitement in otherwise weary nationalist circles that they may

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why are Tories talking about a Labour Super Majority?

12 min listen

Grant Shapps has been speaking to media this morning and warning that a Labour landslide would be ‘very bad news’ for the country. Is the acknowledgement that Labour could seriously damage the Tories a slip of the tongue, or a new strategy for the Tories? Elsewhere, the interview that Rishi Sunak left D Day commemorations for is airing tonight. In a controversial moment, when asked what he had to go without as a child, he says Sky TV…  Megan McElroy speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls. Join the Coffee House Shots team for a live recording on Thursday 11 July. Get tickets at spectator.co.uk/live.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

When will the Greens get real?

There is something a little refreshing about the Green party. In contrast to Rishi Sunak, who has no option but to carry on pretending he has the slightest chance of remaining in Downing Street after 4 July, Green party co-leader Adrian Ramsay admitted at his manifesto launch this morning that his party isn’t looking to form the next government. The party’s realistic hope seems to be to double its number of Commons seats, from one to two. Nevertheless, the Greens do have a full manifesto for government, so let’s do it justice by taking it seriously. Mercifully, the Greens seem to have not bought into the fashionable concept of ‘degrowth’

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Nicola Sturgeon’s ITV hypocrisy

Back to Scotland, where the SNP’s Dear Leader is back in the news — literally, this time. It transpires that Nicola Sturgeon will be one of ITV’s election night pundits during the overnight vote count. The former first minister will appear alongside Ed Balls and George Osborne to provide expert analysis while the election results come out, with Sturgeon billed by the broadcaster as a ‘political insider’. You can say that again… But where Sturgeon goes, drama is never too far behind. Predictably the former FM’s critics have been quick to lambast the ex-SNP leader, with charges of hypocrisy levelled at Sturgeon for accepting a gig her party once blasted

Jawad Iqbal

The Tories’ best hope is to keep Sunak away from the camera

Is Rishi Sunak Labour’s not-so-secret weapon in this election campaign? The question has to be asked after Sunak’s latest political gaffe during an interview with ITV, due to be broadcast tonight, in which he is asked to speak about his experiences growing up. This line of questioning – in the hands of any normal politician – is fertile territory for speaking movingly about early life and family values. But Sunak is no ordinary politician, he is altogether rather extraordinary but not necessarily in a good way. Only in Sunak’s hands could such a soft ball question and easy opportunity be turned into yet another damaging political own goal.  Asked by the ITV

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

How will Remainers cope with a right-wing Europe?

I love to make up new words and see them gradually used more by others – for a writer, there’s no greater thrill. My brilliant ‘cry-bully’ – coined in this magazine back in 2015 – has probably been the most successful, to the point where it’s sometimes amusingly used by cry-bullies themselves, Owen ‘Talcum X’ Jones being the wettest and most bellicose example. Then there’s ‘Frankenfeminism’ (centering the fetishes of cross-dressing men over the rights of women while identifying as a feminist) and ‘Transmaids’ (the people who do this.) But the one I’m most pleased with, though the least used, is Le Grand Bouder, or – to translate it into a lovelier