Politics

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

Friday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

What is the anti-Israel Eurovision protest really about?

A young Israeli woman warned to stay in her hotel room. A baying mob on the streets outside hollering slogans and abuse. Death threats piling up. Bodyguards working round the clock to make sure no protester gets inside to where the woman has taken refuge from their fury. I’m sorry, is this a political protest or a Jew-hunt? The most galling thing about the Malmo protests is the sight of Greta Thunberg I am referring, of course, to the despicable scenes in Malmo in Sweden where the final of the Eurovision Song Contest takes place tomorrow. The woman is Eden Golan, a 20-year-old Israeli-Russian who is singing for Israel. The

James Heale James Heale

Starmer is copying the Tory small boats strategy

Today is one of those rare occasions in British politics – a day when Rishi Sunak’s government has a bit of good news. Figures released this morning show the UK economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the first three months of the year, thanks to stronger than expected growth in March. So it is no surprise then that Labour want to take control of the news agenda by turning attention elsewhere. Sir Keir Starmer is in Dover this morning, proudly unveiling his latest Tory defector. Natalie Elphicke is intended to be Starmer’s ‘small boats bodyguard’ in the upcoming election, using her reputation as a migration hawk to deflect Tory

Steerpike Steerpike

Will John Swinney abandon Sturgeon’s gender bill?

There may be a new First Minister in the driving seat but can the SNP overtake Labour’s lead in the polls? Just this morning, Savanta revealed that, for the very first time in the pollster’s history, Labour is four points ahead of the SNP in Westminster voting intention. It’s certainly not the best start to the job for freshly-appointed John Swinney… And despite officially leading his country for about, er, two days, Swinney is already facing dissent over his decision-making. In a move that was widely anticipated, the First Minister made Kate Forbes his second-in-command – much to the dismay of the Scottish Greens. The eco-activists promptly fell into fits

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Keir Starmer won’t stop the boats

Labour’s new ‘stop the boats’ policy is a risible exercise in deception that will only ever fool the truly gullible. The centrepiece, announced by Keir Starmer today, is to set up a new ‘Border Security Command’, which will be an elite force empowered to use anti-terror laws to ‘smash the people-trafficking gangs’. Funding for the new force will come from savings made by scrapping immediately the Tory Rwanda removals policy, which Sir Keir branded a money-wasting gimmick that would never work. Starmer must know it is all flannel ‘That is my message to the smugglers. These shores will become hostile territory for you. We will find you, we will stop

Oscar Edmondson

The UK leaves recession – but is it too late for the Tories?

10 min listen

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed this morning that the UK confined its technical recession to 2023. The economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the first three months of the year, thanks in large part to stronger-than-expected growth in March, which reached 0.4 per cent. But is the plan really working?  Also on the podcast, Keir Starmer gave a speech in Dover this morning on Labour’s plans to stop the boats. He also took the opportunity to unveil new Labour MP Natalie Elphicke. Is there any clear blue water between Labour and the Tories when it comes to migration?  Oscar Edmondson speaks to Kate Andrews and James Heale. 

Jordan Urban

Who are ‘the blob’?

Liz Truss calls them the ‘deep state’, Dominic Cummings ‘the blob’ and for Sue Gray they are simply former colleagues. But most of the public – and indeed, most of the political class – know very little about them at all. Permanent secretaries and directors general, the two most senior rungs of the civil service, wield substantial power and influence. This is not shadowy or improper, but their job. When ministers make a decision, they usually do so on the basis of advice shaped by their department’s top officials. When civil servants have concerns about the propriety of a task, it is senior officials who guide them. And permanent secretaries

Eliot Wilson

Does David Lammy really expect Donald Trump to forgive and forget?

David Lammy has never been much of a diplomat. The veteran Labour MP is fond of lashing out at his critics, but now, as shadow foreign secretary, he has travelled to the United States to lay the groundwork for a future Labour government’s foreign policy. He may find that some of his earlier oratorical fury comes back to haunt him. He called Trump ‘a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser’ Lammy has compared Conservative MPs in the European Research Group to Nazis and supporters of apartheid South Africa. In 2013, when the BBC wondered if the smoke seen after the next round of the papal conclave would be black or white

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The UK leaves recession – but is it too late for the Tories?

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed this morning that the UK confined its technical recession to 2023. The economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the first three months of the year, thanks in large part to stronger-than-expected growth in March, which reached 0.4 per cent. Both numbers were larger than expected (the consensus was for 0.4 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively), as growth figures for February were also revised upwards, from 0.1 per cent to 0.2 per cent. Services output was the ‘largest contributor’ to the economic bounceback, growing at 0.7 per cent in the first three months of the year. Transportation and storage were the ‘largest positive

Nigel Jones

Is Dominic Cummings’ ‘start up party’ a non-starter?

We haven’t heard much from Dominic Cummings since he walked out of No. 10 Downing Street in November 2020. Now the cerebral Vote Leave mastermind has broken his silence and given us an insight into his latest project. He has proposed a new ‘start up’ party to replace the Tories after what he expects will be their decimation at the next election. In an interview with the i newspaper and in an essay on his own Substack post, the Svengali behind Boris Johnson’s rise and fall offers a typically withering analysis of what he calls the ‘shit show’ Tories. He is equally scathing about their likely replacement with Keir Starmer’s

Daniel DePetris

Is the special relationship between Israel and America souring?

President Biden doesn’t give many sit-down television interviews, but when he does, he tends to make news. This week he sat down for an on-air session with CNN’s Erin Burnett, who asked him point-blank whether US bombs given to Israel have caused civilian casualties in Gaza. Biden’s response was notable not necessarily because the answer was a mystery (of course US bombs have killed civilians there) but rather because Biden showed a considerable degree of frustration with Israel’s war strategy. ‘Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they [Israel] go after population centres,’ the President said. ‘I’ve made it clear to

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is waking up to the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood. Is Britain?

Donald Trump made headlines this month when he claimed that London and Paris are no longer recognisable because ‘they have opened their doors to jihad’. It was a characteristically provocative statement from the former US president, and one that had his many enemies huffing and puffing with indignation. Trump was wrong to describe the two cities as ‘unrecognisable’ but he was right in saying that a ‘jihad’ is being waged. The Brotherhood’s most successful achievement has been the introduction of a new word: Islamophobia ‘Jihad’, at least to non-Muslims, has violent connotations but the word means ‘struggle’ or ‘utmost effort’, and so there are also ideological jihads. This is the

Thursday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Britain is right to stand up to the WHO’s vaccine power grab

The World Health Organisation (WHO) hardly distinguished itself during the Covid 19 pandemic. It was slow to declare an emergency, then tried to make up for the delay by trying to persuade governments to lock down and introduce all kinds of illiberal measures. Worst of all it heaped praise on China’s handling of the epidemic, failing properly to investigate the possibility that the pandemic had originated from a laboratory leak. When it did finally send a team to investigate this, it allowed itself to be pushed around by the Chinese and laughably ruled out the lab leak theory. None of this, however, has stopped the WHO from trying to get

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Can Lammy charm Trump?

14 min listen

This week, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy is stateside, meeting with senior advisors to Donald Trump and hoping to charm them. Meanwhile, David Cameron gives his first set-piece policy speech. Who is the more credible statesman? Cindy Yu talks to James Heale and Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform. Produced by Cindy Yu.

William Moore William Moore

Drama students: how universities raised a generation of activists

39 min listen

This week: On Monday, tents sprung up at Oxford and Cambridge as part of a global, pro-Palestinian student protest which began at Columbia University. In his cover piece, Yascha Mounk, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, explains how universities in both the US and the UK have misguidedly harboured and actively encouraged absurdist activism on campuses. Yascha joined the podcast to discuss further. (01:57) Next: Bugs, biscuits, trench foot: a dispatch from the front line of the protests. The Spectator’s Angus Colwell joined students at tent encampments this week at UCL, Oxford and Cambridge. He found academics joining in with the carnival atmosphere. At Cambridge one don even attended with their

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What’s this revolution really about?

37 min listen

Freddy Gray speaks to the journalist Nellie Bowles about her new book: Morning after the Revolution: Dispatches from the wrong side of History. As someone who had fit into the progressive umbrella, her book recounts issues that arose when she started to question the nature of the movement itself. Freddy and Nellie discuss the challenges of the progressive-conservative divide, bias within the media, and whether privilege is America’s version of the class system. Produced by Patrick Gibbons. 

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Houchen turns on Sunak

When it rains for the Tories, it pours. Now Tees Valley’s Conservative mayor Ben Houchen has hit out at his party’s leadership – just 24 hours after yet another Tory MP defected to Labour. The re-elected Conservative mayor this morning admitted the path to Tory electoral victory is ‘getting narrower by the day’ before adding, in more bad news for poor Rishi Sunak, that ‘ultimately it all rests on the shoulders of the leader.’ Talk about trouble in paradise… In a series of damning remarks made during an interview on BBC Radio Tees today, Houchen seemed rather downcast on the topic of his party’s prospects. ‘Things don’t look great for

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Andrew Bailey paves the way for a summer interest rate cut

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has voted to hold interest rates for the sixth time in a row. Members of the MPC voted 7 – 2 to maintain the base rate at 5.25 per cent – with two members voting to cut rates by 0.25 percentage points. This decision will come as no surprise to the markets, which had already factored in a rate hold. The Bank made clear in March that key indicators – including the state of the UK labour market and the risk of inflation rising again – would influence its decision, none of which dramatically changed in the last seven weeks. The Committee repeats from previous

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

In Putin’s Russia, Victory Day is no longer about 1945

Stepping out onto Red Square for today’s Victory Day parade in Moscow, it was clear to see that Vladimir Putin was in a good mood. Arms swinging with almost comic vigour as he walked, he sat down in the stands above Lenin’s mausoleum with a smug smile on his face. The pathetic fallacy of the flurries of snow on this uncharacteristically cold day were not going to interfere with his glee. The Russian president has reason to be cheerful: two days ago, he indulged in his fifth inauguration ceremony in the Kremlin, handing himself another six years in power. The war in Ukraine is currently working in his favour; Ukraine

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour celebrate largest poll lead since Truss

Poor Rishi Sunak is not having a very good week. After a bruising set of local elections and two defections to Labour in a fortnight, the latest Times poll won’t do anything to settle the Prime Minister’s nerves as the general election looms. Labour now has a staggering 30 point lead over the Tories — the biggest since the Liz Truss era — according to the latest YouGov data. To add insult to injury, the poll also finds that most voters are unconvinced by Sunak’s claim that Britain is not heading for a Labour majority government. Bad luck, Rishi… Today’s poll is officially the worst set of results for the Prime Minister

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Labour MPs need to grow up

Westminster is full of clever people who spend a lot of time stupidly making simple things complicated. The story of Nathalie Elphicke’s defection to Labour is a case in point. This is a simple story, or should be. Someone who used to tell voters to vote Conservative is now telling voters to vote Labour. It’s more proof that the Tories are finished and Labour is the party that represents the biggest share of the electorate. End of story. Half the PLP seems to have spent Wednesday afternoon messaging the lobby to say how much it offends their sensibilities to share oxygen with someone they disagree with Yet the undisciplined and