Politics Archives

Monday

1 Sep 2025

Keir Starmer is Downing Street’s David Brent

How many resets does it take to make a doom loop? In another attempt to work out what the problem with his government is – and with all the mirror salesmen in the capital presumably on holiday – Keir Starmer has done another mini-reshuffle. ‘Phase two of my government starts today’ he says in a fatuous video clip, deploying that nasal whine which you had probably mercifully forgotten over the recess. The image of the PM squeezed into those gimpy little shorts postmen wear is not one that anybody wants Obviously all this isn’t actually phase two but probably closer to phase 14. This time it’s involved the mass import

Steerpike

Corbyn and Sultana’s party split over trans stance

As if it hadn’t experienced enough splits over the last few weeks, it transpires that Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new party is divided over its policy on trans issues. ‘Your Party’ – not its official name, according to a fuming Sultana – is set to have six MPs, with four pro-Gaza independents to join the group. But while Sultana has insisted she will ‘always’ speak in support of trans people, one of these, Adnan Hussain MP, stated last week that trans women are ‘not biologically women’. Talk about trouble in paradise, eh? Hussain is currently a member of the Independent Alliance of MPs, alongside Corbyn and Sultana. Once the

Lord Offord

Are the Scottish Tories too obsessed with the Union?

The end of summer recess (in both Westminster and Holyrood) seems like a reasonable moment to leave tribal party politics at the door and assess whether 25 years of devolution in Scotland has met expectations. Has it improved the quality of life of ordinary Scots, and how it might be changed to ensure that it does better in future? I am still relatively new to politics, having enjoyed a career in business prior to being appointed a Scotland Office minister in 2021, but I was in the room long enough to experience both the satisfaction of being able to make a difference and the frustration of not being able to

Ian Acheson

Does tagging prison leavers really stop them reoffending?

Finally, some good news for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) – tagging works! Last week, the prisons minister was unleashed to proclaim that the latest data on electronic monitoring (EM) of offenders not in custody shows the concept works. Well, up to a point, Lord Timpson. A study of 3,600 offenders on tagging orders has reportedly shown a statistically significant reduction in their rates of reoffending compared with non-tagged prison leavers. It fell from 33 per cent to 26 per cent, which is not bad for government work. We should be grateful that giving ankle tags to offenders means only a quarter of them will go on to commit burglaries,

Tim Shipman

Labour’s transfer deadline day

17 min listen

The summer transfer window comes to a close today but, as Parliament also returns from summer recess today, the only team Keir Starmer is focused on is his own in Number Ten. The Prime Minister has decided to reshuffle his advisers, including bringing in Darren Jones MP to Number Ten from the Treasury. Political editor Tim Shipman and James Kirkup, a partner at Apella Advisors and senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation, join economics editor Michael Simmons to go through the moves. Will yet another change in advisers boost Labour’s fortunes? Or are they doomed to relegation? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.

James Innes-Smith

Why is Lambeth council charging landlords £923 to fill out a form?

Perhaps it’s the left’s puerile belief that all property is theft that has led to Rachel Reeves’s swingeing attack on private landlords. Her latest threat is to slap National Insurance on rental income in her autumn Budget. As a proud socialist, I’m sure Lego-lady is on board with anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s property-thieving assertion; in which case, why not go the whole hog and hand all that stolen booty back to the state? Or give it to Angie; I’m sure she’d be thrilled to add another 14 million properties to her already bulging portfolio. As a small-time ‘landlord’ (a word dripping with feudal menace), it’s not just the wracking up of taxes that makes me

Lucy Dunn

Can Starmer’s No.10 reset save him?

Parliament’s summer recess has just ended and, on his first day back, Sir Keir Starmer has already announced a reset of his Downing Street team. A number of people have moved out – most notably James Lyons, the Prime Minister’s director of communications, who was appointed to the role just last year. It’s only Starmer’s first day back, but it’s certainly not a slow start A selection of new faces will now head to No. 10. The most significant move is Darren Jones, the former chief secretary to the Treasury, whom the PM has poached from Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Jones will oversee Starmer’s day-to-day work, with the new title of

James Kirkup

James Lyons’s departure will cost Keir Starmer

When my friend James Lyons told me last summer that he was going to take a gap year, I knew it wouldn’t be a normal career break. It’s common enough for successful men around 50 to take some time out from busy, stressful careers to re-evaluate, reflect and just get some sleep. I know bankers who have gone back to university, consultants who’ve gone travelling and private equity guys who become surfers. James Lyons is usually the first to see where the story is going But that was never going to James’ mid-life break from the norm. He’s the most intensely focused person I know. After 15 years together as political journalists at

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas will struggle to recover from the elimination of Abu Ubaida

Despite its extraordinary discipline and repeated battlefield successes over the past two years, Israel has been judged in many quarters to have failed in one vital domain: the war of information. While Israel has neutralised enemy commanders, destroyed arsenals, and advanced through hostile territory, it has consistently been outflanked in the propaganda theatre, leading armchair generals to declare that no amount of military action can kill “an idea”. The elimination of Abu Ubaida shows that Israel constantly adapts Hamas and its allies have skilfully harnessed imagery, narrative, and the symbols of victimhood to mobilise global opinion, especially in the West. Yet in recent weeks, there has been a discernible shift.

Sam Leith

Why shouldn’t adults play with toys like Lego?

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” That perennial funeral favourite, 1 Corinthians 13, has a lot to answer for. Generations of so-called grown-ups have, whether through the fear of God or the fear of embarrassment, done all they can to distance themselves from anything that they fear the neighbours or the man upstairs will think is childish. If you don’t like painting Warhammer figurines or building Lego or collecting Funko models, nobody’s making you Now, only two thousand years later, the tide seems to be turning.

Joe Harrison

Britain’s Macron moment – and why we should be worried about it

When French president Emmanuel Macron stormed to power in 2017, his ability to respond to the weakness of France’s mainstream parties, capture a large centrist majority and defeat the populist right seemed to offer a model of hope for liberal internationalists everywhere. Yet despite the president’s undeniable talents as a political communicator, the fate of his administration illustrates the desperate futility of any politicians left clinging to the centrist dream. To the chagrin of countless podcasters and centrist dads, the UK has so far escaped the problems of a Macron-style revolution Between 2017 and 2025, Macron’s centrist revolution has steadily unravelled. His approval ratings have fallen from 64 per cent

Sunday

31 Aug 2025

Richard Ekins

The Good Friday Agreement doesn’t stop Britain quitting the ECHR

It has become an article of faith in some quarters that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (the ECHR) would breach or undermine the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, played this card only last week, in response to the Reform party’s proposals for addressing illegal migration. For her part, the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, said that ECHR withdrawal ‘could affect the Good Friday Agreement and needed to be done in a way that would not destabilise the country or the economy’. Even Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform party, seemed to concede the point, saying that the Belfast Agreement would need to be ‘renegotiated’, implying that without a new

Druin Burch

Britain can’t win its fight against Big Pharma

Britain has picked a fight with the pharma industry, and it isn’t clear why we think we can win. Not only might NHS costs rise, but we may also lose access to new medications, making our health service increasingly second class and meaning that people die. Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s fight has made headlines and negotiations over costs between pharmaceutical companies and the government have failed. Eli Lilly, for example, has paused British sales of their weight loss drug Mounjaro, and when they resume next month they will do so at almost triple the price. Several threads tie the current problems together. The first is that governments and pharma companies

James Heale

How have the 2024 intake found frontline politics?

20 min listen

As Parliament returns from summer recess tomorrow, three rising stars of the 2024 intake join Coffee House Shots to provide their reflections on frontline politics so far. Labour’s Rosie Wrighting, the Conservatives’ Harriet Cross and the Liberal Democrats’ Joshua Reynolds tell deputy political editor James Heale how they have found Parliament so far, and their most – and least – favourite thing about being an MP. Plus: while they are all new, and young, MPs, their parties’ fortunes have all varied wildly – how have they dealt with that? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Gavin Mortimer

Angela Merkel unleashed chaos on Europe

A decade ago today, on 31 August 2015, Angela Merkel made the unilateral decision to open Europe’s borders. The rallying cry of the German Chancellor has gone down in history: ‘Wir schaffen das’ – ‘We can do this’. If we can’t, she added, ‘if Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe we wished for’. Merkel was motivated by conflict in the Middle East, notably in Syria and Iraq, but her invitation to seek refuge in Europe was seized on by many others. Of the estimated 1.3 million people who flooded into Europe in 2015, there were vast numbers of Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Nigerians, Moroccans, Algerians and

Matthew Wilcox

Life isn’t good for everyone in the Cotswolds

On paper, Charlbury is everything the Cotswolds is supposed to be. Stone cottages the colour of anaemic butter. Sash windows in a riot of Farrow & Ball sage. A train station that survived the Beeching cuts and gets you to London in an hour. ‘People talk about the Chipping Norton set, but that disguises how rough parts of Chipping Norton and Witney can be.’ It looks like the kind of place where nothing ever happens. And in many ways, it has worked hard to stay that way. While the setting – close to where US vice president JD Vance recently rented a manor house – may look like postcard England,

Phillips O'Brien

America needs its allies

There are ‘great powers’ and other powers. This is a truism of international relations thinking for those who espouse a ‘realist’ point of view. And for them, being a great power gives a state enormous advantages. Russia, for instance, was widely called a ‘great’ power before its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 while Ukraine decidedly was not. The results of that analysis were predictable. It was widely stated that Great Power Russia, led by strategic genius Vladimir Putin, was going to steamroller weaker Ukraine in a matter of days. After all, great powers were the alpha males of the international relations world, able to bully lesser powers

Saturday

30 Aug 2025

Ross Clark

Trump’s tariff war faces its toughest test yet

Trying to work out what is going on with global trade doesn’t get any easier. Just as the world was settling down to the new reality of Donald Trump’s trade war and governments were stitching up hurried trade deals to minimise the sweeping damage from the tariffs announced on ‘Liberation Day’ in April, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has thrown a very large spanner into the works. It has ruled that the whole exercise is unlawful because the tariffs were not approved by Congress. They will not be removed immediately – the court has allowed them to remain in place until 14 October to give Trump a

Lloyd Evans

Nicola Sturgeon on J.K. Rowling, Farage and Trump

Last night, Nicola Sturgeon appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall to promote her autobiography Frankly. On stage she was questioned by Cathy Newman of Channel 4, who began with J.K. Rowling’s savage review of the book. On her website Rowling described Sturgeon as ‘Trumpian in her denial of reality and hard facts’. Sturgeon fired back: ‘Thank you, J.K. Rowling. Anything that brings publicity for my book is great.’ Then a change of tone. She criticised Rowling’s decision to ‘pour vitriol on somebody’s head … I wouldn’t have the time or the inclination to do to J.K. Rowling what she does to me.’ She warned that ‘hyper-personalised’ rhetoric may have unforeseen consequences.

Alp Mehmet

How we turned universities into immigration machines

Fifty per cent, or some 560,000, of those admitted to the UK under the student visa system since 2022 remained in the country after their original visa expired. Meanwhile, close to one-third of asylum claims now come from those who originally came her on a student visas. These are the stark findings of a report published this week by the Think Tank Migration Watch UK which exposes what ministers and the influential and well-funded education and international student lobby refuse to admit: that the driver of Britain’s very high net migration is not illegal arrivals in dinghies – not to underplay the seriousness of illegal immigration – but the influx of international