Politics

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

Lisa Haseldine

Sunak and Scholz gear up for an awkward meeting in Berlin

Rishi Sunak arrived in Poland today to announce a £500 million boost in aid to Ukraine, using the trip to Warsaw to also finally put a timeline on increasing Britain’s defence spending. By 2030, the Prime Minister pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP. His announcements come ahead of a much anticipated meeting with German chancellor Olaf Scholz tomorrow – one which may prove to be more awkward than either leader had originally anticipated. This morning, Berlin briefed out its displeasure at Westminster’s heel-dragging on UK spending contributions to European security. ‘There does not seem to be any plan to increase defence spending at all,’ a senior

Campus Gaza protests are crippling US universities

University campuses across the United States are facing a growing wave of student-led protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Campus officials have responded by taking unprecedented measures, including calling in the police, to try to clamp down on the unrest and contain an increasingly chaotic situation. The end result? Some of America’s most prestigious educational institutions look less like places of learning and more like crime scenes. At Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, hundreds of people gathered on campus yesterday, refusing to leave. Police, some in riot gear, arrested nearly 50 protesters. Similar student demonstrations have paralysed campuses at the University of California in Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of

Why did it take Rishi Sunak so long to up defence spending?

Britain is putting its defence industry on a ‘war-footing’, the Prime Minister has said, as he vowed to boost spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030. It was only a matter of time that Rishi Sunak made such an announcement. After all, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illustrated a simple truth: that the world is more dangerous now than for a generation, and nations will need to increase their defence spending if they want to protect themselves and their interests. Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat had all expounded this view from within government, and now it seems the PM has given his seal of approval. The money

Steerpike

Why is Labour so ‘angry’ about our next man in Washington?

Civil service appointments rarely generate much excitement in Westminster. But it’s not every day that Britain’s most senior diplomatic posting comes up for grabs. The Financial Times this week reports that our next man in Washington is going to be national security adviser Sir Tim Barrow. The Brexit-era veteran is set to succeed Dame Karen Pierce in the States later this year. One Tory MP praises him as ‘a serious figure’; another describes him as being in ‘very much the old mould of ambassadors – competent but not inspiring.’ Barrow will take up his new post in December or January – a timeline that has not gone down well with Labour. Critics argue that the

Ian Acheson

Prisons have lost the war on drugs

Aldous Huxley’s dystopian best seller Brave New World, published back in 1934, envisaged a society where stability was enforced by a numbing drug called ‘soma’. Constant consumption of soma, mandated by the state, dulled the senses, vanished despair and discouraged rebellion. I was reminded of this by comments made by some of the Times‘ new crime commissioners as they launch a year-long project to fix our broken criminal justice system. They were speculating as to why we weren’t seeing a national jail insurrection similar to what happened here in the spring of 1990 when multiple prisons across the country exploded in violent disorder. After all, many of the precursors that

Ross Clark

What happened to the Tory promise to balance the budget?

There is one big reason why a summer general election is unlikely, however tempted the Prime Minister might be to try to take advantage of the first migrant flight to Rwanda. Read between the lines and it is clear that Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt want to hold another ‘fiscal event’ before going to the polls. Nibbling away at a few more taxes, they appear to believe, will give them the best chance of clinging to power, or at least limiting the electoral damage to the Conservatives. They must be hoping that few people will notice the public borrowing figures. This morning it was revealed that last month the government

Australia doesn’t need a Ministry of Truth

Two unrelated acts of stabbing violence, first the random murderous rampage of a knife-wielding man in Sydney’s Bondi Junction, followed by the livestreamed knife attack on an Assyrian Christian bishop in his church, have led to a crackdown on freedom of expression in Australia. Misinformation and disinformation, our politicians have concluded, caused these grim incidents. Unpalatable as they are, online outpourings of bile and deliberate falsehood need to be seen to be disbelieved. Australia’s Liberal party, supposedly representing the country’s centre-right voters, has indicated it will back Australia’s Labor government in imposing a legislated regime to ‘combat’ misinformation and disinformation online. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has indicated that he

Kate Andrews

Sunak’s Rwanda Bill finally passes parliament

13 min listen

After eight hours of debate on the Rwanda Bill, peers finally threw in the towel shortly after midnight. And with that, the Rwanda Bill became law, pending Royal Assent from the King. The two chambers have been engaged in a mammoth game of ping-pong for the past week, culminating in yesterday’s showdown on two final amendments. What comes next?  Kate Andrews speaks to James Heale and Katy Balls.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon dodges scrutiny, again

If there was ever an immutable truth in Scottish politics, it is that Nicola Sturgeon never misses an opportunity to talk about the joys of independence. So it’s curious, then, that after being presented with the perfect chance to do exactly that, the Dear Leader has suddenly pulled out. What could have changed her mind? To mark the 25th anniversary of devolution next week, Sturgeon was due to give evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee in Westminster. But the former First Minister has now cancelled the session, following the arrest of her husband Peter Murrell four days ago. In typical Sturgeon style, she kept the public in the dark about the decision, with Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservatives’

Does Channel 4 think this counts as balanced?

We are now just nine months out from the latest possible general election, which means that in a year’s time the House of Commons is going to look very different. Absent a remarkable revival in Tory fortunes – which there is no earthly reason to expect – their current seat total will be at least halved, and we will be fastening our seatbelts for five years or more of Starmerism. This will mean, among other delights, more demographic transformation, further atrophying of state capacity, strict restrictions on free speech, and a racial spoils system in government contracts. The specific date remains uncertain, which means that all the big TV channels

UNRWA hasn’t earned our trust in Gaza

Before 7 October last year, observers had long suspected an uncomfortable symbiosis between UNRWA, the UN organisation tasked with organising aid to the unfortunate Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, and the autocratic Hamas government in control in Gaza city. The attack on Israel on that day certainly didn’t dispel these suspicions, and in January this year Israel alleged that a number of UNRWA staff had been implicated. Seventeen countries paused funding for UNRWA, including the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, the EU and several individual European states. So did the UK, which last year had provided about £35 million. The UK, which had said it would await the Colonna report before

Sam Leith

Tony Blair is a post-democratic product

Why was it that when I read a big interview with Tony Blair over the weekend – the ostensible premise being to wonder if he’d be pulling the strings of a Starmer government – I found myself humming something from T.S. Eliot by way of Andrew Lloyd Webber? ‘You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air – / But I tell you once and once again, / It’s Tony bloody Blair.’ Eliot’s Macavity the Mystery Cat, of course, is a dyed-in-the-wool criminal who breaks laws up to and including the law of gravity, whereas our former prime minister is as upright and law-abiding figure

James Heale

Sunak’s Rwanda Bill finally passes parliament

After eight hours of debate on the Rwanda Bill, peers finally threw in the towel shortly after midnight. The two chambers have been engaged in a mammoth game of ping-pong for the past week, culminating in yesterday’s showdown on two final amendments. On the first of these – Lord Browne’s exemption for Afghan interpreters – the government made a concession shortly before 9 p.m. But on the second – Lord Anderson’s proposed monitoring committee to judge whether Rwanda – they did not. The crossbench peer eventually relented at 11:53p.m, conceding the time was nigh to ‘acknowledge the primacy’ of the elected chamber. And with that, the Rwanda Bill became law,

Could Europe send troops to Ukraine?

It is 2026, and in a downbeat speech at the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin finally announces a withdrawal from Ukraine. Russian troops have done their best – or worst – but a fresh influx of well-trained Ukrainians have finally prevailed. The Donbas is now in Kyiv’s grip, Crimea’s fall only days away.  What has turned the tide, though, is not just the long-awaited F16s, or Washington switching the funding back on. Instead, it is the presence of thousands of European troops across Ukraine’s western half, protecting cities, ports and borders, making Ukraine feel reassured and Russia unnerved. As Kyiv celebrates, Europe quietly pats itself on the back too: after 80 years

Why are the English embarrassed about St George’s Day?

How should the English celebrate St George’s Day? England is a country with plenty to boast about, but doing so is somehow not particularly English. The result is that 23 April is usually a day that passes most of us by. It’s a pity. The centuries-old flag of St George was for too long the preserve of the far right Embarrassed, we often seek expressions of Englishness in the sheepish and the mimsy. Egg and chips, rain coming on, mustn’t grumble, you’ve got to laugh, fancy a cuppa, watching the footy, how we love queueing. Thirty years ago, John Major was mocked for speaking of ‘the country of long shadows

Shylock and the Nazis: the truth about Shakespeare’s most infamous character

None of William Shakespeare’s characters are more controversial than Shylock. The moneylender from The Merchant of Venice may be the most famous Jew in Western culture other than Jesus. But what kind of Jew is he? Is he a collage of stereotypes who has been useful to antisemites, including the Nazis? Or does he represent the Jew as cruelly vilified, a tragic victim of persecution? Shakespeare, who was born 460 years ago today, could never have envisaged the way in which the events of the 20th century would change the way we look at Shylock. Yet it’s impossible now to watch The Merchant of Venice without thinking of the Holocaust.

Isabel Hardman

Commons sends Rwanda Bill back to the Lords

The Commons has just voted on the latest ping of the Safety of Rwanda Bill pong, after peers sent back just one amendment, which would prevent Rwanda from being declared a safe country for asylum seekers without the Secretary of State making a statement to parliament having considered the verdict of an independent monitoring committee. MPs rejected that amendment 312-237. So back up it goes to the Lords.  Lord Browne withdrew his amendment to exempt from deportation those who had helped the British armed forces because the government conceded on this point (though the minister in the Lords insisted it wasn’t a concession because that’s how politics and pre-school works).

Who would want to buy Selfridges?

A stake in Selfridges – the most iconic department store in the vast retail emporium of Oxford Street – is again up for grabs. It is the latest chapter in an ongoing financial crisis engulfing its Austrian co-proprietor Signa Group, the property empire built by self-made billionaire, René Benko. The original deal for Selfridges dumped at least £1.7 billion in debt onto the group, which owns four UK department stores, as well as de Bijenkorf in the Netherlands and Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland. Central is now looking for ways to take greater control of Selfridges: last year, it took majority ownership of the Selfridges operating company with a