Politics

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

Wednesday

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Lowe brands Farage a ‘viper’ after Reform charges dropped

While Nigel Farage’s Reform party has seen success in the local elections this month, their former MP Rupert Lowe has received a bit of good news himself. It transpires that the Greater Yarmouth politician will not face criminal charges in relation to an allegation of threats towards the party’s chairman Zia Yusuf – with Lowe taking to Twitter to blast the party’s ‘brutal smear campaign’ in a statement on the matter this morning. He’s certainly pulling no punches now… Lowe was suspended in March after Yusuf and chief whip Lee Anderson announced they had referred their former colleague to the police over ‘threats of physical violence’, while reports emerged that

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Will Reform oust Miliband?

To the green thorn in Sir Keir Starmer’s side: Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband. The lefty veteran may have spent two decades in Westminster engraving stones and taking aim at airport terminals, but all that could be set to end in 2029 if Reform UK’s local election results are anything to go by. Analysis of the May elections suggest that Nigel Farage’s party could elect 81 MPs across the areas that voted in the recent council polls – ousting Miliband in the process. Dear oh dear… The research by Electoral Calculus predicts Labour would only cling onto three seats in the areas that voted this month, while the Tories would

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What is Trump doing in the Middle East?

29 min listen

President Trump is an America Firster, but he has an undeniable affinity for the Arab world. He would have made a good sheik: he doesn’t drink, he loves developing flashy properties to show off his power and wealth, and he’s brutally realistic about the role of oil (and other commodities) in world politics. On his tour of the Middle East, he signed an enormous arms deal with Saudi Arabia and announced all US sanctions on Syria would be lifted. Historian and former diplomat Charlie Gammell joins Freddy Gray to discuss what Trump really wants in the Middle East. 

Matthew Lynn

The City backlash against Reform has begun

It will be like Liz Truss on roller skates. The next election may still be four years away, and the manifestos still need to be fleshed out. Even so, the City has already started issuing stark warnings of a run on the pound if there is a Reform government led by Nigel Farage as Prime Minister. Of course, it is a measure of how far the party has come that the City is taking it seriously. The trouble is, there is also an element of truth in it. Reform would face a huge backlash in the markets – and the party will have to be ready for it.  The financial

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Royal College of Psychiatrists voices opposition to assisted dying

Assisted dying has been a hot topic both north and south of the border this week, as Scottish politicians voted on Tuesday on their version of the euthanasia bill while Kim Leadbeater’s legislation will face another round of voting in Westminster on Friday. But in another blow for the Labour MP, now the Royal College of Psychiatrists has voiced its opposition to the bill – citing its concern over ‘many, many factors’. Oo er. Speaking to the Beeb’s Radio 4 Today programme this morning, the Royal College’s Dr Trudi Seneviratne insisted that ‘there would be many, many factors in the bill as it stands that would need to be addressed’.

Daniel McCarthy

Donald Trump would have made a great sheik

President Trump is an America Firster, but he has an undeniable affinity for the Arab world. He would have made a good sheik: he doesn’t drink, he loves developing flashy properties to show off his power and wealth, and he’s brutally realistic about the role of oil (and other commodities) in world politics. In his first run for president eight years ago, Trump not only surprised the Republican establishment by criticising the Iraq War, he surprised the war’s critics by saying that if America was going to invade, we should at least have seized the oilfields. Trump would rather do business than wage war with Tehran The Abraham Accords were

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Britain is heading the way of France

The backlash against Keir Starmer has begun. Some senior figures within the Labour party have criticised the Prime Minister’s warning on Monday that Britain is in danger of becoming an ‘island of strangers’. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, and Eluned Morgan, the first minister of Wales, are among those who believe the PM is being alarmist.  Morgan said one should not use ‘divisive language when it comes to immigration.’ She added that reducing immigration, in the manner Starmer outlined on Monday, would damage Wales’s care sector. And also presumably the country’s hairdressing industry. Yesterday it was reported that the town of Porth in south Wales (population 5,970) will soon

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is it any surprise junior doctors want more money?

If the government was deliberately trying to encourage union militancy, it could not be making a better job of it. It is reported that junior doctors – or ‘resident doctors’ as we are now supposed to call them for fear of implying that they might be less qualified than consultants who have been doing their jobs for 40 years – could be in line for a pay rise of five per cent this year. This would be on top of the 22 per cent they were awarded last year. Meanwhile, nurses, who had a pay rise of 5.5 per cent last year, appear to be on course for a rise of no

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The fight against assisted dying in Scotland is not over yet

Assisted suicide has cleared its first hurdle in the Scottish parliament, but there could be many more to come. On Tuesday evening, MSPs voted 70 to 56 to progress Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying Bill. It would allow patients to request and be prescribed lethal drugs if they are diagnosed with an advanced, progressive and unrecoverable condition which ‘can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death’. The patient would have to be 16 or older and mentally competent and, unlike Kim Leadbeater’s Commons bill, which is limited to those with no more than six months to live, McArthur’s Bill would not require that the patient be in the final stages

Michael Evans

Trump has given Syria’s new leader the ultimate gift

President Donald Trump was in a generous mood on the first day of his Middle East tour, announcing the lifting of sanctions against Syria and offering a similar gesture to Iran, though with strict conditions. The decision to end sanctions on Syria came as a surprise and was greeted with applause by his audience in Riyadh. Trump said he had been asked by the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Turkey to consider lifting sanctions to help the new government in Damascus which took over after the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad on 8 December last year.  To underline the changed strategy by the Trump administration, the US president will meet

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Palestine and the truth about the Nakba

The Nakba – Arabic for ‘the catastrophe’ and commemorated today – marks a profound moment of trauma in the Palestinian Arab consciousness. In 1948, following the Arab world’s rejection of the United Nations’ partition plan and their subsequent military assault on the fledgling State of Israel, around 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. While Israel accepted the partition and declared independence, the Arab states and local militias initiated a war they would lose. Yet the memory of the Nakba, though born from an aggressive campaign that ended in defeat, has been carefully curated into a narrative of pure victimhood, a perennial wound severed from the choices and actions that preceded it. This

Tuesday

David Shipley

Peter Sullivan should never have been in prison

Peter Sullivan, a man of ‘limited intellectual capacity’ and ‘suggestibility’, has been exonerated after spending 38 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Now aged 68, Sullivan has spent most of his life in high-security jails. DNA evidence has demonstrated that another man was responsible for the brutal assault and murder of 21-year-old Diane Sindall in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in 1986 . How could such a horrific miscarriage of justice happen, and what has Peter endured these past four decades? Peter has lost the best years of his life After being arrested, Peter was interviewed without any lawyer present, with the police saying that legal advice would have been

Patrick West

What Starmer’s immigration critics don’t get

Keir Starmer has finally realised that he needs to tackle rising immigration. The Prime Minister said yesterday that Britain risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’ if nothing is done. Predictably, his speech has gone down badly with the usual suspects. There may be a simple reason why some of Starmer’s critics will never see eye to eye with him on migration There may be a simple reason why some of Starmer’s critics will never see eye to eye with him on migration: their main preoccupation appears not to be with different cultures or individuals. Rather, they seem to regard human beings as parts of a bigger, more important whole. These materialists see

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Will the Beeb sack Lineker over his pro-Palestine post?

Will Gary Lineker ever learn? As if the BBC Sports pundit hadn’t caused enough controversy, now the left-wing centre forward has sparked outrage over a pro-Palestine post he shared on Instagram. The Match of the Day pundit took to the social media site to share a reel first posted by the activist group Palestine Lobby featuring an emoji of a rat – prompting criticism that he was pushing an anti-semitic slur. Hardly a display of the impartiality the Beeb promotes, eh? The former footballer shared a video titled ‘Zionism explained in less than two minutes’, with text written across it: ‘Why does this still have to be explained? Why?’ Next

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Tory MP charged with sexual assault

It is less than a fortnight since the Runcorn by-election, caused by the resignation of Mike Amesbury for punching a constituent. And today, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has announced that Tory MP Patrick Spencer has been charged with two counts of sexual assault. The charges follow two alleged incidents involving two separate women at the Groucho Club in central London in August 2023, the CPS said. Spencer – who is the Tory MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich – will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday. He was first elected in July last year and was widely-tipped as one of the rising stars of his intake. The

Druin Burch

NHS ‘spy scales’ won’t tackle childhood obesity

NHS England, ostensibly wishing to respond to the challenge of childhood obesity, announced yesterday the introduction of ‘spy scales’ to monitor children’s weight remotely. These devices, which conceal the user’s weight, transmit data to an app that praises kids when they lose weight and offers guidance when they don’t. But NHS England is missing the point. Whether the scales are justified depends entirely on how much they work to help kids lose weight, and NHS England appears to neither know nor care. That’s a pity, because knowing and caring about what works is its job. Too often, the NHS is not a serious organisation Smoking bans and taxes on cigarettes

Limor Simhony Philpott

Trump and Netanyahu go their separate ways

The release of Edan Alexander, the last living American-Israeli hostage held by Hamas, was a moment of profound relief for his family and a rare flicker of hope for war-fatigued Israelis. The 21-year-old soldier, kidnapped on 7 October 2023, walked free on 12 May 2025 after 584 days in hell.  The jubilation was quickly muddied by political spin. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ever the opportunist, claimed the release stemmed from Israel’s relentless military pressure. The truth, however, lies elsewhere: American backchannels, led by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, secured Alexander’s freedom through quiet diplomacy in Qatar, not IDF bombs in Gaza. Netanyahu’s attempt to claim credit reveals a deeper rift: President Trump harbours little trust in Bibi.

Oscar Edmondson

Are Labour ‘pandering’ to Nigel Farage?

14 min listen

Keir Starmer has succeeded in keeping immigration at the top of the news agenda for another day – although he may not be happy with the headlines. After his set-piece announcement yesterday, the Prime Minister is caught between fire from both sides. On the left, he is accused of ‘pandering’ to Nigel Farage and even echoing the rhetoric of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech – with regard to Starmer’s statement about Britain becoming an ‘island of strangers’. Meanwhile, Farage has called the Prime Minister ‘insincere’ and ‘playing catch-up’. Within Labour, some backbench MPs have broken ranks. But it is the quiet, soft-left faction – already uneasy about winter fuel,

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Brits now most concerned about borders since Brexit

On Monday Prime Minister Keir Starmer made his big immigration speech in which he warned that without tightening rules the UK risked becoming an ‘island of strangers’. Now a new YouGov poll has revealed that 50 per cent of Brits see immigration as the top issue facing Britain – the highest level since Brexit. The pressure is on… Today’s survey, collected between 10-12 May, shows that half of UK adults view Britain’s borders as the most important issue facing the country – up two percentage points on the previous week. Second in line is the economy, which just under one in two adults view as the most pressing problem, and