Politics

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

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

The Spectator: the magazine police don’t want you to read

Retired special constable Julian Foulkes is one of the latest targets of police officers who seem more eager to crack down on free speech than fight crime. The 71-year-old Spectator reader was detained for eight hours in November 2023 before being interrogated and given a caution after he referenced an anti-Semitic mob storming a Russian airport, in a reply to an activist threatening to sue then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman for labelling the pro-Palestine protests ‘hate marches’. While Foulkes’s tweet was first flagged to the Metropolitan Police Intelligence Command before being raised with Kent Police, it appears the discovery of a number of copies of The Spectator magazine at the ex-constable’s

Simon Hunt

Starmer mustn’t let Trump kill the Digital Services Tax

Donald Trump has his eyes on Britain’s Digital Services Tax (DST). The tariff-touting US President insists that the tech firm tax must be scrapped if the UK is to have the ‘deep’ trade deal on technology it desires. So far the government has demurred, but, with Keir Starmer disclosing last week that there are ‘ongoing discussions’ about the tax, it may yet capitulate. I think it would be foolish to do so. Trump thinks the tax is a punitive one aimed directly at the US. It’s true that big US tech firms are the largest payers. But as the shock emergence of Chinese firm DeepSeek proved earlier this year, there’s

Stephen Pollard

Keir Starmer is wrong to think immigration is just a numbers game

Should the government set a cap on immigration? Do we need to pull out of the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) to take control of our borders? Will Keir Starmer’s plan to cut numbers – which involves cutting the recruitment of overseas care workers – work? All vital questions, not least because the result of the next election may depend on the answers. But it is striking that the debate around immigration, and the government’s plan outlined this morning by the Prime Minister, are focused almost entirely on numbers. The total number matters, but what matters even more is who they are and how they behave The total number

Matthew Lynn

China has won the trade war with Trump

This weekend, the United States struck a deal with China that will see American tariffs on Beijing’s exports come back down to manageable levels again, while China will lower its levies on imports from the US. The giant container ports on both sides of the Pacific can now be re-opened. The factories across China can get back to work, and Wal-Mart and Target can start placing orders again. The global economy can start moving once more – but significantly, it will very quickly become clear who has won the tariff war: China. The deal that was announced this morning in Switzerland, where negotiations took place, by the US Treasury Secretary

James Heale James Heale

Starmer: migration control is a ‘core Labour value’

This morning, the Home Office is publishing its long-awaited white paper on legal migration. The Home Secretary has already been out on the airwaves, billing it as a ‘crackdown’ on low-skilled visas. This morning it was the turn of the Prime Minister. Keir Starmer deployed the Downing Street bully pulpit to hail the package as a ‘clean break’ from the ‘broken measures’ of the past. Proposed changes include tightening English tests and pausing the recruitment of additional overseas care workers. The route to settlement for migrants will be extended from five to 10 years – with reductions for those who contribute to economy. A clampdown on graduate visas is expected

Jawad Iqbal

Is Barbara Woodward right for MI6?

This time last year Britain’s top cyber spy warned that China represents an ‘epoch-defining challenge’. Anne Keast-Butler, the director of GCHQ, accused China of defying international norms and said that the country was the agency’s ‘top priority’. Beijing has been blamed for a string of cyber attacks on British institutions, including hacking the Ministry of Defence’s payroll system and stealing data about UK voters from the Electoral Commission. In recent months the intelligence services have alleged that Chinese spies have penetrated the inner circle of the Duke of York, infiltrated Westminster circles, and targeted Hong Kong dissidents in the UK. This is alleged spying and disruption on a grand scale

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Putin and Zelensky just want to appease Trump

Ceasefire then talks, or talks then ceasefire? This has emerged as one of the pivotal issues in the diplomacy around the war in Ukraine, even if one could question just how genuine both sides are in their respective positions. The proposed talks in Istanbul on Thursday may help clarify matters, but both sides seem more committed to appeasing the White House than talking peace. On Saturday, the usual suspects of Europe – the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and Poland – met in Kyiv and demanded Vladimir Putin call an immediate 30-day ceasefire, on pain of further sanctions. The usual pattern for peace talks is indeed a cessation of

Kitty Thompson

Reintroducing elk can help restore England’s natural balance

After a 3,000 year hiatus, the mighty elk could soon return to England. Plans to reintroduce this towering creature were announced last week, as part of a growing movement to bring back lost species and help restore our natural ecosystems. But the uncomfortable truth is that restoration doesn’t just mean bringing certain animals back, but taking some away. Free to wallow, trample, graze, and knock down trees to create clearings, elk would reshape the small corner of England we give them for the better. Like beavers building dams or lynx hunting their prey, elk are a keystone species. They are critical for maintaining the balance and biodiversity of their wetland ecosystem and

Sunday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

US and China slash tariffs

The White House has announced a breakthrough in trade negotiations with China following two days of talks in Switzerland. Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two sides had made ‘substantial progress’. This morning, he said that the US would lower tariffs on China to 25 per cent from 145 per cent for 90 days, and that China would lower tariffs on the US to 10 per cent from 125 per cent for 90 days. Trump’s trade chief Jamieson Greer (who gave his first European interview to Unherd last week) said yesterday it had been a ‘very constructive two days’. He added: ‘It’s important to understand how quickly we were able to

Joe Bedell-Brill

Yvette Cooper: ‘We are closing care recruitment from abroad’

Under pressure from the success of Reform, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced new measures designed to reduce net migration. The government will consider deporting any foreign criminals, and introduce new restrictions on visas for low-skilled jobs, including scrapping the care worker visa. On the BBC this morning, Laura Kuenssberg asked the home secretary how care homes would recruit enough staff. Cooper said that care companies should recruit from a ‘pool of people’ who are already here on care worker visas, but did not get jobs. The home secretary resisted giving a target number for immigration, but did say she expected these new measures to ‘lead to a reduction of

Patrick West

The police have lost it

When hyper-liberal identity politics went into overdrive in that year of madness, 2020, one of the greatest casualties in this country was to be our police forces. This wasn’t obvious at the time, although officers ‘taking the knee’ at the foot of Black Lives Matters protestors hinted at things to come, as did their growing inclination to attend Pride events and adorn their vehicles in LGBT+ colours. Only in recent months, however, has there emerged the extent to which our police have become contaminated and compromised by this ideology. As today’s Sunday Telegraph reveals, in November 2023 officers from Kent Police arrested and detained an old man for a social media

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: grooming gang victim criticises Lucy Powell

The row over Lucy Powell’s outrageous comments are not going away anytime soon. It was on Any Questions last week that the Leader of the House of Commons suggested that discussing the subject of grooming gangs effectively amounted to a ‘dog whistle.’ She has now been forced to issue a grovelling apology in the House, having, er, conspicuously failed to do so in her original post on X. But among the victims of those disgusting gangs, there is anger and dismay at the attitudes of politicians like Powell. This morning one of them was interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg on her flagship BBC show. Steph, who was abused when she was

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

How scuzzy is your neighbourhood?

Voters turned to Reform in the recent local elections for many reasons, but one theme resonated more than most: the state of our streets, neighbourhoods and communities.  Across Britain – as Gus Carter writes for the cover of this week’s magazine – the same pattern repeats. Whether it’s car thieves smashing windows in London, shops being looted in daylight, or fly-tippers trashing local parks, anti-social behaviour is rife, and no one seems to do anything about it. Councils fob you off. Police don’t turn up. Victims give up reporting crimes because nothing happens. This, as Gus put it, is Scuzz Nation. It’s a country where taxes are high, services are broken, and

Nigel Jones

Could the death penalty return?

The attack on a prison officer by Axel Rudakubana, the killer of the three girls at a dance class in Southport in 2024, has revived calls for a restoration of capital punishment, as many ask why he is serving a 52-year jail term at huge public expense, rather than have been put to death at the time for his heinous crime. Rudakubana is reported to have thrown boiling water from a kettle over an officer from his cell at Belmarsh high security prison in south-east London. Although at the time he made his murderous attacks on the children, he was 17 and was therefore just under the age when killers

Sergey Maidukov

Has war healed Ukraine’s great divide?

The phrase divide et impera has echoed through history, its power as relevant today as it was in ancient Rome. Divide and conquer; rule through division. Rulers, then and now, have wielded this principle like a double-edged sword – deepening rifts to maintain control, ensuring that wounds never fully heal. At best, they turn into scars, waiting to be torn open again at the slightest provocation. War is a terrible thing. And yet, even a tragedy of this scale has taught us something In my own country, Ukraine, I’ve witnessed the devastating impact of this strategy for many years. While Western Ukrainians once called for the Donbas to be fenced

Edward Howell

The North Korean saboteurs funding Pyongyang’s nuclear programme

If you think that it is only Chinese infiltrators roaming across the West, including on our very shores, then think again. For all the ever-expanding scope of ballistic missiles, frigates, and drones in North Korea’s arsenal, the hermit kingdom has been adding another body of weaponry to its toolkit: cyberwarfare capabilities. It is yet another example of the North Korean regime denying its people one thing but providing its confidantes with another. Whilst the North Korean people are forbidden from accessing the worldwide web, the Kim regime has long been cultivating a network of state-sponsored computer scientists and hackers to fulfil one of the country’s core goals, namely, making money

Fleur Elizabeth Meston

The assisted suicide bill has shown parliament at its worst

Kim Leadbeater has earned plenty of praise for her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life), or assisted suicide, Bill. The Labour MP even won a gong for Political Speech of the Year award for her opening contribution to the parliamentary debate. If we cannot trust Parliament to debate life-and-death decisions responsibly, how can we trust it to implement them? “We saw Parliament at its best because the tone, the compassion, and the understanding that was shown was something we can all be proud of,” says Leadbeater, who has also described the bill as “Parliament at its best”. If only this were true. The reality is that the bill – which enters

Saturday

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The India-Pakistan ceasefire is a triumph for Trump

After more than four days of clashes since the early hours of Wednesday morning, India and Pakistan have agreed to a full ceasefire. President Donald Trump announced it on his Truth Social Platform, confirming that the ceasefire had come ‘after a long night of talks mediated by the United States’. The announcement was made hours after Pakistan launched Operation Banyan al-Marsous with both Islamabad and New Delhi claiming to have struck each other’s military bases with heavy missiles. Pakistan’s strikes were a response to India’s Operation Sindoor that had been aimed at jihadist sites in Pakistan, following the April 22 militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. While claims of both sides

Steerpike Steerpike

Reform take over its first Conservative club

It seems that Reform are not content to just take the Tories’ seats. After coming for their MPs, councillors and members, now Nigel Farage’s party is turning its guns on one of the most visible remaining bastions of conservatism in the north of England: working men’s Conservative clubs. This morning, a new sign appeared above the Talbot pub in Blackpool, a onetime Tory club. It now reads thus: ‘The Talbot: Reform UK Club.’ Members and supporters will mix with locals there, as Reform aims to go after the Blackpool South constituency where they finished second last July. A senior party source confirmed to Mr S that the new Reform UK

Nigel Jones

Why the First Sea Lord stepping down is so shocking

The news that First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Ben Key, the head of the Royal Navy, has stepped down from his job while claims of an alleged affair with a junior female officer are investigated, have come as a shock. The armed forces have been relatively free of the sex scandals that have become so common in politics since the Second World War. Sir Ben, a 59-year -old married father of three, has made no comment on the subject , and his duties have been taken over by Vice Admiral Sir Martin Connell, his deputy. Nonetheless, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that he has stood aside for ‘private reasons’. It is