Politics

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

Friday

6 Jun 2025

Trump and Musk was never going to work

Trump’s public breakup with Elon Musk is symptomatic of his failure to hold together the broad coalition to which he owes his re-election. The ‘HUGEst’ political alliance of the century is breaking apart before the eyes of the world in suitably spectacular fashion. For the last few months, the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump, and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, were a political item. Musk donated large sums to Trump’s campaign, lavished the newly re-elected president with praise on his social network, and neglected his companies to pursue his side quest at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In return, Trump

James Heale

Surprise Labour victory as Reform’s fallout continues

14 min listen

Scottish Labour have a new MSP today as Davy Russell won the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, taking the seat from the SNP. Labour won with 31.6% of the vote with the SNP second on 29.4%, Reform close behind on 26.1% and the Conservatives a distance fourth with just 6% of the vote; this marks rare good news for both Keir Starmer and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. Both SNP and Reform will be disappointed not to have won, but Reform have been quick to highlight how close they came, considering how new the party is. Plus, there are signs that Reform took votes away from the incumbent SNP, demonstrating

Ross Clark

Cut the Border Force budget

Whatever happened to the great promise to ‘smash’ the smuggling gangs? When it came to power just under a year ago the Starmer government promised to pour resources into securing Britain’s borders. There was going to be a new Border Security Command – which was actually set up with £150 million of funding, although if anyone can tell me what it has done or what it has achieved, I am all ears. However, it now seems that the UK Border Force is one of the areas which Rachel Reeves has earmarked for spending cuts. The agency has an annual budget of £1.2 billion and employs 11,400 staff, who enjoy extremely

Andrew Tettenborn

Kemi Badenoch is walking into her own ECHR trap

If you think Keir Starmer is rattled by Reform’s awkward-squad views on human rights, spare a thought for Kemi Badenoch. In a speech today obviously aimed at Conservative voters thinking of defecting to Nigel Farage with his unapologetic call to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), she will announce that the Tories too are indeed deeply unsatisfied with the convention, and are determined to do something about it. So far so good. Listen further, however, and you see not so much as a position taken as an exercise in bet-hedging. Rather than going full-on for withdrawal, she is – you guessed it – setting up a committee, albeit

Camilla Swift

Why don’t all farmers love Clarkson’s Farm?

Clarkson’s Farm is back – with the finale of season four out on Prime Video today – but not everyone is happy about it. It’s not the anti-farming brigade I’m talking about – or even the specific anti-Clarkson brigade, who’ve disliked him since his Top Gear days. No, it’s the people within the rural and farming communities that I’m talking about. When the programme launched, it was heralded by many as something of a miracle for British agriculture. Clarkson’s programme showed the people at home all the ups and downs of farming life in its brutal reality: the sheaves of inane paperwork; the incentives to actually not farm at all;

Eliot Wilson

Can Richard Knighton revamp Britain’s armed forces?

With the Strategic Defence Review finally concluded and published, the government has reportedly chosen its candidate to implement the recommendations and changes. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, currently Chief of the Air Staff, will replace Admiral Sir Tony Radakin as Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) and professional head of the armed forces later in the year. His task will be to lead Britain’s sailors, soldiers and airmen into a ‘new era of threat, which demands a new era for UK defence’. Radakin had been appointed to a three-year term as CDS in 2021, but in March last year he agreed to stay on for an extra year. Summer 2025 was therefore pencilled

Aidan McLaughlin

Elon Musk was doomed to fail with DoGE

Only a few months ago, Elon Musk took to his social media platform X to share a confession with his 220 million followers: ‘I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,’ he wrote. This week, Musk and the sitting president had such a violent public breakup that it sent Tesla stock crashing by 17 per cent. The drama, which rivaled a Real Housewives season finale, finally exploded when the President threatened to pull Musk’s billions in federal contracts. Musk returned the favour by claiming Trump hasn’t released the ‘Epstein files’ because he’s implicated in them. It was an eruption that most political observers had, from the start,

Nigel Jones

Zia Yusuf’s resignation won’t harm Reform

The sudden resignation of Reform UK’s chairman Zia Yusuf came as a shock in Westminster yesterday – but is unlikely to do the party much lasting damage. Yusuf, 38, a successful businessman and a former Goldman Sachs banker, said in a terse and huffy statement that working for the election of a Reform government was no longer a good use of his time. While Yusuf gave no other specific reason for his departure , the move was almost certainly triggered by his anger at new Reform MP Sarah Pochin’s question to Sir Keir Starmer on Wednesday. Pochin, who won the Runcorn and Helsby seat from Labour last month, asked the Prime

Raheem Kassam

The Maga movement won’t miss Elon Musk

Let’s face it, no one expected Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ to be perfect. But for Elon Musk to adopt the intransigent position that the work of government should stop in its tracks in pursuit of perfection is a manifest nonsense. Especially when considering OMB chief Russ Vought’s explanation of how the bill helps reduce the deficit. Musk has a habit of failing to see the wood for the trees. He’s been a long-standing backer of China, which my website has reported on for years. He supported DeSantis, not Trump, in the primary. He recently tried to depose Brexit leader Nigel Farage (it went badly for Musk), and just a few weeks ago lashed out at the architect of

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Reform’s burqa ban isn’t ‘Islamophobic’

MPs from Nigel Farage’s Reform party are calling for a burqa ban in Britain. Sarah Pochin, who won the Runcorn by-election last month, asked Sir Keir Starmer in the House of Commons this week if he would consider outlawing the garment. Her demand attracted the ire of Reform chairman Zia Yusuf, who has since stepped down from the job after saying the idea was ‘dumb’. Labour MPs, who shouted ‘shame’ at Pochin, also didn’t like the idea. But those who suggest that it is ‘Islamophobic’ to restrict the burqa are under a misapprehension. The number of Muslim-majority states outlawing the face veil is increasing After all, at least ten Muslim-majority countries

Lucy Dunn

Scottish Labour wins Hamilton in spite of Starmer

In the early hours of this morning, Scottish Labour won the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election in a three-way contest that turned out to be even tighter than expected. Local candidate Davy Russell clinched victory in a seat that the SNP has held for 14 years – despite running a media-shy campaign that saw him duck out of election debates and widely mocked for his discomfort on camera. But while Labour politicians insist this unexpected win shows they’re back on top – party leader Anas Sarwar even claimed he now ‘expected’ to win the 2026 Holyrood election – the numbers tell a slightly different story. Hamilton’s by-elections have proven to

Steerpike

Reeves falls flat at CBI shindig

Oh dear. It sounds as though Rachel Reeves was something of a bust at the big CBI shindig last night at the swish 8 Northumberland Avenue venue in central London. It was barely seven months ago that the Chancellor confidently promised the lobby group in the same room that ‘We’re not going to be coming back with more tax increases, or indeed more borrowing.’ But this evening, the Treasury minister told those same business leaders in a Q&A that: Look, I’m never going to have to repeat a budget like that. You know, that was a big tax raising budget. I recognise that. It is what I felt that we

Thursday

5 Jun 2025

Nick Tyrone

Zia Yusuf’s departure spells trouble for Reform

Zia Yusuf has quit as Reform Party chairman. Nigel Farage and other power brokers within the Reform fold took to social media in an attempt at message control not long after Yusuf announced the parting of ways this evening. “Politics can be a highly pressured and difficult game and Zia has clearly had enough. He is a loss to us and public life,” Farage said to the nation about Yusuf’s decision to walk away. “I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time, and hereby resign the office,” Zia Yusuf wrote But Yusuf’s choice of words in his resignation statement suggested

Oscar Edmondson

Zia Yusuf resigns from Reform

10 min listen

Zia Yusuf resigned this evening from his position as chairman of Reform UK, saying: ‘I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time.’ This comes after he tweeted yesterday that it was ‘dumb’ for Sarah Pochin, Reform’s newest MP, to urge the Prime Minister to ban the burka during PMQs. Did he jump before he was pushed? And can Reform UK really claim to have ‘professionalised’ when this is the second high profile departure this year? Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale.

James Heale

Zia Yusuf resigns as Reform chairman

Zia Yusuf has tonight resigned as chairman of Reform UK. In a statement, he posted on X that ‘I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time, and hereby resign the office.’ He has worked for Reform for 11 months, during which time, he noted: ‘I have worked full time as a volunteer to take the party from 14 to 30 per cent, quadrupled its membership and delivered historic electoral results.’ It comes on the same day that the businessman appeared to call his party’s newest MP, Sarah Pochin, ‘dumb’ for calling on Keir Starmer to ban the burqa – despite

Iain Dale

From Thatcher to Truss, who’s haunting Mel Stride?

17 min listen

Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride delivered a speech today where he attempted to banish the ghost of Liz Truss and improve the Conservatives’ reputation over fiscal credibility. And he compared leader Kemi Badenoch to Thatcher, saying she too struggled at first and will ‘get better’ at the dispatch box. LBC broadcaster Iain Dale and the Spectator’s economics editor Michael Simmons join deputy political editor James Heale to unpack Stride’s speech, talk about Labour’s latest policy announcement over free school meals and discuss why both the main parties are struggling with fiscal credibility. Plus, Iain talks about his new book Margaret Thatcher and the myths he seeks to dispel. Why does he

Natasha Hausdorff

Why can’t Piers Morgan handle the truth about Israel?

As Israel continues to wage a defensive war against the terrorists who invaded and slaughtered hundreds of Jews on October 7, the Jewish State is under attack as never before in the West. I found this out for myself when I was invited on to Piers Morgan Uncensored to discuss the situation in Gaza. Piers Morgan asks for the truth but refuses to hear it. pic.twitter.com/2LtEgoMJ5h — Natasha Hausdorff (@HausdorffMedia) June 3, 2025 What my appearance and censorship on the ironically named “Uncensored” show demonstrated was a refusal, perhaps even a fear, to hear the reality, the facts and the law when it comes to the war against Hamas. This is in

Michael Simmons

The ONS blunders. Again

‘The ONS apologises for any inconvenience caused’ is becoming an all-too-familiar refrain from Britain’s statisticians. The latest mea culpa came after a blunder involving vehicle tax data led the Office for National Statistics to overstate April’s inflation figure. Initially reported as 3.5 per cent, the true figure was 3.4 per cent – only revealed once the Department for Transport corrected its own error on the number of cars subject to increased vehicle taxes. The latest mea culpa came after a blunder led the Office for National Statistics to overstate April’s inflation figure While civil servants at the DfT are to blame, it raises serious questions about the ONS’s quality assurance

James Heale

Mel Stride’s ‘mea culpa’ for Liz Truss

The Shadow Chancellor’s speech this morning was a predictable one. Mel Stride is the kind of Conservative who spin doctors love to send out on the media round: smart, well-briefed and able to stick to the party line. He is also the kind of Conservative who was very much not a fan of Liz Truss, in both temperament and in substance. Tory Kremlinologists will recall that he was one of the most ardent internal critics of her mini-Budget of September 2022, as the-then Treasury Select Committee chair. So, it was no surprise then that the top line from his speech was an apologia for Truss. ‘Never again’, promised Stride, ‘will

Lisa Haseldine

Germany can’t avoid conscription for ever

Germany’s new chancellor Friedrich Merz seems serious about his pledge to make the Bundeswehr the ‘strongest conventional army in Europe’. Yet less than a month into his chancellorship, a daunting realisation is dawning on Berlin: without resorting to conscription, there is little prospect of growing the German army or fulfilling Merz’s ambitious promise. Merz’s defence minister Boris Pistorius – the only SPD politician from Olaf Scholz’s administration to remain in the cabinet – is in Brussels today to commit Germany to raising defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2032. This spending would be split, with 3.5 per cent dedicated to core military spending, and the remaining 1.5 per cent used