Politics

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

Wednesday

Tim Shipman

Wes for PM?

19 min listen

Conspiracy or cock-up? Westminster is abuzz after what appears to be a plan to decapitate Wes Streeting has spectacularly backfired. A flurry of late-night briefings designed to shore up Keir Starmer’s position turned personal against the Health Secretary, suggesting he was plotting a coup in advance of the Budget and in anticipation of – what many expect will be – a poor showing at the local elections. Streeting was left to defend himself on the media round, confidently declaring he was a ‘faithful’ and he also joked that he doesn’t know the whereabouts of Shergar and believes the moon landings are real. There is only one clear winner from this

Madeline Grant

Keir Starmer can’t even commit governmental suicide

It’s not often the Prime Minister gets a derisive laugh from the House of Commons for telling them that he had meetings with ministerial colleagues that morning. However No. 10 making a complete hash of a coup against the PM (or was it actually a pre-emptive coup against the Health Secretary?) meant that once again Sir Keir was in the chamber having to answer questions about the chaos caused by his government outside. The No. 10 debacle is really good stuff The No. 10 debacle is really good stuff. These people can’t even commit governmental suicide properly. This was the Day of Dupes meets Mean Girls, meets the Chuckle Brothers.

Charlie Walsham

Inside the BBC’s impartiality meltdown

As I watched Tim Davie and Samir Shah’s all-staff call on Tuesday, I became increasingly bemused and frustrated. It was impossible to tell from watching that the BBC is facing one of the greatest crises in its history. The fact that the call was hosted by an in-house spin doctor set the tone for softball questions and unchallenged responses.  Despite quitting in disgrace over the impartiality row, Davie seemed remarkably buoyant, babbling a word-salad eulogy to the corporation he has steered to the very edge of a precipice. It was insufferable.   It’s something of a bitter irony that many of my colleagues are at their balanced best when reporting on

Maxwell Marlow

The Waspi women don’t deserve a penny

Worry not, dear taxpayer, there are more bills for you to pay. Not only must you pay for the lockdown that kept you in your cramped apartment for a disease that didn’t affect you, and don’t forget the deficit payments of over £100 billion a year – really, you should just shrug it off. Even if you have your expensive degree, which creates negligible returns, and levelled with record living costs and taxation, you can of course pay for more benefits for a small minority of retired people who didn’t pay attention to changes in their state pension benefit. Let’s be clear – in 1993 when Ken Clarke announced a change to

Steerpike Steerpike

Flashback: Streeting predicts he will be PM

Well that was jolly fun. Kemi Badenoch gave Keir Starmer an almighty pasting at PMQs, predictably lacerating him over the anonymous briefings about Wes Streeting. But – in fairness to Labour’s forces of darkness – the Health Secretary has not exactly been shy about his future intentions. As he told the Guardian in June 2023, he has ‘never been ashamed of aiming high and going as far as my talents will take me.’ And now, an old clip is circulating on the Tory WhatsApp groups. It was filmed in 2018 and features a succession of MPs being asked who will be Prime Minister in ten years’ time. Some of the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Only Wes Streeting came out well from PMQs

Who won PMQs this week? Not Kemi Badenoch, nor Keir Starmer for that matter. In fact, the real winner wasn’t in the chamber at all: Wes Streeting emerged from the session in even better shape than he was before Downing Street decided to launch an extraordinary briefing round against him. The jokes about the instability at the top of the government began even before the exchange between the leader of the ppposition and the Prime Minister. When Starmer gave his conventional first answer, that he had been having ‘meetings with ministerial colleagues and others’ this morning, there were loud guffaws from the benches opposite. Then Tory Lincoln Jopp offered Starmer

Chas Newkey-Burden

A ban on animal testing is long overdue

I was 12 years of age and mooching along Putney high street when someone thrust into my hand a leaflet that changed my life. It bore a photograph of a cat with its head covered in electrodes, and the slogan: Curiosity Will Kill This Cat. I had a beloved cat of my own called Chippy. The sight of the leaflet’s tortured feline froze me to the spot. Last year alone there were 2.64 million animal tests in Britain This was the mid-1980s, when animal testing was the main animal rights issue. You didn’t hear much about veganism, instead it was a different ‘v’ word – vivisection – that was the

Steerpike Steerpike

Badenoch to set out Tory Budget alternative

It is a funny old time for the Tories right now. The government has rather sportingly decided to commit seppuku a fortnight before the Budget. So how are they to get any headlines? Mr S has done some digging and it turns out that the brains of Matthew Parker Street have been hard at work – a word, incidentally, that featured more than 50 times in Kemi Badenoch’s speech last week. Clearly Britney Spears’ 2013 hit has been playing on the Tory leader’s headphones… For next week, she and Sir Mel Stride, the Shadow Chancellor, are planning a big speech, setting out exactly what the Tories would do differently. Welfare

Steerpike Steerpike

Lib Dems: We’re serious (really)

Pity the Liberal Democrats. You win 72 seats at an election – and all anyone wants to talk about is Nigel Farage. You then schedule a big morning pre-Budget press conference – and the government decides to tear itself apart. Like most of HM Lobby, Steerpike was unable to make it to this morning’s event with Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader. But he could not let the occasion pass without comment. For as Ed Davey’s party desperately tries to insert itself into the political debate, it seems that they have decided that comedy is the best solution to their tragedy. At a time when the nation’s finances are

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Streeting hits out at No. 10

It’s nice, isn’t it. The quiet. Just sixteen months after their landslide triumph, the Labour party is now in full-on meltdown. The decision by Downing Street sources last night to launch a pre-emptive missile at Wes Streeting appears to have backfired spectacularly, as the popular Health Secretary handled today’s morning media round with aplomb. Gee, who could have foreseen that eh? Asked to rule out demanding Starmer’s resignation after the Budget, Streeting told Sky News: ‘Yes, and nor did I shoot JFK. I don’t know where Lord Lucan is, had nothing to do with Shergar, and I do think that the US did manage to do the moon landings. I

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Starmer must not give in to the Waspi women

If nothing else, the government is providing us with a masterclass in how to lose control of public spending. A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, as Ronald Reagan once said, and soon it begins to add up to some serious money. Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden has announced that he intends to take another look at one of the few good decisions Labour has taken since it came to office last year: to refuse compensation to nearly three million ‘Waspi’ women who have bleated that they weren’t given sufficient warning that their pension age was to be increased from 60 to 65, ruining their delicately-laid retirement plans.

James Heale James Heale

Are the knives out for Keir Starmer?

A flurry of late-night media briefings have triggered a full blown crisis for Keir Starmer. Allies of the Prime Minister sought to fire a pre-emptive strike in the Times and to the BBC, suggesting that he would fight any challenge to his leadership after the Budget. The Guardian subsequently reported that Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, has 50 frontbenchers willing to resign if the Budget goes badly and Starmer does not go. Various ministers, officials and allies are quoted – suggesting a degree of co-ordination, rather than just one rogue operator sounding off. Streeting, who was down last night to do this morning’s media round, was furious at both the

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

India and Pakistan are edging closer to war

At least eight people were killed in a car blast near New Delhi’s historic Red Fort on Monday. Less than 24 hours later, a district courthouse was targeted by a suicide bombing in Islamabad. A dozen people died. These successive blasts in the capitals of India and Pakistan have raised tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals, who clashed in May following a terror attack in the disputed territory of Kashmir. The situation is in danger of spiralling out of control. Pakistan has already accused New Delhi of being responsible for the Islamabad bombing. Prime minister Shehbaz Sharif called it one of the ‘worst examples of Indian state terrorism in the

Michael Gove

BBC bias & Bridget ‘Philistine’s’ war on education

50 min listen

This week: a crisis at the BBC – and a crisis of standards in our schools. Following the shock resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, Michael and Maddie ask whether the corporation has finally been undone by its own bias, and discuss how it can correct the leftward lurch in its editorial line. Then: Labour’s new education reforms come under the microscope. As Ofsted scraps single-word judgements in favour of ‘report cards’, could this ‘definitive backward step’ result in a ‘dumbing down’ that will rob the next generation of rigour and ambition? And will ‘Bridget Philistine’s’ war on education undo the positive legacy of the Conservatives on education? And

Tuesday

Madeline Grant

The BBC’s MP defenders have all lost their minds

The BBC’s editing scandal has reached the House of Commons. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy made a statement by the government this evening on the ongoing crisis, which is fortunate given the Starmer administration are known as bywords for probity, competence and even-handedness: ‘Same Teir for Everyone Keir’ as the PM is popularly known. There needed to be ‘firm, swift and transparent action’ from the BBC, according to Nandy. Receiving that advice from this government of all people is a real gut punch. Like being overtaken on the M6 by the Flintstones car. There are Saharan sandbanks which are quicker, swifter and more transparent than HM’s government. The BBC, said Nandy,

Madeline Grant

David Lammy has a future in panto

Beadle’s About ran from 1986 to 1996. In it, Jeremy Beadle would blunder round the United Kingdom playing elaborate practical jokes on members of the public. Labour seem absolutely determined to stage a remake of this but with Lord Chancellor David Lammy in the title role: ‘Watch Out, Lammy’s About!’ On his current track record, Lammy will be apologising for things before he’s even done them just to save time Whether it’s overseeing the random releases of foreign perverts amongst the general public, or accidentally misleading the House of Commons about whether he was buying a suit or not, Lammy’s appetite for chaos seems to know no bounds. Indeed, he

Steerpike Steerpike

Tim Davie: BBC is the ‘best of society’

So. Farewell then Tim Davie. The BBC Director General undertook the first leg of his long goodbye tour today, speaking to some of his 23,000 staff in true Corporation style: on a call with the Director of Internal Communications. Talk about the personal touch. Over 35-minutes, Davie answered questions from the Corporation’s (many) hacks about the ‘tough few days’ which he and others have endured. Having revealed that he turned to BBC iPlayer on Sunday night to ‘try and find a bit of relaxation’, Davie went on to turn his guns on the Beeb’s opponents, saying: We are in a unique and precious organisation and I see the free press,

Steerpike Steerpike

Bank of England’s two-minute blunder

Timing is not always the Bank of England’s strong suit. Britain’s central bank has increasingly faced accusations of being found wanting in recent years. Under Governor Andrew Bailey, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street has managed to infuriate the crypto bros, failed to spot the Liability-Driven Investments crisis and consistently botched inflation calls too. Both of Bailey’s predecessors managed to stay within a percentage point of the target on average during their terms. The present Governor is currently averaging 4.5 per cent – more than double his target… Still, economics is the dismal science: one where any judgement call is hard to get right. Much easier are basic facts –

James Heale James Heale

Lifting the two-child benefit cap won’t save Labour

Rachel Reeves will not officially confirm any tax changes until 26 November, but two policy shifts in her second Budget now look inevitable. The first is that the basic rate of income tax is set to rise, breaking Labour’s central manifesto pledge. The second is that the Chancellor will lift the two-child benefit cap, following intense pressure from colleagues. In her two most recent interventions, Reeves all but confirmed both changes. At last week’s press conference said said that ‘each of us must do our bit’, heavily hinting that she will shortly hike taxes for all. Then yesterday, she told the BBC it was not right that children in bigger

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Reality Check: Britain’s data is broken

There were cheers in the Treasury in September when statisticians found an unexpected £2 billion ‘down the back of the sofa.’ The tax man had underreported VAT receipts to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and it meant Britain’s borrowing figures for the current year had been overestimated. A lucky discovery for HMT but an indictment of Britain’s statistical systems.  At the ONS headquarters in Newport, morale is collapsing. The agency, long criticised for data blunders, has become a symbol of a deeper crisis: Britain’s economic numbers can no longer be trusted. Across government, the data infrastructure that underpins policymaking is crumbling. Surveys have shrunk, sample sizes have collapsed, and