Politics

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

Friday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Fewer shoppers are hitting the high street than before Covid

The UK economy has so far defied those, like the Bank of England, who confidently predicted a recession. But the threat is not over yet, as the retail sales figures for October show.  Not only were sales volumes down by 0.3 per cent over the month, but the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also revised its estimate for sales volumes in September downwards from minus 0.9 per cent to minus 1.1 per cent. Over the three months to October – a better guide as the number is based on more data – sales were also down 1.1 per cent. Over the year to October, sales volumes were down 2.7 per cent (although the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The real reason why Nigel Farage is going on ‘I’m a Celebrity…’

In the week that David Cameron returned to government and Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan came a cropper, Nigel Farage has been on the other side of the world preparing for a Bushtucker trial. Farage’s decision to sign up for I’m a Celebrity has been spectacularly badly timed on his part. One of the most sensational political stories of recent years, and Nigel is deep in the Australian jungle with has-beens, nobodies and creepy crawlies.  In justifying his decision to accept the reality TV dollar, the former Brexit party leader said: ‘I am hoping those who hate me might hate me a little bit less afterwards.’ Admitting his appearance in I’m

Thursday

William Moore William Moore

Back to the future: Sunak’s big gamble

45 min listen

On the podcast: It’s been a busy week in Westminster. On Monday, Rishi Sunak’s first major reshuffle saw Suella Braverman sacked and David Cameron make a surprise return to politics.  Then two days later, the Supreme Court’s Rwanda ruling left the government’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’ in tatters. It was meant to be the week in which Rishi Sunak had hoped to stamp his authority on a fracturing party, but it seems to have only added to the narrative of Tory disrepair. Katy Balls writes about Rishi’s last gamble in the magazine this week, and joins the podcast alongside Kate Andrews, The Spectator’s economics editor. (01:01) Also this week:  Svitlana Morenets

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP minister squirms over £11,000 iPad bill

Another day, another tech-related scandal for the SNP. Health secretary Michael Matheson has come under fire for running up a whopping £11,000 bill on his iPad in roaming charges — and initially being prepared to let the taxpayer pick up the bill. Today he gave a lengthy speech explaining himself to the Scottish parliament. He repeatedly choked back tears as he fought to save his career… He told MSPs that ‘the simple truth’ is that his teenage sons had used his parliamentary device to stream football matches — a fact Matheson claims he was only made aware of by his wife last Thursday evening. Having to stop a number of

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The problem with the BBC’s Israel coverage

Since the 7 October massacre, various institutions across the West have damaged their reputations when covering the murder of 1,200 Jews. Chief among them is the BBC which outdid itself in the early hours of Wednesday morning.   Around midnight, the Israel Defence Forces released a media statement announcing that it was launching an operation against Hamas in a part of Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, which the terrorist organisation uses as one of its command centres. The Reuters agency relayed the information via its news wire service, relied upon by journalists across the world. This is the story in its entirety: Nov 15 (Reuters) – The Israeli military said its forces were carrying

Steerpike Steerpike

Guardian forced to delete viral Bin Laden letter

Oh dear. It seems that the world’s wokest newspaper has blundered, again. The Guardian has today been forced to remove a letter by, er, Osama Bin Laden after it went viral on TikTok. The letter had proudly been up on the Graun’s website since 2002, explaining how the terror chief launched his war against the United States in part because of its support of Israel. But now in its place is a sign with the headline ‘Removed: document’ and a brief explainer: This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden’s ‘letter to the American people’, as reported in the Observer on Sunday 24 November

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Jess Phillips and the shame of Labour’s ceasefire rebels

I can’t decide if last night’s Labour revolt was an act of pointless narcissism or sinister appeasement. Maybe it was both. On one hand it will make not the slightest difference to world affairs that 56 Labour MPs defied their party leader and backed an ‘immediate ceasefire’ in the Israel-Hamas war. They ignored Keir Starmer’s plea for party unity on the right of Israel to defend itself against the anti-Semitic terrorists of Hamas and put their names to an SNP amendment calling for an end to the ‘collective punishment of the Palestinian people’. Will the Israelis be quaking in their boots that such political luminaries as Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Naz

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Cameron’s Ukraine trip provides a welcome boost for Zelensky

Just days after returning to government as Lord Cameron, the former prime minister and new Foreign Secretary has made his first foreign visit. Unsurprisingly, the destination of this trip was Kyiv, to meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.  The news of Cameron’s visit broke early this morning, although whether it took place this morning or earlier in the week remains unclear thanks to the wartime high security protocols that exist around such visits. In footage posted by Zelensky to X/Twitter, the Ukrainian premier is shown welcoming Cameron and his delegation to Kyiv. Shaking hands, Cameron calls it an ‘enormous honour’ to meet Zelensky. Cameron’s visit to Ukraine will have provided

Jim Lawley

Pedro Sanchez’s grubby deal to stay in power

In 2017 the Catalan premier, Carles Puigdemont, having first organised an illegal referendum and then declared unilateral independence from Spain, escaped arrest by hiding in the boot of a car. While other Catalan leaders went to prison for sedition, Puigdemont fled to Belgium where he’s spent most of the last six years living comfortably in self-imposed exile. Now he’s preparing to make a triumphant return to Spain as a free man. The socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who has just been officially re-elected, has granted an amnesty to Puigdemont and hundreds of others facing fines and imprisonment for their part in that push for independence. Sánchez had previously promised the

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron has lost all credibility on Israel-Palestine

It has been a bruising few days for Emmanuel Macron. It began last Friday when he gave an interview to the BBC at the Élysée palace at the conclusion of a peace forum in Paris. In unusually forthright rhetoric, the president said there was ‘no justification’ for Israel’s bombing of Gaza, which was killing ‘these babies, these ladies, these old people’. He added: ‘There is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop.’ He also reiterated a call for a ceasefire in Gaza.   Macron’s words drew a swift and sharp response from Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the president’s focus should be on

Oscar Edmondson

Should Starmer worry about the ceasefire rebellion?

13 min listen

Fifty-six Labour MPs rebelled last night and voted for an SNP amendment calling for a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. Keir Starmer had ordered his party to abstain on the vote, and said afterwards that Israel had suffered ‘its worst terrorist attack in a single day’ on 7 October, and that ‘no government would allow the capability and intent to repeat such an attack to go unchallenged’. Is Starmer’s authority now under threat? Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

What the ceasefire vote means for the future of the Labour party

It’s a little too easy to dismiss the huge Labour rebellion on the Israel-Hamas war last night as ‘virtue signalling’. No one can deny that politicians were striking poses. A party, not in government, tearing itself apart about a conflict that does not involve the UK, over policy recommendations which all the combatants will ignore, in the unlikely event that they care enough about the British Labour party to even notice the vote in the first place.  In an interview that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas member, praised the massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, and vowed that his

Ian Williams Ian Williams

Power shifts at the Biden-Xi summit

Perhaps the most important achievement of the summit between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden was that it was held at all. Expectations were set low and were duly met – assuming the modest agreements are carried through. There was little progress on issues that have pushed relations to the lowest point in four decades, and Xi still remains a ‘dictator’ in the eyes of the American president. Asked if he still held that view at the end of a carefully choreographed solo news conference, at which only four questions were allowed, Biden said, ‘Look, he is. He’s a dictator in the sense that he runs a country that’s a communist

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: James Cleverly denies slating Rishi’s Rwanda plan

The Tory party is still reeling from the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Rwanda migrant plan. Following Suella Braverman’s departure, it now falls to the new Home Secretary James Cleverly to help Rishi Sunak find a way through the mess and pacify the party’s grumblings. But it seems that Cleverly may be, er, starting on the back foot. Yesterday in the Commons, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper claimed that Cleverly never believed in the scheme and ‘may even on occasion have privately called it “batshit”’. As luck would have it, Cleverly was on the morning broadcast round this morning. On BBC Breakfast he was quizzed on the comment by the

Matthew Lynn

Biden and Xi’s meeting is a boost to the global economy

At least there will be some pandas. At his summit with President Biden this week, China’s President Xi pledged to send more cuddly bears to the US, the traditional Chinese way of cementing good relations with other countries. More importantly, there was a significant easing of tensions between the two largest economies in the world. Military communications will resume, reducing the chances of a catastrophic miscalculation between the two nations, controls on narcotics will be tightened up, and there will be a resumption of high-level diplomatic contacts. It remains to be seen if that sticks. But if it does, one point is surely clear. That could yield a huge ‘peace

Steerpike Steerpike

Lee Anderson defends Sunak

There’s a lot of grumbling right now about Rishi Sunak on the right. So it must have been to the Prime Minister’s relief that there’s at least one no-nonsense Tory he can always depend on. Step forward Lee Anderson, the party’s deputy chairman and stalwart member of the Common Sense Group. Just a few hours after the PM’s spokesman defended Anderson’s comments about defying the Rwanda court judgement, the former miner repaid the favour, going on GB News to quash rumours that he is thinking of resigning. He told Patrick Christys that that talk of a leadership election is ‘absolute nonsense’, saying: Let me just tell you now, here on

Cristina Odone

How the Tories failed stay-at-home mums

We know that Westminster politicians do not always listen to ordinary voters. But there are few issues on which our representatives are more impervious to entreaties from their electorate than childcare. Too many politicians look on children as the impish impediment to both parents being in paid employment, the obstacles to Mum and Dad paying into Treasury coffers through taxes and national insurance contributions. Parents look on children as their life’s work. There is a particular cohort for whom this clash of priorities has been uniquely painful: parents who stay home to raise their own children. Conservative governments always talk of choice; but this government’s childcare policy robs these mothers

Sean Rayment

It’s time Israel stopped playing by Hamas’s rules in Gaza

For Israel, the war in Gaza is a zero sum game. Israel must win and Hamas must lose. Nothing but total victory over Hamas after the appalling terrorist attacks which left over 1,400 Israelis dead, hundreds injured and over 200 civilians taken hostage, will suffice. But how is victory going to be defined and what is Israel’s end game? When the dust of war finally settles what does Israel want Gaza to look like? An empty, lifeless, bomb-cratered ruin or a self-governing entity, secure within its own borders and no longer a threat to Israel? Unless Israel has a clear strategic aim, its troops risk becoming trapped inside Gaza, possibly

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The 2024 veep show has already started

Vice presidents are meant to be dependable – and in a funny way Kamala Harris is exactly that. Joe Biden knows that, no matter how bad his poll numbers, hers will be worse: she’s the most unpopular vice president since polling began, according to one recent survey. Biden can afford to be pitifully vague in public partly because she is so painfully annoying. He loses his thread; she loses the plot.  That’s one of the reasons why, for all the alarm in Washington circles about the Commander-in-Chief’s ‘job performance’ and the distinct possibility that he might lose to Donald Trump next year, the Biden-Harris ticket seems locked in place for

Wednesday

James Heale James Heale

Mass Labour rebellion over Gaza vote

With no end to the war in sight, expect the theme over Labour splits on Israel to be a constant one Ten of Sir Keir Starmer’s frontbenchers have tonight left their posts after backing an SNP motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Jess Phillips, Afzal Khan, Paula Barker and Yasmin Qureshi were among 56 Labour MPs who defied their party’s whips to abstain tonight. Sarah Owen, Andy Slaughter, Naz Shah and Rachel Hopkins also left their briefs, as did two parliamentary private secretaries: Dan Carden and Mary Foy. They follow Imran Hussain’s departure last week in protest at Labour’s unwillingness to differ from the government in his support for