Politics

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

Rod Liddle

Britain must commit to Ukraine – or admit we don’t care enough

I have never been one of those late-middle-aged right-wing men who, at night, hunkers down over the computer to pleasure himself while staring at photographs of Vladimir Putin. He doesn’t do it for me – not even that picture of him riding a horse semi-naked through a river with a very resolute expression on his stern Asiatic face. This may put me in a minority among people of my age and gender, for I understand that Vlad has legions of admirers among my peers. It is an admiration which tends to speak its name only after a few drinks have been taken and stems largely from Putin’s commendable detestation of

James Heale

Rishi Sunak’s January blues

Rishi Sunak will start the year as he means to go on: spending more time in key marginal seats, telling ‘ordinary’ voters how he is helping them by cutting tax, taming inflation and curbing welfare. The accuracy of his claims is open to question (both tax and welfare numbers are still rising) but the idea is that selected audiences, rather than combative journalists, will ask the questions. Major had his soapbox; Sunak has his livestream. Things could become even worse for the Tories if Farage swaps GB News for the stump While the interrogators might have changed, questions remain about Sunak’s message for voters. One minister admits to being ‘baffled’

Putin’s ‘peace’ is a partitioned Ukraine

Is Vladimir Putin trying to end his war in Ukraine? According to recent reports, the Kremlin has launched a new ‘back-channel diplomacy’ to reach out to senior officials in the Joe Biden administration. Putin’s message: to signal that he could accept a ceasefire that freezes the fighting along current lines. Reactions to the story have been furious. Some Ukrainians, sheltering from Russia’s biggest-ever missile and drone assaults of the war over Christmas, saw it as evidence of a nefarious Washington insider plot to sell Kyiv down the river. President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Putin’s initiative as disingenuous, saying that he saw ‘no sign’ Russia genuinely wanted to negotiate. ‘We just see

Would strike talks be different under Labour?

15 min listen

As junior doctors begin the longest strike in history, Lucy Dunn speaks to Isabel Hardman and Kate Andrews about whether public support for industrial action is starting to wane, and how talks might be different under Labour. 

Gavin Mortimer

The hypocrisy of France’s feminist movement

A cultural war has erupted in France over the iconic figure of Gérard Depardieu. The 75-year-old actor is considered one of the greats of the French cinema but he stands accused of multiple allegations of sexual violence and harassment. An investigation is currently ongoing into claims he raped a young actress several years ago. The woman in question appeared in a documentary broadcast recently called The Fall of an Ogre, alongside another actress who alleges she was also a victim of Depardieu. The film broadcast footage of Depardieu making suggestive remarks to women in 2018.  Depardieu denies all the allegations, stating in October last year that he has never ‘abused

Steerpike

BBC rushes to defend Harvard’s president Gay

President Gay, we hardly knew thee. Six months ago, the political scientist was appointed the head of Harvard University to much fanfare: hailed as a trailblazer, Gay was the first black woman to hold such a role. Now, after weeks of damning headlines, she has a new claim to fame: she is the shortest-serving president in four centuries of Harvard history. Girl boss! Gay’s downfall came after a disastrous appearance last month at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism. Throughout the grilling, she and her counterparts at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology repeatedly sidestepped the question of whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate

Jake Wallis Simons

Israel is heading for war with Hezbollah

Saleh al-Arouri may have been a senior member of the Palestinian group Hamas, but the drone strike that brought his story to an early close took place last night in Beirut, Lebanon. Pictures from the scene show a devastatingly precise hit, which also reportedly eliminated senior members of other factions. The leaders of Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group founded by Iran, will not have been surprised that Israel’s reach extends so easily into their country. Likewise, it will have been no surprise to Israel that al-Arouri and other Hamas officials were to be found in Beirut. Along with Qatar and Turkey, Lebanon has long been one of Hamas’s main bases

Israel has taken a big risk with its Hamas assassination in Lebanon

Israel today killed top Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri, in the most significant assassination since the war against Hamas started almost three months ago. His killing in Lebanon is not only an operational success, but will boost Israeli morale. The fight against Hamas since 7 October has been fierce and difficult. Despite successes in uncovering and destroying many of the group’s tunnels in Gaza and killing thousands of terrorists, the challenges remain significant and the casualty count is high. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) still have months of fighting ahead of them, and it’s doubtful that they will manage to destroy Hamas completely. This has been cause for concern in Israel.

It’s no surprise Mhairi Black has turned on Nicola Sturgeon

Mhairi Black can clearly see which way the wind is blowing. ‘I did always feel a wee bit uncomfortable,’ the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster has said of the cult of personality around former first minister Nicola Sturgeon. ‘We shouldn’t be relying on one face or one person,’ Black told Times Radio, adding that she had always ‘had issues’ with the way Sturgeon ran the party, and that she ‘didn’t miss her’. Isn’t it funny that Black felt so uncomfortable about such things but has only spoken out now? Whatever Black thinks about Sturgeon, she was a clear supporter of her ex-boss’s deeply bonkers and unpopular legislation that could have

Israel’s supreme court verdict spells trouble for Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel’s supreme court has overturned a law passed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last year that would have limited the power of the Israeli courts. This legislation, known as ‘the reasonableness bill’ was meant to put a stop to the courts’ ability to cancel decisions made by the government if they were deemed to be ‘extremely unreasonable’. Yesterday, judges threw out the law, claiming that the government lacked the authority to implement it. The law was part of a package of judicial reforms initiated by Netanyahu’s far-right government; many in Israel argued that the reforms would weaken the courts and undermine Israeli democratic institutions. From the moment it was introduced, the

Is Rishi fishy on the asylum backlog?

12 min listen

Rishi Sunak claimed that the Conservatives have cleared the 92,000 asylum claims, despite figures showing the backlog still stands at tens of thousands of applicants, with several thousand missing. Natasha Feroze speaks to James Heale and Fraser Nelson about the figures, and whether blags like these are a gift to the Reform party.

Kim Jong-un is in no mood to calm down

South Korean voters will be among the more than four billion people going to the polls this year. With a huge potential range of outcomes, North Korea will be watching closely. The annual new year fireworks and pop concert in Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung Square concluded five days of high-level meetings of Kim Jong-un’s Workers’ Party of Korea. The leader’s message was severe. Kim made clear how dialogue with Washington and Pyongyang was off the table, and the North would seek to ‘crush’ what it has long-termed the ‘hostile power’ of the United States. Firmly in line with his pledge in January 2021, Kim underscored how the North would accelerate its

Ross Clark

Fact check: the truth about the asylum backlog

When is a backlog in asylum applications not a backlog? When it is made up of ‘complex cases’ and of new applications which hadn’t been made at the time ministers promised to clear the backlog. Today, the Home Office has been chirping about its success in tackling illegal migration by announcing ‘the legacy asylum backlog target has been met with more than 112,000 asylum cases cleared in 2023 and small boat crossing arrivals down by 36 per cent’. The government’s efforts in 2023, in other words, did ‘not just clear the original 92,000 legacy asylum backlog, but exceed it.’ It has achieved this, it says, by hiring extra staff. On

Why protests in Serbia won’t lead to regime change

Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, has followed in Vladimir Putin’s footsteps this week by blaming popular protests on western meddling to discredit the opposition.   Protests over alleged vote rigging erupted in Belgrade after Serbia’s national and municipal elections on December 17. Vučić and his Serbian Progressive party (SNS) won an emphatic victory in the national poll, with 48 per cent of the vote to the opposition’s 24 per cent. But the results were closer in the Belgrade elections, where the SNS won only a few percentage points more than the opposition coalition, Serbia Against Violence (SPN).   The SPN has since refused to accept the election results in Belgrade, where it accuses the SNS

Patrick O'Flynn

Will Sunak manage to remove illegal migrants ‘within weeks’?

Let the trumpeters trumpet and church bells across this land peal away in celebration: the Home Office has an administrative achievement to its name. According to ministers, a ‘legacy’ backlog of almost 92,000 asylum claims made before the end of June 2022 has been cleared, just as Rishi Sunak pledged that it would be. It is hardly the equivalent of the Union flag flying again over South Georgia early in the Falklands War. But nonetheless let us just rejoice for a moment at that news given how seldom it is that the Home Office hits any target whatsoever. Yet after our rejoicing is done we must, alas, kick our brains into

Steerpike

James Cleverly spars with the BBC

Ding, ding, ding! It seems that James Cleverly took Downing Street’s instructions to get in some much-needed R&R over the holidays very seriously indeed. The Home Secretary was raring to go on this morning’s broadcast round, getting into several spats with the host of Radio 4’s Today programme, Mishal Husain. Cleverly was on air to discuss the Home Office’s claim that the asylum backlog had been cleared. He argued that ‘every single [legacy claim] has been processed’ but said it was ‘impossible to say’ how long it would take to clear the remaining cases, asserting that the aim is to get the overall number of applications coming down. Husain then

How Queen Margrethe made the Danish monarchy popular

Danish New Year’s Eves are to be savoured partly for their predictability. First, on the main Danish State TV channel, the vintage British TV comedy Dinner for One, with Freddie Frinton and May Warden, is broadcast. Then there is the countdown to midnight on the face of Copenhagen’s city hall clock, followed by desultory fireworks let off by individuals in the square below (on a shoestring budget compared to the millions of pounds Sadiq Khan spends annually to promote himself in London). Cut to exultant choirs singing in the new year at a Danish Lutheran church. And, of course, earlier in the evening, the monarch’s address, given since 1972 by our

Aussie republicans are fawning over Denmark’s new queen

According to opinion polls, more Australians want to ditch the country’s ties with the British monarchy than retain it. The Labor government of prime minister Anthony Albanese includes an assistant minister for the republic. King Charles is being dropped from Australian banknotes. Most major Australian media outlets, including News Corp’s flagship newspaper the Australian, and especially the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, are no supporters of the King. The ABC last year notoriously used its coronation coverage to debate the future of the monarchy and to assert its direct responsibility for the greatest stain on Australia’s history: the suffering and maltreatment of Aborigines in the colonial period. For Australian