Politics

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

Saturday

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, James Heale and Robin Ashenden

23 min listen

This week Paul Wood delves into the complex background of the Middle East and asks if Iran might have been behind the Hamas attacks on Israel, and what might come next (01:11), James Heale ponders the great Tory tax debate by asking what is the point of the Tories if they don’t lower taxes (13:04) and Robin Ashenden on how he plans to introduce his half Russian daughter to the delights of red buses, Beefeaters and a proper full English (18:36). Produced and presented by Linden Kemkaran

Limor Simhony Philpott

Netanyahu must go – for Israel’s own good

Israelis were turning against the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu even before Hamas’s invasion. Over the past six months, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets against Netanyahu’s government and its controversial judicial reforms. Israel has been hit by strikes and road blocks and ministers have been heckled in the streets. In an unprecedented move, resistance even reached the army: some reservists vowed to refuse to serve in the Israeli army if the reform passed. Since the atrocity of last weekend, fury at the Israeli government has become even more widespread. When the war broke out, it was clear that Israel was caught napping. This caused an

Terry Barnes

Australia’s Voice referendum is tearing the country apart

Almost 250 years after European settlement, many of Australia’s Aborigines still face appalling socio-economic disadvantages compared to fellow Australians: lower life expectancy and school completion but high welfare dependency and incarceration rates, domestic violence, and endemic unemployment, truancy, alcohol and substance abuse. These are sad realities in such a prosperous nation as Australia. Government statistics show overall per capita spending on an Indigenous person – about three per cent of the total population – is higher that for other Australians, funding health, welfare, education and employment programmes in a national effort known as ‘Closing the Gap’. Yet despite the billions spent over decades, that gap remains intractably wide. Prime minister

Andrew McQuillan

Sinn Fein’s troubling ‘solidarity’ with Palestinians

Black Mountain, which looms above West Belfast, acts as a blank canvas for Irish republicans to plaster their thoughts across. Over the years, banners covering a range of subjects, from Irish unity to Brexit, have been draped across it. In recent days, a Palestinian flag was placed there by a group styling itself Gael Force Art, claiming it was in ‘solidarity with the Palestinian people who launched their biggest operation in fifty years against the rogue state of Israel’. Gerry Adams shared a picture of the flag on Twitter/ X. ‘The Mountain Speaks! Free Palestine,’ he wrote. Irish republicanism has always been a reliable well-spring of support for their Palestinian equivalents. In

Jeff Fynn-Paul

Does the Native American case for reparations add up?

The University of Minnesota is at the centre of a battle for Native American reparations. The university sits on tens of thousands of acres of land that once belonged to indigenous tribes. That land was sold in the 1800s for a fraction of what it’s worth today – and some think the university, which has an endowment of around $3.2 billion (£2.6 billion), should fork out to the descendants of those who once lived there. Minnesota is not alone. Cornell University in New York is facing demands to cough up. The University of Wisconsin at Madison also benefitted from land taken from 250 tribes following the signing of the Morrill

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

Is sumo wrestling dying out?

For any young athletes harbouring ambitions of being a sumo wrestler, there was some good news this week. The Japanese Sumo Association (JSA) has decided to relax its height and weight requirements for young recruits, opening up the sport to those previously barred for being too short or too slight. Now all the beleaguered association needs to do is find them and keep them. Given that recruitment is just one of a host of problems the sport is facing, that won’t be easy. The rule change is in response to a precipitous drop in the number of applicants to train to be a rikishi (wrestler) and perhaps join the fabled

Friday

Jawad Iqbal

India vs Pakistan is the world’s greatest cricket game

An India-Pakistan cricket match is always about much more than just cricket. It is a sporting rivalry and grudge match like no other, a titanic clash in which it is almost impossible to separate sport from politics. That’s why hundreds of millions of fans will be glued to their television screens for this Saturday’s match at the Cricket World Cup tournament in India. The stadium itself will be packed to the rafters, with more than 130,000 spectators lucky enough to get tickets. Some reports suggest that tickets have been selling for as much as $300,000 (£250,000) on the black market. Security will be tight, with  thousands of extra police officers drafted

Dimi Reider

How Britain can save Israel – and Gaza – from bloodshed

The world changed on Saturday morning with Hamas’s attack on army bases and civilian communities in Israel. What began as a Palestinian military triumph became, within minutes, the greatest single atrocity of the entire conflict to date, by either party.  Every assumption of the status quo ante has been swept aside, including much of the international etiquette around calls for restraint: Israel appears to be hours away from launching the most overwhelming assault on a modern city since Vladimir Putin’s attack on Grozny, with unreserved Western blessing. This will likely unleash every rocket in Hamas’s arsenal onto Israeli cities, and might well drag other parties into the fray, from external actors like

Oscar Edmondson

The winners and losers of this year’s conference season

14 min listen

Conference season is over, so we thought that we’d run through this year’s winners and losers. Did Rishi Sunak manage to present himself as the Action Man who can end the ‘thirty year consensus’ in British politics? Did Keir Starmer finally answer the question: if not them, why us? Did anyone surprise us? Or was it all for nothing, as new YouGov polling might suggest. Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Jake Wallis Simons Jake Wallis Simons

Hamas is not long for this world

There was long been a swell of sympathy for Hamas in the West. A certain leader of the opposition, you will remember, referred to them as his ‘friends’ and said that the UK government classifying them as a ‘terrorist organisation’ was a ‘big, big historical mistake’. He did not condemn Hamas this week. And he is not alone. The mass rallies on the streets of Britain in recent days have shown the level of support for a barbarism that for years has been quietly accommodated in this country.  If Gaza is an ‘open-air prison’, the true jailers are Hamas It is depressing how few people on that side of the argument have

Douglas Murray

‘You are not alone’: A message to the Jewish people

I’m not Jewish myself, but most of my best friends are Jews. The reason I mention this is that, all my adult life, I’ve been surrounded by, or chosen to be surrounded by, Jews. And why should that be? In my secular moments, I’d say it’s been luck or good fortune. In my more religious moments, I’d say it’s a signal of God’s grace, of the wild grace of God. Because for me, these friendships and what I’ve learned from them, have been among the greatest blessings of my life. I’ve known Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews. I’ve known secular Jews, Orthodox Jews, ultra-orthodox Jews, Chabadnik Jews and even some Reform Jews. All of these differences are of

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Horror in Arras: France comes under attack again

Emmanuel Macron’s appeal for France to unite has not been heeded. Barely 12 hours after the president made his address on primetime television, a 20-year-old of Chechen origin stabbed a teacher to death and wounded two others in a high school in the northern city of Arras.   The assailant, now in custody, is reported to have shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ during his rampage. Interior minister Gérald Darmanin announced that the knifeman was on an extremist watchlist, a revelation that is politically explosive. Yet again, someone known to be radicalised has been able to commit bloody murder. Just this week, the trial concluded of an accomplice of Larossi Abballa, who in

Steerpike Steerpike

Kate Forbes joins SNP conference boycott

Dear oh dear. The SNP is not a happy place right now. Following yesterday’s spectacular defection from Lisa Cameron, Kate Forbes has today announced she will also be a no-show at SNP conference for the first time since becoming an MSP. Forbes, who narrowly lost hapless Humza earlier this year, plans to shun her party’s Aberdeen shindig and head instead stateside. Forbes says she has ‘longstanding engagements’ in the US, but her timing will raise eyebrows among the SNP establishment. Sunny climates or watching your party implode in the Granite City? Tough choice…. Forbes isn’t likely to be the only SNP politician snubbing Yousaf’s first party conference, senior nationalists tell

Anna Richards

Poland’s history will play a vital role in its election

On 15 October, Poland goes to the polls. The Polish people must choose between two narratives for the country, each inspired by a different era of history. For the ruling Law and Justice party, the Second World War has become a key theme of its parliamentary election campaign. This came about after the question of German reparations was revived by an exhibition on Polish war losses presented in the British parliament last month. Discussing a recent Polish radio poll which revealed that 58 per cent of Poles support war reparations, Arkadiusz Mularczyk, the Polish Secretary of State for Europe maintained that Germany, the aggressor, was ‘given the privilege to choose

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s dig at Netanyahu shows why he isn’t fit to be president

When Donald Trump appeared at a Republican Jewish Coalition event in 2019, he referred to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as ‘your prime minister’. Now that prime minister has incurred Trump’s wrath. On Tuesday at a rally in South Palm Beach Trump declared that Netanyahu was ‘not prepared’ for the assault by Hamas on Israel. Netanyahu, he said, got cold feet about joining in the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was offed in Iraq in a drone strike on 3 January 2020. For good measure, Trump added that Hezbollah was ‘very smart’. For Netanyahu, who tried to curry favour with Trump during his presidency, the barbed comments from Trump are

Steerpike Steerpike

Simon Case embarrassed (again)

Like a reverse Macavity, the Cabinet Secretary is back in the headlines, at the centre of another Whitehall scandal. Today it was the Covid inquiry – the longest-running farce since Charley’s Aunt. As part of the inquiry’s ongoing hearings, it today published evidence about how decisions were made back in the dark days of 2020 when the UK was wrestling with the first wave of Covid deaths. Among the messages shown to the inquiry were exchanges in a WhatsApp group between Simon Case and Lee Cain, the-then Downing Street Director of Communications. In one Cain asks ‘Wtf are we talking about’ to which Case replies ‘Whatever Carrie cares about, I

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Russia is trying to break through Ukraine’s front line before winter

Ukraine is on fire. Russian forces have launched an offensive across the entire front line in their final push before winter. About a hundred combat clashes took place yesterday, one of the most decisive of which is unfolding in Avdiivka. A suburb of occupied Donetsk, Avdiivka fell under the control of pro-Russian militants for three months back in 2014 before it was liberated. Now Avdiivka is under attack again, with Ukrainian soldiers trying to stop the largest offensive on the city since the onset of the war. Avdiivka has been semi-encircled by Russian forces from the north, east and south for months, with little change on the ground. In the

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

What is the right punishment for Just Stop Oil’s Cambridge protestor?

As a longstanding supporter of ancient over modern in the architecture stakes, it can only grieve me to see the front wall of King’s College, Cambridge defaced by the orange paint of Just Stop Oil. But that’s what happened to a ten-metre stretch of stone wall near the porters’ lodge yesterday. I left those very hallowed portals more than a quarter of a century ago. In my day, a similar attack was carried out on the college by visitors from the Polytechnic of North London who had been invited to an event by chi-chi socialists in the King’s student body. Back then, King’s was the home of radical chic, while

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

As oil prices rise, the permacrisis continues

It was a year ago this weekend that Liz Truss sacked her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, over the fallout of their ‘growth plan’. This marked the beginning of the end of Truss’s premiership: she then appointed Jeremy Hunt to the role, and he swiftly dismantled almost every part of her infamous mini-Budget. Since leaving No. 10, Truss has been quick to return to the political spotlight, writing comment pieces for national papers, giving interviews, making speeches and interventions – and launching a Growth Commission through which she continues to take the Office for Budget Responsibility to task. But just as Truss continues to make her views known, so do her critics.

Steerpike Steerpike

Hard Times for Sunak as his ratings slump again

It’s tough at the top. A new poll out today from the Times shows that for all the hype around Rishi Sunak’s conference speech, his popularity has now fallen to a record low. According to youGov, only 20 per cent of voters believe Sunak would make the best Prime Minister, down five points in a week. It’s his lowest approval rating since he entered Downing Street a year ago this month. Hardly the curtain-raiser that No. 10 wanted ahead of parliament’s return on Monday… In fairness to Sunak, it’s not like voters are rushing to Sir Keir Starmer off the back of his efforts either. His rating fell by two