Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
40 min listen
My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is the film writer Peter Biskind. In his new book Pandora’s Box, he tells the story of what’s sometimes called “Peak TV” – and how a change in business model (from network to cable to streaming) unlocked an extraordinary era of artistic innovation, and uncovered an unexpected darkness in the public appetite to be entertained.
13 min listen
Today, Keir Starmer held a long meeting with some Muslim Labour MPs over their concern on his stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict, first ignited by comments he made on LBC which seemed to justify Israel’s electricity and water blockade of Gaza. The Labour leader has made huge progress to move his party on from the reputation of anti-Semitism forged during the Corbyn era – but can he find a middle way to please all wings of his party on this deeply emotive issue? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu.
A harrowing session at PMQs. Rishi Sunak seemed subdued and de-energised. His fizz had gone flat. The usual hip-wriggling shuffle at the despatch had been replaced with a hunched, anxious pose. Heavy shoulders. Head drooping. The Middle East crisis has snapped his elastic. The issue Sir Keir had ducked was Gaza. Too hot to handle Sir Keir, by contrast, was beaming like a City embezzler celebrating his daughter’s wedding. Spreading one arm wide, he turned munificently towards his backbenchers and welcomed the victors from last week’s by-elections. He poked fun at the defeated Tory in Tamworth, Andrew Cooper, who had dismissed the complaints of voters who can’t buy food but
We have seen many grim images over the past two weeks. Images of the apocalyptic, Isis-style violence visited upon the people of Israel by Hamas. Images of destruction and grief in Gaza as Israel hammers Hamas for its crimes against the Jewish people, as is its right. And yet it is an image from London, not Sderot or Gaza City, that has haunted me all day today. Which has made me feel a visceral revulsion. It’s a photo of two sisters who were kidnapped by Hamas. Emma and Yuli are their names. They are twins, just three years old. They are hugging and smiling in the photo. They are a picture of
The death of the gangster Dave Courtney – found in his bed with a gunshot wound at the age of 64 – has once more brought to the fore the odd fascination with ‘gangsters’ which certain strange sorts harbour. Call me dirty-minded, but as with the ever-growing fascination with ‘true crime’, I can’t help thinking it’s all about sex. Before we were modern, mean men with brawn rather than brain would have been the best ones to bag; now that bookish Musks and Zuckerbergs rule the world, the Neanderthal has found himself somewhat surplus to requirements. But he still rings a primeval bell with the dimmer members of society, who
When two planes flew into the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, the world stood in solidarity with the United States. In London, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was played at Buckingham Palace. ‘We are all Americans,’ declared Le Monde. In Berlin, 200,000 people took to the streets to express their sorrow. This makes it all the more striking how different – and how morally obtuse – the reaction to Hamas’s slaughter of around 1,400 Israelis has been. Major news outlets were strangely reluctant to dwell on the horror before jumping straight to the Israeli response. Instead of declaring that we are all Israelis, Le Monde editorials fulminated against Israel’s ‘desire
When the cabinet gathered on Tuesday morning, the meeting started as a sombre affair. Just days before, the Conservatives had suffered – in the words of polling expert Sir John Curtice – ‘one of worst nights any government has endured’. The Tories lost both the Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire by-elections to Labour. The Environment Secretary, Thérèse Coffey, managed to lighten the mood when she intervened to say that it hadn’t gone unnoticed that it was Rishi Sunak’s 365th day as Prime Minister. Loud banging on the table ensued, led by Jeremy Hunt. A year into Sunak’s premiership, neither he nor his supporters are where they would have liked to be.
Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, on his return from Israel (where he spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister) and to Saudi Arabia (where he spoke with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince), told the House of Commons: ‘Hamas is not only a threat to Israel, but to many others across the region. All the leaders I met agreed that this is a watershed moment. It’s time to set the region on a better path.’ Twelve Britons had died in the Hamas attack, and five were missing. Of the blast at Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital on 17 October, which killed numbers of people into the hundreds, he said it was likely to
It was revealing that Keir Starmer decided not to ask Rishi Sunak about Israel at Prime Minister’s Questions today. The Labour leader headed straight from the session into a crunch meeting with Muslim MPs and peers who are angry at the way he has handled the conflict (more from Katy here), and so he clearly decided that repeating last week’s series of statements about Labour’s support for Israel’s self-defence wouldn’t help internal party tensions. Instead, he went for a proper old political knockabout, and spent the entire session talking about the failed Tory candidate in the Tamworth by-election. By the time the Labour leader reached his pay-off, the Tamworth theme
Things you do not hear very often, number one: a pro-Palestinian protestor denouncing Hamas for the barbarity of its incursion into Israel on 7 October, appalled at the savagery of those attacks upon children, grandmothers, etc. It may seem as if, in saying this, I am stating the obvious – because support for that pogrom was, I would suggest, strong among some of those carrying Palestinian flags on marches through London and elsewhere. Six Arab language journalists were suspended by the BBC when it was discovered that they retweeted messages glorifying in that day’s murder. They were not members of Hamas. Ordinary Palestinians interviewed, cowering in the rubble of Gaza, were
Six weeks ago, I invited Ahmed Alnaouq, a young diplomat who recently joined the Palestinian mission in London, to stay for a cricket weekend in Wiltshire. He resisted all entreaties to play the game but was in every other way a delightful guest. On Sunday, Ahmed learnt that his family in Gaza has been wiped out by an Israeli bomb. His father, siblings, and more than 15 nieces and nephews had all been killed. Twenty-three dead, no injuries. Another brother was killed by an Israeli bombing in 2014. His mother died three years ago because, he says, Israel denied her medical treatment. When I sent him a text message saying that
With a general election – and the prospect of forming a government – now firmly on the horizon, the Labour party has no shortage of long-standing policies that it is quickly seeking to recast, review or revoke entirely. Sir Keir Starmer’s earlier pledges to abolish tuition fees, increase taxes on higher earners and scrap the two-child benefit cap have all been unceremoniously dumped. Other commitments, such as a £28 billion per annum ‘Green Prosperity Plan’, have been significantly watered-down, while proposals for a tax raid on US tech giants have shifted to a wider review of business rates. This is, in many ways, a natural and prudent process for a
It wasn’t so long ago that Keir Starmer was being widely praised for keeping his party united and on message over Israel at Labour’s conference in Liverpool. But fast forward a few weeks and the Labour leader is under pressure over his stance on Israel’s right to defend itself following the terror attacks by Hamas on 7 October. The trouble started as a result of an interview Starmer gave to LBC soon after the attacks. Speaking in Liverpool, LBC’s Nick Ferrari asked Starmer whether ‘cutting off power, cutting off water’ was appropriate as a response to the atrocity. The Labour leader replied: ‘I think that Israel does have that right…It
Imagine you’re Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, drafting your Autumn Statement for delivery in three weeks’ time. Bookies’ odds for a Tory general election win have moved out to six-to-one (against Labour’s dead-cert one-to-seven) following by-election wipe-outs. The Lib Dems look set to nab your South West Surrey seat if you don’t stand down anyway. And you can’t give your back-benches red-meat tax cuts because public borrowing for this year could run £30 billion higher than forecast. Releasing the pension ‘triple lock’ to save money would alienate older Tories. Inheritance tax giveaways that might please them would be campaign gold for Labour. A stamp duty cut would do nothing for floating-vote home-buyers facing
Oh dear. The world’s wokest media outlet is at it again. When they’re not moralising over artists or misattributing quotes, there’s nothing more the Guardian enjoys then a ritual round of Israel-bashing. A vintage example has been offered up today on its website. Barely a fortnight after more than 1,400 Israelis were butchered by Hamas terrorists, it has published an article claiming that Israel is misusing the history of the Holocaust. According to Israeli academic Raz Segal, President Biden was wrong to reference the historic suffering of the Jews in his response to the attack of 7/10. Segal argues that the ‘weaponisation of Holocaust memory by Israeli politicians runs deep’
In his eagerness to stand with Israel, it seems Sir Keir might have slipped up. For a fortnight now Labour has been rowing about his comments in an LBC interview in which Starmer seemed to justify a water and electricity blockade of Gaza. Since then, it’s been damage control galore, amid an exodus of outraged councillors quitting the party in disgust. Starmer is due to meet Muslim MPs today to discuss their concerns about all this. The Keirleaders will just be hoping that today’s pow-wow goes better than Starmer’s previous peace mission. On Sunday he visited a mosque before sharing a selection of HQ-approved images of him shaking hands and
The EU’s response to the war between Israel and Gaza has been badly muddled. While Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden have been making their view crystal clear on Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas’s attacks, Josep Borrell, the top EU diplomat, has toed a different line. Borrell this week called for what was effectively an Israeli ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel’s more ardent European allies are furious. ‘We cannot contain the humanitarian catastrophe if Gaza’s terrorism continues. There will be no security and no peace for either Israel or the Palestinians if this terrorism continues,’ Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, said. Her Austrian counterpart, Alexander Schallenberg, echoed that
As Israel releases body cam footage showing the stark reality of Hamas terrorists’ brutal attacks on civilians during their assault on 7 October – and as its forces begin launching limited raids into Gaza to prepare the ground for a full-scale offensive by land, sea and air – the severity of Hamas’s situation is finally dawning on its militants. The mood amongst its members in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath Gaza is likely to have darkened dramatically. Despite Hamas’s delusional boasting of bravely fighting to the death and ‘saving Palestine’, the penny is beginning to drop that these are the final days, both for the terrorists, and for Hamas as an
14 min listen
Natasha Feroze speaks to Stephen Bush and Katy Balls about some of the geopolitical problems that lie ahead for Labour. Will David Lammy have to roll back on his views on Trump? Will Keir Starmer appeal to his muslim voter base whilst taking the standard Biden line on Israel/ Palestine? What about the Indian general election in November?
Rishi Sunak is in office but Liz Truss remains in power. That’s the line that Labour are pushing on today’s announcement that the cap on bankers’ bonuses will be abolished next week. The change was initially announced by Kwasi Kwarteng in the infamous mini-budget of September 2022. It was one of the few measures to be retained when Chancellor Jeremy Hunt replaced Kwarteng at the Treasury on the grounds that it did not have an impact on state finances, unlike her tax cuts. Labour are naturally keen to suggest that this shows that Sunak has not moved the Tories on from the Truss era. Darren Jones, the party’s Shadow Chief Secretary, was quick to condemn it