Politics

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

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Scottish parliament to investigate SNP health secretary

Uh oh. It’s not looking good for Scotland’s health secretary Michael Matheson. During a rather tearful speech in the Chamber last week, Matheson revealed that he had referred himself to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body for an external review. While this temporarily halted press enquiries into the details, the referral isn’t the safety net Matheson desperately needs. For now it turns out that the SPCB wants to investigate him further. So far it’s only taken Holyrood 10 months to act… However, the watchdog won’t be looking into the porkies Matheson told the press last week — namely, denying his iPad had been used for personal activities when he knew it

Senay Boztas

Why Geert Wilders won

Far right, anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders has won a historic victory for his Freedom party (PVV) in shock Dutch elections on Wednesday. As the final votes are counted, Wilders appears to have more than doubled his 17 MPs in 2021 elections, winning 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament and almost a quarter of the 13 million votes. ‘The PVV can no longer be ignored,’ vowed Wilders following his success overnight. ‘We will govern’. Wilders, who campaigned on the idea of ‘stopping’ immigration, appears to have benefitted from widespread mistrust of the government after a series of scandals under ex prime minister Mark Rutte. For years, Wilders has tried to

James Heale James Heale

Tory backlash as net migration hits record levels

After much Whitehall spin, the official figures are now in. Net migration in 2022 is estimated to have hit 745,000, a huge revision upward from an earlier estimate of 606,000. That figure only fell slightly by 10 per cent to 672,000 for 2023, as a total of 1.2 million people arrived to live in the UK in the 12 months up until June. Today’s net migration figure is more than three times the level when the 2019 Conservative manifesto pledged to ensure ‘overall numbers come down.’ The reaction of Conservative MPs to these figures has not been a happy one. The New Conservatives group of 25 right-wingers has released a collective

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Sunak has no excuse for immigration being this high

Of all the essential tasks facing Rishi Sunak when he became Prime Minister, bringing down the level of legal immigration should have been by far the most straightforward. This is probably not what the electorate had in mind when voting for Brexit in order to ‘take back control’ of the borders All he had to do was tweak student and work visa requirements to ensure a significant fall from the gargantuan 606,000 net migration number bequeathed to him by Boris Johnson. He could then have tried to sell the idea to Tory-leaning voters that a downward direction of travel had been set in motion, with further down payments on the

Matthew Lynn

Is Javier Milei already defying his critics?

Critics of Argentina’s president Javier Milei have already made up their minds: he is a lunatic and his plans will collapse on first contact with the real world. Argentina’s money will run out and the economy will grind to a halt. To some commentators, he is a ‘hard-right’ ideologue who will crash the economy within weeks. They say he’s like Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng on roller-skates. If you listen to those attacking Milei, you’d be forgiven for thinking the man in charge in Buenos Aires will precipitate yet another economic calamity in a country which has been stumbling from one disaster to another for almost a hundred years. But

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Net migration hits 672,000 – with 2022 figures revised up

Has migration to the UK peaked? Net migration in the year to June hit 672,000, down from 745,000 in 2022. Some 1.2 million people came to Britain whilst 508,000 moved overseas. The ONS says it’s too early to call this a downward trend, but that immigration seems to be slowing whilst emigration is increasing. Perhaps the biggest story though is the size of some of the revisions. The ONS had previously put the net migration figure for 2022 at just over 600,000. Today they found 140,000 more people and revised it up to 745,000. This is a staggering change. Taken with today’s figure, that new peak suggests numbers are coming

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Did Israel-Palestine protests push Geert Wilders’s election victory?

Geert Wilders’s victory is another slap-in-the-face moment for the European Union. The complexities of Dutch democracy may mean that he struggles to form a strong government. But his victory, which seemed impossible just a few weeks ago, reminds us that, whether we like it or not, anti-immigration politics is the most potent force in 21st century western democracies. It also raises interesting questions about how the Israel-Palestine war may be influencing elections far outside the Holy Land. There are of course many factors behind Wilders’s latest ascent — his ‘Nexit’ position against the European Union, his Freedom alliance with Dutch farmers against the eco-left, and his broader objections to the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Has Hunt opened the door to a spring election?

Rishi Sunak wakes up to the most positive front pages his government has had in months. The decision to use the autumn statement to cut personal tax as well as make the largest business tax cut in modern history has led to the press praising the government for easing the tax burden – even if it is still going up. Meanwhile, MPs hope this is just the beginning and it marks a pathway to further tax cuts ahead of the election. Addressing MPs last night at a meeting of the 1922 committee, Hunt said the autumn statement marked a turning point – both for the economy and the party’s fortunes. He

Jawad Iqbal

Is India attempting assassinations on foreign soil?

Is the Indian government guilty of conducting a covert policy of targeted assassinations of political opponents on foreign soil? The question is prompted by explosive revelations that the US authorities have foiled a conspiracy to kill a Sikh separatist on American soil and have issued a warning to India over its suspected involvement. The latest allegations, reported in the Financial Times, come just two months after Canada accused India of being behind the murder of a Sikh activist in Vancouver – a claim that prompted furious denials and denunciations from New Delhi.  Sitting on the diplomatic fence is not really feasible for Washington when it involves claims of India targeting

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Removing Hamas will not solve everything

Ever since Hamas invaded Israel, massacred 1,200 of its citizens and kidnapped 240 as hostages, there has been an effort to distance the Gazan population from the terrorist group. In most cases it has been well-intentioned, reflecting a desire that western populations do not associate the rape, torture and mass murder of Jews seen on 7 October with the residents of a territory that is 98 per cent Muslim. Since 9/11, political, civil, journalistic and security elites have made delinking Islam and Islamist violence a priority in their initial responses to terrorism. This has been the case particularly in countries with a sizeable or highly visible Muslim population that could

Joanna Williams

Why won’t the Tories ban pupils from transitioning?

Finally, after months of argument and expectation, media briefings and leaked drafts, it seems the government just might be ready to release its transgender guidance to schools. Possibly. In a few weeks. Word is that this latest iteration asserts the importance of sex over gender. It makes it clear to schools that sports teams, toilets and changing rooms should be demarcated according to biology. Only female children are to play on girls’ sports teams or sleep in girls’ dormitories on school residential trips. This is sensible and in keeping with decisions recently taken by major sporting bodies. But those hoping for a complete ban on children social transitioning – changing

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The Scottish Greens’ oil crusade is coming unstuck

‘Well, well, well,’ as the meme goes. ‘If it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.’ The news that Grangemouth, Scotland’s last oil refinery, is to close by 2025, with hundreds of jobs thought to be at risk, has elicited statements of concern from across the political spectrum. But no one is likely to improve upon that from Scottish Green MSP Gillian Mackay, who posted on Twitter/ X: There couldn’t be a more dazzling display of radical cluelessness. Mackay’s party, which is in government with Humza Yousaf’s SNP in Scotland, has made a crusade of harrying the oil and gas industry out of operation north of the border. Earlier this

Wednesday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The truth about Hunt’s ‘tax cutting’ Autumn Statement

18 min listen

The Chancellor today delivered his fiscal update, branding it as an ‘Autumn Statement for Growth’. In it, he announced a series of tax cuts for both businesses and workers including the decision to make ‘full expensing’ permanent and a surprise announcement on National Insurance, which has been cut by two percentage points for workers and simplified for the self-employed. Fraser Nelson, Kate Andrews and Katy Balls unpack the details of Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement.  

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Don’t mock Big Tech around Rishi Sunak

PMQs began with Sir Keir Starmer’s favourite trick. He read out a sob-story intended to humiliate the government. Having outlined the woes of two unfortunate citizens, he accused Rishi Sunak of ‘refusing to take responsibility’ and of ‘boasting that everything is fine’. The sad pawns in this prank were a teenage boy and his hard-working mother. Sir Keir even named them in the house. The young lad doesn’t go to school and his mum struggles to look after him while maintaining her job in the NHS. The pair get no help. They have no friends or neighbours, apparently. No colleagues, no relatives and no teachers to give them support. There

Steerpike Steerpike

Penny Mordaunt hits back at Tory ‘ideologues’

It’s not been the best of times for the One Nation Tories. Yesterday Andrea Jenkyns – deputy chair of the European Research Group – launched a full-frontal attack on the caucus, telling that GB News: This One Nation Group make up the majority of the parliamentary party, but these are the ones who didn’t want Brexit, who didn’t want Boris, who didn’t want Liz Truss — so they’re not really in tune with the British public… I don’t think the Tory party are going far enough [to the right] actually. If you look at the group, they’ve never accepted Liz [Truss], they never accepted Boris and it’s about time that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Rachel Reeves borrows an attack line from Ronald Reagan

Rachel Reeves is getting used to being nicknamed ‘the copy-and-paste shadow chancellor’ by the Tories. Today she leaned into that name by repeating a phrase she’s been using for a while; one she copied and pasted from another politician. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 question of ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ was the central theme of her Autumn Statement response. Her recast of it was ‘the questions that people will be asking at the next election and after today’s autumn statement are simple: do me and my family feel better off after 13 years of Conservative governments? Do our schools, our hospitals, our police today work

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

The truth about Hunt’s ‘tax cutting’ Autumn Statement

Jeremy Hunt’s March Budget was an exercise in Big State Toryism. It lacked meaningful tax cuts, was full of new spending promises, and was estimated by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to take the ratio of public spending to GDP to ‘43.4 per cent, its highest sustained level since the 1970s’. But today’s Autumn Statement, the Chancellor told the Commons today, was going to be different. Framing the fiscal update as an ‘Autumn Statement for Growth’, Hunt began his announcement by insisting that  ‘our choice is not big government, high spending and high tax because we know that leads to less growth, not more. Instead we reduce debt, cut taxes and

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: MP accused of calling Stockton North a ‘s***hole’

When Labour MP Alex Cunningham asked Rishi Sunak why child poverty was at 34 per cent in his Stockton North constituency, he received an unexpected reply. During the exchange in the Commons, an MP was caught on microphone apparently suggesting the reason was that Stockton North is, er, a ‘shithole’. The comment was picked up on parliament’s live video feed but mystery surrounds who made the remark. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly denied that he was to blame. Asked whether he made the comment, his spokesman said: ‘He did not, and would not. He’s disappointed they would accuse him of doing so.’ Other Tories are suggesting that the actual remark was

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Tories are cutting it fine with their Autumn Statement

Just a year ago, Jeremy Hunt played Scrooge at the despatch box. In an attempt to regain market credibility following Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, Rishi Sunak’s new government announced £30 billion of spending cuts (largely pencilled in for after the election) and £25 billion of tax rises. It was a far cry from the summer leadership contest, when Truss and Sunak promised to lower the tax burden. Sunak’s argument has always been that he would cut tax – but only once some order had been restored to the public finances. Sunak’s reticence has been unpopular with his own side. Boris Johnson attacked him for lacking a ‘grand economic strategy for growth’. With

The Spectator

Britain’s welfare system is out of control

To grasp the scale of Britain’s welfare crisis, consider some of the changes announced by the government this week. There will be tighter restrictions on sickness benefit and people with mobility issues will have to work from home. It’s a big and controversial reform. But the result? The number of Britons claiming sickness benefits – 2.8 million – will still keep rising to 3.4 million by the end of the decade. Reversing this trend, it seems, is a political impossibility. The worst aspect is that Mel Stride, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is probably going as fast as the system can manage. His reforms will likely be met with a