Politics

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

Thursday

22 May 2025

Danny Shaw

Is Labour tough enough to act on Gauke’s prison review?

Uncork the Gauke! In the coalition years, whenever George Osborne found himself in a tight spot as Chancellor, advisers would send for David Gauke, who was then a Treasury minister. The tall, imposing but unflappable Gauke would tour the radio and TV studios to deliver a measured message of reassurance, calming the political waters and restoring some credibility to whatever government policy was in the spotlight. This week, Gauke has been uncorked again – this time by Labour – to solve the prison capacity crisis. When the party came to office, the population in men’s jails across England and Wales was rising so fast it was about to outstrip the

Steerpike

Kneecap member charged with terror offence

To Kneecap, the Irish republican band under fire over controversial concert footage – which appeared to show one of the band members calling for the deaths of MPs and yelling ‘up Hamas, up Hezbollah!’ Now one of the trio, 27-year-old Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, has been charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah at a gig in London, according to police. Dear oh dear… The Belfast local, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged with displaying a flag in November last year at the O2 Forum in London in a way that, the Metropolitan Police said, aroused ‘reasonable suspicion that he

David Shipley

Can Labour prevent the justice system from collapsing?

David Gauke’s long-awaited Sentencing Review is here. If its recommendations are accepted, we will see thousands of people spared jail and thousands of inmates released as early as a third of the way through their sentence. The government is relying on the review to save the justice system from collapse. As the Lord Chancellor explained just last week, despite plans to build another 14,000 prison places, the system simply can not keep pace with the growth in our prison population. For months now, ministers and officials have been focused on keeping just enough space in the prison system until the Sentencing Review can be implemented. So now it has arrived,

Eliot Wilson

Could the EU sideline Britain in its defence loan scheme?

The Security and Defence Partnership which the government agreed with the European Union this week has had more spin applied to it than a thousand cricket balls. The central argument in its favour, apart from vacuous reiki-like attempts to change the ‘mood’ of relations with the EU, was that it would allow the UK defence sector to engage with the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) loan instrument providing €150 billion (£127 billion) for defence procurement over the next five years. It does not do that. You would be hard pressed to realise that the partnership has not succeeded in what many saw as its central purpose. Weasel words came in

Patrick West

How George Wendt embodied American television

The American sitcom Cheers depicted a Boston bar where everybody knew your name, and its most loyal customer, Norm Peterson, was the character practically everybody wanted to be. Norm, played by George Wendt in all the show’s episodes from 1982 to 1993, and who died on Tuesday aged 76, was the ultimate bar-fly, the role model for those who used to haunt bars and pubs, and for many who still do. This cuddly, ursine and somewhat shambolic character was held in affection by viewers and all in the fictional drinking-hole – he was greeted upon his arrival with the universal salutation, ‘Norm!’ – mostly because he was just consistently funny.

Kate Andrews

Trump’s skewering of Cyril Ramaphosa was pure theatre

We got another round of extraordinary scenes coming out of Donald Trump’s Oval Office yesterday. During his meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s President, Trump asked his staffers to press play on video footage showing what appeared to be violent chants against white farmers. ‘We have thousands of stories talking about it, we have documentaries, we have news stories,’ the US President said over the audio. He would not let President Ramaphosa look away. The footage went on, to which President Ramaphosa finally responded: ‘This is not government policy.’ President Trump did not let up. ‘They’re being executed and they happen to be white, and most of them happen to

Lara Brown

King’s College Cambridge is wrong to cut ties with arms firms

Who says that student activism is pointless? Setting up a tent, donning a keffiyeh, and camping out on your university’s front lawn might look like a waste of time, but at Cambridge it’s a strategy that pays off. King’s College – which has been repeatedly targeted by pro-Palestinian protestors – has agreed to cut ties with arms companies. The college announced that it will divest money from weapons manufacturers after its governing body voted to ‘adopt a new responsible investment policy’. King’s College – which has been repeatedly targeted by pro-Palestinian protestors – has agreed to cut ties with arms companies In an email sent to students on Tuesday, King’s College said it

Michael Gove

Starmer vs the workers: the real Brexit betrayal

Keir Starmer looked blank. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, seemed confused. Only the old Stalinist Seumas Milne seemed really to understand. It was 2019. Labour’s front bench team, and their leader Jeremy Corbyn’s close advisers, were being upbraided – from the left. Why were they putting the interests of international capital ahead of our workers? Why were they abandoning the chance to implement a meaningful industrial policy? Why were they giving up on the chance to save British steel, to give all support necessary to our manufacturing sector, to make a stand against neo-liberalism? The person in the room making the challenge, over ginger beer and sandwiches, was not Owen

Richard Johnson

Labour must learn to love Brexit

The problem with Keir Starmer’s approach to Brexit is that it fundamentally misunderstands the country. It isn’t that the Leave-voting public have realised that they made the wrong choice, foolishly tricked by the slogan on the side of a bus a decade ago. Voters in Grimsby have not suddenly been won round to the virtues of the Common Fisheries Policy. Most Leavers do not suddenly think shorter queues at the airport in Sofia is worth the downward pressure on wages caused by thousands of young Bulgarians who (understandably) will think Britain’s £12.21 minimum wage is more attractive than Bulgaria’s roughly £3 per hour. The reason people feel dissatisfied with Brexit

James Heale

What do ‘Labour values’ actually mean?

Keir Starmer’s appearance before Labour MPs on Monday was a crowded affair. Such was the level of excitement that organisers set up an overspill room in parliament. A fortnight after a dire set of local election results, the Prime Minister promised to fight the next election ‘as Labour’. Yet his troops seem increasingly divided as to what that actually means. More than two dozen MPs spoke at that meeting, criticising Starmer’s Gaza policy, migration speech and welfare cuts. It is those benefit changes that are causing the most immediate grief to the whips. Ministers want to restrict the eligibility requirements for disability payments, meaning only those with the most serious

Wednesday

21 May 2025

Steerpike

Watch: Trump confronts South African president

Just what is it with Oval Office encounters? Three months after his spat with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump is at it again. The US President ambushed a visiting Cyril Ramaphosa today, playing footage that appeared to show white South Africans being persecuted. Trump ordered aides to dim the lights and play a video showcasing what he called a ‘genocide’ of white farmers in the country. Turning to Ramaphosa, his South African counterpart, Trump said people ‘were fleeing’ while demanding an ‘explanation’ for what he said was a ‘very sad situation’. ‘We have thousands of stories talking about it, we have documentaries, we have news stories… it has to be responded to,’

Brendan O’Neill

The UN’s claim about babies dying in Gaza is unravelling

Just when you thought Israel couldn’t be any more evil, yesterday we learned that thousands of babies are set to perish under its ruthless writ in Gaza. Fourteen thousand to be precise. All in the next 48 hours. Thousands of innocent lives snuffed out as the Jewish State, that most wicked of states, looks the other way. Now we know, the cry went up, just how barbarous the State of Israel can be. Israelophobia is out of control. It is the most dangerous bigotry of our times This story spread like a pox through the internet yesterday. It infected influencers everywhere. Everywhere you looked you’d see those cruel numbers –

Katja Hoyer

Is monarchism a threat to the German state?

Last week a man called Peter Fitzek was apprehended by police. He calls himself King Peter I, and he is the head of the ‘Kingdom of Germany’, the largest of a number of groups that don’t accept the legitimacy of the current German state and want to replace it with their own. Monarchism may not be widespread in Germany, but the idea certainly has a dedicated following. Police came down hard on Fitzek’s realm in coordinated morning raids last Tuesday. Over 800 police officers stormed and searched properties in seven German states, leading to the arrest of ‘King Peter’ and three other people deemed to be the ringleaders of the

Lloyd Evans

Badenoch responded well to Starmer’s winter fuel U-turn

That hardly ever happens. A major climbdown was announced in the house of commons at PMQs. Sir Keir Starmer used a scripted question to reveal a massive U-turn on winter fuel payments and he timed his bombshell to give the opposition leader, Kemi Badenoch, very little chance to improvise a reply. Sir Keir’s gamble worked. To deaden the effect of his surrender he used the dullest phrases that his un-lyrical brain can contrive. He said he hoped that ‘more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payments. And we will look at that as part of a fiscal event.’ In English he meant he won’t freeze granny to death next December.

Martin Howe KC

Starmer has surrendered to the EU

Sir Keir Starmer boldly claimed in the House of Commons this week that his ‘reset’ deal with the EU would ‘release us from the tired arguments of the past’. The truth is that it will do the exact opposite. The country will need to confront yet again tired old arguments which we thought had been resolved. Brexit was all about getting back control of our laws, our borders and our money. A Brexit in which we formally leave the European Union but still follow its laws is senseless. We lose our freedom to choose our laws, and we don’t even have a vote on the shape of the laws which

Isabel Hardman

Kemi’s best PMQs yet

Kemi Badenoch was on good, brutal form at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Keir Starmer had tried to spike her guns by using a planted question to tell the chamber at the start that as the economy improved, he wanted to see more pensioners eligible for winter fuel payment. But the Tory leader still managed to make Starmer – and his party – look uncomfortable. Her most potent line was a taunt: ‘He can’t see them, but they all look sick just hearing what it is he’s going to do.’ Enough Labour MPs have expressed worries about the government’s policies on benefits, immigration and aid that her accusation rang true, even

Ross Clark

Starmer’s winter fuel U-turn is a big mistake

One of Keir Starmer’s first mistakes in office was to remove the winter fuel allowance from all pensioners other than those in receipt of pension credit. His latest big error is performing a U-turn and telling us that the government is, after all, looking at loosening the eligibility criteria, so that many more pensioners will qualify for the money next winter. Starmer’s explanation for his U-turn during Prime Minister’s Questions was bizarre How can both these things be true? Because the former was a political error, the latter an economic one. The optics of removing the winter fuel allowance at a time when millions of public sector workers were receiving

Oscar Edmondson

Winter fuel U-turn and a rift at the heart of government

12 min listen

After sustained speculation and a local elections drubbing, Keir Starmer announced today at PMQs that the government will be softening their policy on winter fuel. Whilst it won’t come into effect for some time, they have agreed to ensure that ‘more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payment.’ This comes hours after a memo was mysteriously leaked to the Telegraph. It contains an extensive list of recommendations from Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner to the Treasury, including a set of eight tax rises such as reinstating the pensions lifetime allowance and altering dividend taxes. This amounts to a direct challenge to Rachel Reeves’s fiscal approach and preference for spending cuts. The

Steerpike

Corbyn changes mind on Lowe’s Lucy Connolly motion

Rupert Lowe may have left Nigel Farage’s Reform party, but he’s certainly keeping himself busy. Now the MP has tabled an early day motion calling for a review of sentencing practices to ensure non-violent social media offenders don’t get locked up – after the wife of a Tory councillor, Lucy Connolly, was imprisoned for posting a heated message about last summer’s riots on social media. In a rare display of cross-party collaboration between the right and left wings of the Commons, ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn startled onlookers by being the first politician to add his name to the motion’s list of signatories. But he withdrew his support just as fast,

Limor Simhony Philpott

More than anything, Israelis want the hostages home

The war in Gaza, now in its 19th month, has reached a tipping point. On Monday, the UK, France, and Canada issued a stark warning to Israel, threatening ‘concrete actions’ if it doesn’t halt its renewed offensive and lift aid restrictions. The EU followed, with top diplomat Kaja Kallas announcing a review of trade agreements with Israel. Hamas gloated predictably, calling the statement ‘an important step’ toward restoring international law – as if the terror group ever cared about any law but Sharia. But this diplomatic pile-on risks emboldening the group and alienating an ally without offering viable solutions. Israel’s war against Hamas is messy, costly, and increasingly unpopular at