Politics

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

Wednesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Rachel Reeves's legacy is going to be dismal

For some time, the Budget on 26 November has been looking as if it might be Rachel Reeves’ final fling before she is pulled away from the levers of the UK economy. But if so, it appears she may be preparing to go out in style. According to a report in the Financial Times, she is planning, yet again, to raise taxes while using as an excuse a supposed black hole left behind by the Tories. The Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) has warned the Chancellor that the productivity estimates it has been using for its economic forecasts have been too optimistic. Rather than growing at 1.1 per cent in

Alexander Larman

Donald Trump will be on his best behaviour for King Charles

The Donald has touched down in Britain for his unprecedented second state visit. It makes sense in a way that this most unconventional of American presidents is being granted a privilege that has never been offered to any other US leader, namely a repeat performance of pageantry and pomp that will flatter this Anglophile’s ego to its considerable core. That the event is happening against King Charles’s wishes might bother any other prime minister, but such was Keir Starmer’s desire to curry favour with Trump that he even waved the King’s handwritten invitation on camera. And with that he ensured favourable treatment for the country he is (barely) governing. The

Patrick West

Britain is becoming a nation of hermits

The malign effects of the Covid lockdowns continue to reveal themselves. The latest confirmation of the baleful legacy of that policy is a new survey which suggests that we are turning into a nation of hermits. According to a fresh study, reported by the Daily Telegraph, many people in Britain are still imposing lockdowns on themselves, four years after the last government-decreed lockdown. The survey of 2,000 British adults discloses that two thirds of Gen Z – and more than half of millennials – said that there are times when they do not go outside for days. This isn’t something that only afflicts the youth. Across all generations, the study

Michael Gove

Why Danny Kruger's defection changes everything & could Boris Johnson be next?

54 min listen

This week Michael and Madeline unpick the shock defection of Danny Kruger to Reform UK’s ‘pirate ship’ – as described by Michael – and ask whether this coup could mark the beginning of the end for the Conservative party. They also dive into Westminster’s most charged moral debates: the assisted dying bill in the Lords and the quiet decriminalisation of abortion up to birth. What do these changes say about parliament’s ‘intoxicated liberal hubris’ – and the protections given to the vulnerable? Also, Donald Trump lands in Britain this week – but why is it that the Prime Minister acts ‘like Carson the butler’ in his presence, and who exactly

Tuesday

Madeline Grant

Only the boot-lickers will defend Mandelson now

Despite the Prime Minister presumably going to bed each night, trotters crossed, eyes screwed up and wishing hard as if trying to reanimate Tinkerbell, the Mandelson scandal is not magically going to go away. Indeed, today MPs were granted an extensive chunk of parliamentary time to discuss it. Unsurprisingly, the PM swerved this particular treat. Given how things are going he really ought to be ringing round publishers to see if any of them want his memoirs. I wonder where the serialisation will be? It’s a good job the Beano is still publishing. There was no sign of the Foreign Secretary either. Today the boy who stood on the burning

James Heale James Heale

Will Trump's state visit save Starmer?

12 min listen

Keir Starmer has lost another aide, MPs are debating what the Prime Minister knew about Mandelson’s links to Epstein and a new poll has Lucy Powell as the favourite to win Labour’s deputy leadership race against education secretary Bridget Phillipson. Could things be any worse for Starmer? With US President Donald Trump touching down at London Stansted tonight, the PM will be hoping the state visit provides an opportunity to draw a line under the past few weeks. But Trump is anything but predictable, and he likes a winner – will ‘The Donald’ sour on Starmer? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Matthew Lynn

Elon Musk's Tesla investment is a big gamble

Tesla does not look like a great investment right now. The competition from better and cheaper Chinese electric vehicles is savage and Elon Musk’s outspoken political views have tarnished the brand, at least among the eco-conscious liberals who first adopted it. And yet, Musk has just spent $1 billion (£733 million) of his own money on its shares. His investment only makes sense as a bet on its robotics unit – but that is still very high risk for the company’s pugnacious CEO.  No one could ever accuse Musk of not putting his money where his mouth is. While Tesla may be under more pressure than ever, yesterday he sank

Steerpike Steerpike

Two ex-Tory MPs defect to Reform

You spend ages waiting for a defection then two come along at once. On the same day that former Tory health minister Maria Caulfield defected to Reform, Mr S can reveal that Henry Smith, the former Conservative MP for Crawley, has also jumped ship. Smith was first elected to parliament in 2010 and was a member of a number of parliamentary committees – and will join Nigel Farage’s party as an ordinary member. Meanwhile his colleague, and former minister, Caulfield proclaimed on GB News this morning that ‘the future is Reform’. She told the outlet that: If you are Conservative right-minded, then the future is Reform. The country is going to

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why Britain can’t build

The government promised to build 1.5 million new homes over the course of this parliament. How close are they to reaching the annualised rate? We don’t yet have government statistics to cover the whole of Labour’s first year in office, yet in the year to March construction began on just 138,650 new homes across the UK. In other words, housebuilding is running at substantially less than half the rate needed for the government to meet its promise. In fact, construction is slowing compared with where it was under the Conservatives. A report by the House Builders’ Federation (HBF) on construction in London explains some of the reasons why. In London,

Steerpike Steerpike

Migrant deportations fail for second day in a row

It’s not been Sir Keir Starmer’s week. After a 100,000-strong march at the weekend saw Brits protest issues like Britain’s borders, the news that the Home Office has failed to deport migrants to France for the second day in a row is unlikely to defuse tensions. Thanks to human rights claims, the one-in one-out migrants deal to France has been delayed after lawyers submitted eleventh-hour legal challenges – putting a spanner in the works of Starmer’s deportation plans. A flight leaving Heathrow Airport today was due to have a number of migrants on board – but the Home Office admitted that there would be no deportations for the second day

Stephen Pollard

Is Danny Kruger right that the Tory party 'is over'?

It’s been widely – and rightly – said that Danny Kruger’s defection to Reform is a highly significant moment, both for his new party and for the Conservatives. But perhaps the most interesting contention he has made in explaining his move is that the Conservative Party “is over”. A more likely outcome is that while the Tories are unable to recover, they also refuse to collapse so completely that they become irrelevant It certainly seems inconceivable, as Kruger said, that the Tories could win the next election (although the last few years should have taught us that nothing is inconceivable in politics: Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party,

Steerpike Steerpike

China hawks demand spy probe answers

Oh dear. It seems that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has blundered again. The latest furore is about the agency’s decision to drop a China espionage case that alleged the involvement of more than two dozen reports to Beijing intelligence. The case collapsed yesterday and ‘not guilty’ verdicts were entered after Tom Little KC, the prosecutor, told the Old Bailey ‘we simply cannot continue to prosecute this case’. The trial was due to begin next month but Little said that the evidential threshold had not been met. Cue outrage from various Sinosceptics…. A quintet of senior parliamentarians have now written to Stephen Parkinson, the Director of Public Prosecutions, demanding answers.

Andrew Tettenborn

Labour is in a migration trap of its own making

The failure to deport any illegal migrants at all on the first designated flight to France yesterday under the agreement the government struck with France in August may be due to bad luck rather than bad management. This is still bad news for the nation; the smuggling gangs, far from being smashed by a complacent Keir Starmer, will now be airily reassuring clients that their investment is safe because, whatever the Home Office says, they are most unlikely to be sent back to France. However, in the longer term this is much worse news for Labour.  Labour are largely hamstrung here by their own ideology When the agreement for migrant

Eliot Wilson

If Tony Radakin couldn't reform the MoD, who can?

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, having handed over his responsibilities last week after four years as chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), began his new life with a speech at the Institute for Government. His 20-minute address was no bland reminiscence: the former professional head of Britain’s armed forces had a great deal to get off his chest. He was positive about much that had happened over the past four years. The UK had led the way in supporting Ukraine, Nato had become larger and stronger and the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ had shown that European nations could act quickly and effectively. The Defence Industrial Strategy and changes within the Ministry

Michael Evans

Trump is living in Putin's world

It all began with such promise. Donald Trump would sweep away all the failures of past administrations, sit astride the globe like a Nobel Prize winner in the making and solve the world’s seemingly unresolvable security challenges. To be fair, it has only been eight months since he began his second term in the White House. But it is a fact that Trump has struggled to bring the force of his personality and chutzpah to bear in trying to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as he pledged he would in short shrift during his presidential campaign. His return to the White House was supposed to be the start

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Rachel Reeves: destroyer of jobs

Over the past year, some 142,000 payrolled jobs have been lost, according to the latest labour market figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Another 8,000 disappeared last month alone. Unemployment remained at 4.7 per cent – higher than a year ago. The bulk of job losses came in accommodation and food services, which shed 90,000 workers. The culprit seems obvious: the anti-business tax raid unleashed by the Chancellor in the last Budget. That £25 billion hike on employer National Insurance, as well as the increase in the minimum wage, is not just discouraging job creation but making employers think twice about keeping people on. And with the government’s

Andrew Hogg

The long history of Peter Mandelson's scandals

The politician now known as Lord Mandelson is an unmitigated stranger to the truth who has been prepared to use the power of office to bully and obfuscate. This is not the verdict of some political obsessive merely drawing conclusions from the clouded career of the man who, until last week, was the United Kingdom’s man in Washington. It’s my view as a journalist – former news editor of two national newspapers, head of the Sunday Times Insight investigative team and reporter for the Daily Mail  – having once had occasion to question Mandelson about his financial dealings. His response to my questions revealed a side to the man at considerable variance

David Shipley

Cutting prison education is a calamity

Prisons across the country are slashing education funding. According to the Guardian, public money for prison education courses is being reduced by almost 50 per cent. As a result, basic English and maths courses are being scrapped. This appears to breach Labour’s 2024 manifesto commitment, in which they promised to ‘work with prisons to improve offenders’ access to purposeful activity, such as learning’. If the government hopes to save the justice system from collapse, then it needs to bring down reoffending. The Sentencing Bill and the coming reforms to the court system will significantly reduce the use of imprisonment, and Labour hope that jails and probation will be able to help

Edward Stringer

Barring Israeli soldiers from the Royal College of Defence Studies is a mistake

The government has announced that owing to the war in Gaza, students from the Israeli Defence Forces will no longer be welcome at the UK’s Royal College of Defence Studies in London. Those who are critical of Israel will welcome this display as robust signalling. I would argue that even they, and all those who desire long-term resolution of the region’s more intractable problems, should think long before supporting it. It is more likely that the most serious damage will be done to us. The RCDS is one the UK’s soft power jewels. I attended as a student in 2008 (one remains a member for life) and had it under

Monday

Patrick West

Progressives can never be wrong

The progressive and idealistic left will never admit that they are wrong. That’s because, possessed with a sense of mission and unshakable righteousness, they will always believe that they are right. No matter the murder in America last week of a family man by a reputed, self-styled anti-fascist, and no matter the mostly calm and dignified conduct of those at the Unite the Kingdom march in London on Saturday, they will always smear and demonise those of a conservative persuasion with hysterical, slanderous words. By all accounts, despite the 25 arrests made from a crowd of up to 150,000, it was a mostly civilised and peaceful affair. Perhaps the most