Politics Archives

Thursday

31 Jul 2025

Ctrl U: the Online Safety Act is shutting down the internet

This time last year, the UK was consumed by the worst race riots since 2001. It was precipitated by the spread of online rumours that the perpetrator of the Southport atrocity was a Muslim refugee. This summer, there have been smaller protests following reports of sexually motivated attacks allegedly perpetrated by migrants. But something is different. Legislation which was originally passed in 2023 came into force last Friday and the effects can already be felt. Social media posts showing rioters fighting with police have been suppressed; those referring to sexual attacks have been automatically flagged as pornographic. Footage from a protest outside the Britannia Hotel in Leeds, which showed police

Tim Shipman

The asylum hotel crisis will cost Labour

Yvette Cooper doesn’t do holidays, which is probably just as well since she is the minister who, this summer, holds Labour’s fate in her hands. During the Easter break, the Home Secretary, her husband Ed Balls and their adult children holidayed in Madrid. Cooper went every day to the British embassy to check emails and make secure phone calls to London. Balls tells a story about a camper van trip to New England in 2015, when Cooper was running for the Labour leadership. ‘After a few early mornings spent sailing her into the middle of the lake near their campsite so she had enough signal to call her campaign team

Wednesday

30 Jul 2025

Ross Clark

The air traffic control failure looks like cock-up rather than conspiracy

The most remarkable thing about today’s air traffic control failure, which has led to at least 45 flights being cancelled and many more disrupted, is how few people are bothering even to question whether this could be the work of hackers employed by a foreign power. In recent years almost every systems failure that afflicts UK infrastructure has caused speculation that the Russians or Chinese are to blame – followed by the gradual realisation that, no, we did this to ourselves through our own incompetence. What does it say about the priorities of the industry when perfume shops at Heathrow seem to be more adequately staffed than air traffic control?

Lucy Dunn

Could Reform’s Scottish surge provoke indyref2?

20 min listen

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney unveiled his strategy for pursuing a second independence referendum this week, arguing that an SNP majority at next year’s Holyrood elections is the only way to guarantee it. This is seen as an attempt to put Scottish independence back on the table as well as combat the rising popularity of Reform. Pollster Mark Diffley of Diffley Partnership joins Lucy Dunn to unpack the SNP’s independence strategy. Mark points out that while Reform are consistently outperforming expectations, their support still primarily comes from ex-Conservatives. This, plus the unpopularity of the current UK Labour government, could provide the SNP with an opening to exploit and shore up

Adam Holloway

Why I left the Conservatives – and joined Reform

There comes a moment for many soldiers – and most politicians – when you realise the battle you think you’re fighting isn’t the one your leaders are waging. That moment came for me watching Kemi Badenoch tell Sky News’s Trevor Phillips there are real differences between Reform UK and the Conservatives. She was right. The difference is the Reform leadership – voters grasp the scale of our national peril and back a party serious about addressing it. I didn’t leave the Conservative party, it left me Many in Britain feel we may already have passed the point of no return. Our cities grow less cohesive, the country effectively bankrupt. For

James Heale

Exclusive: Ex-Tory MP defects to Reform

Reform UK has today unveiled its latest defector. Adam Holloway served as the Conservative MP for Gravesham in Kent from 2005 until 2024. A former soldier, he focused heavily on military matters in the Commons and served in the Whips’ Office in the governments of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. His decision to switch parties follows a number of other ex-Tory MPs defecting including Jake Berry, Anne Marie Morris and Ross Thomson. More defections are expected in the coming weeks. In a statement, Nigel Farage told The Spectator that ‘Adam’s parliamentary and military experience will be vital as we look forward to the next general election.’ He added that Holloway’s

Michael Simmons

Trump’s tariffs are taming China

Stockholm This week, the fate of the global economy could have been decided over a Mongolian barbecue in a Stockholm tourist trap. On Tuesday, just 50 yards from Sweden’s seat of government, Rosenbad – where the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng had been wrangling over trade negotiations – the Chinese delegation suddenly exited the talks and headed for lunch near the Mongolian buffet place, where they had eaten the day before. Its windows were covered up and a sign announced it would be closed for three days for a ‘private event’. The Americans stayed behind, making do with salad. China, still the factory

Sean Thomas

The Online Safety Act is plumbing new depths of stupidity

As anyone who has endured a pointless argument on the internet probably knows, there’s a decidedly useful rule for such situations. It’s called Godwin’s Law. Coined in 1990 by American lawyer Mike Godwin, in its most well-known version it states that in any sufficiently lengthy online row, the first person to invoke the Nazis – whether as comparison, example, or evidence – instantly loses by virtue of their luridly stupid exaggeration. Anyone who drags infamous paedophile Jimmy Savile into a political argument has already lost. Why? Because they’ve reached up for the most grotesque, emotive analogy in the rhetorical pantry Now it seems we have a shiny new British equivalent.

Lara Brown

The Online Safety Act and Labour’s ‘ancient’ institutions

After Reform promised to repeal the Online Safety Act, it didn’t take long for Labour to defend internet censorship. ‘And get rid of child protections online? Madness,’ Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted. ‘Why would anyone want to grant strangers and paedophiles unfettered online access to children?’ asked Mike Tapp. Science Minister Peter Kyle went one step further, declaring that anyone opposing the Online Safety Act – including Reform leader Nigel Farage – is ‘on the side of Jimmy Savile’. Labour’s latest attack ad reads: ‘Farage’s Reform party would scrap laws keeping children safe online’. How dare Farage try to turn back the tide of progress like this, returning the UK

Steerpike

Trump suggests he could become Scotland’s next First Minister

Watch out, John Swinney – Donald Trump is, it seems, eyeing up your job. During the US President’s trip up north to visit his Turnberry golf course and open his new ‘Mona Lisa’ course in Aberdeenshire, Trump was full of praise for bonnie Scotland and its people, going so far as to single out the First Minister to call him a ‘terrific guy’ during yesterday’s opening ceremony. Goodness… But while the President was full of compliments for the SNP leader, he suggested he wouldn’t mind knocking him off the top spot to take the First Minister job himself at some point. When quizzed whether he’d ever want to run Scotland,

Stephen Pollard

Starmer’s Palestine U-turn shows how dangerous he is

We often think of Sir Keir Starmer as the dull bureaucrat, all at sea in politics – a Prime Minister who is elevated from the concerns of so many of his colleagues, and who just can’t relate to them. Starmer is certainly a leader on the defensive: pushed around by his backbenchers, rather than the man who delivered a Labour landslide who has then plotted his government’s direction of travel. If Starmer is judged on his actions, a damning picture emerges of a man incapable of sticking to any one position But in any meaningful sense, the ‘worthy but dull’ caricature of the PM is plain wrong – and demonstrably so.

Steerpike

Watch: Gary Neville turns his guns on Starmer

Back to Gary Neville, the left-wing right-back who has never met a camera he didn’t like. Just when we thought he’d disappeared from our screens for good, the lefty ex-footballer has reared his head again to take a pop at, er, Labour. That’s a turnaround for the books! Speaking to Sky News this morning, the card-carrying Labour member decided to opine on some of the Treasury’s decision-making of late. First caveating that he is very much in favour the government’s choice to up the minimum wage – ‘I honestly believe that people, to be fair, should be paid more’, the millionaire pundit confessed – Neville turned his guns on Sir Keir

David Shipley

The horror of police involvement in the grooming gangs

However bad you think the rape gang scandal is, it keeps getting worse. Yesterday, the BBC published a detailed investigation which stated that ‘five women who were exploited by grooming gangs in Rotherham as children say they were also abused by police officers in the town at the time.’ The report, based on interviews with the five women, along with testimony from 25 other victims, says that ‘corrupt police officers worked alongside the gangs or failed to act on child sexual exploitation.’ Most of the alleged victims were ‘in their teens but some were as young as 11’. Again and again we see signs that these rape gangs acted with

Steerpike

Few Brits believe minor crimes are properly policed

It’s the second week of Reform’s six-week ‘Lawless Britain’ campaign and there has been some back and forth about whether crime rates in the UK are getting better or worse. New polling out today reveals, however, what the public think about the tackling of crime in this country – and the results are rather damning. A YouGov poll, conducted between 23-24 June, found that few British adults believe that criminals who commit minor crimes are likely to face justice. Less than 10 per cent of Brits think that those who steal bicycles, snatch phones, scam people online or dodge fares will face punitive action. This is in stark contrast to

Ross Clark

Has the IMF changed its tune on Brexit?

Given the perilous condition of Britain’s public finances, perhaps we ought to start taking the IMF and its World Economic Outlook a little more seriously. It is not impossible to foresee Rachel Reeves or her successor having to repeat what one of her Labour predecessors, Denis Healey, had to do in 1976: and beg the IMF for an emergency loan. What the IMF thinks of the prospects for the UK economy will be key to what sort of deal she might be able to secure. The IMF has, at least, ceased to make out that Britain is doomed to suffer a self-inflicted, Brexit-generated recession all of its own. On the

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Starmer’s Palestine position is perverse

Keir Starmer’s declaration that Britain will recognise a Palestinian state unless Israel takes ‘substantive steps’ to end the war in Gaza is, on its face, a symbolic diplomatic gesture. Yet symbols, particularly in international affairs, carry weight. And this one is a blow to Israel, both politically and strategically. The question is not whether this decision is consequential, but how and for whom. If recognition is contingent on Israel achieving a ceasefire, then Hamas has every reason to prolong the conflict Framed as a humanitarian imperative, the British ultimatum appears, on closer inspection, to rest on an unsettling inversion of logic. The precondition for recognition of a Palestinian state is

Gareth Roberts

As a gay man, let me tell you the truth about Section 28

‘As a gay man…’ is a handy signal; in 99 per cent of cases, it tells you that whatever follows is going to be irrelevant rubbish. This certainly held true during the excruciating appearance on Iain Dale’s LBC show the other day by Zack Polanski, one of the candidates in the current campaign for leadership of the Green party. Polanski had been ambushed by phone-in caller Dr Shahrar Ali, who isn’t just a random member of the public. In fact, he is the former deputy leader of the Green Party, who last year won a legal case against them for discrimination without following a fair process. The Greens had removed

David Spencer

The Met must fix London’s street crime crisis

It’s a statement of the bleeding obvious: London is in the grip of a street crime epidemic. Between 2021 and 2024, knife crime in London increased by 58.5 per cent to 16,789 offences – the highest number ever recorded. Most, about 60 per cent, are robberies, and in a significant proportion of them the item stolen was a mobile phone. Over 81,000 mobile phones were reported stolen in London last year. What has gone wrong, who is responsible and what can be done about it? One of the key insights Policy Exchange reveal in its report today is that knife crime is highly geographically concentrated. Only 4 per cent of neighbourhoods

Tuesday

29 Jul 2025

Michael Simmons

The US-China trade war is not over yet

Stockholm, Sweden The United States and China have concluded two days of trade negotiations in Stockholm without reaching an agreement to extend the truce in their ongoing trade war. Shortly after the talks ended, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who led the American delegation, told reporters that any decision to extend the current 12 August deadline – at which point tariffs would revert to 34 per cent – rests solely with President Trump. A meeting between Trump and President Xi Jinping was not on the agenda. The Chinese delegation said both sides had agreed to ‘push’ for such an extension. Bessent, along with Trump’s trade adviser Jamieson Greer, told me

James Heale

Starmer to recognise a Palestinian state

Following a lengthy cabinet meeting this afternoon, No. 10 announced that the UK is prepared to follow France in recognising a Palestinian state in September. Keir Starmer intends to press ahead with this plan unless three conditions are met: that Israel takes substantive steps and reaches a ceasefire, makes clear that there will be no annexation of the West Bank and commits to a long-term peace process to deliver a two-state solution. Given that Israel is currently unlikely to commit to any, let alone all three, of these conditions, British recognition of Palestine now looks inevitable. The official Downing Street read-out of today’s session stretches to 664 words. That is