Politics

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

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Emily Maitlis doesn’t understand grooming gangs

‘You are focusing on Pakistani grooming gangs, because, probably, you’re racist.’ That’s what Emily Maitlis told ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe when he had the misfortune of appearing on the News Agents podcast yesterday. But is she right? In fact, Pakistani men are up to five times as likely to be responsible for child sex grooming offences than the general population, according to figures from the Hydrant Programme, which investigates child sex abuse. Around one in 73 Muslim men over 16 have been prosecuted for ‘group-localised child sexual exploitation’ in Rotherham, research by academics from the universities of Reading and Chichester has revealed. Lowe has highlighted these cases and is crowdfunding an inquiry

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Equalities watchdog faces legal action over trans rules

Oh dear. Now legal action has been launched against the UK’s equalities watchdog – alleging that guidance around transgender people and toilet facilities breaches human rights law. Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project has today announced it has instructed a team of lawyers in a case against the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Labour’s equalities minister Bridget Phillipson. Good heavens… It comes after the ruling by the Supreme Court last month that backed the biological definition of a woman, concluding that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act referred to biological sex. The equalities watchdog insisted the ruling meant that transwomen should be prohibited from using female toilets and changing facilities –

James Heale

Parliament is changing its mind on assisted dying

There was a markedly different feel to today’s debate on Assisted Dying. The last time the House debated Kim Leadbeater’s Bill at the end of November, there was plenty of pep and self-congratulation among the speeches. But today, it was a decidedly more bad-tempered affair, as MPs met for the first day on the Bill’s report stage, ahead of its Third Reading in a month’s time. There are four obvious reasons why today saw a shift in the mood of the House. The first was the chop-and-change of the Bill’s safeguards during committee stage, with roughly 150 changes since the last vote. Labour’s Florence Eshalomi gave one of the most

A 10mph speed limit is preposterous

The increase of 20mph speed limits in Britain has been sending drivers around the bend. But if an organisation called the Road Safety Foundation (RSF) has its way, things could be about to get even slower – and more frustrating – for motorists. The RSF says that road speeds in cities should be cut to 10mph to prevent deaths and reduce serious injuries. Talk of a 10mph speed limit is preposterous. Does the RSF want to take us back to 1903, when the Motor Car Act of that year first raised the speed limit to what was then a blistering 20mph? Nearly all of human progress involves trade-offs between advantages and risks

Brendan O’Neill

The anti-Israel Eurovision mob are Hamas’s little helpers

Imagine booing a survivor of a fascist attack. People actually did that this week. Pro-Palestine activists heckled and insulted a young woman who survived Hamas’s anti-Semitic butchery of 7 October 2023 by playing dead under a pile of bodies. Take a minute to consider the depravity of this, the sheer inhumanity of tormenting a woman who experienced such terror. It was a spectacle of cruelty masquerading as protest The woman is Yuval Raphael. She’s the 24-year-old singer who’s representing Israel at Eurovision. The last big music event she attended was the Nova festival in the desert of southern Israel on 7 October 2023. What she witnessed there almost defies belief.

MPs should get a say on Starmer’s trade deals

Sir Keir Starmer has been busy talking up his trade deals with the US and India, while also planning ‘reset’ talks with the EU next week. Yet are these agreements all they are cracked up to be? The simple answer is that it is hard to tell because MPs are unlikely to get an opportunity to scrutinise them adequately. However, with all these deals, the devil is likely to be in the detail – and there is every chance that each one may prove to be politically contentious in the coming weeks and months. Over the past year alone, Labour has proposed a controversial new deal with Mauritius over the

The red lines delaying an American nuclear deal with Iran

Speaking to reporters on his Middle East diplomatic tour, Donald Trump hinted at what could be his biggest foreign policy achievement to date. A nuclear deal with Iran is ‘close’, he said. Tehran has ‘sort of’ agreed to curbing its suspected clandestine atomic weapons programme. The US and Iran have now had four rounds of indirect negotiations in Oman, and although the content has remained confidential, the atmosphere between the two sides has been candid but amicable, raising expectations that a deal to stop Tehran ‘breaking out’ and building a nuclear bomb could be brokered diplomatically without the need for Trump to resort to military force. When the first round

Ross Clark

Rachel Reeves’s war on family businesses

The Environmental and Rural Affairs select committee is surely right that the government imposed the inheritance tax changes on farmland without proper consultation – and ignored the likelihood that they will cause serious hardship for family farms. Never mind the threshold which Rachel Reeves claims will mean most farms can still be passed on IHT-free – something questioned by the NFU and other critics – the new rules will inevitably drive many larger farms out of business when the current generation passes on. But is there really any point in what the committee is proposing: that the changes are simply delayed for a year? Surely what we really need is

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Sturgeon earns more from second jobs than her MSP role

To the SNP’s Dear Leader, who just can’t seem to keep out of the spotlight. Now Scotland’s former first minister – who is still a sitting MSP – has been accused of prioritising herself over her constituents after her declared extra earnings reveal she is earning more from her second jobs than her role as a parliamentarian. Alright for some! Alongside her £74,000 a year MSP salary, it transpires that Sturgeon has declared almost £200,000 of additional earnings since resigning from the top job as FM in 2023. Alongside her day job, the Glasgow politician has received yet another bumper sum of £76,500 for her upcoming memoir, Frankly, which is

James Heale

Inside Zia Yusuf’s Reform masterplan

On Monday, I sat down for a lengthy interview on Spectator TV with Zia Yusuf, the chairman of Reform UK. This weekend, many of his party’s 677 newly-elected councillors will come to London to hear from him on how to make the most of their bridgehead in local government. One thing that Yusuf is clearly thinking hard about is the role of these councillors in crafting Reform’s narrative for 2029. He believes that they will demonstrate that his party is fit to govern and expose the failings of the established parties in office. Much of his focus will be fighting the Home Office in court to stop asylum-seekers being put

Could Starmer’s ‘return hubs’ work?

Yesterday, following the publication of Labour’s immigration white paper, Sir Keir Starmer tried to pull a rabbit out of the hat by announcing what he described as ‘return hubs’ for failed asylum seekers. On a visit to Albania to discuss measures to crack down on organised crime and illegal immigration, Starmer said he was in talks with a number of countries about the idea and that he saw return hubs as ‘a really important innovation’. It is hard to see Starmer’s ‘return hubs’ announcement as anything but an embarrassment Unfortunately, he was left like a stage conjuror with a malfunctioning prop when his host – the Albanian PM, Edi Rama

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Lammy hits back in row with French taxi driver

Back to our hapless Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who has found himself embroiled in a new war of words. No, not with Sergey Lavrov or president Xi – this time, it’s with a French cab driver. Zut alors! Sources close to the Foreign Office denied Lammy had been aggressive in any way Lammy got into a dispute with Nasin Mumin after the taxi driver charged the Foreign Secretary and his wife Nicola Green an additional fee of €700 (£590) for a 360-mile trip from Forli in Italy, where the King made a state visit, to Flaine in France, where the couple were holidaying. Mumin alleges the couple’s entourage had agreed

John Keiger

Britain could pay a big price for Starmer’s ‘EU Reset’

The great ‘EU Reset’ of 19 May – when the first formal UK-EU summit since Brexit will take place – is rapidly approaching. Yet even before Keir Starmer and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen meet in London to thrash out an agreement, advance attempts to sell the new relationship are growing. That so much surrounding Monday’s UK-EU summit in London is being kept secret on either side of the Channel is auspicious ‘UK wins £500m in science grants from EU Horizon scheme after Brexit lockout,’ the Guardian excitedly told its readers earlier this month. It claimed that British scientists were ‘over the moon’ with Britain’s return to the EU’s flagship

The trouble with BBC Verify

Can the BBC ever be objective and unbiased? It’s a question many of us ask ourselves, sometimes in hope, often in exasperation. It’s also a question that the Corporation forever asks itself, but instead in the spirit of aspiration and ambition. So it’s ostensibly good news that it has announced plans to expand its Verify fact-checking unit. On the face of it, this initiative should result in more accountably and scrutiny in its news output. Verify was born out of insincerity and dishonesty BBC director-general Tim Davie has unveiled a scheme, on behalf of ‘the world’s most trusted news provider’, to ‘build Verify across more services globally’. Davie also wants

Why lesbians want out of the LGBT movement

LGBT+ is an ‘inclusive’ way to represent all the different identities in the longer acronym, says the BBC. What nonsense: the reality is that while lesbians and gay men often get lumped together we actually have little in common. It’s time for lesbians to break free of the LGBT+ label. As the LGBT+ acronym has expanded to become more ‘inclusive’, many lesbians like me have come to feel less included As the LGBT+ acronym has expanded in recent years to become more ‘inclusive’, many lesbians like me have come to feel less and less included. The umbrella term takes in all manner of sexual and gender identities, most of which

Steerpike

Man charged with arson over fires linked to Starmer

To the fires linked to Sir Keir Starmer’s property and car that have been probed this week. It now transpires that a 21-year-old man has been charged with arson with intent to endanger life over attacks at properties linked to the Prime Minister. Roman Lavrynovych, a Ukrainian national living in Sydenham, London, is alleged to have started fires outside two properties and torching a vehicle in north London. He has been charged with three counts of arson with intent to endanger life and is due to appear at Westminster magistrates’ court on Friday. It comes after the London Fire Brigade and the police had attended the property shortly after 1.30

Mixed signals for Labour as GDP rises but the rich leave

13 min listen

The Prime Minister is in Albania today to focus on immigration: the government has announced that the UK is in talks to set up ‘return hubs’ with other countries to send failed asylum seekers abroad.  Unfortunately for the government though, also going abroad are Britain’s millionaires. In the cover article for this week’s Spectator, our economics editor Michael Simmons writes that London lost 11,300 dollar millionaires last year alone. These figures run in stark contrast to today’s news that GDP increased by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2025. This continues a trend of mixed signals for Britain’s economy.  Also on the podcast Spectator editor Michael Gove discusses his interview with justice secretary

Steerpike

Would voters back a Tory-Reform pact?

While rumours continue to swirl about whether the Conservatives will strike a deal with Reform UK, exclusive polling shared with the Spectator suggests that voters aren’t all that convinced by the aligning of the Tories with Nigel Farage’s party. In fact, it appears that almost six in ten Brits believe the Tories and Labour are similar to each other – with two thirds of Reform supporters seeing little difference between the UK’s two main parties. How very curious… The data from Merlin Strategy, collected from 2,300 adults on 9 May, backs up concerns that voters are turning away from the UK’s long-established political parties – with just under 70 per