Politics

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

Friday

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour Together? Party morale & the threat of Reform

11 min listen

Former Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth and Patrick Maguire from The Times join Katy Balls for her penultimate Coffee House Shots podcast as The Spectator‘s political editor. Since losing his seat at last year’s general election, Ashworth has been CEO of Labour Together – but not for much longer as he exclusively reveals on the podcast. Less than two weeks to go from the local elections, and only a few months away from marking one year in power, what is morale like in the Labour Party? While Patrick reflects on who might, or might not, be feeling happy, Ashworth provides more reasons for Labour supporters to feel bullish – particularly when thinking about the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Deborah Mattinson Edition

29 min listen

Deborah Mattinson joined the House of Lords as a Labour peer in February. Her involvement in politics began when she worked alongside Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould to create Labour’s Shadow Communications Agency for Neil Kinnock. In 1992 she co-founded Opinion Leader Research, and she went on to advise Tony Blair ahead of the 1997 election and later became Gordon Brown’s chief pollster. In 2021 she was appointed Director of Strategy for Keir Starmer, a position she held until stepping down following last year’s landslide victory. On the podcast, Deborah tells Katy Balls about growing up as a Labour supporter with a father active in local Tory politics, the work

Bijan Omrani

What English Heritage gets wrong about the origins of Easter

Easter is, of course, the time of year when Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but don’t expect to learn that on the English Heritage children’s Easter trail. ‘Did you know Easter started as a celebration of spring?,’ children who take part in the trail are told. Any mention of Christ or Christianity is omitted from that sign, which has been planted at English Heritage sites across the country. However, one god does get a look in. This first panel, decorated with children collecting flowers, painted eggs and a cheery Easter bunny, gave the following account of the origin of Easter: ‘Long ago, people welcomed warmer days

Zoe Strimpel

The trouble with Harvard

Harvard is in trouble, but I’m finding it hard to have any sympathy. In the aftermath of October 7th, Jewish students at what is supposedly the United States’s most prestigious university were intimidated, vilified and silenced. It was an intolerable double punch after the trauma of Hamas’s brutal massacre in Israel. The ugly scenes at Harvard became a blueprint for campus protests throughout the US, especially at Columbia, UCLA and the University of Michigan. These all-campus jamborees of Israel-loathing were looked on benignly, and sometimes even joined, by faculty that are otherwise easily angered by crimes such as using the wrong gender pronoun. Now, as threatened, Donald Trump is taking

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Why ‘respectable’ Tories don’t like Russell Findlay

The plight of Russell Findlay reveals a lot about how politics works. Findlay was elected leader of the Scottish Conservatives in September 2024, by which point the party’s vulnerability to Reform was already clear. The Holyrood Tories were not made for a populist era. They are a patrician party of the cosy centre, chiefly concerned with the Union, taxes and crime, and so Findlay’s populist style has not been welcomed by some of his MSPs. One of them, Jamie Greene, has defected to the Liberal Democrats and, whether any of his former colleagues join him, there are several who no longer seem at home in the Tory Party. Findlay’s unvarnished

Daniel DePetris

What will Trump do if the Ukraine peace talks fail?

With the war in Ukraine now in its fourth year, Trump administration officials, including Donald Trump himself, have spent the last month dialling their Ukrainian colleagues, jetting to foreign capitals to meet with Ukrainian and Russian officials and huddling with European ministers in an attempt to bring the conflict to a conclusion. The latest meeting happened this week, when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, traveled to Paris for an all-hands session. Trump, however, doesn’t have much to show for his efforts. U.S. officials continue to put on a brave face and insist that Trump, and only Trump, has the knowledge, skill-set and experience to negotiate

Thomas Munson

The Good Friday Agreement has failed to heal Northern Ireland

‘As if we didn’t have enough to argue about!’ exclaimed the gentleman in front. We were standing just off a busy road adjacent to a looming wall. The road wasn’t any road, and the wall wasn’t any wall. It was Shankill Road, and this was one of Belfast’s infamous peace walls. The man wasn’t picking a fight. He was referring to West Belfast’s increasingly prevalent references to the war in Gaza. Peace walls have adorned murals of Northern Irish paramilitaries for decades. Now, there are a growing number of references to fighting in the Middle East, with Belfast’s Protestant and Catholic communities divided on the issue with sad predictability. Falls

Thursday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Where the King went wrong on Maundy Thursday

It is an unfortunate truth that the picturesque Maundy Thursday service celebrated today in Durham, in which the King distributes Maundy money to deserving individuals, is a watered down version of the original. It started out in abbeys and churches when clerics would wash each others’ feet in imitation of Christ washing the feet of the Apostles before the Last Supper. Bad King John adopted the tradition in 1210 by washing the feet of poor men and it was maintained by monarchs until about the Glorious Revolution of 1688 – James II was the last to do it properly – until it was finally replaced with the hygienic but not very moving ceremony of distributing money by George II.  If the

The Spectator

Watch: Douglas Murray on Israel’s plight and the plague of western guilt

On Monday evening, The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove and Spectator columnist and associate editor Douglas Murray sat down for a live event at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster.  In front of a packed auditorium with 1,500 guests, they discussed the October 7th massacre; Douglas’s latest book, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West; and the best and the worst aspects of the MAGA movement. This is a video exclusively for Spectator subscribers.

Richard Dawkins

Will the Supreme Court gender case victors get the apologies they deserve?

Those who have won a great victory after years of struggle are entitled to enjoy a modest triumph, a single victory lap. But to crow too loudly is unseemly, and it is the mark of a small victor to pursue former opponents vindictively, taking vengeful advantage of new-found power to do so. An ugly object lesson is the small-minded man gleefully dominating American headlines today: a walking, talking, strutting, preening definition of how not to behave in victory. If there’s one thing you can count on a woman to quite clearly not have, it is a penis On 16 April, in London, the Supreme Court handed a stunning victory to

James Heale James Heale

UK-US trade deal ‘within three weeks’

It is the eternal question for UK policymakers: America or Europe? For the past nine months, Keir Starmer has sought to follow his 17 post-war predecessors in maintaining an uneasy balancing act between the two. But the Prime Minister’s tricky task has been made even more difficult by Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The President is a lifelong Eurosceptic, declaring in February that ‘the European Union was formed in order to screw the United States’. In his second term Trump is demonstrating even more hostility towards the EU than before. His administration has shown little interest in maintaining close Atlantic ties, citing grievances on trade and defence expenditure.

Kristina Murkett

The teachers’ union should be on the side of private schools

The National Education Union has accused private schools of exploiting staff to save money. ‘Staff working in the private education sector,’ said Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU, ‘report that workload is being increased… in response to the cost-of-living crisis and increased cost of VAT and national insurance.’  It is of course true that private schools are under more financial pressure than ever, and are making cost-cutting decisions that may add to teachers’ workload: one in five private school teachers say they have had colleagues made redundant since VAT on school fees was introduced, while 26 per cent say that their school has frozen recruitment. Yet teachers’ workload is a problem across

Steerpike Steerpike

Rupert Lowe to sue Reform leadership for defamation

Back to the Reform fallout, which has escalated this afternoon. Now the party’s former MP Rupert Lowe has said he will sue his old party for defamation over what he claims is a ‘concerted smear campaign’ against him. He was suspended in March after party chairman Zia Yusuf and the chief whip Lee Anderson released a joint statement in which said they had referred Rupert Lowe to the police, alleging their ex-colleague had made ‘threats of physical violence’ against Yusuf. The Metropolitan Police has since launched an investigation into the now-independent MP – and Lowe’s gun collection was seized at the start of the month. Crikey! Lowe has been taking

Katy Balls Katy Balls

How Wes Streeting will make or break Starmer

15 min listen

Michael Gove and Katy Balls join James Heale to discuss their interview with the Health Secretary Wes Streeting included in this week’s special Easter edition of The Spectator. Michael identifies three key reasons why Streeting’s fate is key to the success of the government: immigration, the cost-of-living crisis and faith in the NHS. Seen as the ‘golden child’ of Number 10, Streeting has as many supporters in the Labour party as he has detractors – but his Blairite-coded image could help him take the fight to Reform.  Also on the podcast, Michael, Katy and James discuss Nigel Farage’s progress in the local election campaign. Plus, as this is Katy’s last podcast

Steerpike Steerpike

Brussels chief gushes over Starmer

Sir Keir Starmer may not be polling all that well with the British public but he’s managed to garner some overseas admiration. It transpires that the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has penned an enthusiastic piece in Time magazine on the UK Prime Minister, lauding his previous work in the courts and heaping praise on his diplomatic talents. How very interesting… Von der Leyen gushes that ‘as a young human rights lawyer, Keir Starmer fought against the death penalty in courts across the world’, going on to rave: Throughout his career, he worked to safeguard the values of justice and democracy – even taking on Vladimir

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour’s gender debate hypocrisy

The ink had barely dried on the Supreme Court justices’ unanimous judgment on Wednesday – confirming that ‘woman’ in the Equality Act refers to biological sex – before Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot were out there touting their long-term advocacy of that very position. Education Secretary Bridge Phillipson even claimed in response to the ruling that: ‘We have always supported the protection of single sex spaces based on biological sex.’ But if Mr S’s memory serves correctly, that isn’t an entirely accurate reflection of history. How times change… After all it was Phillipson herself who, when asked on Times Radio last June which bathroom a transwoman should use, replied: ‘You

Matthew Lynn

Can Starmer sell a US trade deal to UK business?

The White House reportedly expects that a trade deal between the United States and the UK could be signed within the next few weeks. This should be a big deal, at least for the small island if not for the world’s biggest economy. There could be a grand signing ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Or at a state visit to parliament by President Donald Trump. Or, if nothing else, perhaps Paddington Bear could put in an appearance to boost marmalade exports. But there is just one catch. It will have to be sold to the public and business alike – and that will be very hard for the bitterly anti-Trump Starmer

Steerpike Steerpike

Jenrick embroiled in UK ‘Signalgate’

It’s official: Robert Jenrick is running. Rarely a week now goes by without the Shadow Justice Secretary causing some sort of stir. Whether it is his impressive weight loss or his triumph over the Sentencing Council, the Newark MP is an ever-present in the headlines of the Tory press. But, in their latest initiative, it seems that the tech-savvy team behind Robert Jenrick have now come somewhat unstuck… For this morning, in a bid to plug their man’s forthcoming London Marathon bid, team Jenrick created a WhatsApp group of friends and admirers. Unfortunately, more than 500 names were added including the cream of HM Parliamentary Press Gallery and one of

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why is Starmer not fighting the EU’s new carbon tariff?

Why do so many people rail against the trade barriers erected by Donald Trump and yet have so little to say about similar barriers erected by the EU? Where is the liberal outrage against the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) which from next January will add tariffs to imports of ferrous metals, aluminium, cement and fertiliser, and which in future is intended to be expanded to other goods with significant carbon footprints? While remainer opinion has condemned Keir Starmer and his government for ‘appeasing’ Trump by considering lowering the Digital Services Tax and easing online safety laws in order to please US tech giants, there is a remarkable lack

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Britain and France are too scared to tackle the migrant crisis

France has overtaken Germany as Europe’s top destination for asylum seekers. During the first quarter of 2025, France registered more than 40,000 applications, just above Spain (39,318) and Germany (37,387). This is a 41 per cent drop in German applications for the same period in 2024; Interior Minister Nancy Faeser attributed the fall to a ‘strong package of measures, Germany’s own actions and close European cooperation’. Germany has been Europe’s destination of choice for asylum seekers since 2011. The country was considered the most welcoming, in part because of the impression cultivated by the former chancellor Angela Merkel, who issued an open invitation to migrants and refugees in 2015. Successive