Politics

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

Thursday

Oscar Edmondson

The Spectator’s war on government waste

11 min listen

It’s a double celebration for Rachel Reeves today. Not only is it her birthday, but the UK economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics’ latest report. December, when the economy expanded by 0.4 per cent (the market consensus had been 0.1 per cent), was the saving grace. This helped tip the final quarter of 2024 onto the right side of positive growth. But it’s not all rosy for the Chancellor. This morning’s update won’t take anyone in the Treasury off high alert, and there has been a development in the story about her CV. The BBC has been looking

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Car rams crowd in Munich, injuring at least 28

This morning, at around 10.30 local time, a white Mini Cooper ploughed into a crowd of more than 1,000 people in central Munich, south Germany. According to the local authorities, at least 28 people have been injured, with several suffering life-threatening injuries, including a child. Pictures from the scene show a battered car, with a smashed windscreen, surrounded by debris and discarded first aid material. According to Bavarian police, the driver of the car, who was arrested at the scene, is a 24-year-old Afghan failed asylum seeker. The man is reportedly known to the police and has a history of drug and theft-related offenses. The German newspaper Der Spiegel is

Steerpike Steerpike

Reeves faced expenses probe in previous job

As birthdays go, this is unlikely to be Rachel Reeves’s most enjoyable – thanks to an unexpected present from the BBC. Its journalists have been busy digging around the Chancellor’s CV claims – detailed in Mr S’s full timeline here – and the corporation has accused Reeves of exaggerating how long she spent working at the Bank of England. And, in a move that has become almost habitual for the Labour Chancellor in recent months, it appears ‘Rachel from accounts’ has changed her LinkedIn CV yet again… Reeves initially claimed in an interview with Stylist that she ‘spent a decade working as an economist at the Bank of England’ –

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MP WhatsApp scandal worsens

Uh oh. Former Labour health minister Andrew Gwynne was sacked and suspended at the weekend after some rather controversial message exchanges involving the MP were revealed. A second MP, Oliver Ryan, had the whip removed on Monday after his role in the controversial group chat – ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ – came to light. But now, as reported by the Times, more messages have been unearthed that paint the pair in an even worse light. The private group, for the eyes and ears of a select few Labour activists and MPs in Greater Manchester, was in use between 2019 and 2022. Amongst normal conversations were remarks deemed sexist, racist and derogatory

Matthew Lynn

Does Rachel Reeves’s industrial strategy even exist?

The Labour government was pinning everything on an ambitious industrial strategy to boost growth. It was meant to make the UK the fastest-growing economy in the G7, reboot the economy, raise real wages and generate all the extra tax revenues that were going to pay for improved public services. The trouble is, there is not much sign of it. First we were told that it would be published in the spring, and now it has emerged that we will have to wait until June to finally see it. It is increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that it may not actually exist.  Today’s GDP figures will have come as a

Andrew Tettenborn

Judges have finally backed a Christian who was sacked for LGBT posts

Finally, some good news on the free speech front: a Christian school worker who lost her job after sharing posts about gay relationships has won a crucial legal battle. Seven years ago, Kristie Higgs, a pastoral worker and mother at a primary school who held firm Christian views, used her private Facebook account to complain in colourful language about plans to rejig sex and relationships education in primary schools. One post referred to “brainwashing our children”. Another mentioned “suppressing Christianity and removing it from the public arena”. Higgs also called on her Facebook friends to sign a petition. She felt particularly exercised about suggestions that gender was a matter of

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

UK recession fears ease but Rachel Reeves has little to celebrate

The UK economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics’s latest report. December, when the economy expanded by 0.4 per cent (the market consensus had been 0.1 per cent), was the saving grace. This helped tip the final quarter of 2024 onto the right side of positive growth. Talk of recession will quiet down, at least for now. But this morning’s update is not going to take anyone in No.10 or the Treasury off high-alert. Monthly growth in December was stronger than expected, mainly thanks to a continued rise in services activity and a recovery in production from

Dalibor Rohac

Trump risks playing into Putin’s hands on a Ukraine peace deal

With the phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the quest for a peace deal for Ukraine is off to a troubling start. The conversation hinted at an eventual normalisation of United States-Russia relations and signalled that negotiations are likely to be led over the heads of Europeans – and Ukrainians – and possibly without input from Trump’s own Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg.  ‘As we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine’, Donald Trump wrote after his conversation with the Russian leader. ‘President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’ We both believe very strongly

Adrian Pabst

What postliberalism really is

The election of Donald Trump and the advance of populism across Europe confirm that we have already entered a postliberal era. Our age marks the end of liberal hegemony that first emerged in the 1960s and 1970s before triumphing after the end of the cold war – the fusion of left-wing social-cultural liberalism with right-wing economic liberalism. Contemporary liberal thought – with its focus on the individual, negative liberty, subjective rights and utility-maximisation – fails to understand the world we live in or the nature of reality. Part of the reason is that much of 20th-century liberalism denies any notion of substantive, transcendent goods in favour of individual rights. Contemporary

Jawad Iqbal

Saudi Arabia’s beer ban shows why it shouldn’t host the World Cup

Football fans attending the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia will not be allowed to buy alcohol during their time there. Hands up anyone who is surprised. The sale of alcohol is outlawed in the desert kingdom, and penalties for consumption include flogging, jail or deportation. Prince Khalid bin Bandar Sultan Al Saud doesn’t come across as someone who spends much time in pubs The Saudis are also notoriously indifferent to the notion of human rights, so they’re hardly likely to respect the desire – some might describe it as a basic right – of some football fans to have a few bevvies before, during and after a match. The

Leah Pennisi-Glaser

Don’t cancel Neil Gaiman’s books

How far can Neil Gaiman fall? The acclaimed author has been accused of sexual misconduct by eight women. One of his accusers, a woman who had been babysitting Gaiman’s child, alleges that Gaiman offered her a bath before joining her in the tub naked and assaulting her. Gaiman denies the allegations against him. ‘I’m far from a perfect person,’ he has said, ‘but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.’ Whatever Gaiman did or didn’t get up to in his private life, we should separate the art from the artist Whether or not the allegations against Gaiman are true, the backlash has been swift. Gaiman’s upcoming creative projects

Jonathan Spyer

The case for ending the Israel-Hamas ceasefire

The question now facing Israel is this: will the war in Gaza recommence? The ceasefire agreement was signed less than a month ago, and it is already looking shaky.   The first phase of the deal has not yet been completed. Sixteen of the 33 Israeli hostages scheduled to be freed in this phase have been released, and so have 656 of 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. But Hamas has now announced the postponement of the release of an additional three hostages, which was scheduled to take place this Saturday. US President Donald Trump has expressed support for abandoning the phasing of the deal, and demanded that all hostages be released by Saturday at noon –

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Andrew Gwynne sacked, Trump saves Prince Harry and a £30m refund over moths

Home Andrew Gwynne was sacked as a health minister and suspended from the Labour party for making jokes about a constituent’s hoped-for death, and about Diane Abbott and Angela Rayner. Oliver Ryan, a member of the WhatsApp group where the jokes were shared, had the Labour whip removed and 11 councillors were suspended from the party. Asked about 16,913 of 28,564 medics registering to practise medicine in Britain last year having qualified abroad, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said there was ‘no doubt’ that ‘the NHS has become too reliant’ on immigration. The government issued guidance saying that anyone who enters Britain by means of a dangerous journey will normally

James Heale James Heale

Kemi vs. Nigel: who would Thatcher have backed?

It is 50 years since Margaret Thatcher was elected Tory leader and at this week’s shadow cabinet meeting, Lord Forsyth was invited as guest speaker to mark the occasion. He noted the similarities between 1975 and 2025. Back then the party was broke, reeling from defeat and facing the fallout from a reorganisation of local government. But, despite threadbare resources, Thatcher managed to rebuild to win power four years later. ‘You have the potential to do the same,’ Forsyth told Kemi Badenoch. Yet there is a crucial difference between then and now: a rival on the right. Nigel Farage’s Reform party is vying with Badenoch to inherit Thatcher’s mantle. Each

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Trump might really be a ‘peacemaker’ in Ukraine

In a move likely to mark the beginning of the end of the Ukraine war, Donald Trump today announced that he had begun talks with Vladimir Putin. Trump has already held a ‘lengthy and highly productive phone call’ with Putin, he announced in a post on Truth Social, adding that they agreed to ‘have our respective teams start negotiations immediately’. The Biden administration promised repeatedly that no peace deal would be negotiated over the heads of the Ukrainians. But that was always, frankly, a lie. Trump at least has sufficient respect for Ukraine to be honest that the endgame of the war was always going to be decided in Washington, not

Lucy Dunn

Reform declares war on renewables

It was in a plush central London office space lined with leafy wall plants that Reform UK chose to make its big economic announcement today. Attendees were warmly welcomed with a lavish spread of wraps, canapés and even beer on tap – before Nigel Farage and Richard Tice cut to their news: ‘We will scrap net stupid zero.’ Farage was quick to trumpet his party’s anti-establishment credentials, noting Westminster’s cross-party consensus on the environment. Not Reform – whose politicians are insistent they can ‘right some of the wrongs’ of the renewable sector. ‘Reform is serving notice on the industry,’ Tice told attendees. ‘We are going to win the next general

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Donald Trump says Ukraine peace talks should start ‘immediately’

Donald Trump has spoken to Vladimir Putin on the phone and agreed to begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine ‘immediately’. The US President announced details of the conversation between the two leaders on his social media platform Truth Social. According to Trump, the pair had a ‘lengthy and highly productive’ discussion, touching on AI, the Middle East, the ‘power of the dollar’ and bonded over how valiantly their two nations had fought side by side against the Nazis in the second world war. ‘But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the war with Russia/Ukraine.’ In a move bound

Alexander Horne

How to fix our immigration laws

Almost every day there seem to be new headlines about abuses of the asylum and immigration system. The latest involves the case of a Gazan family who were granted the right to remain in the United Kingdom after they applied to enter the country under the Ukraine Family Scheme visa. Unsurprisingly, the Home Office determined that the Gazan family did not qualify for the Ukrainian scheme. The government also concluded there were no compelling, compassionate circumstances to justify the family remaining in the UK. The family’s initial application was dismissed by a first-tier immigration tribunal judge in September last year. However, they were allowed to remain after an appeal to the Upper Tribunal

Steerpike Steerpike

Tories: Starmer misled the House

It wasn’t Kemi Badenoch’s best day in the House of Commons today. But amid Keir Starmer’s endless demands that the Tory leader ‘do the homework’, the Prime Minister might just have slipped up halfway through the weekly Q&A. Badenoch asked her Labour counterpart about a ruling by an immigration judge which suggests that Palestinian migrants have the right to live in the UK by applying through a scheme meant for Ukrainian refugees. Starmer replied by insisting that: She hasn’t quite done her homework because the decision, the decision in question, was taken under the last government, according to the legal framework of the last government Is that really the case? The

Oscar Edmondson

Was that Kemi Badenoch’s worst PMQs?

14 min listen

Today was the final PMQs before recess, and Kemi Badenoch had been hoping to leave on a high before the break. She started promisingly, opening with the case of a family from Gaza being granted asylum in the UK under the scheme designed for Ukrainians. Starmer replied to say he disagreed with the decision of the courts and that the Home Secretary was already looking at how to close the ‘legal loophole’ enabling that decision. But Badenoch seemingly hadn’t prepared for his rebuttal, exposing once again the weakness of her own technique. Does she risk being outshone by her own backbenchers? Also on the podcast, Kim Leadbeater is having to