Politics

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

Tuesday

27 Sep 2022

Could Russia shut its borders?

In Putin’s Russia, fortunes can change rapidly. A week on from the partial mobilisation of the army, Russians are gripped by the fear that the closure of the country’s borders is next. Those who are not willing to risk death in Ukraine are looking for a way out. In the six days since 21 September, when Putin announced his plan in a pre-recorded television address, protests have sprung up in at least 43 towns across the country; the human rights organisation OVD News has said that more than 2,300 people have been arrested for taking part. According to the official terms of the Kremlin’s partial mobilisation, those with military experience

James Heale

Is Starmer ready for No.10?

10 min listen

Keir Stamer took centre stage for his speech at the Labour party conference today. Unlike last year, there were several standing ovations and loud cheers from the audience. Was his speech one to remember in Labour’s history? And has he secured his position as the man to lead Labour back into government? James Heale speaks to Katy Ball and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Natasha Feroze.

Coffee House

Read: Keir Starmer’s full speech to 2022 Labour conference

Thank you, conference. It’s great to be here in Liverpool. After all the changes we’ve made, all the hard work we’ve put in, finally we are seeing the results we want. Yes, conference, we can say it at last: Arsenal are top of the league. But before I begin, I want to address something important. This is our first conference in Liverpool since 2018. And that means it’s our first conference since this city’s call for Justice for the 96 became Justice for the 97. For too long this city has been let down. So, when Labour wins the next election, one of my first acts as Prime Minister will

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer’s cautious conference speech

Keir Starmer’s big speech to his party’s conference was about the practical things Labour could do to fix Britain. He was introduced by the leader of Southampton Council, who talked repeatedly about what happens when Labour gets into power. She said that Starmer ‘knew what Labour had to do to win again… now he is setting out what Britain needs to do to win again.’ Starmer’s big announcement to show how Labour will help Britain win again was a practical one: a Labour government will set up Great British Energy, a publicly-owned energy company which will ‘take advantage of the opportunities in clean British power’. It showed that the announcement

Freddy Gray

Has conservatism been misunderstood?

27 min listen

This week Freddy is joined by political theorist Yoram Hazony. They discuss Yoram’s new book Conservatism: A Rediscovery, the origins of American conservatism and whether the family unit will be the defining feature of the modern conservative movement.

Steerpike

Rupa Huq suspended after race row overshadows Starmer’s speech

Oh dear. Things couldn’t have been going better for Labour leader Keir Starmer. The left has been routed, the Tories are divided, the pound is plunging and the markets are panicking. But in true Labour style, his MPs are always on hand to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. Speaking at a British Future event, Labour MP Rupa Huq – who has now had the whip suspended – made a rather unpleasant swipe at new Tory Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. Huq, one of the hard-of-thinking drones in the Starmer Army, checked whether the Chatham House rule applied before telling attendees that Kwarteng was only ‘superficially’ black: ‘Superficially he is a black man…

Nicholas Farrell

Giorgia Meloni can’t afford to fight the EU

Ravenna, Italy The victory of Giorgia Meloni in Italy with a huge majority of seats in parliament has prompted the expected political indignation. It’s not just the international press, either. Yesterday, for instance, my 17-year-old son Francesco Winston told me that at his school – we live near Ravenna in the Red Romagna, a hotbed of ex-communists – all his companions were in mourning. Why, I asked? ‘They say she’s going to abolish abortion,’ he explained. Why do they believe that? I asked. ‘They’re badly informed,’ he replied. Bravo figlio mio, bravo! Meloni would not abort an unborn child herself – she told me when I interviewed her in Rome

Lawrence Goldman

The problem with Cambridge University’s slavery report

It’s perfectly legitimate for Cambridge University to seek to understand its history, warts and all. But the University’s final report of its ‘Legacies of Enslavement Advisory Group’, established in 2019 to investigate the university’s historic links with slavery, is short on facts and long on opinions. It also fails to consider Cambridge’s links with the noble cause of anti-slavery. It is hardly surprising that Cambridge should have been associated with slavery. The Atlantic slave trade and West Indian slavery were integral to the British empire between the late sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet the report tells us that no ‘Cambridge institutions directly owned any plantations that exploited enslaved people’. Instead, the Advisory

Gavin Mortimer

Why the European right is gaining ground

Last month the new Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, shared online a brief video of a Ukrainian woman being raped in Piacenza by an African migrant. The reaction among Italy’s media and political elite was one of outrage; not at the fate of the 55-year-old woman, but at Meloni for having dared posted the footage on Twitter along with the declaration: ‘One cannot remain silent in the face of this atrocious episode of sexual violence against a Ukrainian woman carried out in daytime in Piacenza by an asylum seeker. A hug to this woman. I will do everything I can to restore security to our cities.’ Meloni was accused

James Snell

Iran’s ‘kamikaze’ drones take to the skies above Ukraine

Ukraine is awash with foreign-made weapons, something that is true of both sides. While Ukraine uses American-made rocket systems, French, German and British artillery pieces, and anti-tank weaponry from across the globe, Russia is resorting to foreign suppliers of its own. This means artillery shells from North Korea and, increasingly, drones from Iran. Russia relying on these countries has produced a lot of mockery, some of it justified. Why would a country which claims to be winning its war, with an economy unaffected by sanctions, request resupply from North Korea – a nation whose entire economy is the size of an American city? But on drones, at least, the Russian

Simon Heffer

John Major has taken a pounding (1992)

It’s three decades ago this month since the UK government was forced to withdraw the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on ‘Black Wednesday’. As the pound sinks this week, we revisit Simon Heffer’s cover story from 1992 on how John Major dealt with the debacle. You can read more on our fully-digitised archive. Like many who profess affection for the works of Anthony Trollope, the Prime Minister is not thought to have strayed far beyond the well-known favourites. He is probably not familiar with a lesser work that accurately reflected his state of mind until the markets trussed him up last week — He Knew He Was Right. In

Steerpike

Harri in a hurry to get his next gig

Every revolution has its casualties and the Truss takeover was no exception. With a new PM comes new courtiers, and No. 10 has duly witnessed a clear-out of staff from Boris Johnson’s ancien régime . And while the fallen king contents himself post-premiership with his long-awaited Shakespeare tome, other members of his court must find new ways to enrich themselves. Among them is Guto Harri, the spin doctor supreme whose greatest hits in Downing Street include claiming his boss wasn’t a ‘complete clown’ and likening Chris Pincher to Dr David Kelly. So after a glorious seven month spell in government, where next for the comms guru? It seems that Harri is

Isabel Hardman

Is Labour ready for power?

Labour conference has been pretty strange so far. Not the sort of strange that parties in opposition get comfortably used to: eccentric stalls in the conference centre, frontbenchers sounding off about their own pet projects that directly contradict what the leader is up to, or fights between members on the conference floor (sometimes involving inflatable animals to get more attention). But strange because of the absence of those things, and a seriousness that has quite visibly changed the demeanour of most people in Liverpool. Yes, there are gripes from the conference floor about Keir Starmer not turning up to picket lines, but the membership is upbeat and largely supportive of

Katy Balls

The message behind Starmer’s Labour conference speech

As market volatility in response to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s Budget on Friday continues to dominate the news, Keir Starmer will try to use his conference leader’s speech to pitch his party as the safe choice on the economy. When Starmer takes to the conference hall stage this afternoon, he will say it is now the Labour party that stands for ‘sound money’ – as he attempts to capitalise on the fallout of Friday’s fiscal event. Starmer wants to position Labour as the ‘party of the centre-ground’ The Labour leader will accuse the Tories of having ‘lost control of the British economy’ and for bringing in ‘tax cuts for

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

Is Europe’s attitude to asylum seekers changing?

The EU spent last November reinforcing its borders as Vladimir Putin directed a wave of refugees through Belarus towards the bloc. This winter, politicians in Brussels are once again preparing for another wave of asylum seekers caused by Putin – Russian men fleeing conscription. Baltic countries are taking a hard line. Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas told CNN that ‘every citizen is responsible for their country’s deeds… so we are not giving any asylum.. For Russian men’, while interior minister Lauri Laanemets said asylum ‘would be fundamentally contradictory to the aim of all our sanctions so far, which is the collective responsibility of Russian citizens’. Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis

Brendan O’Neill

Does the EU respect the Italian people?

I know we’re all meant to be quaking over the election result in Italy. That we’re all supposed to be gnashing our teeth over the ‘first far-right politician since Mussolini’ to lead the Italian people. That is how much of the media is referring to Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party and now on course to become Italy’s first female Prime Minister following the victory of the right-wing bloc in Sunday’s elections. And yet I find myself far more concerned – troubled, in fact – by the behaviour of Brussels than by anything that has happened in Italy. Consider the comments made by the President of the

Charlie Methven

Why football needs a regulator

Plans by the government to introduce a regulator to the football industry – endorsed by all Westminster parties just a year ago – have, to use jargon oddly appropriate in this case, been ‘kicked into the long grass’. Truss is instinctively against regulating almost anything. When I asked her about the ‘fan-led’ Crouch Report on the campaign trail a few weeks back, she replied, not very cryptically, that she would apply a ‘very high bar’ to any new types of regulation. So, the news that the legislation has been paused is no great surprise to me. The Premier League has, in effect, largely become a closed shop of the 20

Monday

26 Sep 2022

James Forsyth

Labour storm ahead of Tories in latest poll

Tonight’s YouGov poll in the Times is brilliant news for Keir Starmer ahead of his conference speech tomorrow. It has Labour 17 points ahead, its biggest lead since the company started polling in 2001. These numbers, following the market reaction to the statement, are an awful start To be sure, the numbers reflect more voter disappointment with the government than a sudden bout of Starmer mania. Some 68 per cent of voters said the government was managing the economy badly. Only 12 per cent thought the ‘mini-Budget’ is affordable. Just 19 per cent said it was fair, against 57 per cent who thought it was not fair. And 69 per

Rod Liddle

The BBC’s Meloni problem

Here is a quote from the BBC Europe Editor, Katya Adler’s, very short piece on the BBC Radio 4 Six O’Clock News this evening, concerning the electoral victory of Giorgia Meloni in Italy: Millions of Italians didn’t vote for her. They say they do not recognise themselves in her nationalist, protectionist proposals, her anti-immigration rhetoric and her conservative family mores. Isn’t that remarkable? Can you imagine the awful Adler, or indeed any correspondent, commenting on the victory of a left-wing candidate: Millions of people didn’t vote for her. They say they do not recognise themselves in her mentally unbalanced identity politics, ranting support for cripplingly high taxation, foreign policy characterised

Winston Marshall

Jordan Peterson: The Book of Revelation, Ronaldo and the role of the artist

117 min listen

Winston speaks with best-selling author, clinical psychologist and leading public intellectual Dr Jordan Peterson. They discuss the role of artists in society and the state of the arts today. What is so original about Dr Peterson’s work? How hopeful is he for universities? Is it the duty of the privileged to serve the oppressed? And, among other things… Ronaldo, the Book of Revelation, the New Atheists, the Queen’s personality traits and how the energy crisis will end in apocalypse.