Politics

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

Wednesday

David Shipley

What is Labour doing to fix the grooming gangs scandal?

Thank God for Katie Lam. Yesterday the government tried to conduct a grubby betrayal of thousands of young girls groomed and raped in towns and cities across the country. On the last day parliament sat before the Easter recess, Jess Phillips, the junior minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls spoke to an almost empty Commons to update MPs on the government’s plans to deal with ‘grooming gangs’. Few MPs were present. Phillips assured her colleagues that Labour are developing ‘a new best practice framework to support local authorities that want to undertake… local inquiries’. A meagre £5 million will be available for local authorities should they wish

Chris Bayliss

Tinkering with the electric car mandate won’t help manufacturers

Presumably, some future government will have to reverse the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles in Britain. The country quite obviously lacks anything like the necessary charging infrastructure for a wholesale switch to electric for the national vehicle fleet in the foreseeable future. Let alone sufficient generation capacity at peak times. But if or when they do, those future vehicles will now have to be manufactured abroad. The 2030 deadline was first announced by Boris Johnson in 2020, and UK car makers began grandfathering the plant and production lines for new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in the wake of that decision. If the 2030 deadline

Ross Clark Ross Clark

What caused Birmingham’s bin strikes?

Yes, as Wes Streeting says, it is ‘unacceptable’ for rubbish to be left piling up on the streets of Birmingham as the binmen go on strike. But neither he nor all the other government figures complaining about the strike should forget its cause. It is the fallout of Birmingham City Council going bust as a result of an equal pay claim brought by cleaners who complained they were not paid as much as binmen. It was a case based on the principle of ‘work of equal value’. It is not case of men and women working alongside each other in the same jobs being paid different rates; rather it is

Matthew Lynn

The hidden logic behind Trump’s market meltdown

Donald Trump’s announcement of huge levies on all the US’s major trading partners has triggered a global stock market meltdown, which may soon be followed by a full-blown recession. Almost no mainstream economist, and certainly none who believes in free markets and free trade, has a good thing to say about Trump’s tariffs. Yet there is a hidden logic behind the policy. It is not as completely brainless as it might appear. In fact, there are six reasons why the tariffs could make sense.  First, they may well be an effective battering ram for taking down tariff and trade barriers globally. No one seriously disputes that the American market is

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

David Lammy’s imperial overreach

With the imperial pomposity of an old colonial governor, David Lammy has ‘made clear’ to the Israelis that denying entry to Labour MPs Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang is ‘no way to treat British Parliamentarians’. Bloody natives, getting ideas above their station again. Any more of this nonsense, chaps, and you’ll be summoned to High Commissioner Lammy’s office for a jolly good talking to.  The MPs were travelling to Judea and Samiria – or the West Bank – which is ultimately under Israeli military control, but were denied entry by the Population and Immigration Authority. Mohamed and Yang say they were ‘astounded’, British MPs being unfamiliar with the concept of a country that enforces its borders. The pair were questioned on the

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Musk blasts Trump’s ‘moron’ trade adviser

Elon Musk strikes again! The tech billionaire and co-leader of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has lashed out for a second time at the President’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro as tensions over tariffs ramp up in the White House. Now Musk has blasted Navarro as ‘dumber than a sack of bricks’ and ‘truly a moron’ in his latest pop at the government adviser. The gloves are coming off… The Twitter CEO has been sparring with Navarro since Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs were announced last Wednesday. Musk’s latest attacks come after Navarro suggested in an interview that the billionaire businessman’s support of free trade was due to his car

Oscar Edmondson

What happened at the Liaison Committee?

16 min listen

Parliament is about to go into recess for the Easter holiday and so – as is customary – Keir Starmer sat in front of the Liaison Committee this afternoon, where he was grilled on topics including tariffs, defence and welfare. This comes on the day when there has been a momentary reprieve in the markets, which experienced a modest bounce – most likely as a result of suggestions from Trump that he is willing to negotiate with China. Markets seem to have priced in that these tariffs could be negotiated down, but that is of course a big ‘if’. The question remains for Keir Starmer: what more can he do

Steerpike Steerpike

Starmer takes a pop at OBR over welfare forecast

To the Commons, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer is speaking to the Liaison Committee before the House rises for Easter recess. The PM has spent much of this afternoon fending off questions on growth, healthcare and British industry – but it was on his government’s recently proposed welfare cuts that the Labour leader went on the attack, hitting out for the first time at the Office for Budget Responsibility. Defending Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall’s benefits reforms announced last month, Sir Keir took at pop at the OBR over the way it scores the impact of the Labour lot’s welfare cuts. Speaking to the committee, Starmer insisted: It is

James Snell

Have we really brought dire wolves back from extinction?

A biotech company claims it has facilitated the first howl of the dire wolf (an extinct canine) heard for 10,000 years. And there’s a video. A scientist holds up two white-coated cubs in his arms. Although their howling, really, is more like a series of yelps, they are meant to be the first of something big. They’re called Romulus and Remus, Colossal Biosciences, says. And they are the beginning of a new project to bring back from the grave a long-gone wolf species. A species that is often in fiction, often in fossil, but not often live and in colour. The de-extinction (which is what Colossal, never notably underselling, calls

Rakib Ehsan

Britain doesn’t need yet another equalities quango

Labour has evidently not learned from its recent troubles with the Sentencing Council over guidelines which risked undermining the very foundations of the criminal justice system. The government now has plans to create a new enforcement body to tackle ‘pay discrimination’ against ethnic minorities and disabled people. The equalities minister, Seema Malhotra, has set up a call for evidence which will search for advice on the planned formation of an equal pay regulatory and enforcement unit – a proposed quango that would work with the trade union movement to strengthen the implementation of equal pay rights. In a statement plucked straight from the ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ playbook, Malhotra declared that

Matthew Lynn

Is the worst of the market crash over?

The FTSE-100 is up by a couple of hundred points. Germany’s DAX has added 400 points, and in Tokyo the Nikkei 225 rose by 6 per cent overnight. After the wild trading ever since President Trump announced the imposition of huge tariffs on all of America’s major trading partners, some stability appears to have returned to the financial markets. Is the worst of the slump over? It is far too early to predict that with any confidence – but there are two reasons for thinking it might be. It remains to be seen how the markets unfold over the next few days. There could well be a bankruptcy or two

Alexander Kolyandr

Russia can’t escape the fallout of Trump’s tariff war

When Donald Trump unveiled his table of tariffs in Washington last week, there was one country that was conspicuously absent from his list: Russia. The White House’s argument was that there was no point slapping tariffs on trade with Moscow because the existing sanctions in place against it meant there was negligible bilateral trade going on between the two countries. Despite this, the global trade war that has erupted will still impact Russia, threatening to undermine Moscow’s economic stability, stifle its already slowing growth and amplify its strategic dependence on Beijing. Trump’s trade realignments will further marginalise Russia as an energy supplier The White House’s justification for excluding Russia from

Ian Williams Ian Williams

China won’t win its ‘fight to the end’ against Trump

China has accused Washington of ‘blackmail’ and said it will ‘fight to the end’ after Donald Trump threatened overnight to impose an additional 50 per cent tariff on Chinese imports. At the same time, President Xi Jinping is seeking to present himself as a responsible champion of the international trading system and defender of globalisation against the Trump wrecking ball. Neither position bears scrutiny; the latter is almost laughable, since it is Beijing’s persistent disregard of international rules that has fuelled the anger in America in the first place. It all smacks of desperation and not the ‘super economy’ of CCP propaganda As part of its strategy, the Chinese Communist

Alexander Horne

Parliament will be relieved Philip Green has lost his human rights case

In a decision that will be welcomed by many in Parliament today, the European Court of Human Rights dismissed a claim by prominent businessman Sir Philip Green. Green had argued that his right to a private life and a fair trial had been infringed when a Labour Peer, Peter Hain, made a statement on the floor of the House of Lords claiming Green had been accused of sexual harassment and bullying by former employees. The employees in question had signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and so Green had obtained an interim injunction (pending a trial) and anonymity order from the Court of Appeal after he learned that the Daily Telegraph planned

William Clouston

Why tariffs work

To travel by train through America’s rustbelt is to witness the real reason for Trump’s tariff revolution. Miles upon miles of derelict factories and decaying industrial architecture stand as monuments to trade policies which have gutted America’s manufacturing heartland and undermined the families – and the towns – which depended on it. In electing the Trump-Vance ticket last year American voters have called time on decades of elite indifference to industrial production and the liberal trade policies which have accompanied it. It turns out that the transitory profit secured by executives who out-sourced thousands of US industrial jobs to cheaper jurisdictions is no compensation for the loss of your industrial

Steerpike Steerpike

Prince Harry: I was ‘singled out’ in security row

The monarch of Montecito is, er, back in the UK. Prince Harry has returned to Britain for a two-day hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in a last-ditch attempt to win automatic state-funded security for his family whenever they return to Britain. He may have stepped down as a working prince five years ago, but it seems the royal renegade is missing the perks… The Duke of Sussex embarked on the 10,000-mile return trip from California in a bid to win back taxpayer-funded security arrangement for him and his wife, Meghan, and their children. The matter is thought to be a rather significant factor in Harry’s falling out with

Alexander Larman

The true purpose of King Charles’s Italy trip

After some recent bad news for King Charles in the form of an – admittedly fleeting – setback in his ongoing cancer treatment, you could hardly blame him for wanting a brief respite from the gruelling health challenges that he has faced. And respites don’t come more glamorous or enjoyable than the state visit that he and Queen Camilla are currently undertaking to Italy. It is appropriate that the trip coincides with their 20th wedding anniversary this week. The published itinerary suggests that fun, rather than onerous duty, will be the guiding spirit of the four days that they will be spending in Rome, Ravenna and other locations in the

Steerpike Steerpike

Tories lose major donor prompting HQ closure fears

Just as the House of Commons is about to rise for Easter recess, Her Majesty’s Official Opposition has been hit with some rather unfortunate news. As revealed by the Guardian, the Tories have lost one of their biggest donors – in a move that could, insiders believe, lead to the closure of the party’s headquarters in the north of England. Good heavens… The paper heard from two Conservative sources that HomeServe founder Richard Harpin – who has donated £3.8 million to the party since 2008 and was ranked by the Electoral Commission as the Tories’ 10th biggest donor in 2023 – has now put a pause on his funding. It’s

Tim Knox

Is the ‘Office for Value for Money’ just another quango?

Who can possibly be against any attempt by any government of any political colour to get better value of money? After all, public sector productivity – which has been basically flat over the last 25 years despite all the advantages of new technology – is at heart a question of doing just that. So we should all welcome that Rachel Reeves in her first budget set up the Office for Value for Money in the very heart of the Treasury. With its similar title to the Office for Budget Responsibility (which has of course been criticised for taking over responsibility for the budget), perhaps here at last would be a

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas has a history of using ambulances for war

Before the facts had even settled, western media outlets rendered their verdict: Israel was guilty. Guilty of deliberately targeting ambulances. Guilty of murdering humanitarian workers. Guilty because in the court of international opinion, Israel’s guilt is the default setting. Only later did the complicated reality emerge. Israeli forces near Rafah, acting on intelligence that Hamas operatives were exploiting ambulances for military purposes, opened fire on a suspicious convoy. People were killed, including members of the Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defence. But rather than approach the incident with caution and historical awareness, media outlets like the New York Times and Sky News rushed to enshrine a narrative of Israeli barbarism – a