Politics

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

Saturday

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Can J.D. Vance be part of the peace talks?

Practically every aspect of that Oval Office meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky was surreal. The blow up at the end was certainly the most shocking, but watching the American President repeatedly bite his tongue – until he didn’t – was also very strange.  Holding back opinion is not normal behaviour for the American President. Yet we watched Trump speak very cautiously throughout the meeting, refusing to take sides, but more importantly, resisting the urge to push back when Zelensky insisted there would be no compromise to end the war or highlighted that the rare earth deal did not go far enough to ensure Ukraine’s safety.  Trump’s deliberate attempt

Debbie Hayton

The legacy of Covid will stay with children for life

Five years ago in March 2020, schools fell silent as Covid-19 swept across the world. At first, there was a tinge of excitement among some students and staff; it was as if, perhaps, we had been told that the whole country was going to be snowed in for six weeks.  Had the restrictions thawed within a couple of months, the impact on at least some children’s education might even have been positive. New experiences stretch the mind, after all. But it didn’t work out like that. While pubs, restaurants and hairdressers re-opened on 4 July, schools stayed on remote teaching until September. This generation of children was let down badly

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Coffee House Shots Live with Robert Jenrick and Jonathan Ashworth

70 min listen

The Spectator’s Katy Balls, Michael Gove and Kate Andrews were joined by special guests Robert Jenrick and Jonathan Ashworth for a live podcast, recorded at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. The main topic of discussion was, of course, Donald Trump, whose inauguration has ushered in a new world disorder. His ‘shock and awe’ foreign policy has sent Europe scrambling as it tries to work out who will be responsible for ensuring its security in the future. We have seen a move away from the idealism that has defined foreign policy in the last decade and towards ‘realism’, with countries committing to boots on the ground and greater defence spending. Are

Thomas W. Hodgkinson

What Kierkegaard tells us about Bridget Jones

The scene is a well-appointed drawing room in Copenhagen in September 1840. A fresh-faced girl in her late teens is playing the piano in an attempt to soothe the troubled spirit of her boyfriend, a slender, bouffant-haired philosopher in his late 20s by the name of Søren Kierkegaard. Suddenly, he grabs the score from her and claps its pages shut before exclaiming, ‘Oh! What do I care for music? It’s you I want!’ Upon which, he proposes marriage, and soon after, the young Regine Olsen accepts. Immediately, Kierkegaard has second thoughts. Being an existentialist, he doesn’t deal in casual doubts. His are devastating. When Regine bumps into him in the

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Gentler stop and search tactics won’t keep Britain safe

What sort of mojo do you want your police officer to bring with them the next time you’re stopped and searched? The Metropolitan police asked Londoners to help them use this procedure better: one quoted consultation response was to stop using ‘bad energy’ in such an encounter. Perhaps the answer to London’s awful street crime problem is more astrology than criminology. Such comments have influenced the creation of a new ‘charter’ eighteen months in the making, which signals the advent of kinder, gentler frisking in the nation’s capital. Of course, most people reading this piece will never have reason to be approached by a police officer in the street, detained and

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Was Starmer’s love-in with Trump really such a triumph?

Opponents of Keir Starmer would be well advised to concentrate on his many real weaknesses rather than inventing non-existent disasters just to bolster their own prejudices. The British radical online Right spent the last 48 hours not only hoping for the UK Prime Minister to be humiliated by Donald Trump, but then pretending he had been even when he clearly hadn’t. The reality is that Starmer’s visit to Washington DC was very successful, at least in the short-term.  As well as establishing an unlikely public rapport with Trump, the Prime Minister advanced a promising dialogue on tariffs and trade and got the President to endorse his Chagos Islands deal. British

Friday

Owen Matthews

Zelensky knew who he was dealing with. And he misstepped

Seldom in modern times has the fate of a whole nation been so dependent on a single meeting and on a single relationship. When Volodymyr Zelensky entered the Oval Office on Friday he had one job: to repair a deep and catastrophic rift between him and Donald Trump, who the previous week had called the Ukrainian president a ‘dictator’. Zelensky held the future of US support for his country’s defence against Russia in his hands.  But instead of a reconciliation, the meeting turned into an epochal diplomatic train wreck. So disastrous was the exchange that by the end Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington Oksana Markarova was holding her head in her

Jawad Iqbal

Zelensky made a fatal mistake in going toe-to-toe with Trump

What possessed the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump in a verbal wresting match in the White House? It makes almost no sense as a diplomatic strategy. It is well documented that the US president, notoriously thin-skinned and egotistical, likes to be showered with compliments and treated as an all-knowing, all-seeing master of the political universe. All that Zelensky was required to do was behave in a simpering manner while the cameras were rolling, before moving on to the substantive negotiations behind the scenes. Indeed, only 24 hours earlier, Sir Keir Starmer provided a useful primer on how to go about pandering to Trump in order

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Zelensky’s White House visit turns sour

Keir Starmer will have been pleased on Thursday after his meetings with Donald Trump managed to avoid any major gaffe or diplomatic incident. There was some relief when Trump chose not to repeat his past comment that Volodymyr Zelensky was a dictator. However, the same cannot be said of Friday’s meeting between Zelensky and the US president. Trump met the Ukrainian president at the door of the White House where he gave reporters a thumbs up ahead of his arrival. However, the mood quickly turned sour when they sat down for initial remarks ahead of talks and a press conference where the pair were expected to sign a US-proposed minerals

Ben Domenech

The Donald Trump interview

56 min listen

In a wide-ranging conversation at the White House yesterday evening, Donald Trump was in the mood to talk about everything under the sun – from the speedy success his second administration has had putting fear into the hearts of bureaucrats and Eurocrats, to why he believes there is a path to a balanced budget. He spoke to The Spectator’s Ben Domenech for the first magazine interview of his second term, following a major day of international politics with his meeting with prime minister Keir Starmer.

Jawad Iqbal

Dodds’s departure is embarrassing for David Lammy

The resignation of Anneliese Dodds, the International Development Minister, over cuts to the aid budget is a shock on many levels. After all, it is almost unheard of for a senior politician in office to quit because of some political belief or principle. Dodds deserves praise for sticking up for her values, even – and most importantly – at the cost of her political career Dodds decided she had to go in the wake of Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the international aid budget by almost half to pay for an increase in defence funding. Dodds revealed she was only told about the move on Monday but held off resigning

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Will Dodds’s departure trouble No.10?

Keir Starmer has lost another minister. Anneliese Dodds is stepping down as International Development Minister following No. 10’s decision to slash the foreign aid budget by almost half to pay for an increase in defence spending. That policy decision was announced earlier this week ahead of Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump at the White House. In her resignation letter to the Prime Minister, Dodds warns that ‘these cuts will remove food and healthcare from desperate people’ and ‘deeply’ harm the UK’s reputation. Dodds’s departure speaks to an unhappiness in parts of the Labour party Dodds says that she chose to wait until after Starmer’s Washington trip was completed to

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Trump: To help Ukraine, Europe must help itself first

Fresh off the back of a summit with Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington, the President of the United States granted The Spectator’s US Editor-at-Large Ben Domenech an exclusive interview in the White House. One of the most pressing topics discussed by Starmer and Trump was support for Ukraine in its efforts to resist Russia’s invasion – and America’s threat to throw in the towel as Europe’s peacekeeper. It was time for Europe, Trump told The Spectator, to step into the breach. Trump’s inability to resist promoting the superiority of American support for Kyiv aside, he is correct ‘They have to step up, but they also have to get equipment,’ the President said. ‘They

John Connolly John Connolly

Trump: UK encryption laws are like what you get in China

Keir Starmer may have survived his meeting with Donald Trump yesterday – with the President saying he was ‘inclined’ to support the Chagos deal and might not impose tariffs on the UK – but it appears the US President still has plenty of concerns about the state of this country. Speaking to The Spectator’s Ben Domenech yesterday, the President was asked what he thought about our new Prime Minister. While Trump conceded that ‘He’s different. Different type’ to Boris Johnson (which may well go down as understatement of the year) he was generally positive about Sir Keir, saying ‘I have to say, he was very nice. We had a very good meeting.’ But

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP face fresh exodus as thousands desert party

Dear oh dear. Just as positive polling had lifted the spirits of the Scottish Nats, news of their membership exodus will bring them crashing down. As revealed by the august paper that is the Scotsman, the SNP has lost more than 5,500 members in six months alone. It’s hardly what you want to hear when you’ve an election to fight in a year, eh? The Scottish journal revealed that, as of 31 December 2024, the party had just 58,940 members – down from some 64,525 in the summer months. Not that SNP figures are strangers to an exodus, however. In 2019, the party had a staggering membership base totalling 125,000.

Matthew Lynn

Will Labour MPs scupper a US-UK trade deal?

A UK-US trade deal is on the table. On a surprisingly successful trip to Washington, US President Donald Trump made it clear to the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer that a trade agreement with the United States was close. “We could very well end up with a real trade deal where the tariffs won’t be necessary,” Trump said after his meeting with the British delegation. “We’ll see.” Britain’s dire economic performance means that the UK is hardly in a position to turn down a deal With our economy in dire trouble, Britain needs this agreement more than ever. There is just one problem: Sir Keir will have to take on

Steerpike Steerpike

Trump: Joe or Hunter Biden left cocaine in the White House

Back in 2023, when Joe Biden was President of the United States, there was something of a drugs scandal in the White House, when the Secret Service found a gram of cocaine in the West Wing. An investigation was launched, but while Secret Service officials trawled through their security systems and indexed ‘several hundred’ people who entered the White House, they were unable to identify a suspect. There was ‘insufficient DNA’ on the bag in question and an FBI lab was unable to retrieve any fingerprints. A mystery indeed. Who could have left the cocaine there? It’s clearly something that has been on Donald Trump’s mind since he’s returned to

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

How successful was Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington?

25 min listen

Freddy is joined by The Spectator World’s deputy US editor, Kate Andrews, and The Telegraph columnist, Tim Stanley, to talk about Keir Starmer’s much-anticipated meeting with Donald Trump in Washington. Across the board, it has been read as a success – at least domestically, that is. The victories include movement on the Ukraine backstop, some positive discussions around the UK avoiding tariffs, and a second state visit is on the horizon as well. The biggest win, though, was the number of compliments that the president gave Starmer, including – puzzlingly – about his accent. The Spectator World’s Ben Domenech secured an interview with Donald Trump after the Starmer meeting, in which he was

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

How Starmer won over the Donald

14 min listen

Unbelievably, Keir Starmer arrives back from Washington today after a successful meeting with Donald Trump. In fact, it’s hard to see how it could have gone much better. Top of the list of victories: it looks like some headway was made in avoiding tariffs on the UK and, on Ukraine, the pair discussed the prime minister’s call for a security backstop for any deal. Starmer described that part of the talks as ‘productive’ and said that a ‘deal has to come first’. There will also be a second state visit for the President.  The greatest victory however is winning personal and effusive praise from the President. The Spectator’s sister magazine

Daniel Thorpe

Is the Kurdish PKK about to lay down its arms?

On Thursday, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) called on his organisation to lay down their arms and dissolve themselves. If they comply, this would put an end to a decades-long conflict with the Turkish state that has claimed the lives of over 40,000 people. The statement was delivered in a crowded press conference in Istanbul by members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy party (DEM). The call appeared to be more or less unconditional. One of the speakers at the end of the conference added that ‘in practice, of course, the laying down of arms and the PKK’s self-dissolution require the recognition of democratic politics