Politics

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

Thursday

6 Mar 2025

The Huw Edwards BBC pay saga shows how ridiculous the licence fee is

Did anyone really expect Huw Edwards to return the £200,000 he ‘earned’ – or, more correctly, was paid – between his arrest in November 2023 and when he finally resigned from the BBC the following April? The BBC’s chairman, Samir Shah, appeared to think so when he faced the Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport on Tuesday. ‘We’ve obviously asked, and we’ve said it many times, but he seems unwilling. There was a moment that we thought he might just do the right thing for a change, then he decided not to.’ If it was Mr Shah himself doing the asking, he was no doubt impeccably polite. Director-general

Rod Liddle

The weakness of Donald Trump

Forgive the mordant tone, but this article was written in a desolate post-industrial nightmare girdled by diversionary roads going nowhere aside from away from places. It is somewhere in middle England, where the West Country merges into the Midlands and the north into the south: it is essentially delocated, it is nowhere. There are 15 or so deserted light industrial units, vast metal hangars for storing stuff, acres of car-parking spaces and a few trees suffering from rickets or polio. There are also huge and very bright lamps shining in through my hotel window, betraying no evidence of their purpose other than to keep me awake, and in the foreground a

Katy Balls

Starmer is the unlikely hero of the hour. Can it last?

When Donald Trump addressed Congress this week, he declared he was ‘just getting started’. His words will not have soothed politicians in the UK, who are still playing catch-up with the President’s first 43 days. This week, Trump proved yet again that he is the biggest force in British politics. His blow-up with Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, threats of a trade war and the disparaging comments by his Vice-President, J.D. Vance, about European countries that haven’t ‘fought a war in 30 or 40 years’ dominated Westminster. Amid all the noise, UK party leaders have been drawn into new positions. Despite his close links to Team Trump, Reform’s Nigel

The Spectator

Trump has shifted the world in Putin’s favour

The verbal pummelling of Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House last week was an ugly moment of bitter truth. We saw the West tearing itself apart thanks to Donald Trump’s vanity and J.D. Vance’s disdain for the Ukrainian leader. If there is anything positive to be taken from the uncomfortable spectacle, it is that Europe now understands it has to take its defence much more seriously. And it is a mercy that negotiations between Zelensky and Trump have not been derailed for good. The Ukrainian President spent the week doing what his US counterpart accused him of failing to do: thanking the US for military and other aid it has

Wednesday

5 Mar 2025

Michael Gove

Could spending cuts herald a ‘winter of discontent for Labour’s left’?

15 min listen

With reports of ‘billions’ of spending cuts earmarked for the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, taking place later this month, Michael Gove and Kate Andrews join Katy Balls to discuss what exactly Rachel Reeves could cut. With little fiscal headroom and sluggish forecasts of growth, Reeves doesn’t appear to have many options. It’s likely that welfare will be targeted, and there are reports that Labour’s opposition to new North Sea oil & gas licences may be relaxed to stimulate growth. One area that appears off the table is defence – following the Prime Minister’s pledge to cut international aid in order to fund new defence spending. But if all these reports are

Stephen Daisley

Trump can’t override everything

‘There are judges in Jerusalem,’ Menachem Begin is reputed to have proclaimed, following a court ruling which he believed vindicated one of his policy positions. The phrase has been appropriated by critics of judicial reform and others keen to see Bagatz, the Israeli supreme court, remain a bulwark against illiberal overreach by the government. ‘There are judges in Jerusalem’ is a reassuring reminder that, whatever the designs of politicians, the law remains the supreme rule of the land. There are judges in Washington DC, too. The Supreme Court of the United States has denied the Trump administration’s application for vacatur of a temporary restraining order preventing the State Department from implementing the USAID cuts announced by Donald

Lucy Dunn

What does the SNP exodus mean for the party’s 2026 line-up?

There is little over a year to go until the 2026 Holyrood election and Scottish party selection processes are underway. This morning, two of the biggest names yet have said they will stand down at next year’s election: Finance Secretary Shona Robison and Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop have announced they’re off. ‘The decision to retire is entirely personal and I do it for positive reasons,’ Hyslop insisted to reporters today. It is unlikely that will convince cynics who suggest the pair have jumped before they were pushed. The Holyrood selection process is a chance for the SNP to sort the wheat from the chaff The duo joins a long list

Jonathan Spyer

What is Israel’s plan for Syria?

Israeli leaders recently made clear that the IDF’s current military deployment into south-west Syria is not intended as a stop-gap measure until its northern neighbour stabilises. Rather, in a speech last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told IDF officer cadets that the force’s troops would stay on the formerly Syrian side of Mount Hermon, and in the buffer zone carved out to the east of the Golan Heights for ‘an unlimited period of time’. Israel’s incursion into Syria to disrupt a perceived threat resembles other foreign entries into Syria, In a statement appearing to hint at a yet more ambitious Israeli strategy, the Prime Minister added that Israel demanded the

Ross Clark

Why is the UK economy stalling?

Giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee this afternoon, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey doubled down on a point he has previously made to the committee: the economy is being pulled down by an extraordinary fall in productivity in the public sector. Relative to 2019, he said, productivity across the public sector is now 8 to 9 per cent lower. In the health sector, it is 17 to 18 per cent lower. In what he described as a ‘back of the envelope calculation’ the overall effect has been to reduce GDP by between 1 and 3 per cent. Last year, Bailey added, something extremely unusual happened: UK productivity fell

John O’Neill

As US border crossings fall, UK small boats hit record highs

Small boat crossings since the start of the year are at a record level. Yesterday 326 migrants arrived, bringing this year’s total to 3,224. Last year 2,983 migrants crossed the Channel over the same period. The number who have made the journey since Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, having promised to ‘stop the small boat crossings’, is 24,666. The figures are in stark contrast to the US, where Donald Trump recently announced that ‘the invasion of our country is over’ with attempts to illegally cross the US-Mexico border at a record low. Border agents had 8,326 encounters with migrants in February, Trump said; there were 190,000 in the same month last year. One of

James Heale

The Special Forces scandal is not going away

What was the most important moment at Prime Minister’s Questions today? It was not the somewhat pedestrian back-and-forth between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch on support for Ukraine. It was instead a subsequent point raised by David Davis on the subject of Britain’s Special Forces. Davis – a textbook example of a free-thinking backbencher – asked the Prime Minister about a ruling last month by Northern Ireland’s presiding coroner. The government has given no signal that it intends to pursue a judicial review The ruling concerned a 1992 SAS ambush at St Patrick’s Church in Clonoe, County Tyrone. It found that the use of lethal force by British soldiers against

William Schneider

The Chagos deal is a threat to national security

It has been widely reported that, during his meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week, President Trump gave his consent to the UK’s proposed deal to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. However, this is not quite what happened. What he actually said was that he thinks the US ‘will be inclined’ to go along with the deal – but that ‘it is a little bit early, we have to be given the details’. As the saying goes, the devil is indeed in the detail. Once the President and his team are fully briefed on the situation surrounding the Chagos Islands – and the joint UK-US military

Lloyd Evans

PMQs was a façade

A bit of a stitch-up at PMQs, or so it seemed. The ‘opposition’ leader, Kemi Badenoch, ignored her duty to voters and spent ten minutes feeding softball questions to Sir Keir Starmer about President Zelensky. At issue was Donald Trump’s decision on Monday to withdraw military aid from Ukraine. Kemi meekly asked Sir Keir if he might help. ‘What is he doing to rebuild their relationship after a challenging week?’ Sir Keir can do nothing, obviously. Trump has lost patience with the leader of an impoverished, war-sick country whose eastern fringes are occupied by a hostile superpower. Britain has no influence either way. But Sir Keir wants to pose as

Stephen Pollard

Are we forgetting the lessons of VE Day?

There is a grim irony in today’s announcement of the commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May – at the very time that the Western alliance is collapsing. The plans include dressing the Cenotaph in Union flags, a military procession and flypast in London and a service of remembrance and thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey, followed by a concert. All good, and all appropriate. But, according to the government press release, ‘street parties will also be held across the country’. Really? The symmetry is obvious, of course. VE Day was one big street party as the country celebrated the defeat of the Nazis and the triumph of

Isabel Hardman

Starmer avoids criticising Trump at PMQs

Keir Starmer has clearly decided that the only way to disagree with Donald Trump and his administration without angering the US President is to make statements that contradict him without ever mentioning him or J.D. Vance by name. Today he opened Prime Minister’s Questions by paying tribute to six young British soldiers who were killed 13 years ago tomorrow in Afghanistan, and a soldier who was killed 18 years ago today in Helmand. He added: These men fought and died for their country, our country, and across the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 643 individuals died fighting for Britain alongside our allies. Many more were wounded. We will never forget

Steerpike

Nandy blasts Beeb over Gaza documentary

It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – which means there’s more bad news for the BBC. Now the government has taken aim at the broadcaster, with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy slamming the Beeb today in a parliamentary statement. In the scathing text, Nandy wrote of how she is ‘deeply shocked and disappointed’ about the Hamas documentary revelations and noted pointedly that she is not yet convinced similar slip-ups won’t happen again. Last week the corporation apologised for the release of a Gaza documentary in which the child narrator was later found to be the son of a Hamas minister. AND the Culture Secretary is far from impressed by how the BBC

Steerpike

Speaker splurges £180k on luxury trips

Is Lindsay Hoyle turning into John Bercow? Mr S first asked the question in January after revealing that the Speakers’ Office had doubled in size on Hoyle’s watch. And now other outlets are running with the same theme, by looking at the Speaker’s trips abroad. It seems the man of the people rather enjoys the high life, spending £180,000 of taxpayers’ money on top-end flights, luxury hotels and chauffeur-driven cars. Talk about putting that ‘order order’ in, eh? ‘Long-Haul Hoyle’ splashed the cash on £900-a-night hotels, first-class flights and even a private plane trip to the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat, according to Freedom of Information responses by the Daily Mail.

Ross Clark

Trade unions are calling the shots under Labour

Is Angela Rayner really being sidelined in this government, having been steamrollered by the rush for growth championed by Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves? That is a hypothesis which has been put forward many times in recent months, but it is not true to judge by the reaction of businesses to the Employment Rights Bill. The CBI – which gave the impression that it couldn’t get rid of the Tories fast enough after Boris Johnson’s Peppa Pig fiasco – is not the least bit impressed, with chief executive Rain Newton-Smith complaining: ‘The government has been commendably open to seeking feedback from industry about these plans,’ but that it ‘has not

Matthew Lynn

Europe could pay the price for Germany’s debt shake-up

Germany has finally decided to join the party – but Europe may come to regret it. After two decades of limited borrowing and fiscal restraint, Europe’s biggest economy is finally joining the high-debt club. Incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz will borrow €800 billion (£670 million), and perhaps much more, to pay for extra spending on defence and infrastructure. Sure, Germany needs to spend more on its armed forces and on restructuring its economy. But it will also likely mean the euro-zone no longer has a single solvent member to anchor it. It is hard to see how this situation will end well for Europe. Merz is a centre-right, pro-business leader, but

Lisa Haseldine

Europe’s rearmament is off to a feeble start

If there is one silver lining to Donald Trump’s Oval Office bust-up with Volodymyr Zelensky last Friday, it is that Europe is finally getting serious on rearmament and defence. Or is it? On Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission (EC), announced a package of measures designed to encourage EU member states to up their defence spending. If they make full use of the new proposals, von der Leyen said, it would amount to an increase of up to €800 billion (£661 billion) spent on defence across the bloc. Announcing the package, she declared: ‘We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively