Politics

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

Wednesday

12 Mar 2025

Steerpike

Labour MP U-turns on benefit cuts letter

There’s drama in Labourland today as one backbencher appears to have had second thoughts about her stance on benefits payments – after the Get Britain Working group’s open letter went out with her name on it. The letter, which has called upon Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall to introduce a ‘new social contract’ to get disability benefit claimants back to work, has ruffled feathers both with left-wing MPs and, er, one of its own signatories. Allison Gardner has taken to social media today to fume that her name ‘shouldn’t have been added’ to the petition and assure her constituents she has requested its removal. Talk about a reverse ferret,

Isabel Hardman

Is Kemi Badenoch finally getting the hang of PMQs?

Kemi Badenoch made some changes to her strategy at Prime Minister’s Questions today and had a much better time of it. She stuck to one topic, rather than performing handbrake turns from one matter to another, and she didn’t accuse Keir Starmer of not answering the question. Instead, she claimed the Prime Minister was ‘out of touch’ and had no idea ‘what is happening out there’. The Tory leader’s focus was on the national insurance increase, which comes into effect next month. She asked first about job losses caused by the rise in employers’ contributions, and responded curtly that Starmer ‘needs to get out more’ when he argued that Labour

Oscar Edmondson

Has Ukraine called Putin’s bluff?

12 min listen

Last night there was a huge breakthrough in Ukraine peace talks, with Zelensky accepting a US proposal for a ceasefire and placing ‘the ball in Putin’s court’, according to Marco Rubio. While getting Zelensky to accept is a huge diplomatic win, the proposal hinges on Putin agree to the terms of the ceasefire – which will last for 30 days but can be extended by mutual agreement. ‘I’ll talk to Vladimir Putin. It takes two to tango,’ said Donald Trump. Can Putin afford to reject the deal? And could this be the basis for a lasting peace? Meanwhile, Keir Starmer has been getting a lot of credit for his role

Ross Clark

Quangos are forever

So it is goodbye to the Payment Systems Regulator, which will be merged with the Financial Conduct Authority. That is not a huge breakthrough for the nation in itself – it merely means that the likes of Visa and Mastercard will have a different telephone number to ring when they want to organise a bit of lobbying. But it is, Keir Starmer wants us to know, just the beginning. Just as he promised on Monday to chop the benefits bill, the Prime Minister wants us to know that he now has quangos in his sights. To be fair to him, he does seem to appreciate the problem with ‘quasi-autonomous non-government

Steerpike

Parliament splashes £4 million on traffic marshals

If you, dear reader, have visited parliament in recent years, you might have had the misfortune to be confronted by one of the new-fangled orange traffic marshals popping up around the estate. Given the crumbling state of the Commons, Mr S is constantly querying whether this army of apparatchiks is really necessary – given that most cars crawl through the estate at around five miles per hour. But, alas, it seems that the bosses in the Palace of Westminster know best… Still, all that ‘elf n safety shtick does come with a price. Steerpike has done some digging and it turns out that the price tag is quite considerable. An

Iain Macwhirter

Nicola Sturgeon’s dismal legacy

The departure of the former Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, from active politics draws a line under the Scottish National Party’s greatest generation. Her former mentor, Alex Salmond, died suddenly of a heart attack in October. Now, Sturgeon has told her supporters that “the time is right for me to embrace different opportunities and to allow you to select a new standard-bearer”. Sturgeon, of course, relinquished her hold on the standard of government in February 2023 when she resigned suddenly and plunged her party into chaos from which it has yet to recover. When she departed Bute House, in the wake of the scandal over her flagship Gender Recognition Reform

Jane Stannus

Is Canada doing enough to stop the US trade war?

There’s such a thing as cutting off your nose to spite your face, and the tariff war between Canada and the US is beginning to look like a case in point. On Monday, the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford announced a 25 per cent surcharge on electricity exports to the US, with 1.5 million households and businesses in New York, Michigan and Minnesota likely to be impacted. Trump responded with all-caps outrage, raising the March 12 tariff on steel and aluminium coming into the United States from Canada from 25 to 50 per cent — a threat that would mean curtains for Ontario’s auto sector. How, asked the US president,

Steerpike

Sturgeon to step down at Holyrood election

Farewell Nicola Sturgeon. The former first minister took to the professional platform that is Instagram today to announce that she will be stepping down as an MSP at the next election. After much speculation, the SNP’s ex-Dear Leader has confirmed that she does not plan to stand for Holyrood in 2026 – after spending more than a quarter of a century in the Scottish Parliament. Talk about a long slog, eh? Writing on the social media platform today, Sturgeon told her faithful followers that: I have decided not to seek re-election to the Scottish parliament next year. As members of the SNP in Glasgow Southside, I wanted you to be

Matthew Lynn

Trump’s Tesla stunt won’t help Musk

Tesla’s share price has halved, sales have slumped, boycotts are being organised and Chinese rivals are ready to steal the market. It has been a rough few weeks for the electric vehicle manufacturer, but Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk has been handed a lifeline by Donald Trump: the US president gave his full-backing to the company by buying one of its cars. Heck, he might even have used his own money. There is just one snag: Trump’s high-profile support will make things worse for Tesla, not better. Outside the White House yesterday, Trump chose from five shiny new Teslas. A day earlier, Trump had posted on his Truth Social feed that

Nigel Jones

The ‘dirty dozen’ who crossed Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage is a curate’s egg of a politician: good in parts. The good part, at least for a Brexiteer like me, is that it was his tireless campaigning, more than any other’s, that freed Britain from the clammy grasp of the EU. No one else in politics can match his ability to fire up a crowd and put his finger on the popular pulse. But his fatal flaw is his inability or unwillingness to share power and lead a team. For Farage, it is his way or the highway. This dictatorial tendency has manifested itself at every stage of his turbulent career. Many have dared to challenge his authority

Debbie Hayton

Why isn’t Streeting cracking down on puberty blockers?

If a government’s first duty is to protect its citizens, then Wes Streeting must step up to defend some of society’s most vulnerable. Instead, the Health Secretary is reportedly refusing to intervene over NHS plans to test puberty blockers on children. Nearly £11 million has been allocated to experiment with drugs that may prevent children’s bones from developing normally. Streeting knows these drugs are potentially dangerous when used to stop the natural development of healthy children. He banned the practice last December after the Commission on Human Medicines found that there was an ‘unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children’. So why is Streeting not

Charlie Walsham

The BBC’s Ramadan blindspot

The month of Ramadan is well under way and the BBC is encouraging all its employees to demonstrate empathy and support for their fasting colleagues. New advice has been issued. Regular staff have been urged to recognise that while ‘Ramadan is spiritually significant’ it can also be ‘physically challenging’ and Muslim colleagues ‘may seem quieter or different during Ramadan’ but this ‘should not be taken personally’. Managers have been given pointers too. ‘Consider adjusting work hours to support fasting employees,’ the advice states. ‘This might mean starting and finishing earlier or offering remote work options if possible.’ This guidance is available via the internal BBC Gateway website, which carries a

Vazha Tavberidze

Oleksii Reznikov: ‘Trump and Zelensky fall-out was a clash of emotions’

‘What just happened – the suspension of military aid – was predictable. I expected it. It wasn’t too hard to predict,’ the former Ukrainian defence minister tells me. Oleksii Reznikov, speaking to me from Kyiv and wearing a ‘Saint Himars’ T-shirt, remains as upbeat as ever, chuckling as he recalls how, back in 2022, Ukraine was supposed to fall in three days. ‘We knew we wouldn’t. It was a matter of survival – three days became three weeks, three months, and now three years. These current events? Just another phase. We have tough negotiations ahead. This isn’t a two-player game – it’s multilateral, with competing interests and big personalities.’ Back

Anthony Breach

Will Labour’s Planning Bill get Britain building again?

The UK has one of the worst housing shortages in the developed world, with 4.3 million fewer homes than we need. This doesn’t just make housing more expensive – it also hits our country’s productivity and harms living standards across Britain. A challenge this size needs big, bold reforms. The government’s latest response is its Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which was published on Tuesday. Will it get Britain building again? Some of the biggest changes the Bill makes are for infrastructure projects. The Bill should reduce the power of quangos to block infrastructure from being built. In the past, infrastructure developers have been forced by regulators to build things like a

Michael Evans

Why Putin could reject a ceasefire

With all the good news coming out of the Jeddah talks about a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, there is only one question that needs to be answered: will President Putin be interested in any sort of deal right now? President Trump is convinced that Putin wants peace. But if the Russian leader really wants to bring his war to an end, will he do so on America’s terms, or wait until he has fulfilled one of his main objectives: the total subjugation of the four provinces in eastern Ukraine that he claimed he had annexed in the first seven months of the invasion? At a ceremony in St George’s Hall

Damian Thompson

Christianity, culture wars and J.D. Vance: a conversation with James Orr

62 min listen

James Orr was living the life of a young, high-flying lawyer when, after a few drinks at a New Year’s Eve party, he asked for signs that God existed. The signs came; among other things, he narrowly avoided a fatal skiing accident. Now he is a passionate Christian and a conservative culture warrior who helped defeat an attempt to impose the tyranny of critical race theory on Cambridge University, where he is an associate professor of the philosophy of religion. He’s also an intellectual mentor to the vice president of the United States; Politico describes him as ‘J.D. Vance’s English philosopher king’. Dr Orr says Vance is ‘extremely articulate, but he takes

Christopher Snowdon

The truth about blinkered single-issue campaigners

Why do single-issue campaigners oppose solutions to their problems? Once you become aware of ‘not invented here’ syndrome, you start to see it everywhere: climate change activists lobbying against nuclear energy, anti-smoking campaigners campaigning against e-cigarettes, anti-obesity campaigners complaining about weight loss drugs. There are even some anti-alcohol campaigners who want to clamp down on alcohol-free beer. Whenever innovation steps up to provide a practical solution to a serious problem, it is those who should be most delighted about it that put up the most resistance. This all seems self-defeating until you realise that these campaigners already had a solution in mind which they are more interested in implementing than

Stephen Daisley

What would Reform be without Nigel Farage?

Barely have they abandoned the sinking ship that is HMS Tory than right-wingers are finding their liferaft taking on water. Reform seemed unstoppable for a small while, often outpolling a Conservative party whose captain went to sea four months ago and hasn’t been heard from since. Now Rupert Lowe, its most prominent MP other than Nigel Farage, has lost the whip and been reported to police for alleged ‘threats of physical violence’ against Zia Yusuf, the party’s chairman. Lowe denies any wrongdoing. Discontent has swelled in the ranks, especially among younger and very online members, who regard Lowe as the most ideologically sound of Reform’s MPs. For liberals, it’s tempting

Tuesday

11 Mar 2025

Mark Galeotti

Has Ukraine called Putin’s bluff?

Has Vladimir Putin’s bluff just been called? It certainly looks like it. So long as the Ukrainians were refusing to countenance a ceasefire, then Moscow could portray them as being the obstacle to the kind of quick deal Donald Trump appears eager to conclude. Kyiv had previously floated the idea – after another unhelpful intervention from French President Emmanuel Macron – of a limited ceasefire extending just to long-range drone attacks on each others’ cities and critical infrastructure and operations on the Black Sea. But this was a non-starter that was too transparently a trap for Putin, hoping to make him look like the intransigent party if he turned it

Lisa Haseldine

Ukraine agrees to US plan for 30-day ceasefire with Russia

Ukraine has agreed to an American proposal for an immediate 30-day truce in the war against Russia. Kyiv’s decision to accept a month-long ceasefire follows nine hours of talks with members of US President Donald Trump’s administration in Saudi Arabia today. Making a statement this evening following the conclusion of the talks, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the ‘ball is now in Russia’s court’ to agree to the ceasefire. It would be ‘the best goodwill gesture’ Moscow could provide, Rubio added. Confirming Rubio’s announcement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – who didn’t take part in today’s discussion – declared that ‘Ukraine accepts this proposal, we consider it positive,