Politics

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

Friday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Starmer backs Nato membership for Ukraine

Keir Starmer has reassured the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky of Britain’s ‘commitment to Ukraine being on an irreversible path to Nato’ membership. The Prime Minister made the comments in a phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart this morning. This appears to be a rebuttal of comments made by senior members of US President Donald Trump’s team stating that Nato membership for Kyiv in the aftermath of the war with Russia is unrealistic.  Starmer’s pledge to Zelensky comes after the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth declared on Wednesday during a defence summit in Brussels that ‘the United States does not believe that Nato membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of

Eliot Wilson

Why didn’t Starmer go to Munich?

The Munich Security Conference, which this week gathers in the Bavarian capital for its 61st edition, is a big deal in defence and foreign policy circles. When it first convened in 1963, there were just 60 delegates, but that has now grown to more than 350 heads of state, government and international organisations, ministers, senior military leaders, parliamentarians, business leaders and others. The incoming chairman of the conference is former Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg. Sir Keir Starmer is not among the attendees. While Boris Johnson gave speeches in 2021 and 2022, and Rishi Sunak addressed the meeting in 2023, the current prime minister will be represented by David Lammy, John

Michael Evans

Why Britain is crucial to Ukraine peace talks

Britain has the opportunity to become a master in tightrope diplomacy between Donald Trump and an increasingly alarmed Europe after the 47th president’s blitz of foreign policy announcements. To say that European leaders have been hyperventilating over the dramatic chess move made by Trump in his 90-minute phone call with Vladimir Putin is to put it mildly. Trump has been accused of appeasement a la Neville Chamberlain and his paper of peace following the US president’s seeming surrender to Putin’s two key demands to end the war in Ukraine: permanent retention of ground seized and no future membership of Nato for his suffering neighbour. Horrified leaders and politicians in Europe have

Steerpike Steerpike

Assisted dying bill could see ‘death czar’ judge cases

Back to the assisted dying bill which, it would appear, seems to be dying a slow death itself. The legislation is losing support after an amendment was introduced by its sponsor Kim Leadbeater – which removes the need for a high court judge to approve cases – ruffled feathers, with the Sun newspaper now coming out against the plans. Meanwhile some unsavoury discussions about the bill’s misuse have left onlookers feeling rather uncomfortable about the whole thing. Last night, the full wording of the amendment was published. Despite Leadbeater’s previous insistence that the role of high court judges in the euthanasia process is ‘really, really important’, the alteration would remove

Stephen Pollard

Europe and the death of Nato

There has been no more effective and successful defensive alliance in history than Nato. The unity and determination of Nato’s members meant the Soviet Union understood that the doctrine of ‘Massive Retaliation’ was real: if they attacked, Nato would respond with nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union did not attack. But it is clear from events this week – and, in truth, has been clear for some years – that Nato is now effectively dead as a serious force for defence and deterrence, snuffed out by the myopia and weakness of the European political class. Russia’s invasions of Ukraine, first in 2014 and then in 2022, demonstrate how enfeebled deterrence has

James Hanson

Donald Trump is making the same mistake as Neville Chamberlain

It is easy to forget how popular Neville Chamberlain was in the autumn of 1938. Proclaiming ‘peace in our time’ after signing the Munich Agreement, he was heralded as the deal-maker supreme. A leader who’d averted needless bloodshed and whose critics were merely warmongering naysayers. You don’t need me to tell you the rest of the story, but you might have thought its lessons wouldn’t be so easily forgotten. Today it is Donald Trump casting himself as the bringer of peace to continental Europe. Posting on his Truth Social platform, the president said he’d spoken with Vladimir Putin, and that they two men had ‘agreed to have our respective teams

Michael Lind

Our future is a ‘mafiacracy’

If the nightmare of anticommunists during the cold war was an endless future of totalitarian terror, the nightmare of today’s critics of liberalism is an endless future of constant social upheaval and atomisation as a result of unchecked markets and radical individualism. Not a boot stamping on a human face forever, but a high-tech appliance in need of the latest upgrades – forever. What many critics as well as defenders of liberalism tend to overlook is the possibility that liberalism – in the economy, in politics, and in culture – will prove to be unstable and self-liquidating. To put it another way, a liberal social order tends to be an ephemeral transition

Sam Meadows

What Elon Musk can learn from Javier Milei

Did Argentina pave the way for Elon Musk’s Doge? At the very least, Javier Milei’s famous chainsaw has provided a roadmap for the South African billionaire to follow as he tries to slash the size of the US government budget. Musk has spent much of the past few days and weeks decrying supposed ‘fraud’ and ‘abuse’ his team has discovered in its analysis of US government spending, a message he reiterated in his Oval Office interview this week. Set aside his rather peculiar and broad definition of fraud for a moment and a straight line can be drawn between his messaging and Milei’s.  The self-described anarcho-capitalist president waged his successful

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Will Ed Miliband see sense and drill British gas?

The government says it wants to stop the ‘blockers’ which are holding back Britain’s economy. It also says it wants to boost the nation’s energy security. How convenient, then, that along comes a project which could achieve both at the same time. The only trouble is that it is something which will drive Ed Miliband nuts. Over the next few weeks, it is reported, a little-known oil and gas company, Egdon Resources, will announce that it has discovered 480 billion cubic metres worth of shale gas reserves in a large trough extending westwards of the Lincolnshire town of Gainsborough. Onshore oil and gas is Egdon’s business – it already operates

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The surprising fall of Germany’s populist far-left party

For all the alarm about the instability of German politics, the results of this month’s federal election campaign seem – on the surface – largely baked in. The conservative CDU party, led by the bullish Friedrich Merz, is expected to win, with approximately 30 per cent of the vote. The far-right Elon Musk-loving Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is predicted to come second with around 21 per cent.  But dive deeper, and the polls show that German politics is still very much in flux. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD party is fighting for third place with the Greens. And there are three parties which may well fail to meet the 5 per

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Why does Louis Theroux keep picking on Israeli settlers?

When is Louis Theroux going to make a documentary where he embeds himself with Hamas in Gaza? Or Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, or Qalqilya? Probably never, because he’d most likely come to a sticky end. His attempt to make a show about British Muslims who were sympathetic to Isis “fizzled out” Instead, Theroux is once again making a film about Jews in Judea and Samaria – the region known as the West Bank – focusing on so-called “settlers.” His last foray into this subject was The Ultra Zionists, in 2011, a documentary criticised by some for cherry-picking the most extreme and controversial voices from the settler movement to create a

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Can we trust the Tories on immigration? An interview with Chris Philp, shadow home secretary

38 min listen

On this special episode of Coffee House Shots, economics editor Kate Andrews is joined by shadow home secretary Chris Philp to discuss the Tories’ newly announced plan to tackle immigration. On legal migration, their proposal includes plans to end worklessness in order to stop the reliance on low-paid migrant workers. And on illegal migration, the line is ‘zero tolerance’ on small boats, including a removals deterrent much like the Rwanda plan, as well as other changes to the legal framework. One of the more controversial elements of their strategy is on citizenship. The Tories want to increase the period before migrants can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) from five to ten

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How the judiciary fuel Europe’s migrant crisis

If Europeans wanted evidence that it is judges and not politicians who run their countries this month has proved it. At the start of February, the Rome court of appeal ordered that 49 migrants who had been rescued at sea and transferred to Albania – under the terms of an agreement struck between the two countries – be returned to Italy. It is the third time in four months that a court has intervened to thwart Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s attempt to combat illegal immigration. According to the judges, sending migrants to Albania is a contravention of an EU court ruling that member states must assess the safety of a

Thursday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Britain’s bureaucratic bloat, debating surrogacy & is smoking ‘sexy’?

40 min listen

This week: The Spectator launches SPAFF The civil service does one thing right, writes The Spectator’s data editor Michael Simmons: spaffing money away. The advent of Elon Musk’s DOGE in the US has inspired The Spectator to launch our own war on wasteful spending – the Spectator Project Against Frivolous Funding, or SPAFF. Examples of waste range from the comic to the tragic. The Department for Work and Pensions, Michael writes, ‘bought one Universal Credit claimant a £1,500 e-bike after he persuaded his MP it would help him find self-employment’. There’s money for a group trying to ‘decolonise’ pole dancing; for a ‘socially engaged’ practitioner to make a film about someone else getting

Steerpike Steerpike

How long will Sturgeon cling on in Holyrood?

To Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon is, er, not very busy. In fact, Mr S can reveal the SNP’s former Dear Leader has made a grand total of two spoken contributions in the Holyrood Chamber over the last 12 months. One was during a debate on Ukraine while another speech reminded MSPs that more needs to be done by her own government to protect Scotland’s young people. Talk about taking a back seat, eh? The former first minister may be keeping a low profile in the Scottish parliament but she has suggested, rather curiously, that she might not quit frontline politics just yet. It transpires that Sturgeon has submitted her application

Ido Vock

Will the Munich attack lead to a crackdown on asylum seekers?

Another day, another apparent attack by an asylum seeker in Germany. In Munich, a 24-year-old Afghan is alleged to have driven a Mini Cooper into a trade union demonstration. At least 28 people have been injured, 11 seriously, according to police. The alleged driver of the car, Farhad N, reportedly came to Germany in 2016 Bavarian Premier Markus Söder called the crash a “presumed attack”. Police say they don’t know whether there is a link to the Munich Security Conference, which is taking place in the city. The alleged driver of the car, Farhad N, reportedly came to Germany in 2016. His asylum application was rejected but he was issued

Oscar Edmondson

The Spectator’s war on government waste

11 min listen

It’s a double celebration for Rachel Reeves today. Not only is it her birthday, but the UK economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics’ latest report. December, when the economy expanded by 0.4 per cent (the market consensus had been 0.1 per cent), was the saving grace. This helped tip the final quarter of 2024 onto the right side of positive growth. But it’s not all rosy for the Chancellor. This morning’s update won’t take anyone in the Treasury off high alert, and there has been a development in the story about her CV. The BBC has been looking

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Car rams crowd in Munich, injuring at least 28

This morning, at around 10.30 local time, a white Mini Cooper ploughed into a crowd of more than 1,000 people in central Munich, south Germany. According to the local authorities, at least 28 people have been injured, with several suffering life-threatening injuries, including a child. Pictures from the scene show a battered car, with a smashed windscreen, surrounded by debris and discarded first aid material. According to Bavarian police, the driver of the car, who was arrested at the scene, is a 24-year-old Afghan failed asylum seeker. The man is reportedly known to the police and has a history of drug and theft-related offenses. The German newspaper Der Spiegel is

Steerpike Steerpike

Reeves faced expenses probe in previous job

As birthdays go, this is unlikely to be Rachel Reeves’s most enjoyable – thanks to an unexpected present from the BBC. Its journalists have been busy digging around the Chancellor’s CV claims – detailed in Mr S’s full timeline here – and the corporation has accused Reeves of exaggerating how long she spent working at the Bank of England. And, in a move that has become almost habitual for the Labour Chancellor in recent months, it appears ‘Rachel from accounts’ has changed her LinkedIn CV yet again… Reeves initially claimed in an interview with Stylist that she ‘spent a decade working as an economist at the Bank of England’ –

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MP WhatsApp scandal worsens

Uh oh. Former Labour health minister Andrew Gwynne was sacked and suspended at the weekend after some rather controversial message exchanges involving the MP were revealed. A second MP, Oliver Ryan, had the whip removed on Monday after his role in the controversial group chat – ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ – came to light. But now, as reported by the Times, more messages have been unearthed that paint the pair in an even worse light. The private group, for the eyes and ears of a select few Labour activists and MPs in Greater Manchester, was in use between 2019 and 2022. Amongst normal conversations were remarks deemed sexist, racist and derogatory