Politics

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

Wednesday

Lucy Dunn

Reform declares war on renewables

It was in a plush central London office space lined with leafy wall plants that Reform UK chose to make its big economic announcement today. Attendees were warmly welcomed with a lavish spread of wraps, canapés and even beer on tap – before Nigel Farage and Richard Tice cut to their news: ‘We will scrap net stupid zero.’ Farage was quick to trumpet his party’s anti-establishment credentials, noting Westminster’s cross-party consensus on the environment. Not Reform – whose politicians are insistent they can ‘right some of the wrongs’ of the renewable sector. ‘Reform is serving notice on the industry,’ Tice told attendees. ‘We are going to win the next general

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Donald Trump says Ukraine peace talks should start ‘immediately’

Donald Trump has spoken to Vladimir Putin on the phone and agreed to begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine ‘immediately’. The US President announced details of the conversation between the two leaders on his social media platform Truth Social. According to Trump, the pair had a ‘lengthy and highly productive’ discussion, touching on AI, the Middle East, the ‘power of the dollar’ and bonded over how valiantly their two nations had fought side by side against the Nazis in the second world war. ‘But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the war with Russia/Ukraine.’ In a move bound

Alexander Horne

How to fix our immigration laws

Almost every day there seem to be new headlines about abuses of the asylum and immigration system. The latest involves the case of a Gazan family who were granted the right to remain in the United Kingdom after they applied to enter the country under the Ukraine Family Scheme visa. Unsurprisingly, the Home Office determined that the Gazan family did not qualify for the Ukrainian scheme. The government also concluded there were no compelling, compassionate circumstances to justify the family remaining in the UK. The family’s initial application was dismissed by a first-tier immigration tribunal judge in September last year. However, they were allowed to remain after an appeal to the Upper Tribunal

Steerpike Steerpike

Tories: Starmer misled the House

It wasn’t Kemi Badenoch’s best day in the House of Commons today. But amid Keir Starmer’s endless demands that the Tory leader ‘do the homework’, the Prime Minister might just have slipped up halfway through the weekly Q&A. Badenoch asked her Labour counterpart about a ruling by an immigration judge which suggests that Palestinian migrants have the right to live in the UK by applying through a scheme meant for Ukrainian refugees. Starmer replied by insisting that: She hasn’t quite done her homework because the decision, the decision in question, was taken under the last government, according to the legal framework of the last government Is that really the case? The

Oscar Edmondson

Was that Kemi Badenoch’s worst PMQs?

14 min listen

Today was the final PMQs before recess, and Kemi Badenoch had been hoping to leave on a high before the break. She started promisingly, opening with the case of a family from Gaza being granted asylum in the UK under the scheme designed for Ukrainians. Starmer replied to say he disagreed with the decision of the courts and that the Home Secretary was already looking at how to close the ‘legal loophole’ enabling that decision. But Badenoch seemingly hadn’t prepared for his rebuttal, exposing once again the weakness of her own technique. Does she risk being outshone by her own backbenchers? Also on the podcast, Kim Leadbeater is having to

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Kemi is starting to sound like Sir Keir

Kemi Badenoch has made PMQs her own. Her own what? Her own select committee. That’s how she runs it. She asks long rambling questions that exhibit her knowledge of the subject. Then she hands over to Sir Keir who rambles back at her, taking his time, feeling no pressure to answer. Not much drama or excitement at all. Kemi, with her beautiful manners and perfectly modulated English, has the air of a head girl investigating a fire at the hockey pavilion. Sir Keir answers with glib and defensive evasions that are often delivered in exasperated tones. His preening vanity is plain for all to see and yet Kemi can’t burst

Steerpike Steerpike

Who were Richard Hermer’s worst clients?

Sir Keir Starmer’s Attorney General has had a rather rocky start to his role. Richard Hermer KC has come under scrutiny over his links to Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial Chagos deal, his stance on slavery reparations and his position on Israel. And now, at Prime Minister’s Questions today, the Prime Minister had to fend off questions about his Attorney General’s rather, um, interesting list of former clients during his time as a barrister. Responding to Tory attacks, Sir Keir told the Commons: ‘We’ve long had the principle that everybody is entitled to legal representation in this country. This means lawyers do not necessarily agree with their clients.’ Of course – but

Len Shackleton

Football doesn’t need a regulator

Kemi Badenoch has come out against the Football Governance Bill, and not before time. In November 2021, Tracey Crouch, the former Tory sports minister, led calls for a football regulator in her ‘Fan-Led Review of Football Governance’, and in March 2022, Boris Johnson backed the plans. Once that muddy ball started rolling, even three changes of prime minister couldn’t stop it. Keir Starmer is seemingly as much in favour as his predecessors. The enduring argument for a football regulator lies with the weird economics of professional football, which sees the majority of clubs spending well in excess of their regular revenue in the hope of winning trophies or promotion –

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory backbenchers are outshining Kemi Badenoch at PMQs

Prime Minister’s Questions is rapidly becoming a challenge for Kemi Badenoch to come up with a topic that the Tories aren’t vulnerable on so she has a decent chance of attacking Keir Starmer. Given things aren’t exactly going swimmingly for the Labour government, it shows how very weak the Conservatives are that Starmer can get through entire sessions of the most dramatic point of the parliamentary week without sustaining even a light scratch. Today, though, the weakness of Badenoch’s attack was not in the topic, but in her own technique. The Tory leader ended up on the defensive instead of the man she was supposed to be questioning.  Starmer clearly

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

OBR gloom spells trouble ahead for Rachel Reeves

Has Rachel Reeves broken her fiscal rules? It’s been speculated for some time now that the Chancellor lost her headroom when borrowing costs surged last month. Capital Economics forecast at the start of the year that Reeves’s limited headroom (about £10 billion) had been wiped out by rising gilt yields. This left the Chancellor in the uncomfortable spot of having to weigh up more tax hikes or serious spending cuts just months after unveiling her first Budget – the kind of tax-hiking Budget she insisted would not be needed again. Today, the news gets worse. The Office for Budget Responsibility has reportedly downgraded its growth forecast for the UK –

Coffee House

Read: JD Vance’s full speech on AI and the EU

Vice President JD Vance told world leaders at yesterday’s AI summit in Paris that the ‘the AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety’. Here’s the full transcript. Thank you for the kind introduction, and I want to start by thanking President Macron for hosting the event and, of course, for the lovely dinner last night. During the dinner, President Macron looked at me and asked if I would like to speak, and I said, ‘Mister President, I’m here for the good company and free wine, but I have to earn my keep today’. And I, of course, want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being

Steerpike Steerpike

Treasury silent on Chagos deal costs

How much does a sell-out cost? Mr S has been trying for months now to work out what the Chagos deal will mean for British taxpayers. The Financial Times originally reported an estimated total bill of £9bn – before the Mauritian prime minister suggested last week the sum would be much higher. With a sum of £18bn now being quoted by some outlets, Steerpike wants to know which government department will be footing the costs of the 99-year deal? When it comes to figures, the obvious place to start is the Treasury – Whitehall’s ‘central department’ to use Nigel Lawson’s phrase. A written question was put to Rachel Reeves, asking

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Is Pope Francis Rory Stewart in a frock?

Imagine living in your own holy fiefdom, with some of the strictest security on earth, and lecturing other nations about how to deal with illegal immigration. That’s Pope Francis for you. There he is in the Apostolic Palace, sentries at every door, wagging his be-ringed finger at Donald Trump’s America for its ‘mass deportation’ of undocumented aliens. Even for a Pope this is some next-level cant. You can’t help but marvel at the sheer sanctimony of Francis’s position The pontiff’s latest bout of Trump Derangement Syndrome came in a letter to America’s Catholic bishops. He said he is watching closely the ‘major crisis’ unfolding in the US, by which he

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Will flattery buy Zelensky help from Trump?

For all the efforts on every side to manage expectations, there is a sense that some kind of Ukraine deal – even if more likely a ceasefire rather than some comprehensive settlement – is coming. With the risk that this is, as Vladimir Putin would prefer, a decision made between Moscow and Washington, over Kyiv’s head, the Ukrainians are scrambling to gain traction on the process. We have already had Volodymyr Zelensky’s suggestion that the United States could get priority investment access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth. Now in a set-piece interview with the Guardian, he has offered a finely-balanced mix of flattery and entreaty in the hope that even a

Danny Shaw

The police vetting system is a mess

Picture the scene: the press conference room at New Scotland Yard in March 2023 – just after the publication of a damning report into the Metropolitan Police by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Casey’s review, announced following the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer, had concluded that ‘predatory behaviour’ was ‘allowed to flourish’ in the Met, with ‘too many places for people to hide’, leaving the integrity of the organisation ‘vulnerable to threat’.  The Met were on the defensive – but they had a clear plan to raise standards and restore trust and they wanted journalists to hear it. The leadership team spoke with determination

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MP: keep illegal migrants because of Paddington

Desperate times call for desperate measures seems to the mantra of the day in Labour HQ. First a foreign office minister insisted that ceding the Chagos Islands was essential to avoid, er, war – and now Labour MP Stella Creasy has invoked Paddington Bear to stand up for illegal migrants. You couldn’t make it up… Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the backbench MP hit out at her own government’s plans to slash numbers of illegal migrants coming to the UK. Her intervention comes after the Home Office last night announced rules that will prevent small boat arrivals from becoming British citizens. No matter how long they’ve been in

Matthew Lynn

Cheaper mortgages won’t save Britain from recession

Electricity bills are going up. Netflix is adding a couple of pounds a month to the price of a standard subscription, and council tax is going through the roof. Most of us are probably struggling with the cost of living. There is, however, one piece of good news: the sub four per cent mortgage is back. The only catch is that it won’t be around for long. Santander will this week start offering two- and five-year fixed rate mortgages at just 3.99 per cent, the first time any of the major lenders have been willing to lend money to homeowners for less than four per cent for several months. A

David Nutt

Why whisky may be worse for you than cocaine

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has hit out at the longstanding US ban on cocaine, in response to Donald Trump’s crackdown on the drugs trade. ‘Cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whisky’, Petro argued last week, adding that ‘scientists have analysed this’. He also suggested that the global cocaine industry could be ‘easily dismantled’ if the drug was legalised worldwide. Although I was not consulted directly by Petro, I am one of the scientists he was referring to who have analysed the harms of various drugs. In 2010, I was the lead author of a Lancet paper which argued for the first

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Why is Jean-Luc Melenchon talking about the ‘Great Replacement’ theory?

Jean-Luc Melenchon has broken a taboo in French, and Western, politics. The de facto leader of the French left, whose La France Insoumise party is the driving force of the coalition that won most seats in last July’s legislative elections, told students in Toulouse: ‘Yes, Mr (Eric) Zemmour, there is a Great Replacement! This replacement is that of a generation coming after the other and which will never resemble the previous one’. Melenchon was aiming his remarks at Eric Zemmour. The controversial journalist turned incendiary politician has came under relentless attack after he promoted the Great Replacement as a central plank of his election manifesto during his run for the

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour minister: Cede Chagos to avoid war

Just when you think Labour’s Chagos saga can’t get any stranger, it does. Now foreign minister Stephen Doughty has claimed that ceding the archipelago to Mauritius is necessary to avoid sparking war. Writing in the Times today, Doughty has rather bafflingly insisted that there is a risk foreign powers like China or Russia could exploit an advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice and build intelligence centres near the Diego Garcia US military base. In fact, the foreign office minister has gone as far as to suggest that retaining the Chagos Islands could result in an international disaster on the scale of the Cuban missile crisis. Instead Starmer’s deal