Politics

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

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour’s freebie scandal rears its head

It wouldn’t be recess without a sleaze scandal, eh? Now Sir Keir Starmer’s wife is in the limelight, after it transpired that she has accepted yet another set of freebies. Victoria Starmer accepted free tickets to Royal Ascot worth hundreds – almost exactly a year on from when Lady Starmer and the Prime Minister were embroiled in a freebie fiasco row over free clothing and hospitality. Dear oh dear… Sir Keir’s register of interests revealed that Lady Starmer nabbed £650 worth of tickets for her and two family members to attend Royal Ascot, as reported by the Express. The Prime Minister himself wasn’t lucky enough to benefit from the gifts

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Has the Bank of England forgotten what its job is?

15 min listen

Some excitement on Threadneedle Street today after the Bank of England cut interest rates to 4 per cent. The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has just voted five to four – after a revote – for what is the third cut this year. This takes interest rates back down to levels not seen since the beginning of 2023. Concerns about an increasingly slack labour market seem to have driven the MPC’s decision. This sounds like good news – and Starmer will welcome it as such – but the Bank’s apparent comfort with loosening policy in this context is baffling says Michael Simmons. Its own forecasts show inflation climbing back to

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Has the Bank of England forgotten what its job is?

The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 4 per cent. Threadneedle Street’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has just voted five to four, after a revote, for what is the third cut this year. This takes interest rates back down to levels not seen since the beginning of 2023. Concerns about an increasingly slack labour market seem to have driven the MPC’s decision. A second vote was required – the first since 1998 – because initially four members of the committee voted for a 0.25 per cent cut but one member voted for a larger cut of 0.5 per cent. Markets expect the rate to be cut once more to 3.75 per

Matthew Lynn

Reeves can’t continue to ignore the entrepreneurs fleeing Britain

Major listed companies have already switched from London to New York. The non-doms are all fleeing for Milan and Dubai. And now it turns out that company directors are quitting Britain in record numbers. The exodus of entrepreneurs is accelerating all the time. And yet, so far the Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer have remained completely silent on the issue. Surely, sooner or later they will have to say something? An analysis by the Financial Times this week found that almost 3,700 company directors have left Britain over the last few months, almost double the number before the Budget. Given the time lags involved in filing

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Higher gambling taxes won’t solve child poverty

As the man who first gave Britain a £150 billion deficit, I don’t think Gordon Brown is the best person to advise the current government on its fiscal policy. But even so the gaping hole in his call for higher gambling duties does raise the eyebrows. Brown seems to think that higher gambling taxes are capable of lifting half a million children out of poverty. Writing in the Guardian, he claims that raising online gaming taxes from 25 per cent to 50 per cent will raise an extra £1.6 billion, jacking up general betting duty from 15 per cent to 25 per cent will raise an extra £450 million and

Owen Matthews

What Putin wants from his meeting with Trump

With just a day to go until the expiry of his ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to halt the war on Ukraine or face dire consequences, Donald Trump has once more reset the clock. Trump intends to meet in person with President Vladimir Putin of Russia as soon as next week, the New York Times has reported. That summit will be followed by a second, trilateral meeting including Trump, Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Trump reportedly told top European leaders in a conference call on Wednesday night. The announcement came after Trump’s envoy, real state developer Steve Witkoff, met Putin for three hours of talks at the Kremlin. Trump

Steerpike Steerpike

Josef Fritzl caused Badenoch to lose faith

‘The testing of your faith produces perseverance’ – James 1:2-3. That may be the case, but too much testing can also result in secularism apparently. In an interview with the Beeb, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has said that while she was ‘never that religious’ growing up though would have ‘defined myself as a Christian apologist’. She revealed, however, that all this changed in 2008 – due to Josef Fritzl. The Tory leader said that when she discovered what Fritzl had done to his daughter Elizabeth – imprisoning and repeatedly raping her in his basement over 24 years – it changed her attitude to religion forever. Badenoch – whose maternal

William Moore William Moore

Reform’s motherland, Meloni’s Italian renaissance & the adults learning to swim

46 min listen

First: Nigel Farage is winning over women Does – or did – Nigel Farage have a woman problem? ‘Around me there’s always been a perception of a laddish culture,’ he tells political editor Tim Shipman. In last year’s election, 58 per cent of Reform voters were men. But, Shipman argues, ‘that has begun to change’. According to More in Common, Reform has gained 14% among women, while Labour has lost 12%. ‘Women are ‘more likely than men… to worry that the country is broken.’ Many of Reform’s most recent victories have been by women: Andrea Jenkyns in the mayoral elections, Sarah Pochin to Parliament; plus, there most recent high profile

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The lies of the land

You can gauge the fragility of an ideology by the blind fury with which it reacts to questioning. So it is with neo-liberalism. Teacher Simon Pearson, for example, was sacked for suggesting that the jailing of Lucy Connolly – who said very nasty things about asylum seekers – was an example of two-tier justice and that, while her words were indefensible, she should not have been sent to prison. One could counter that opinion, but only at the risk of coming into collision with hard facts concerning sentencing – hence the sacking. Best to get shot of your political opponents, especially when he or she is demonstrably correct. Only by

Tim Shipman

Motherland: how Farage is winning over women

On the campaign trail in the Midlands ahead of May’s local elections, a journalist asked Nigel Farage: ‘Do you have a woman problem?’ The twice-married, twice-separated father of four laughed and said: ‘God, yes. I’ve had 40 years of it.’ His response was characteristic of Reform UK’s leader – a determination not to take things too seriously and a tacit acknowledgement that every political cause he has espoused has been more popular with men than women. ‘Around me there’s always been a perception of a laddish culture,’ he says. ‘Ukip was the rugby club on tour.’ In last year’s general election, 58 per cent of Reformvoters were men. Since May,

Wednesday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Is Putin calling Trump’s bluff on Ukraine?

US special envoy Steve Witkoff was back in Moscow today to meet with Vladimir Putin, ahead of Donald Trump’s Friday deadline for Russia to make peace with Ukraine. This was Witkoff’s fifth meeting with Putin this year. Similar to his previous audiences with the Russian president, today’s one-on-one lasted for three hours. While broadly we know that the two will have been meeting to discuss the Ukraine war, the details or results of the meeting so far remain unknown: according to Russian presidential aides, the Kremlin will hold off from issuing public comments on what transpired until Witkoff has had a chance to brief Trump. The President’s increasing frustration and

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

What Douglas Murray’s court win means for press freedom

10 min listen

The Spectator and Douglas Murray have comprehensively won a defamation case brought by Mohammed Hegab. Hegab, a YouTuber who posts under the name Mohammed Hijab, claimed that an article about the Leicester riots, written by Douglas Murray and published by The Spectatorin September 2022, caused serious harm to his reputation and led to a loss of earnings. However, the judge found that the article did not cause serious harm to Hijab, that what was published was substantially true, and that Hijab had ‘lied on significant issues’ in court and had given evidence that ‘overall, is worthless’. What does this case mean for the future of press freedom? On today’s podcast, Michael Simmons discusses

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why the Trump-Russia story never ends

In June, Tulsi Gabbard found herself in a difficult position. As a dovish Iraq war veteran who happens to be Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, she’d spent weeks trying to stop America launching air strikes against Iran. She’d cited intelligence reports which contradicted Israeli suggestions that Tehran was just days away from having a nuclear bomb. Trump didn’t want to know. ‘I don’t care what she says,’ he told reporters, before ordering the strikes on Iran. Gabbard had been humiliated. Surely she had to resign? Nothing is sure in Trumpworld, however, and humiliation is half the fun. Rather than falling out with the Donald, Gabbard instead redoubled her efforts

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

Are Britain’s prisons ready for this summer’s protests?

We’re looking at a busy weekend for the country’s criminal justice system, already permanently running red hot. The activist group Defend our Juries is organising a mass protest in London on 9 August to oppose the government’s ban on Palestine Action (PA), which was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in early July. The stated purpose is to overwhelm the police and courts to prove the proscription is not just immoral in their eyes but unworkable. I have my own difficulties with the proscription of PA, not because I remotely support their aims but because I believe they act more as an organised criminal enterprise for which we have actually already

Steerpike Steerpike

Lineker to move to ITV after BBC antisemitism row

Well, well, well. After quitting the Beeb amid an antisemitism storm, it transpires that Gary Lineker has been picked up by none other than rival broadcaster ITV. The left-wing right-back will reportedly present a new Saturday night show called The Box, which will see a group of people, possibly celebrities, undergo a series of challenges while stuck inside – you guessed it – a box. Less room for controversial political commentary in that one, Mr S presumes… Lineker’s move comes after the sports pundit came under fire for shared a social-media post featuring an ‘anti-Semitic’ rat emoji and declared that Israel’s response to the October 7 terrorist attacks was ‘beyond depraved’. Lineker – the

Andrew Tettenborn

Starmer will regret his ‘one in, one out’ migrant deal

Today the much-vaunted ‘one in, one out’ agreement over returning small boat migrants to France officially comes into effect. Keir Starmer, as you might expect, has announced with an air of quiet satisfaction that repatriation can now start in earnest and implied that the Channel-sized hole in Britain’s borders is well on the way to being stopped up.  If only. Well before any removal flight disappears into the clouds covering the UK, the government’s plan to make us cast aside our worries about immigration is fast unravelling. Even the embattled Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, desperate to cast herself as a migration tough girl for the benefit of the white van

Steerpike Steerpike

Prince Harry loses control of charity after bullying row probe

Back to the monarchs of Montecito, who are not have a good time of it at the moment. It transpires that Prince Harry has lost his battle for control of the charity he launched in his mother Princess Diana’s memory – after the charities watchdog blasted him for his part in a ‘damaging’ bullying row. Dear oh dear… As Mr S wrote in April this year, the Charity Commission commenced an investigation after ‘concerns [were] raised’ at Prince Harry’s African charity, Sentebale, over bullying in the boardroom. The opening of the probe comes after Harry, his co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and their trustees stepped down after a falling out over funding with

Madeline Grant

Migration has radicalised middle England

One of the symptoms that something has truly shifted is unrest in unlikely places. The sleepy heartlands of middle England suddenly becoming not so sleepy but angry and active. Few places have a greater claim to fit the latter description than my home county, Warwickshire.  A stone’s throw away from my grandparents’ old home in North Warwickshire is a village called Meriden – so called because it claims to be the geographical centre-point of the country; the middlest of middle England. It is solidly, stolidly small-c conservative – not radically so. The MPs for the Warwickshire parliamentary constituency were generally Tories of the county variety. Warwickshire largely turned out for the King

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Has Rachel Reeves created a £50 billion fiscal black hole?

The Chancellor’s black hole is getting bigger and tax rises are coming. That’s the judgement of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) whose model of the UK economy has forecast she must find £50 billion of revenue or cuts if she’s to return to the £9.9 billion of fiscal headroom she left herself in the spring.   Some now believe the gap is so large Reeves may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, VAT or employee national insurance Reeves’s self-imposed and ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules require her to abolish the deficit by the end of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) five-year forecast. NIESER’s

Matthew Lynn

Could Trump kill Britain’s pharma industry?

The global trading system is adjusting to the tariffs levied by the United States: for most goods they look likely to settle at roughly 15 per cent. The microchip industry will carry on much as before, the auto manufacturers will adjust, and even if it means drinking more Californian instead of French wine, the drinks trade will settle down. There is just one exception: pharmaceuticals. President Trump is determined that drugs should be manufactured on American soil. And if he follows through on that, Britain risks losing one of its last major industries. The tariffs on pharma imports will start with just a few percentage points, but the plan is