Politics

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

Wednesday

Joanna Cherry

Nicola Sturgeon should apologise to the women of Scotland

It is difficult to describe the emotion felt by lesbian and women’s rights campaigners when Lord Hodge announced the outcome of For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers at the Supreme Court this morning. It was the culmination of a struggle for justice which has lasted years and during which we have been vilified as bigots and threatened with death and sexual violence. Some of us have lost jobs, positions and career prospects as a result of standing up for what we knew was right. No less a person than Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon called us bigots, transphobes, racists and homophobes. She said that our concerns were ‘not valid’. The highest court in the

Lara Brown

Ministers must now stand up for women’s rights

The highest court in the land was set the task of determining: what is a woman? Today it gave its answer: sex in the Equality Act 2010 is biological and immutable and cannot be altered by a gender recognition certificate (GRC). The Supreme Court should be commended for securing women’s sex-based rights – rights to which they have should always have been entitled as a matter of law.   It will come as a surprise to many that a question with such an apparently obvious answer had to be settled in the Supreme Court. But such is the influence of gender ideology on policy that women’s legal rights have often been

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why did we need the Supreme Court to tell us what a woman is?

How did it come to this? How did we arrive at a situation where it fell to a court of law to tell us what a woman is? That’s my overriding emotion today. I’m delighted the Supreme Court has ruled that a woman is legally defined as a person with female biological characteristics. But I’m gobsmacked that we apparently needed five judges to tell us something our species has known since we first came down from the trees. What sweet relief the judges made the right decision. But the garlands should go to For Women Scotland The ruling of the Supreme Court is fantastically sensible. It unambiguously states that the

Alexander Horne

Can we go back to calling terfs ‘women’ now?

In a landmark judgment, after years of controversy, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers today. The issue the court had to determine was enormously significant, namely the meaning of ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010. In a detailed and compelling ruling, the UK’s top court unanimously concluded that the terms refer to biological sex. The case arose following a decision by the Scottish government in 2022 to introduce revised statutory guidance which stated that a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) would be considered a woman for the purposes of the Gender Representation on Public

James Heale James Heale

How will the parties judge success at the local elections?

14 min listen

With just over two weeks to go until the May elections, the latest national polling suggests an almost three-way split between Reform, Labour and the Conservatives. But will this translate to the locals? And, given these particular seats were last contested in 2021 amidst the ‘Boris wave’, how will the parties judge success?  The Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale and More in Common’s Luke Tryl join Lucy Dunn to discuss. Will the story of the night be Tory losses and Reform  gains? Or will it be about the government’s performance against opposition parties? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Debbie Hayton

This legal definition of ‘woman’ has restored sanity to the law

The UK Supreme Court has ruled that a woman is someone whose sex is female. The judgment, handed down this morning by Lord Hodge, sought to establish coherence in an area of law that has become the focus of an emotional, and sometimes heated debate. For that we should all be grateful. The law as it stands is a mess. On one hand, the long-established principle that being a woman is a matter of biology underpinned the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 – which stated most clearly that, ‘“woman” includes a female of any age, and “man” includes a male of any age’. When the law was updated in 1999

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

The Supreme Court ruling is a victory for women

The Supreme Court ruling on the definition of ‘woman’ in the Equality Act is a victory for women, proper statutory interpretation and the reality-based community. It started with the Scottish government trying to take something away from women. The Gender Representation on Public Boards Act, passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2018, required 50 per cent of non-executive appointments to public boards to be women. But the act defined ‘woman’ to include ‘a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment’ provided that person was ‘living as a woman’ and intended to undergo ‘a process… of becoming female’. In theory, this could have meant that a public board could

Steerpike Steerpike

Supreme Court: ‘woman’ refers to biological sex

To the Supreme Court, which has this morning backed the biological definition of a woman. Today a panel of judges unanimously ruled that the terms ‘women’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act refer to biological – and not legal – sex in the landmark case For Women Scotland brought against Scottish ministers. It’s a win for gender critical campaigners who have long argued to protect women’s rights – and a humiliation for John Swinney’s SNP government. The ruling by justices at the UK’s top court today means that the protected characteristic of sex in the 2010 Equality Act is deemed to refer to biological sex – after longstanding disputes on

Matthew Lynn

Only a US trade deal can save UK pharma from Trump’s tariffs

Forget whisky, cars or chemicals. The real blow to the British economy from President Trump’s determination to impose steep tariffs on everything the United States imports from the rest of the world is still to come. Over the next few days, Trump plans to unveil levies on pharmaceuticals. And if the UK can’t find a way of carving out an exemption from that, it will do huge damage to us at the worst possible moment.  For the moment, drugs are exempt from the 10 per cent blanket tariff on US imports, and the higher country-specific levies. That will change in the next few days, with President Trump promising to add

Jawad Iqbal

No one needs Liz Truss’s ‘uncensorable’ social platform

Liz Truss, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, refuses to go away quietly. Her latest barnstorming idea is to launch her very own ‘uncensorable’ social media platform to counter the mainstream media and protect free speech in Britain. Truss told a cryptocurrency conference, held in Bedford, that the platform would launch this summer. Honestly, who wants this? As pointless new ventures go, it must be right up there. The idea of a Truss social media network was first mooted at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in Washington. At the event in February, she pledged that the platform would be ‘uncensorable’ and ‘uncancellable’. Truss appears to have learnt nothing

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why should rich people pay more for their energy bills?

The point of a government energy regulator is supposed to be to make sure that the market is working to achieve proper competition. Their other job is surely to keep an eye on the billing practices of energy companies – to make sure, for example, that they are not hoodwinking people into signing up for their services on the basis of incorrect information. But, as has become common with quango arms-length government agencies, Ofgem appears to be trying to broaden its remit. Ofgem has decided to make a foray into the issue of redistributive taxation. The body has proposed that the standing charges imposed on gas and electricity bills should

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Britain is not out of the woods on rising inflation just yet

Price rises have unexpectedly eased. The Consumer Price Index rose by just 2.6 per cent in March, down from 2.8 per cent the month before and slightly lower than analysts’ expectations of 2.7 per cent. The figures, just published by the Office for National Statistics, show that the slowdown was driven by falling fuel costs and flat food prices compared to a year ago. Most of the fall was due to lower prices at the pumps, with both petrol and diesel down by 1.6p last month. Meanwhile, prices in some sectors continued to rise – most notably in education, where costs jumped by 7.5 per cent year-on-year, largely due to the introduction

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is France too weak to stop the violent attacks on its prisons?

A wave of violence is sweeping France as gunmen attack the country’s prisons. In some cases, vehicles belonging to prison staff have been set alight and in other incidents bullets from AK47s were sprayed at the gates. In the eastern city of Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at his home. The violence began on Sunday evening and is ongoing: overnight three vehicles were set ablaze outside Tarascon prison in the Côte d’Azur region, and a fire was started in an apartment where a prison guard lives close to Paris. Graffiti was also sprayed on the wall. No one has been hurt but the coordinated attacks, carried out the length

Cristina Odone

It’s not the government’s job to prepare kids for school

Today, every parent of five-year-olds will find out what school their child will be going to in September. The likelihood is that they will get one of their top choices – last year, 93.2 per cent of families received an offer from their first choice of primary school. Reception class is the introduction to ‘proper’ school, and the tiny tots will do more duck-duck-goose than A-B-C. But today’s children arrive incapable of even this light schedule. As we now have heard so often, many arrive in nappies and many will not know how to speak properly or play nicely. Almost half of teachers say parents have no idea what being school-ready means. And the

Pieter Cleppe

Is Brussels finally cracking down on NGOs?

Over in Brussels, a scandal has erupted over the role of ‘non-governmental organisations’, or NGOs, in European Union decision making. In a new report, the European Court of Auditors, the EU’s in-house financial watchdog, has criticised the European Commission’s ‘opaque’ monitoring of how EU funds are distributed to these organisations. Between 2021 and 2023, the EU dished out €7 billion to 90 NGOs through various funds, focused on environmental policy, migration or science. According to the Court of Auditors,  30 of these NGOs received more than 40 per cent of EU funds between 2014 and 2023 – some €3.3 billion. That may only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to NGO funding. The auditors warned

Tuesday

Catriona Stewart

What could the For Women Scotland judgment mean for women’s rights?

Following months of deliberation, the apex court in the United Kingdom is to rule on For Women Scotland vs The Scottish Ministers. The case has been brought by a grassroots group of gender-critical women backed by JK Rowling. It focuses on the legal constraints surrounding statutory guidance issued by the Scottish ministers on the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. Despite claims to the contrary, the Supreme Court will not on Wednesday decide an answer to the question ‘what is a woman?’ Rather, it is to rule on how ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are defined for the purposes of the law. This may seem a pedantic distinction but, in a

William Atkinson

What Vance understands about Suez

As with so many of the aphorisms and witticisms attributed to Winston Churchill, it is impossible to verify whether the greatest Briton actually ever said that ‘Americans can always be trusted to the right thing, once all the other possibilities have been exhausted’. But that expression immediately came to my mind when reading J. D. Vance’s UnHerd interview – and over a remark entailing Churchill’s prime ministerial successor, to boot. Vance’s real message to Europe? Anthony Eden woz rite. The Vice-President said much of interest. The news that the UK and US are close to signing a ‘great agreement’ on trade had the Ftse 100 rallying. Vance’s claim that that ‘you can’t separate American culture from European

John Foreman

Of course Britain’s military chiefs should be meeting with China

It’s quite something when the Chinese Ministry of Defence is more transparent than its British equivalent. Despite the Prime Minister on assuming office promising ‘transparency in everything we do’, a flying visit to Beijing last Wednesday by the UK chief of defence staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, only emerged via a Times scoop a day later. Official silence from an habitually opaque UK MoD about the first such visit for 10 years ceded the information advantage to China, allowing it to paint a rosy, false picture that Radakin had discussed deepening engagement and cooperation with his Chinese equivalent, General Liu Zhenli. This in turn prompted outrage from UK China hawks who accused Radakin of engaging in ‘a

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Has a US-UK trade deal inched closer?

13 min listen

As Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs keep shifting, leaving countries scrambling to react, there has been some good news for Keir Starmer and the Labour government. Speaking to UnHerd, the US vice-president J.D. Vance spoke up the UK’s chances of securing a trade deal. While this would be a win for Starmer, questions remain over the substance – from agriculture to food, what would be included? And can we really believe it will happen? The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls and deputy US editor Kate Andrews join Patrick Gibbons to discuss.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Steerpike Steerpike

Louise Haigh’s officials lose two phones a week

Just what is it with the Department for Transport and phones? Back in November, Louise Haigh was forced to quit as Secretary of State after allegations about missing mobiles came to light. Then, last week, the Rail Minister Peter Hendy was revealed to have texted while, er, driving a Routemaster bus at rush hour. And today, Steerpike can reveal that the ministry’s mobile phone woes are not just confined to those at an elected level… For it seems that DfT officials have been following Louise Haigh’s lead in misplacing their electronic paraphernalia. A response to a parliamentary question by Tory peer Lord Leigh has revealed that more than 80 mobile