Politics

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

Tuesday

18 Mar 2025

Will Labour MPs stomach Liz Kendall’s benefits crackdown?

To underline that there was government agreement on the welfare cuts and reforms she was announcing, Liz Kendall had Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and a slew of other cabinet and senior ministers sitting behind her in the Commons. The Work and Pensions Secretary announced ‘decisive action’ on the benefits system, which she said was ‘failing the very people it is supposed to help and holding our country back’. That ‘decisive action’ was a reform package that Kendall said was expected to save over £5 billion in 2029/30. It included restricting the eligibility for the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) so that only those who have the highest level of

James Heale

Will Kemi’s anti-net zero campaign bother Labour?

The people’s republic of Holborn and St Pancras is not exactly fertile Tory territory. But it was in a swanky office in Keir Starmer’s north London patch where Kemi Badenoch chose to make her big energy speech this morning. Rather than dwell on her long-awaited policy commissions, the Conservative leader spent the bulk of her speech explaining her decision to drop the party’s commitment to net zero by 2050. In something akin to a Tory TedTalk, she bestrode the stage, clicking through various slides, replete with charts explaining how the UK came to have ‘the highest electricity bills in the developed world.’ Virtually every element of current UK policy making

Ali Kefford

Our nuclear submarines are spending too long at sea

A Vanguard-class submarine used for Britain’s nuclear deterrent has resurfaced after a record-breaking 204 days at sea. Relatives gathered on the Rhu Narrows point yesterday to welcome back their loved ones as the sailors returned to HM Naval Base Clyde, in Scotland. When the submarine departed last year, it was still summer, President Biden was in office and Chancellor Rachel Reeves had yet to deliver her first budget. The boat would have sailed out to open sea, dived and followed a pre-planned route known only to the commanding officer and a handful of others on board, meticulously avoiding any other vessel in her path. She will have remained underwater for the entirety of

Steerpike

NYT outrage as Hezbollah-supporting professor deported

To Donald Trump’s America, where outrage spread across the nation’s left-wing papers at the weekend after it emerged that a Brown University professor had been deported from the country. Dr Rasha Alawieh had, the New York Times reported, a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her removal – and yet that didn’t stop Trump’s team from expelling her. But so desperate were lefty broadsheets – including the Guardian – to kick up a furore about it all, they didn’t wait to hear exactly why the Department of Homeland Security had made the move. On Monday, the DHS explained in more detail about why it had deported the doctor,

Danny Shaw

Asylum appeals aren’t helping Labour close migrant hotels

The top mandarin at the Home Office gave the game away. At a somnolent session of the Commons home affairs committee, Sir Matthew Rycroft revealed that Labour had dropped a key pre-election pledge, made just 72 hours before polling day. Instead of moving all asylum seekers out of hotels ‘within 12 months’, as the party had promised, it would take up to five years. ‘The overarching aim continues to be to exit hotels by the end of the Parliament,’ Sir Matthew told MPs last month. The permanent secretary’s casual use of the term ‘continues’ suggested a process potentially concluding in the summer of 2029 had always been the plan –

Andrew Roberts

Why we wrote the 7 October parliamentary report

‘Amnesty International and Harvard,’ says Alan Dershowitz of the 7 October 2023 massacre, ‘blamed it on Israel even before the first shot was fired in Gaza.’ It was true; the Israel Defence Force (IDF) did not enter Gaza until 27 October, but already there were ‘River to Sea’ anti-Israel demonstrations, anti-Semitic posts on TikTok, the first stirrings of the Tentifada movement on campuses, a deafening silence in the United Nations (especially from its women’s committee which was to take six months to denounce the mass rapine) and a worldwide attempt to blame 7 October on its victims rather than its perpetrators. On Saturday 15 May 2024 there were two consecutive articles in the Times, a full eighteen

John Ferry

Scotland’s ferry fiasco is never-ending

Scotland’s troubled nationalised shipyard, Ferguson Marine, has failed in its bid to win a crucial order for seven small electric ferries that will operate on Scotland’s west coast, it was announced yesterday. Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL), the state body in charge of ferries procurement, says it intends to award the contract for the new ‘loch class’ vessels to Polish firm Remontowa Shipbuilding. A budget of £175 million has been allocated to the build, which will include harbour and shore power upgrades. Six shipyards were invited to tender for the contract, with five returning responses. ‘Bids were robustly assessed against technical and financial criteria, with a 65 per cent/35 per cent weighting,

Alexander Horne

Britain has little influence over Israel’s war in Gaza

As the world focused its attention on a possible peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, it might have been easy to forget that the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas did not mark an end to the crisis in the Middle East. This morning, that ceasefire looked near collapse with Israel ramping up pressure on Hamas and reportedly killing 300 people (including Hamas deputy interior minister, Mahmoud Abu Wafah) overnight. In addition to the resumption of air strikes, Israel has also sought to use other tactics to compel Hamas to release the remaining hostages, including restricting the flow of aid into the territory and cutting off supplies of electricity. These

Freddy Gray

Trump is giving Putin the opportunity to play nice

Almost exactly seven years ago, on Monday 19 March 2018, Donald Trump decided he wanted to telephone Vladimir Putin to congratulate the Russian president on his re-election. The call was set up for the following day, though Trump’s then national security advisor H R McMaster ordered his team to give the President helpful note cards. The first said, in capitals: ‘DO NOT CONGRATULATE ON ELECTION WIN.’ Of course, Trump completely ignored the instruction and applauded Vladimir on his triumph. Trump also neglected to mention the Novichok poison attack on Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England, which had taken place earlier that month – and which British intelligence officers had characterised as

James Heale

Why Kemi Badenoch is abandoning Net Zero

There are two big speeches being made in London today. Shortly after midday, Liz Kendall will rise in the House of Commons to explain how she intends to reform the welfare system. But before that, Kemi Badenoch will launch her policy commissions to put together a credible Conservative platform in 2029. Cutting benefits or making the Tories electable: one wonders which woman has the harder task. The challenge of opposition is always in getting your message heard. So it is to the credit of the Tory spinners then that they have managed to splash both the Mail and Telegraph with Badenoch’s claim that ‘Net Zero by 2050 is impossible.’ She

Ross Clark

Starmer is taking a big gamble with his welfare cuts

That the welfare bill needs bringing under control is pretty undeniable. According to projections by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) an unchecked welfare bill could rise over the next five years from £64 billion to £100 billion. That is not to mention the effect on the economy of increasing numbers of people being shunted onto sickness benefits and never expected to work ever again. If the case is made properly, and the focus is kept on the public finances, the government should enjoy widespread support for a policy that trims the welfare state. Yet there is still a risk that this could all go horribly wrong for the government. And

Steerpike

Labour announce credit card crackdown in war on waste

After The Spectator’s Spaff probe brought the rather alarming extent of government waste to light, the Labour lot have hastened their crackdown on frivolous spending. The latest target? Credit cards. Thousands of government credit cards will be cancelled in a bid to crack down on wasteful spending, the Cabinet Office has said. Whitehall departments and their associated agencies will be instructed to freeze their cards this week with ‘only a minority’ to be exempt from the cull – after figures revealed that over the last four years, credit card spending quadrupled. Sir Keir Starmer’s crowd is keen to reduce the number circulating by half as it ploughs ahead with its

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Israel has ‘opened the gates of hell’ in Gaza

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Israel launched a surprise wave of strikes across the Gaza Strip, targeting key Hamas infrastructure and leadership. This escalation comes after Hamas repeatedly refused to release Israeli hostages under conditions proposed by Israel and backed by US mediators. Despite extensive negotiations, including direct involvement from Washington, Hamas chose to reject every proposal put forward, prompting Israel to resume military operations aimed at further weakening the terror group’s capabilities. Among those killed in last night’s Israeli airstrikes on Gaza were senior Hamas official Issam al-Da’alis, depicted as the king of spades in the playing card collection of Hamas’ leadership targets, Major General Mahmoud Abu

Jonathan Sacerdoti

There is no more hiding from the chilling truth of 7 October

The 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report, chaired by Lord Andrew Roberts, has now been published. It provides a meticulously researched, forensic account of the atrocities committed against Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Compiled by the UK-Israel All Party Parliamentary Group, this report is an essential document, recording in stark detail the murder, torture, and sexual violence inflicted upon innocent civilians. It ensures that this horror is preserved in the historical record, beyond the reach of those who would seek to distort or deny it. That such a report is necessary at all speaks to the disturbing times we live in. The idea that a massacre of nearly 1,200

Stephen Daisley

Why can’t the SNP attract anyone with any talent?

Here’s a political conundrum for you. You’re the SNP. You’ve been in power in Scotland since 2007. You’re 13 points ahead in the polls one year out from the next Holyrood election. You’ve been stumbling these past few years but you’ve finally found your feet again. Your leader is less divisive than his predecessors and his deputy more competent than hers. Your opponents are either tethered to an unpopular Westminster government or distracted by a rival party. You stand a good chance of winning a fifth consecutive term in government. But you have a problem: you can’t attract talent. A striking number of incumbent MSPs want out. To date, 21

Gareth Roberts

The plight of James O’Brien

Pity poor James O’Brien. The long-suffering remainer has always had a raw, fiery quality unusual in the British phone-in host. Where most of his male colleagues tend to be pear shaped more than bear shaped – and where female radio presenters often resemble head girls sitting bolt upright in the front row of the class with their hands up – O’Brien has always been an outlier. Even if O’Brien sounds the part as a radio host, he has never quite looked it. In LBC promo photographs of the smiley, ‘say cheese’ variety, he looks uncomfortable. O’Brien resembles a bouncer in the background in a wedding album. He has hosted a weekday

Monday

17 Mar 2025

John O’Neill

Is Boris right about the ‘Boriswave’?

Boris Johnson is trying to wash his hands of the unprecedented wave of migration that has seen more than one million people move to the UK in each of the last three years. He was confronted about this ‘Boriswave’ on the Triggernometry podcast yesterday and told the hosts that rather than being the result of his decisions, Covid and the Migration Advisory Committee were to blame. Are his explanations convincing? First, he said the bounce was due to people leaving the country in the pandemic and returning afterwards: ‘If you look at what actually happened, the numbers go down, we had a huge number of people leave the country because of Covid…

James Heale

Badenoch lays claim to Thatcher’s legacy

It is a hundred years in October since Margaret Thatcher’s birth – so what Conservative leader would miss the chance to lay claim to the Iron Lady’s legacy? Kemi Badenoch was up this afternoon as the keynote speaker at the Centre for Policy Studies’ conference at the Guildhall in London. The theme of this year’s annual Tory shindig has been ‘remaking conservatism’ – and Badenoch clearly sees an opening to remake conservatism in her image. Her remarks this afternoon were brief but kept to the pattern of her leadership bid last summer. Badenoch dubbed Mrs Thatcher ‘the leader who saved our country: she didn’t arrive in office to manage decline;

Isabel Hardman

Do Labour know what they want from welfare reform?

Liz Kendall and her ministerial colleagues were forced to offer an hour’s worth of holding statements about the government’s welfare reforms this afternoon when they appeared at Work and Pensions Questions in the Commons. Those reforms are supposed to be coming in a green paper this week, probably tomorrow, but the Work and Pensions Secretary ended up dodging questions on whether she even had collective agreement from her colleagues. Those questions came from Kendall’s shadow Helen Whately in the topical section. When Whately asked whether there had been collective agreement, Kendall replied that the shadow minister would have to ‘show a little patience’, before mocking the Conservatives for having no

Brendan O’Neill

Happy St Patrick’s Day – but not for Ireland’s Jews

‘Céad míle fáilte’, the Irish love to say. It means ‘a hundred thousand welcomes’. It’s emblazoned in the arrivals hall at Dublin airport. You’ll see it written in the Celtic font on the walls of Ireland’s cosy pubs. It has led to Ireland being christened ‘the land of a thousand welcomes’, where all visitors, no matter their heritage, will be greeted with a hearty hug. The tragic truth is that Ireland is awash with Israelophobia Well, not all. There’s one group of people to whom Ireland’s famed friendliness seems not to extend. ‘Zionists are not welcome in Ireland’, barks an Irish leftie at an Israeli gentleman in a chilling video