Politics

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

Friday

Eliot Wilson

Will Republican leaders apologise over ‘Stakeknife’?

‘Stakeknife’, a double agent who was an informant for the British Army while working within the innermost counsels of the Provisional IRA, probably cost more lives than he saved. That is the damning verdict of Operation Kenova, which has spent seven years – and £40 million – probing whether Stakeknife was effectively permitted to kill while the security forces watched on. Stakeknife’s identity has never been officially confirmed but it is accepted he was a Belfast man called Freddie Scappaticci, who died last year. Interned in 1971 along with figures like Gerry Adams and Alex Maskey, he was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) by 1974 and

Steerpike Steerpike

Meghan Markle’s PR push

The Queen of Privacy is doing it again. After a brief hiatus from the spotlight, the Duchess of Sussex has appointed a PR guru to help resurrect her UK image. Mr S isn’t all that surprised the Sussexes are setting their sights back on Britain — they were, after all, dubbed ‘Hollywood’s biggest losers’ at the end of last year. Meghan has employed an as yet unnamed professional public relations exec to help overcome her ‘popularity problem’ in the UK. The job role will also include time working on the Sussex’s not-for-profit Archewell Foundation. Eagle-eyed readers might remember this is the company that produced Meghan’s Archetypes podcast series which ran for a

Nigel Jones

Meet Portugal’s new hard-right kingmakers

Portugal goes to the polls this weekend for parliamentary elections and it looks likely to become the latest European country in which a populist hard right party shakes up politics. Chega – which means ‘enough’ – was only founded in 2019, yet it is forecast to more than double the 12 seats it won at the 2022 election. This would make the party, led by Andre Ventura, a charismatic former football pundit, potential kingmakers in a new conservative coalition government. Ventura is no stranger to controversy, not least over comments he made about Romani people (he has said the Portuguese government needs to ‘resolve the issue’). Yet the party’s right-wing

Bartek Staniszewski

Britain’s adoration of the NHS is nothing to celebrate

‘The NHS is, rightly, the biggest reason most of us are proud to be British,’ Jeremy Hunt said in his Budget this week. The Chancellor isn’t wrong: according to polling from last year, the health service is the top reason to be proud to be British among 54 per cent of British citizens; far more than our history (32 per cent), culture (26 per cent) or let alone democracy (25 per cent). But this is not something to be celebrated; instead, it is illustrative of the malaise that today affects British national identity. It is a sad reflection on how feeble British national identity has become Traditionally, there are two

Mark Nayler

Spanish soldiers have exposed the flaw in gender self-ID

Dozens of male Spanish soldiers have legally changed their gender, allegedly to claim benefits intended for women. In doing so, the soldiers have exposed the vacuity of Spain’s so-called ‘trans law’, passed last year by its Socialist-led government. Under Spain’s self-ID law, approved in February 2023 despite objections from the conservative opposition, feminist groups and elements of Spain’s ruling leftist coalition, anyone over the age of 16 can change their legal gender without psychiatric or medical evaluation. According to the Daily Telegraph, which reported the story, soldiers in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta are already taking advantage of its loopholes: 41 men have switched their legal gender to female, and four of have also changed their names. The majority of these

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will the NHS step count app get people back to work?

Is there really any point to the NHS app monitoring people’s step count? This is the latest announcement from Health Secretary Victoria Atkins, who wants to use the app as the ‘front door to prevention’ and helping people back into work. It is easily caricatured as a modern-day Norman Tebbit ‘on yer bike’ measure, suggesting to the long-term sick that if only they walk 10,000 steps a day, they’ll get back into a job. Except perhaps they will. We have a number of problems with our current approach to illness. One of them is that we tend to view everything through a biomedical model when other interventions can be as,

James Heale James Heale

Why is Theresa May standing down?

13 min listen

Theresa May has announced that she will not seek re-election this year. The former prime minister said that launching her global commission on modern slavery and human trafficking meant she would not be able to spend as much time as she would like on constituency matters. James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman about the news.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What May’s departure reveals about the Tory party

The tributes are pouring in for Theresa May after the former prime minister announced that she will be stepping down at the next election. In a statement in the Maidenhead Advertiser, her local paper, May reiterated her support for Rishi Sunak and said she was leaving to spend more time on ‘causes close to my heart’ such as the fight against modern slavery. Sunak has in turn praised her as a ‘relentless campaigner’. May’s former chief of staff Gavin Barwell has said that future prime ministers should follow her example by remaining in parliament for a time as a backbencher following a period in No. 10. May’s decision to step

Daniel Thorpe

Will Erdogan ever get to grips with Turkey’s sky-high inflation?

Inflation and the cost-of-living crisis dominates the agenda in Turkey, ahead of local elections at the end of March. Year-on-year inflation reached 67 per cent in February, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute, breaking a 15-month record and puncturing hopes that high interest rates would put a lid on rapidly increasing prices. For years, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a bitter opponent of high interest rates. ‘Interest rates are the reasons, inflation is the result,’ he roared regularly at political rallies, defying traditional economists. He cites Islamic traditions whereby high interest rates amount to usury, to justify his unorthodox monetary policies. Erdogan was a bitter opponent of high interest rates

Kasra Aarabi and Jason M. Brodsky

Iran is making a mockery of the US

Three sailors have been killed and four seriously wounded after the Houthis attacked the True Confidence merchant ship in the Gulf of Aden this week. According to US forces in the region, the 183-metre long ship was hit by a missile launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen. It’s clear already that the fingerprints of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – the Iranian regime’s paramilitary force – are all over this attack. For starters, the Islamic Republic of Iran had a clear motive. Until a few days ago, the True Confidence was owned by Oaktree Capital Management, a US based asset-management firm – and also the previous owner of the Suez Rajan tanker, which was seized by the US last year after being caught carrying Iranian oil. This latest

Steerpike Steerpike

Listen: Minister struggles to defend Donelan’s libel costs

As the dust begins to settle on Jeremy Hunt’s Budget plans, there’s one Tory MP who won’t be quite as keen to see the papers move on. Science Secretary Michelle Donelan is coming under increasing scrutiny after it emerged that not only had she got her facts wrong and lost a libel case — she’s making the taxpayer pick up the tab. While Penny Mordaunt rode to Donelan’s defence in the Commons yesterday, Gareth Davies MP struggled to sell the government line. The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury stumbled his way through an interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari this morning, apparently deciding that the best way to answer his questions

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Macron’s war-mongering talk is unnerving Europe

Relations between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron have always been strained but they’re now positively hostile. Media on both sides of the Rhine have laid bare the differences that exist between the two men. Der Spiegel calls it a ‘battle of egos’, while Bild recently ran an article headlined ‘The Dangerous Ice Age’.   Analysing the reason for the glacial relationship that exists between Macron and Scholz, Bild highlighted their different natures: Scholz was ‘stiff, often hesitant, but in the end mostly true to his word’, and a leader who had more faith in the Americans and the British than his EU partners. Macron, on the

Christopher Bedford

Biden’s angry State of the Union address

President Joe Biden compared himself to presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, and his Republican opponents to Hitler, Nazis and the Confederacy during Thursday night’s State of the Union – and that was just in the first ninety seconds. Before two minutes had gone by, he’d lumped the Grand Old Party in with Russian president Vladimir Putin for good measure. Having cracked a decent joke and demagogued his opponents, the President was off to the races. By the third minute, he’d reached his next most important goal: more money for war in Ukraine. By minute four, he’d mentioned former president Donald Trump, though not by name. His ‘predecessor’, as he

Steerpike Steerpike

Theresa May to quit parliament at the election

Another one bites the dust. Theresa May has today become the 60th Tory MP to announce she is standing down at the next election – and easily the most high-profile. The Maidenhead backbencher, who served as prime minister from 2016 to 2019, generously gave the scoop to her local newspaper. In a statement, she told the Maidenhead Advertiser that since returning to the backbenches she has championed: Causes close to my heart including most recently launching a Global Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. These causes have been taking an increasing amount of my time. Because of this, after much careful thought and consideration, I have realised that, looking ahead, I

Meghan Murphy

Justin Trudeau, am I guilty of pre-crime?

Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the internet, intended it to be a place for everyone. But now the web is being used to undermine democracy and free speech. It has become a tool for the powerful to suppress dissent. ‘That feeling of individual control, that empowerment, is something we’ve lost,’ Berners-Lee told Vanity Fair in 2018. Today, not only do corporations like Google and Meta dictate what we see online, but, in places like Canada, the government is quickly making itself the gatekeeper. Last year, prime minister Justin Trudeau presented his Online Streaming Act as a means to purportedly support the development of online Canadian content. In fact, the

Thursday

James Heale James Heale

Peers back vote on foreign state press ownership

Rishi Sunak has tonight been urged to support an amendment in the House of Lords which would give parliament a veto on foreign states owning UK media outlets. Tina Stowell, a former Leader of the House, has written to the Prime Minister today ahead of her amendment to the Digital Markets Bill being debated next Wednesday by fellow peers. It comes two days after a letter in support of Stowell’s amendment, organised by Robert Jenrick, was signed by more than 100 Tory MPs. The spur of this amendment is the proposed takeover of the Telegraph and Spectator titles by the UAE-owned RedBird IMI. Yet in her letter to Sunak, Stowell stresses that this

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Zelensky’s sacked army chief posted to London

When Ukrainian war hero Valery Zaluzhny was fired as the head of the military a month ago, all talk was on what his new role would be. The logical option seemed to keep the general among Ukraine’s military command, where he could share his valuable experience of fighting the war with Russia. But instead, he is being sent to London as Ukraine’s ambassador to Great Britain. According to president Zelensky, Zaluzhny requested the posting himself. It was rumoured at the time that, when Zaluzhny was fired, he was given two options: become Zelensky’s adviser or head to London. At the time, sources suggested Zaluzhny turned down both offers. Now, he has accepted

Steerpike Steerpike

‘You’re fired’ – watch Trump’s prebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union speech

In a few hours, Joe Biden will deliver what could be his final State of the Union address as President. And the man who hopes to make that happen in November was quick to get his side of the story in first, releasing a ‘prebuttal’ before Biden even appeared in the Senate. Donald Trump blasted the man he calls ‘crooked Joe’ in a three-minute clip, slamming Biden’s immigration and economic policies and casting the upcoming speech as a ‘sad excuse.’ He told supporters: Joe Biden is on the run from his record and lying like crazy to try to escape accountability for the horrific devastation he and his party have created – all the while they continue the very policies

William Moore William Moore

Trump II: Back with a Vengeance

47 min listen

On the podcast: what would Trump’s second term look like?  Vengeance is a lifelong theme of Donald Trump’s, writes Freddy Gray in this week’s cover story – and this year’s presidential election could provide his most delectable payback of all. Meanwhile, Kate Andrews writes that Nikki Haley’s campaign is over – and with it went the hopes of the Never Trump movement. Where did it all go wrong? They both join the podcast to discuss what to expect from Trump’s second coming. (03:11) Then: Will and Gus take us through some of their favourite pieces from the magazine, including Michael Hann’s Pop review and Cosmo Landesman’s City Life column. (16:38) Next: Flora Watkins writes

Lucy Dunn

Are Scottish Tories causing trouble for Rishi Sunak?

10 min listen

Lucy Dunn speaks to James Heale and Katy Balls about the slightly muted reaction to the budget. Labour has compared the announcements to Liz Truss’s unfunded tax cuts and Scottish Tories have criticised the chancellor’s decision to extend the windfall tax on the profits of North Sea oil. But is this really the pre-election budget?