Politics

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

Sunday

Daniel DePetris

Trump is coming for Europe on defence

Hundreds of millions of Americans will have a new president tomorrow. Depending on where you land on America’s increasingly hyper-partisan political spectrum, 20 January will either be a day of dread or joy, a return to the good old times or a step back into rough, unpredictable waters.  The same could be said for policymakers across the Atlantic Ocean. Most of Europe’s political heavyweights, the majority of whom are still content to live in the 1990s as if the geopolitical changes of the last two decades didn’t occur, are dreading Trump’s return. Fresh off another victory, Trump and his administration want to see clear, unambiguous action It doesn’t take a

Lucy Dunn

What’s behind Reform’s surge in Scotland?

Five years ago, Reform UK had no presence in Scotland. Its Facebook and Twitter pages emerged during the latter half of the pandemic and despite briefly experiencing four months in Holyrood courtesy of a Tory defector, the group has since then remained very much out of sight and mind. Nigel Farage neglected Scotland during last year’s general election campaign, his deputy Richard Tice visited just once and the group still lacks a Scottish leader. Despite all that, however, Reform is shaping up to become kingmaker in the 2026 Holyrood election.  ‘Everywhere I went, people were talking about Reform. And I thought: there’s something really going on here.’  On Thursday, The Spectator revealed

John R. MacArthur

True-blue New Yorkers are bracing themselves for Trump’s return

Fleeing the United States ahead of a ‘fascist takeover’ by Donald Trump on 20 January has been the talk of liberal circles, and nowhere more than in deep-blue New York City. A New York Times story revealing that tech billionaire and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman was ‘weighing a move overseas’ because he feared ‘retribution’ from the next president added fuel to already smouldering speculation ignited by the relocation of the anti-Trump TV celebrity Ellen DeGeneres and her wife to England. I tend to ridicule such quailing as absurd and unpatriotic, if not downright cowardly.  I was thrown off my leftist assumptions, however, when my plumber visited our family’s weekend house on the East End

Sonia Sodha

How assisted dying changed my mind on religion

A couple of weeks ago, a friend voiced a sentiment that I wasn’t expecting. ‘I think your values are quite Christian, Sonia.’ What I found even more surprising was my own reaction to it. A year ago, I’d have felt patronised, maybe even a little insulted. Instead, I took it as a compliment. Growing up the daughter of East African Asian immigrants of different faiths – my father an atheistic Gujarati Hindu, my mother a lapsed Punjabi Sikh – faith wasn’t a strong feature of my childhood. As a young child, I’d quite often go to the gurdwara with my maternal grandparents, who were religious. I went to a school

John Jenkins

The UK still hasn’t come to terms with the Muslim Brotherhood

Earlier this month, the UAE announced it was sanctioning 11 individuals and eight rather obscure organisations for alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The UAE proscribed the MB as a terrorist group in 2014, so you might be forgiven for thinking this was routine. But it wasn’t. All eight organisations were based in the UK. Normally this works the other way round: the UK bans or sanctions entities elsewhere. Having an Arab country – especially one we claim as a friend – do that in reverse should set alarm bells ringing. There was a brief flurry of press interest, then silence.  The Muslim Brotherhood is the mothership of all modern

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How France’s Jimmy Savile also got away with his evil

This week nine more charges of sexual abuse were levelled against Abbé Pierre, the late French Roman Catholic priest who for decades was regarded as a modern-day saint. This brings to 33 the number of charges, ranging from sexual assault to the rape of a boy, all alleged to have been committed between the 1960s and shortly before the priest’s death in 2007 at the age of 94. Among the latest complainants are a woman now 58, who detailed how she was assaulted by Abbé Pierre exactly fifty years ago. ‘Several times I’ve wanted to shout to the world that this man isn’t who he says he is,’ the woman said in an

Steerpike Steerpike

Will MAGA push out Mandelson?

They do say you shouldn’t take anything for granted and it seems Peter Mandelson is beginning to realise that too. He may have thought that his new appointment as UK ambassador to the US was set in stone – but it has emerged that the president-elect is considering, um, rejecting Sir Keir Starmer’s nominee. Ouch.  As first reported by the Independent, it transpires that the Trump team says it isn’t certain that Mandelson will be accepted by the Republican leader after he becomes president. For a nominee to officially take on the role, the country’s head of state has to accept the ‘letters of credence’ – and on this, Trump may

Saturday

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump’s plan for day one

Washington, DC On your marks, get set, executive orders.  Donald Trump will be sworn back into office on Monday, from inside the Capitol Rotunda, as Ronald Reagan was in 1985. Cold weather is the official reason for moving the ceremony from outside to in, and it seems true – the 78-year-old president-elect may wish to avoid the fate of his predecessor William Henry Harrison – although there’s plenty of speculation that security is the real factor. The Donald, in benevolent king mode, also didn’t want the poor horses to freeze to death on his big day. It’s funny what goes on in that very famous orange head.  Trump will then make

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The truth about a Tory-Reform pact

It’s been a mixed week for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader can – alongside Elon Musk and Nigel Farage – claim a partial win after Labour announced an audit and inquiries into grooming gangs (though stopped short of a national one). She also set out the first part of her plan for restoring trust – acknowledging that the Tories has made a series of mistakes while in office. However, an interview on the pensions triple lock was quickly weaponised by Labour, Tory MPs are hungry for a policy announcement and the Reform party is in the lead in several polls. It’s why talk of a ‘Reform-Tory pact’ is rising up

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Reeves’s worst week so far?

16 min listen

It’s been a tricky week for Rachel Reeves: an onslaught of criticism for the levels of borrowing costs, GDP at 0.1 per cent, and stagflation still gripping the UK economy. Remarkably she has come out of it looking stronger – politically at least. But can she afford to celebrate? The Spectator’s Kate Andrews and data editor Michael Simmons join the podcast to discuss the economy, and go through some of the most striking graphs from The Spectator’sdata hub this week. Produced by Natasha Feroze.

Andrew Liddle

The dilemma facing Scottish Labour MPs

For Scottish Labour’s significant crop of new MPs, the heady summer of electoral triumph is already a distant memory. In the days following the general election – where Anas Sarwar’s party swept the Central Belt, gaining a whopping 36 seats – it seemed Scottish Labour’s recovery was not only inevitable but already underway. In the months since that has all changed, with Scottish Labour’s popularity declining as much – if not more – than its UK counterpart. A Norstat poll in December, for instance, had Scottish Labour at its lowest ebb in three years and the SNP, remarkably, on course to once again form the Scottish Government following devolved elections

Eoghan Harris

Lockerbie and the forgiveness fallacy

It’s clear who was to blame for the Lockerbie terrorist bombing: Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi paid over a billion dollars to relatives of the 270 victims of the attack after accepting responsibility. But viewers of Sky Atlantic’s Lockerbie: A Search For Truth, might feel that the USA and UK were somehow involved. Here’s a clue as to why that might be the case: it’s co-directed by Jim Loach, son of Ken, who seems not so much a chip off the old block as a chip off the old Trot block. Swire’s story resembles what a Sinn Féin critic like me calls the forgiveness fallacy Lockerbie’s hero is Jim Swire, who lost his

Angela Epstein

Why are so many BBC broadcasters going native?

Of the many characters created by the peerless Victoria Wood, one creation in particular lingers in the mind: namely the immaculately polished, but unashamedly snobbish television continuity announcer, who, with an assassin’s smile, treated her audience with utter contempt. ‘We’d like to apologise to viewers in the North. It must be awful for them,’ was one of her more cutting remarks. The hon hon hon bonhomie of French surnames – step forward President Macrrrrrron – is hard to take seriously Coming from Manchester, Wood was clearly making mischief with counterintuitive comedy. She was taking aim at how crisp, received pronunciation can make anything sound plausible. Had she not died in 2016, at

Jim Lawley

Spain’s expat tax won’t last long

‘There are only two families in the world, as a grandmother of mine used to say: the haves and the have-nots.’ Sancho Panza’s line in Cervantes’ famous novel was echoed by socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday when he worried that Spanish society was rapidly dividing into two classes: ‘Those who inherit properties from their parents and those who have to spend their lives working to pay the rent.’ Spain certainly has a severe housing crisis. Although the fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman is far below the 2.1 needed to maintain population, mass immigration means that every year the country needs to find homes for over half

Alexander Larman

What made David Lynch cool

When one of your favourite filmmakers dies, it is hard not to feel a deeply personal sense of loss; the punch in the viscera with the knowledge that someone who has created some of the most iconic pieces of cinema from the past half-century will no longer be bringing his inimitable and unforgettable personal voice into film. And so it has been with the dreadful news that the director David Lynch died on Thursday at the age of 78: not a young age, but when the likes of Ridley Scott and Clint Eastwood are still making major work in their eighties and nineties, it is an enormous shame that he

Friday

Matthew Foldi

Will TikTok have a second life?

TikTok is hoping that 2025 can be its year – but what comes next for the social media company is truly anyone’s guess. Will someone buy it? Will it divest from its Chinese ownership? Will it exist in America next week (the app is fully banned in China as is)? Stay tuned. The social-media app is seeking yet another revival at the 11th hour. Despite a bipartisan bill signed by President Joe Biden that restricts the ability for foreign adversaries to run social-media companies in the United States, TikTok is activating its army of supporters once more (the app is presumably hoping that its child soldiers will not threaten to kill themselves or

Yossi Melman

Why Netanyahu won’t let the Gaza hostage deal fall through

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to claim his first major foreign policy achievement just days before his inauguration on Monday. If no last-minute obstacles arise, a long-anticipated hostage deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza could take effect as soon as this Sunday. But while Trump will emerge victorious from this situation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, will find himself humiliated and defeated. For nearly a year, fearing the collapse of his right-wing coalition, Netanyahu has worked hard to prevent the deal from concluding, using all sorts of excuses and hoping that Hamas would eventually derail it and be blamed for it. This has not happened.

Iain Macwhirter

Will the SNP come to its senses on North Sea oil?

Drill, baby drill. The mood on Net Zero is changing in the Scottish parliament where a majority of MSPs have signed a petition calling for a reversal on the ban on new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. This sea change in attitudes to the black stuff, if you’ll excuse the pun, could portend a dramatic reversal of the Scottish government’s opposition to fossil fuels in SNP leader John Swinney’s long-delayed energy strategy. The “presumption against offshore drilling” has been the centrepiece of SNP energy policy since Cop26 in 2021, when Nicola Sturgeon posed for selfies with Greta Thunberg. Sturgeon is gone, of course – and her clean

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Will the IMF regret its backing for Labour’s Budget?

International investors may be jittery about the UK’s future, but the International Monetary Fund appears to be more optimistic. The IMF has published its World Economic Outlook report for January, which forecasts the UK will have the third-fastest growth in the G7 this year. It revises upwards its projection for 2025, by 0.1 per cent, to 1.6 per cent. The UK falling in after the United States and Canada does not make good on Labour’s promise to be the fastest growing advanced economy. But after a tumultuous week of gilt fluctuations, bad growth figures and an even worse retail sales update, it’s a good way to be ending the week.

James Heale James Heale

Trudeau’s assassin could be Canada’s next leader

Less than 24 hours after Mark Carney’s launch, Chrystia Freeland announced her bid to be the next Liberal party leader of Canada. The former finance minister – whose resignation last month triggered Justin Trudeau’s downfall – put out a pithy six word statement this morning. ‘I’m running to fight for Canada’, it said, simply. She intends to officially launch her campaign on Sunday, having already gained public endorsements from Mark Holland and Diane Lebouthillier. The leadership field has narrowed considerably this week as possible contenders Christy Clark, Dominic LeBlanc, Francois Phillipe Champagne and Mélanie Joly all ruled themselves out. It leaves Freeland and Carney as the only two serious candidates