Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tim Shipman

Is Starmer finally learning the art of politics?

The theme of British politics in 2025 has been the assertion of the fun fringe over the staid centre. Nigel Farage and Reform have led all year in the polls and maintain a healthy lead over Labour and the Tories as the year comes to a close. In the final quarter of the year, the big story has been the emergence of the Green party, under Zack Polanski’s leadership. Both he and Farage know what they think and say it with gusto – little quarter is asked or given. We are at the stage where populists have captured the imagination and are also popular. Reform now has more members than any

Ross Clark

Why is the Motability boss getting a bumper pay rise?

Until Rachel Reeves tightened the rules in last month’s Budget, Motability customers were able to sink into the leather seats of a top-of-the-range Mercedes. But however luxurious the upholstery, it can’t have been as thick and durable as the rhinoceros skin of Motability boss Andrew Miller. He has just been awarded a 23 per cent pay rise to £924,000. There are no prizes for guessing who is contributing to the largesse shown to him by his board. Nearly half of Motability’s £8.1 billion spending last year was covered by the government’s exploding welfare budget. Motability has been under the spotlight Just how impervious to public opinion do you have to be to accept

Lisa Haseldine

Does Putin truly believe he's the victim of his own war?

Ukraine – not Russia – is ‘refusing to end this conflict using peaceful means’, Vladimir Putin claimed this morning. The Russian President chose to open his traditional end-of-year press conference in Moscow with the subject of Ukraine, rehashing lines Kremlin-watchers have heard many times since he launched his full-scale invasion almost four years ago. The strength of feeling with which he answered prompts the question of whether Putin truly believes what he is saying? Asked by NBC – one of the few foreign outlets granted a question during the marathon press conference – if he would feel responsible for more deaths if he didn’t agree to a peace plan, Putin

James Hanson

The absurdity of the £10 Christmas bonus for pensioners

In the time honoured tradition of underwhelming Christmas gifts, surely none is quite so derisory as the government’s Christmas bonus for pensioners. Many recipients may not even notice it. A £10 payment by the Department for Work and Pensions, this tax-free bauble is sent to every state pensioner in the first week of December, plus those on carer’s allowance or pension credit. There is no fanfare from ministers, no letter from the DWP, it just quietly appears in the bank accounts of around 18 million people each and every year. Nothing sums up the craven way our politicians deal with pensioners quite like the Christmas bonus First conceived by Ted

Yesterday

Terry Barnes

Is Australia finally taking anti-Semitism seriously?

After four days of looking like a rabbit in the headlights, embattled Australian prime minister, Labor’s Anthony Albanese, finally started to act like a national leader willing to do what’s right. Yesterday, Albanese announced his government’s response to a plan to combat anti-Semitism proposed by his hand-picked special envoy on anti-Semitism, Jewish community leader Jillian Segal. Albanese has had Segal’s report since July. His response yesterday, which effectively accepted the envoy’s 13 recommendations, was tardy but substantial. Most importantly, the Australian government accepted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism – a definition that boils down simply to hatred towards Jews, without qualification – as the basis of

Kristina Murkett

Misogyny lessons for schoolboys will backfire

All parents and teachers of teenagers will know two things. The first is that teenagers are the human equivalent of seismometers when it comes to perceived unfairness: they are acutely sensitive to any injustice or unequal treatment, and if they feel they are not being treated the same as their peers, this can quickly erupt into an outburst of outrage or denial. The second is that, try as we might, parents and teachers are not cool. We are not cool at the best of times, but we are definitely not cool when we are telling teenagers not to do something – and there is always the risk that lecturing them

Owen Matthews

Europe has left Ukraine living on borrowed time

Russia started the war on Ukraine, so Russia should pay for the damage it has wrought. Such was Volodymyr Zelensky’s forceful message to European leaders last night as he pleaded for a ‘reparations loan’ backed by the €190 billion (£167 billion) of Russian Central Bank capital frozen in a Belgian clearing bank since Putin’s full-scale invasion. ‘Just as authorities confiscate money from drug traffickers and seize weapons from terrorists, Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks,’ Zelensky told his European allies. ‘It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal.’ But after negotiations that went late into the night, Europe ultimately shied

Quentin Letts

Who won 2025? with Quentin Letts

25 min listen

As is fast becoming a tradition on Coffee House Shots at this time of year, James Heale and Tim Shipman are joined by sketch writer Quentin Letts to go through the events of the past 12 months. From sackings to resignations, and Farage to Polanski, it is a year in which the centuries-old consensus has been challenged and Westminster is delicately poised ahead of a 2026 which will define politics for the remainder of this parliamentary term. On the podcast, they discuss who is up and who is down, why Farage might be running out of steam and who is the most insufferable MP? Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Megan

David Shipley

The fiscal case for mass migration is being demolished

Perhaps because it’s the week before Christmas, the Migration Advisory Committee’s (MAC) latest annual report has attracted little attention. Many people can’t have read it, because it is full of incendiary details which demolish the case for mass migration. The MAC is ‘an advisory non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Home Office’. It is not a political body, and its board is comprised of sober, sensible academics, who have set out to model ‘net fiscal impact’ – the costs, or benefits to the taxpayer of different kinds of migration. It’s worth noting that they do not seek to model second- or third-order costs of migration, such as housing costs, crime

Michael Gove

Q&A: How has being adopted impacted your politics?

27 min listen

Submit your urgent questions to Michael and Maddie at spectator.co.uk/quiteright. This week on Quite right! Q&A: is demography destiny? With Britain’s birth rate falling, Michael Maddie Grant discuss whether the country is quietly drifting towards decline – and whether immigration, pro-natal policy or something more radical is the answer. Is importing labour a short-term fix that stores up long-term problems? And can advanced economies really persuade families to have more children? Then: adoption, identity and love. Michael reflects candidly on being adopted, how it shaped his sense of responsibility and gratitude, and why he believes the system too often lets the perfect become the enemy of the good. And finally,

Thursday

Tim Shipman

Starmer should pick a UN ambassador who knows Trump

After three months of speculation, Keir Starmer has appointed a replacement for Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington. The winner is career diplomat Christian Turner, who has, for the last couple of years, been the political director at the Foreign Office. Turner is considered a high-flyer and has been tipped for big roles like this for years, but it certainly won’t have done him any harm to have been one of the key link men with the incoming Labour administration a year ago. He and Oliver Robbins, the permanent secretary, have been presiding over a difficult reduction in headcount and awkward internal politics over both Gaza and Trump. He is

James Heale

Keir Starmer just declared war on the lobby

This evening, Downing Street has announced a major overhaul of the ‘lobby’ briefing system. Currently, accredited political reporters are invited to twice-daily briefings with No. 10 spokesmen. But Tim Allan – the newly-appointed executive communications director – wants to change all that. He plans to scrap afternoon briefings and host ‘occasional’ morning press conferences in place of morning briefings. ‘Content creators’ are to be invited along too. Allan claims these changes will ‘better serve journalists and to better inform the public about government policies.’ Naturally, most lobby journalists disagree.The current and outgoing chairmen of the parliamentary press gallery have declared that they are ‘furious’ at the changes, unceremoniously announced, without

Eliot Wilson

Kemi Badenoch is right to call for more defence spending

Kemi Badenoch has announced a series of commitments on defence spending that she would implement if she were to become prime minister. This is an important and sensitive issue as the war in Ukraine continues and there are repeated warnings about the heightened threats to the UK. The Conservatives would reallocate £17 billion of public expenditure to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Badenoch said yesterday, because the ‘defence of the realm must be the first priority of any government’. The most politically sharp-edged measure the Tories have announced is repurposing the National Wealth Fund (NWF), which Labour established to ‘increase investment… to accelerate delivery of the government’s growth and clean

Brendan O’Neill

What the word ‘intifada’ really means

Finally the left is showing an interest in freedom of speech. And all it took was a police clampdown on cries for violence against Jews. They turned a blind eye when cancel culture ran riot on campuses. And when gender-critical women were gagged for telling the truth about biology. And when people lost their jobs after dissing Islam. But stifling Jewphobic speech? That’s a step too far. They’re up in arms now. Let’s be clear: ‘Globalise the intifada’ is a call for anti-Jewish violence This is the news that the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police have promised firmer action against chants like ‘Globalise the intifada’. In the aftermath of

Michael Simmons

Despite the rate cut, inflation remains a danger

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has just voted to cut interest rates to 3.75 per cent and in doing so has delivered the Chancellor an early Christmas present. The five to four decision brings rates down to from the 4 per cent they’d been held at since August. The cut is the fourth this year and means base borrowing costs are now at their lowest rate since February 2023. The cut has happened because swing voter and Bank Governor Andrew Bailey switched his vote. Markets had anticipated the move, with trades implying a cut had 90 per cent odds. However, the fact the decision swung on a knife edge

John Keiger

Bats are paying the ultimate price for our wind turbine obsession

The 11,000 wind turbines in the UK are not only an eyesore, they are also a killer. Their blades can spin deceptively fast at up to 186 miles per hour. Even if most are bridled at 56 miles per hour for structural reasons, they still manage to kill creatures which fly into their paths. Birds of prey and swifts are particularly vulnerable, as are songbirds, many of which are on ornithological ‘red lists’. The scale of the slaughter of bats is monumental: 200,000 annually in Germany, 500,000 in the USA and 30,000 in the UK, according to a French study into the impact of wind turbines on bats by the Museum national d’histoire naturelle, recently reported in Le

Duncan Gray

How to really save the BBC

Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC has accidentally done Britain a favour. One ‘fake news’ moment involving the US president has turned what would normally be a media-page squabble into a question on the doorstep: should every household in the UK continue to pay to receive a live television signal, enforceable by law, to fund the BBC? In a world of monthly subscriptions for global streamers, the licence fee has never felt more like an anachronistic tithe. The British public are fed up with the licence fee BBC Charter renewal – due at the end of 2027 – has become an election issue. There’s a chasm that needs

Iain Mansfield

Why should British taxpayers fund students’ European Erasmus jollies?

Half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money will be spent on rejoining the EU’s Erasmus+ student exchange programme. With libraries closing, criminals being let out of jail early and funding for maths and classics in schools slashed, it is the clearest indication yet of where this government’s priorities lie. Rejoining Erasmus+ simply means that working people will now be funding these young people’s excursions The decision to re-enter the Erasmus+ is widely touted as ‘permitting’ UK students to access study opportunities on the continent. The reality is that many university courses have always offered students the opportunity to spend some time studying abroad, whether in the EU or elsewhere. Rejoining

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The crackdown on 'globalise the intifada' chants is too little, too late

Protesters chanting ‘globalise the intifada’ will now be arrested, according to the heads of Greater Manchester Police and the Metropolitan Police. The announcement has been framed as a response to a ‘changed context’. But what it actually represents is an admission, belated and heavy, that the authorities spent years refusing to see what was directly in front of them. The chant was never opaque. The intifadas were not metaphors or moods The chant was never opaque. The intifadas were not metaphors or moods. They were campaigns of organised violence: shootings, stabbings, bombings, lynchings, buses torn apart, cafés turned into graves. And each individual terror attack, each ‘isolated’ act of violence

Tim Shipman

Daniel Finkelstein on anti-Semitism, Nick Fuentes & viral hate

33 min listen

Nick Fuentes is a 27-year-old American influencer with a growing following. He believes America has been subverted by rich, powerful Jews. He was recently interviewed by Piers Morgan, where these views were put to him directly. During the exchange, Morgan referenced a video made by Times columnist Danny Finkelstein about his parents – a clip that has since led to Finkelstein being inundated with thousands of antisemitic messages. Danny Finkelstein joins The Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman to discuss the growth of antisemitism, and what it reveals about modern Britain, America and the internet. They explore the pressures of multiculturalism, what this all means for liberal democracy, and the fragility

Wednesday

Madeline Grant

An unhappy Christmas PMQs for Keir Starmer

Thank God! Today was the last Prime Minister’s Questions before Christmas and so Sir Keir and Mrs Badenoch began their speeches with seasonal greetings. Was a Christmas truce about to break out? Unlikely; Sir Keir couldn’t resist a poke at Reform’s Russian problems. ‘If wise men from the East come bearing gifts, this time report it to the police’ he scoffed. Today, Nigel Farage, Sir Keir’s very own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, loomed down on proceedings from the Commons viewing gallery. Even he chuckled at this opening gag. The death of Tiny Tim is genuinely more likely to bring about a smile than the Prime Minister’s gags Things got

Tim Shipman

A ‘classically awful’ PMQs to round out the year

10 min listen

Today was the final PMQs of the year – and it was certainly not a classic. It is customary for the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition to make some attempt at Christmas cheer by telling jokes at the despatch box, but this year’s zingers were awful. Despite a promising start from Keir Starmer, it soon degenerated into quips about whether the Prime Minister has ‘the baubles’ and whether Kemi Badenoch will be ‘Home Alone’. None of the jokes were delivered with any aplomb. Is this parliament at its worst? Also today, Wes Streeting is under pressure as the junior doctors’ strike begins – how is he dealing

Isabel Hardman

Badenoch – and Starmer – should work on their PMQs jokes

Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer conformed to time-honoured tradition today at Prime Minister’s Questions by producing lots of jokes that would be rejected by a cracker company in their exchanges. The Tory leader’s lines included that the government was full of turkeys, Starmer didn’t have the baubles to stand up to striking doctors, and all Labour MPs wanted for Christmas was a new leader. Starmer had one decent joke Starmer had one decent joke that someone else had written for him at the start. As he wished the whole House a happy Christmas, he had some ‘advice’ for Reform UK, which was that ‘if mysterious men from the East appear