Politics

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

Michael Evans

Trump is living in Putin’s world

It all began with such promise. Donald Trump would sweep away all the failures of past administrations, sit astride the globe like a Nobel Prize winner in the making and solve the world’s seemingly unresolvable security challenges. To be fair, it has only been eight months since he began his second term in the White House. But it is a fact that Trump has struggled to bring the force of his personality and chutzpah to bear in trying to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as he pledged he would in short shrift during his presidential campaign. His return to the White House was supposed to be the start

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Rachel Reeves: destroyer of jobs

Over the past year, some 142,000 payrolled jobs have been lost, according to the latest labour market figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Another 8,000 disappeared last month alone. Unemployment remained at 4.7 per cent – higher than a year ago. The bulk of job losses came in accommodation and food services, which shed 90,000 workers. The culprit seems obvious: the anti-business tax raid unleashed by the Chancellor in the last Budget. That £25 billion hike on employee National Insurance, as well as the increase in the minimum wage, is not just discouraging job creation but making employers think twice about keeping people on. And with the government’s

Andrew Hogg

The long history of Peter Mandelson’s scandals

The politician now known as Lord Mandelson is an unmitigated stranger to the truth who has been prepared to use the power of office to bully and obfuscate. This is not the verdict of some political obsessive merely drawing conclusions from the clouded career of the man who, until last week, was the United Kingdom’s man in Washington. It’s my view as a journalist – former news editor of two national newspapers, head of the Sunday Times Insight investigative team and reporter for the Daily Mail  – having once had occasion to question Mandelson about his financial dealings. His response to my questions revealed a side to the man at considerable variance

David Shipley

Cutting prison education is a calamity

Prisons across the country are slashing education funding. According to the Guardian, public money for prison education courses is being reduced by almost 50 per cent. As a result, basic English and maths courses are being scrapped. This appears to breach Labour’s 2024 manifesto commitment, in which they promised to ‘work with prisons to improve offenders’ access to purposeful activity, such as learning’. If the government hopes to save the justice system from collapse, then it needs to bring down reoffending. The Sentencing Bill and the coming reforms to the court system will significantly reduce the use of imprisonment, and Labour hope that jails and probation will be able to help

Today

Edward Stringer

Barring Israeli soldiers from the Royal College of Defence Studies is a mistake

The government has announced that owing to the war in Gaza, students from the Israeli Defence Forces will no longer be welcome at the UK’s Royal College of Defence Studies in London. Those who are critical of Israel will welcome this display as robust signalling. I would argue that even they, and all those who desire long-term resolution of the region’s more intractable problems, should think long before supporting it. It is more likely that the most serious damage will be done to us. The RCDS is one the UK’s soft power jewels. I attended as a student in 2008 (one remains a member for life) and had it under

Yesterday

Patrick West

Progressives can never be wrong

The progressive and idealistic left will never admit that they are wrong. That’s because, possessed with a sense of mission and unshakable righteousness, they will always believe that they are right. No matter the murder in America last week of a family man by a reputed, self-styled anti-fascist, and no matter the mostly calm and dignified conduct of those at the Unite the Kingdom march in London on Saturday, they will always smear and demonise those of a conservative persuasion with hysterical, slanderous words. By all accounts, despite the 25 arrests made from a crowd of up to 150,000, it was a mostly civilised and peaceful affair. Perhaps the most

Lucy Dunn

Tories granted emergency debate on Mandelson

Peter Mandelson is no longer US ambassador to the UK, but tough questions remain for Keir Starmer about why he appointed the ‘Prince of Darkness’ in the first place. Downing Street distanced itself from Mandelson last week, with the Prime Minister’s spokesperson claiming that new information had emerged about Mandelson’s relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein that put things in a different light. Mandelson was sacked just days after Starmer had defended his man in Washington amid criticism from his backbenchers. Now news has come out that the House of Commons will debate Mandelson’s appointment tomorrow. The backlash continues… The Conservatives have been granted an emergency debate in the Commons

Andrew Gilligan

It’s time to admit that high-speed rail is a dead end

For those who think there could never be a worse disaster than HS2, or hope that governments can learn from their mistakes, I have disappointing news. Later this month, ministers will unveil a future platinum medallist in the Fiasco Olympics: a project which even their own infrastructure watchdog calls ‘unachievable’. A new, high-speed line between Liverpool and Manchester which will actually take longer than the existing rail service. Called Northern Powerhouse Rail, this section alone will cost a claimed £17 billion (in reality, perhaps £30 billion). It will be a high-speed railway on which trains can never reach high speeds, because the stations are too close together. It will leave

Steerpike Steerpike

Starmer aide quits over explicit Diane Abbott messages

When it rains for Starmer, it pours. As if the Prime Minister didn’t have enough on his plate – what with his deputy Angela Rayner resigning over her tax affairs before Starmer sacked Peter Mandelson from his ambassador role over his links to Jeffrey Epstein – now one of his top aides has quit over sexually explicit messages. Uh oh… It transpires that Paul Ovenden had exchanged messages with a former colleague in 2017 in which he discussed a game of ‘shag, marry, kill’ involving Labour MP Diane Abbott. In the messages, Ovenden – a close ally of Morgan McSweeney – retold a rather graphic account of the story in

Oscar Edmondson

Why Danny Kruger’s defection to Reform matters

13 min listen

The big news in Westminster today is that there has been another defection to Reform. But this time it feels slightly different: a front bench Tory with a CV that spans multiple Tory leaders and a number of books on Conservative thought is now batting for Reform. Danny Kruger, Nigel Farage’s latest defector, served as David Cameron’s speechwriter, Boris Johnson’s political secretary and Robert Jenrick’s campaign manager just last summer. His defection will therefore come as a serious blow to those who argue that the Conservative party stands a better chance than Reform of winning the next election. Kruger told the room that he believes Reform now stands the best

Steerpike Steerpike

Full list: Labour MPs slamming Starmer

Oh dear. If Sir Keir Starmer thought his first 12 months in office had been rocky, his second year in power is shaping up to be an even bumpier ride. This weekend saw myriad briefings against the Prime Minister after a tumultuous two weeks in which he lost his deputy Angela Rayner to a tax scandal, British ambassador Peter Mandelson over Epstein and saw a Tommy Robinson rally demonstrating how increasingly polarised the UK is becoming. As Labour continues to struggle in the polls, some in Starmer’s army believe that a poor performance at next May’s local and devolved parliament elections could spell the end for Sir Keir. Some backbenchers

Madeline Grant

Danny Kruger is Reform’s best recruit yet

In fairness, I suspect plenty of Tory MPs are looking for reasons to get out of party conference this year. East Wiltshire MP Danny Kruger – who this afternoon appeared at the Faragean elbow to defect to Reform – has probably found the single best, if drastic, get-out-clause available.  Kruger isn’t the first MP to tread this path of course, but because of his character and standing within the party he leaves, this defection isn’t like the others. Nadine Dorries has probably fallen out with more people before breakfast than most of us will manage in a lifetime. Andrea Jenkyns seemed to have defected with the sole purpose of finding

Matthew Lynn

Can Trump force Nato to get tough on Russian sanctions?

The pipelines would be sealed off. The supertankers would be left in the ports, and the wells would have to be capped. When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, it was confidently assumed that sanctions on Moscow’s oil and gas industry would be so punishing for its fragile economy that it would quickly force Vladimir Putin to plead for a settlement. Unfortunately, it has not worked out like that. Instead, the sanctions against Russia have been widely flouted. In response, President Trump has demaned that Nato makes them stick. But would sanctions really work and cripple Putin’s war machine?  President Trump was in typically robust form. Over the weekend, he

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The NHS is right to drive a hard bargain for new drugs

It is not often that the NHS gets accused of being too good at negotiating down costs. But that seems to be gist of the case levelled against it regarding the cost of drugs. AstraZeneca has paused the expansion of a research facility in Cambridge and US pharmaceutical firm Merck has cancelled a plan to invest £1 billion in a research centre in London. In both cases the blame has been cast on the tight-fistedness of the NHS in not paying enough for drugs. If you don’t pay, goes the argument, then you won’t get investment in new drugs.     We have to accept that we are never going to get new

James Heale James Heale

Why Danny Kruger’s defection matters

This morning Nigel Farage unveiled his latest defector: Danny Kruger. The Wiltshire MP boasts impeccable Tory credentials. He served as David Cameron’s speechwriter, Boris Johnson’s political secretary and Robert Jenrick’s campaign manager just last summer. His defection today will therefore come as a serious blow to those who argue that the Conservative party stands a better chance than Reform of winning the next election. Kruger told a press conference in Mayfair that his former Tory party were ‘finished as the main opposition to the left’. His argument is that Reform is the ‘new home’ of conservatism. His new role in Reform is ‘preparing the party for government’  – a theme

Steerpike Steerpike

Danny Kruger defects to Reform

Another day, another defector joins Reform. This time it’s Tory MP Danny Kruger, who has joined Nigel Farage’s outfit to lead the party’s ‘preparations for government’ – despite the politician never having held a ministerial job himself. The first sitting Conservative politician to defect to Reform since last year’s election gave a punchy statement at Farage’s London presser this morning, telling his audience: I hoped after our defeat last year that the Conservative party would learn the obvious lesson, that the old ways don’t work, that centrism is not enough, that real change is needed. But no. We have had a year of stasis and drift and the sham unity that comes from

Steerpike Steerpike

Alastair Campbell apologises over false Charlie Kirk claim

Well, well, well. It’s not often that onetime New Labour spinner Alastair Campbell expresses any form of contrition. But after he made a pretty startling claim about the late political activist Charlie Kirk – who was shot and killed last week – the communications director-turned-podcaster has been forced to concede that on this occasion, like on many others, he was in fact wrong. Speaking on his podcast The Rest of Politics, Campbell bleated within hours of Kirk’s death that ‘it is important that we don’t lose sight of some of the views that he expressed because they were horrific’. He went on to fume: ‘I remember one clip I saw

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Pope Leo is naive about Europe’s migrant crisis

Giorgia Meloni has not cracked Italy’s migrant crisis. On the contrary, the number of migrants crossing the central Mediterranean is on the rise once more. A total of 47,313 migrants have crossed this year up to 12 September, which is 3,000 more than the same period in 2024. The vast majority makes land on the island of Lampedusa, like the 228 who disembarked on the small Mediterranean island on Sunday. Their three boats had departed from Zawiya and Homs in Libya, and the passengers were predominantly Egyptians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans. Lampedusa is struggling to cope with the numbers of arrivals despite a system of transferring the migrants to

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Tommy Robinson’s ascent was entirely avoidable

There’s a certain thrill in saying, ‘I told you so.’ We all relish the moment when our warnings are vindicated, when the world finally catches up with our foresight. But this time, I genuinely take no pleasure in it. I said Britain would begin to crack, and now it is.  I’m exhausted by those who, years later, grudgingly admit that I was right. I’d much rather be mocked for overreacting, my words dismissed with a snarky ‘this aged well’. At least then, the worst wouldn’t have come to pass. The recent Unite the Kingdom demonstration, led by Tommy Robinson, brought this into sharp focus. Figures like Laurence Fox and Katie

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Was Charlie Kirk’s murder the senseless act of an internet troll?

We are in the grip of old habits. We assume, most of us, that when a prominent political figure is assassinated, the motive for the killing is political. So it was with Charlie Kirk’s assassin. Before anything was known about the killer, President Trump’s allies and outliers decided that it was a symptom of the murderous violence of soi-disant antifascists on the left. When it emerged, subsequently, that our man was from a republican family and that he potentially may have been part of the white supremacist ‘groyper’ movement, anti-Trump types chalked it up to the violence of the Right.  There may have been more justification for the latter position

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The AfD’s mission to seduce West Germany is paying off

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party continued its westward march in popularity across Germany yesterday, securing third place in the local elections in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Preliminary results show that, alongside the outcomes of mayoralty and district administrator elections which took place in the state, the far-right party won 14.5 per cent of the vote across the 396 municipalities which went to the polls. The liberal SPD party came in second with 22.1 per cent, while the CDU – the governing party in Berlin – secured a third of the vote, with 33.3 per cent. The German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, will be breathing a small sigh of

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The truth about the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march

On Saturday morning, I skipped synagogue and went to the Tommy Robinson march instead. By the time I arrived at Whitehall to collect my press pass for the Unite the Kingdom rally, the sun was shining and the stage was still being set up. I had optimistically planned to go straight to Shabbat prayers and return by 1 p.m., when the march was expected to reach its endpoint. But that proved unrealistic. So I stayed put, somewhat overdressed in a suit, and spoke with two Scottish women setting up tables of homemade cakes and snacks backstage. One told me she had been volunteering for Tommy Robinson ever since she first

Sunday

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Peter Kyle on Mandelson’s ‘singular talent’

Chaos continues to follow the prime minister, as damning emails between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein were made public, forcing Keir Starmer to sack the UK ambassador to the US just days before Trump’s scheduled state visit. Details of the emails were reportedly given to Downing Street on Tuesday, but Starmer defended Mandelson in the House of Commons on Wednesday, apparently not knowing about the contents of the emails until Wednesday evening. On Sky News this morning, Business Secretary Peter Kyle told Trevor Phillips that Starmer had taken ‘decisive action’ hours after coming across the emails. Phillips asked Kyle how it was possible that the vetting process had not brought