Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Mani Basharzad

The worst thing about being an Iranian in Britain

What’s the most annoying thing about being an Iranian in Britain? Since coming to the UK a year ago, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard one particularly irritating comment. I’ve been told it by Oxford students and professors, Uber drivers and friends. It has felt like a shadow following me. No, it’s not a racist remark; I’ve never encountered this in Britain. It’s being told: ‘I support what your government is doing.’ The greatest challenge has been not losing my temper when someone says it People say it because they oppose Israel, back Palestine or enjoy resisting US imperialism. Of course, they know little of life

Paul Goodman

Debate: is 2026 Kemi’s year?

16 min listen

Regular listeners will remember back in May we recorded a podcast debating whether Kemi Badenoch was the right fit for Tory leader. At that point in time the Conservatives were falling in the polls and she was facing allegations of laziness and a lack of a political vision. Spool forward to the end of the year and she is in her strongest position ever. She looks more assured in PMQs, her conference speech was a hit and her media game is much improved. But is she actually getting better, or is Starmer getting worse? And will this modest bump in fortunes translate to success at the local elections? James Heale

Steerpike

Reform offer removal van to Tory HQ

It is the season of goodwill to all men. So, in the spirit of brotherly love, Reform staff have today made a kindly Christmas gesture to their Tory rivals. Two removal vans rocked up at Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) with an offer to help Kemi Badenoch’s staff move out ahead of their expected departure from Matthew Parker Street in 2026. Unsurprisingly, the Tories are yet to take up Nigel Farage’s team on such a generous offer… The ‘Reform Removals’ vans are billed as offering a ‘premium removals service’ for struggling political forces. ‘Major movers for minor parties’ is the slogan emblazoned on both sides of each van. A senior Reform

David Shipley

Could Alaa Abd el-Fattah have his British citizenship revoked?

It’s a difficult Monday for the Prime Minister. Shortly after Keir Starmer expressed his ‘delight’ that Egyptian dissident Alaa Abd el-Fattah had arrived in the UK, it emerged that the PM’s ‘top priority’ apparently hates Jews, white people and the English most of all, if his past tweet are anything to go by. As a result, the government is now facing demands from Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch, and even senior Labour MPs to strip el-Fattah of the citizenship he was granted in 2022 while a prisoner in Egypt. How plausible is this? In fact, although such demands are very unusual in British politics, the deprivation of citizenship is a long-established

Today

Michael Gove

‘Boris didn’t care!’: Dominic Cummings on lawfare, lockdowns & the broken British state | part one

47 min listen

In this special two-part interview, Michael and Maddie are joined by Dominic Cummings. After starting his political career at the Department of Education, Dominic is best known as the campaign director of Vote Leave, the chief adviser in Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s premiership, and one of the most influential strategists of modern times. Whether you consider him a visionary reformer or (as David Cameron once said) a ‘career psychopath’, his ideas – on government, technology, the blob, education and the future of the right – continue to provoke debate. In part one, Dominic diagnoses Britain’s institutional decline and takes us inside Whitehall’s ‘heart of darkness’. He explains that ministers

Yesterday

Stephen Pollard

Alaa Abd el-Fattah's apology changes nothing

Call me an old cynic, but I knew from the moment that the Alaa Abd el-Fattah affair blew up what the next stage would be. The single most predictable thing in the entire farce – a Whitehall farce indeed, albeit very much not in the old Brian Rix mould – was that when el-Fattah made his first comment, it would be that far from hating Jews, he was in fact deeply, passionately, preternaturally opposed to anti-Semitism in all its forms. Lo and behold, it came to pass: I take accusations of anti-Semitism very seriously. I have always believed that sectarianism and racism are the most sinister and dangerous of forces, and

Stephen Daisley

The British state radicalised me

The liberal state and its journalistic and academic outriders fret constantly about the radicalising influence of under-regulated social media, but they are overlooking an even more effective provocateur: themselves. I say this as someone who is in the process of being radicalised by them. With the decision to grant citizenship to Alaa Abd El-Fattah and recently to return him to Britain from Egypt, and for the Prime Minister to express his ‘delight’ at these arrangements, they’re practically force-feeding me red pills. Not so long ago, I was a happy warrior for liberal multiculturalism. Critical of the indulgence shown to Islamism, sure, and troubled by my fellow pro-immigrationists’ tacit – and

Lisa Haseldine

Dominic Cummings's warning to broken Britain on migrant crime

Britain should prepare for more rape cases involving illegal migrants, Dominic Cummings has warned. Speaking on The Spectator’s Quite right! podcast, the former advisor to Boris Johnson referenced the case of two young Afghan asylum seekers who were jailed earlier this month for the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa. Places like Leamington ‘better get used to it’, Cummings said, ‘because there’s going to be a lot more of it.’ Criticising the lack of information Warwickshire police were initially willing to share about the identities of the Leamington perpetrators, Jan Jahanzeb and Israr Niazal, following their arrest in May, Cummings told Michael Gove and Madeline Grant: The odd thing is, the

Henry Donovan

Friedrich Merz risks losing touch with the German people

What a radically changing year 2025 has been: a year in which Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, found himself fighting not merely the parliamentary opposition, the Russian threat and the brittle promise of European unity, but also his weakest and most self-confident adversary of all – his own coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD). After years of aborted ascents, Friedrich Merz has finally reached the summit. For more than seven months now, he has sat in the Kanzleramt in Berlin he once seemed destined never to occupy. His ascent, however, was ungainly. Two rounds of voting were required to crown him chancellor. A monumental volte-face on the reform of the

Quite right!

Dominic Cummings on lawfare, lockdowns and the broken British state – part one

In this special two-part interview, Michael Gove and Madeline Grant are joined by Dominic Cummings. After starting his political career at the Department for Education, Dominic is best known as the campaign director of Vote Leave, the chief adviser in Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s premiership, and one of the most influential strategists of modern times. Whether you consider him a visionary reformer or (as David Cameron once said) a ‘career psychopath’, his ideas – on government, technology, the Blob, education and the future of the right – continue to provoke debate. In part one, Dominic diagnoses Britain’s institutional decline and takes us inside Whitehall’s ‘heart of darkness’. He explains

Patrick Gibbons

Ten years after Brexit, the EU is wrestling with its identity

As the tenth anniversary of the Brexit vote approaches, renewed debate about Britain’s relationship with the European Union is perhaps inevitable. A steady drip of stories has suggested that closer ties between the UK and EU may once again be under consideration, with speculation over rejoining the customs union appearing every week since the Budget. Health Secretary Wes Streeting went further just before Christmas, arguing in favour of the move. The economic case for deeper cooperation may be compelling, but even for those who hope this is a prelude to something bigger, it is worth asking a more fundamental question: what kind of European Union would Britain be re-entering? One

Sam Leith

Spotify wouldn't exist without the musicians it exploits

It used to be said that you could walk from the west of Ireland to Nantucket on the backs of the cod, so thick was the Atlantic with the fish. But as readers of a certain age will remember, by the last decade of the last century, it was looking doubtful that the cod population would see this century out to the end. By 1992, the cod population was one hundredth of its historic level.   We knew that the way we were fishing was, in that unappealing but apt vogue-word, unsustainable. The fishermen themselves knew that it was unsustainable – that they were destroying the very resource on which their

Jonathan Sacerdoti

We need to talk about Islam

I did not come to Islam through theology. I came to it through fear, threat and hatred directed at me and the world I live in. I think the first time I became aware of something called Islam was in 1989, when Salman Rushdie was sentenced to death by Iran’s ‘Supreme Leader’ for writing his novel, The Satanic Verses. Images of furious men immolating books spread around the world and seared themselves into my childhood mind, fixing fear and confusion to something I did not yet know how to name. My father, a bookseller, insisted on continuing to sell the book, but decided, soberly, that it would have to be kept

Alexander Kolyandr

It’ll be anything but a happy new year in Putin’s Russia

The next year will be challenging for Russia. Yes, we’ve heard this for almost four years. We’ve been told that the Russian economy is about to collapse under Western sanctions and the cost of war, yet it stumbles on. There may be no breadlines or toilet paper shortages, but the bill for the Kremlin’s past political and economic decisions has finally landed, and it is ordinary Russians who will foot it. What a difference a year makes. Economic growth, fuelled by Vladimir Putin’s profligate spending on the defence industry, has virtually evaporated. Oil revenues, which provide a fifth of the government’s income, are down nearly a quarter owing to lower

Ross Clark

America is better off without Clare Melford

How tempting it is to rush to the aid of Clare Melford, one of the five people told by the Trump regime that they cannot have a US visa on the grounds that their presence in the country is not conducive to America’s commitment to free speech. It is hypocritical, one might say to Team Trump, to make a show of defending free speech by banning people you don’t like from entering your country. Indeed, that was the reaction of Chi Onwurah, chair of the Commons committee on Science, Innovation and Technology. She said last week: ‘Banning people because you disagree with what they say undermines the free speech the

Nicola Burkinshaw

No, Lady Macbeth isn't a trans man

William Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is many things: ruthless, ambitious, manipulative, flawed. But there’s one thing she isn’t: a man. Or so I thought. For almost a decade, I have been working as a private tutor helping students studying English and history. I love my job: there’s few things better in life than reading great literature and discussing it with keen youngsters. Often, tutoring is about filling in gaps in their knowledge; sometimes it’s about correcting misinterpretations. Most recently this meant I had to unpick the suggestion that Lady Macbeth was, in fact, a bloke. The problem appears to have come from the line in Macbeth: ‘Unsex me here’ Predictably, the

Sunday

David Shipley

Nigel Farage is right to go after civil servants who let in sex offenders

British civil servants have almost never faced real consequences for their failures. If Reform come to power, that might change. Nigel Farage’s party has announced yesterday that they will introduce a new criminal offence of ‘dishonestly determining an asylum claim’. They will use this law to prosecute civil servants who have knowingly put British women and girls in danger by granting asylum to foreign sex offenders. These prosecutions will be retrospective, targeting those who have already made such asylum grants. The new crime would carry a prison sentence of up to two years, and could also result in offenders’ pensions being forfeited.  This announcement follows revelations that asylum caseworkers are

Brendan O’Neill

Keir Starmer will regret gushing over Alaa Abd el-Fattah

‘Top priority.’ Those two words in Keir Starmer’s tweet about Alaa Abd el-Fattah stung the hardest. What an affront to the country. On Boxing Day, as people came down from Christmas revelry that they could ill-afford, here was their prime minister prioritising the wellbeing of an Egyptian loudmouth most Britons couldn’t name. Rarely has the PM’s remoteness been so starkly exposed. ‘I’m delighted that Alaa Abd el-Fattah is back in the UK,’ Starmer wrote on X, following the arrival of the Egyptian activist who was jailed by the Sisi regime for spreading ‘fake news’. He will come to regret this gushing tweet. Abd el-Fattah is the author of racist tweets

Ross King

Are we failing to learn the lesson from Ancient Rome's riches-to-rags tale?

Today’s tech billionaires, property tycoons and hedge-fund titans have nothing on the ancient Romans. Julius Caesar, who plundered Gaul for both gold and slaves – at one point selling 53,000 captives from a single tribe – had a fortune valued at $5.4 trillion (£4.1 trillion). His wealth was on a scale that makes today’s billionaires look modest. Caesar’s riches were so great that he was worth more than Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Larry Ellison combined. His fortune was inherited by his great-nephew, Octavian, who, as Augustus, added to the family pot: by seizing Egypt he became, arguably, the richest man of all time. Even the sternest Roman

Yardena Schwartz

How the first Palestinian leader became a Nazi war criminal

If the founding leader of the Palestinian national movement had been wanted for Nazi war crimes, you might assume this would figure in every modern debate about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet one of the darkest, most inconvenient facts of twentieth-century history has remained strangely peripheral: the intimate alliance between the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and the Nazi regime. The founding father of the Palestinian cause was an unapologetic Nazi collaborator who abetted an actual genocide Many have seen the image of Husseini meeting with Adolf Hitler in Berlin in 1941. Yet few know what they discussed and what Husseini went on to do for the Third Reich.

Sergey Radchenko

The Ukraine war pessimists were proven right this year

As the Russian-Ukrainian full-scale war nears its fourth anniversary, Vladimir Putin looks confident, even cocky. It is not that he has achieved great breakthroughs on the battlefield. The Russians have managed, haltingly, to occupy a little more of Donbas, but one would have to zoom in on the map to see these gains, which amount perhaps to 1 per cent of the (now hopelessly ruined) Ukrainian territory – paid for with hundreds of thousands of lives of Russian soldiers. True, these things are never linear, and no one could rule out that this war of attrition will still lead to Ukraine’s military defeat. Putin probably feels that the goal is

Saturday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Why is Alaa Abd el-Fattah's return a 'top priority' for Keir Starmer?

Apparently it has been a “top priority” for Keir Starmer and his government, since the moment they came to office, to return Alaa Abd el-Fattah to the United Kingdom. A man granted British citizenship only in December 2021. A man who had previously described Britons as “british dogs and monkeys”, who wrote that he “rejoice[s] when US soldiers are killed, and support[s] killing zionists even civilians”, and who declared, without equivocation, “I’m a violent person who advocated the killing of all zionists including civilians, so fuck of [sic]”. Top priority. The Prime Minister’s enthusiasm was echoed in chorus. Yvette Cooper expressed her ‘delight’. Hamish Falconer assured the world that ‘the

Rory Hanrahan

Why pubs shouldn't ban Labour MPs

In Britain’s public houses, a rebellion is brewing. Landlords, hit hard by the Labour government’s fiscal measures – higher employer National Insurance, slashed business rates relief, and policies that threaten closures – have started discussing boycotts. The plan: bar Labour MPs from the premises as a protest against the erosion of the hospitality sector. As a pub manager approached to join this effort, I’ve considered it carefully. Yet I must reject it. Such a ban, however appealing in frustration, is anti-conservative and undermines the pub’s role as a neutral space. The plan: bar Labour MPs from the premises as a protest against the erosion of the hospitality sector The facts

Klaus Dodds

The battle for Antarctic krill is about to get uglier

Krill – the small, shrimp-like crustacean – is a keystone species. It underpins the marine ecosystem of the Southern Ocean, where it is estimated that between 300 and 500 million tonnes of them live. They are consumed by marine animals, including whales, seals and penguins, as well as fish and squid. But is krill now at risk of being overfished? And are the warnings of conservationists being ignored by countries more interested in making a quick profit? Nowadays, krill features in dietary supplements, livestock food and pet food. It is also processed to produce fish food for use in aquariums and aquacultures. The global krill industry was valued at well over