Politics

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

James Heale James Heale

For all Reeves’s ‘lying’ denials, this is just the beginning

Four days after a Budget is usually the time when it starts to unravel. Some within Labour see it as a victory of sorts for Rachel Reeves that, so far, the post-Budget debate has focused mostly on the run-up to her statement rather than the measures it contained. Certain policies – such as business rates changes for small businesses – have the potential to blow up into political rows. But the collapse of the Chancellor’s authority this summer has meant the Budget did not contain any serious reform that could stir up major trouble.  Reeves made it through her media round but the impression was, at times, shifty and unconvincing Fearing

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Inside the mind of Putin’s real hatchet man

As Moscow and Washington prepare for talks on the latest version of Donald Trump’s peace plan next week, leaked recordings of a conversation with US envoy Steve Witkoff have thrown a spotlight on to senior diplomat Yuri Ushakov. It seems he, not Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, is the prime mover behind Russia’s negotiating position. The stature of Lavrov, once a legend in the diplomatic community, has steadily diminished since 2014, when he wasn’t even consulted before Vladimir Putin decided to annex Crimea. Every year since then, the now-75-year-old minister has petitioned Putin to be allowed to retire; every year this is denied. Instead, Lavrov remains confined to a role of

Charles Amos

Pensioners don’t need a £10 Christmas bonus

This week, 17.5 million people on various benefits including the state pension and disability living allowance will receive a £10 Christmas bonus. It’s about time though, that Keir Starmer played Scrooge and finally abolished the bonus altogether. For, unlike their Dickensian forebears, poor pensioners this Christmas won’t be going without food or warmth. In fact, they have more than enough of both. When the Christmas bonus was introduced by the Tory minister Keith Joseph more than 50 years ago, the basic argument was that pensioners needed the money to cope with that year’s soaring inflation of 7.1 per cent. Although believing £10 did not go far enough, the Labour politician

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Ireland wants you to forget Chaim Herzog

Now Ireland is erasing its Jewish history. Last week Dublin City Council voted to change the name of Herzog Park in the south of Dublin. The park was named for Chaim Herzog, the Belfast-born, Dublin-raised Jew who later became the sixth president of Israel. ‘Following consideration, the Committee agreed… that the name “Herzog” should be removed from the park’, says the council’s chilling missive. Scrubbing the name of a Jew from a public park? Tell me that isn’t anti-Semitism. For two years now, Herzog Park has been the focal point of that spittle-flecked Israelophobic fury that is so commonplace in modern Ireland. Last year an online petition demanded that its

Yesterday

James Heale James Heale

The ‘Your Party’ conference is a mess

It used to be said that the old Liberal party had so few MPs that they could fit in the back of a taxi. At least they were willing to share the same vehicle. After more than five years of plotting, Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party is finally holding its first conference in Liverpool this weekend. The run-up to the event was overshadowed by not one, but two, MPs exiting the six-strong ‘Independence Alliance’ in the House of Commons. That sense of infighting and paranoia has set the stage nicely for the past 24 hours. For Zarah Sultana has announced that she is boycotting day one of the conference, in protest

Jonathan Spyer

Israel is turning the screws on Hezbollah

The killing of Lebanese Hezbollah military chief Haytham Ali Tababtabai by Israel this week reflects how much the balance of power between Jerusalem and the Iran-backed Shia Islamist group has shifted since the year-long war between the two in 2023 and 2024. Yet, paradoxically, Tabatabai’s killing also shows that nothing has been finally settled between the two enemies. While Hezbollah has now been shown to be much weaker than Israel, it nevertheless remains stronger than any internal faction in Lebanon, including the official Lebanese government. The practical consequence of this is escalation: Hezbollah is seeking to repair and rebuild its capacities, no force in Lebanon is willing or able to stop

Robin Ashenden

Claude Lanzmann would despair of today’s Europe

The late Claude Lanzmann, director of the monumental Shoah – the nine-and-a-half hour documentary about the Holocaust, released in 1985 and widely considered the greatest cinematic work on the subject – would have turned 100 this week, a destiny he missed by only eight years, dying in 2018. What would the filmmaker – who devoted almost a decade to his masterpiece, nearly obliterating himself in the process – make of Europe in 2025, a place where idealistic crowds of the young march for Israel’s annihilation, where the words ‘Dirty Jew’ are spray-painted on Parisian walls, and where, in the first six months of 2025, there were a registered 646 anti-Semitic acts

Andrew Tettenborn

There are some crimes where only a jury can ensure justice

David Lammy’s plans to prune the right to trial by jury are certainly drastic. Juries would remain only for murder, manslaughter, rape and cases deemed to be in the public interest, with other offences carrying sentences up to five years tried by judge alone. Lawyers are predictably unhappy at these proposals. They see them as seriously compromising the traditional rights of defendants to be tried by their peers, not to mention revealing the hypocrisy of the man who, under the Tories, robustly defended the right to trial by one’s peers. They also think, rightly, that Lammy is now acting not so much from principle as from a desperate need to

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Why the BBC keeps on blundering

The dust is settling on the BBC’s latest crisis over its sloppy editing of a Donald Trump video, but it won’t be long before the next blunder. The reality is that every BBC crisis is epiphenomenal: the anger that periodically flares up against the BBC is rooted in our frustration that it fails to do the impossible and provide cultural order and unity. This is hard to articulate, so we magnify secondary issues like the pay of its top presenters, and perceived bias in the news. In doing so, we ignore the real problem: that the BBC can’t win. We can no longer trust the BBC to shelter us from

James Heale and Michael Simmons

Disraeli to Reeves: how each Chancellor drank their way through the Budget

34 min listen

Throughout the years, the only person permitted to drink inside the House of Commons is the Chancellor, so what has been the tipple of choice for each resident of Number 11 dating back to Benjamin Disraeli? Following Rachel Reeves Budget this week, Michael Simmons and James Heale drink their way through the ages, discuss the historical context of each Budget, and question whether Rachel Reeves has the toughest job of them all. This episode was originally recorded for Michael Simmons’s new podcast Reality Check. Search Reality Check wherever you subscribe to your podcasts.

Friday

Tim Shipman

Rachel Reeves’s Budget was based on fiction

I think we will look back on this week as one of the most pivotal of this government. It was the moment when Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves revealed themselves. This week’s Budget showed clearly what Reeves’s revealed preferences are – and what they are not When we were all trying to work out what Theresa May really thought about Brexit, her chief negotiator Oliver Robbins privately told his team they should be guided by her ‘revealed preferences’. This week’s Budget showed clearly what Reeves’s revealed preferences are – and what they are not. Growth is not, as the government keeps claiming, its top priority. Growth was downgraded for every

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Why is the US obsessed with Britain’s decline?

30 min listen

Why are Americans so interested in Britain’s decline? While visiting London, Tucker Carlson has said that the country has ‘shrunken’ and its culture ‘destroyed’, particularly because of mass immigration. Freddy Gray is joined by Tim Stanley and Ed West to discuss whether Britain has become ‘ground zero in the decline of western civilisation’ and if the US has always viewed the UK this way. 

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Yes, John Swinney is a head of government

This week Catherine Connolly, the newly elected President of Ireland, welcomed John Swinney, First Minister of Scotland, to the Áras an Uachtaráin, official residence of the republic’s head of state. Her government X account posted some photographs of the meeting and described Swinney, who leads Scotland’s secessionist Scottish National party, as ‘the first foreign head of government received by President Connolly’. This was a statement of fact, but feelings don’t care about your facts, and so Connolly has found herself scolded on both sides of the Irish Sea. She has been told with the invincible confidence of the ignorant that she has insulted the UK’s Prime Minister. After all, Keir

Tim Shipman

The black hole myth & the brain drain conundrum

16 min listen

With Budget week finally at an end, certain mysteries remain. Chief among them is why the Chancellor decided to give an emergency speech preparing the public for a rise in income tax. On 4 November, Rachel Reeves summoned journalists to Downing Street early in the morning to warn that ‘the productivity performance we inherited is weaker than previously thought’. She then refused to rule out hiking income tax rates – sending a clear signal to markets that rises were coming. Nine days later, however, the Treasury let it be known via the FT that income tax increases would not be needed after all. When the gilt market reacted badly –

Lucy Dunn

France finally agrees to intercept Channel migrant boats – but there’s a catch

After months of pressure from Britain, France has agreed to begin intercepting small boats in the Channel. The move comes after Keir Starmer wrote a letter urging Emmanuel Macron to support the proposal, telling the French leader that we ‘have no effective deterrent’ for migrants hoping to get to the UK illegally by sea. As reported by Le Monde, Starmer insisted: ‘It is essential that we deploy these tactics this month.’ France will intervene only before traffickers have picked up passengers The plan will see French security forces allowed to stop the small boats while they’re at sea, the caveat being that France will intervene only before traffickers have picked up

Lara Brown

Lara Brown, James Heale, Sam Olsen & Toby Young

19 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Lara Brown reports on how young women are saying ’no’ to marriage; James Heale takes us through the history of the Budgets via drink; Sam Olsen reviews Ruthless by Edmond Smith and looks at Britain’s history of innovation and exploitation; and, Toby Young questions the burdensome regulation over Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Steerpike Steerpike

Fact check: are the NYT’s experts right about UK immigration?

Yesterday’s release of immigration figures by the ONS didn’t make for particularly pleasant reading. While net migration had fallen to around 200,000 in the 12 months to June, much of this was down to an unusually high exodus of people, with 693,000 leaving the country over the same period. Many of those leaving were under the age of 30. That news, however, seemed to prompt something approaching gloating over at the New York Times, which published a piece yesterday headlined: ‘The British Public Thinks Immigration Is Up. It’s Actually Down, Sharply.’ To labour the point, the piece was accompanied by a picture of anti-migration protestors in Scotland. The not-so-subtle subtext

Benedict Rogers

This is Hong Kong’s Grenfell

Hong Kong is reeling from the tragedy of a devastating fire which ripped through seven 30-storey apartment blocks in a crowded housing estate two days ago. The death toll so far is 128 and still rising. At least 76 have been injured and almost 300 are missing. Stories abound of survivors trapped in flames and smoke. The death toll so far is 128 and still rising. At least 76 have been injured As is so often the case in such tragedies, the emergency services responded with inspirational courage. Firefighters battled the blaze for hours, medics treated the injured, and rescue workers pulled survivors from smoke-filled stairwells. At least one firefighter

Steerpike Steerpike

Starmer faces Labour rebellion over employment U-turn

Another day, another drama. On Thursday afternoon, it emerged that Sir Keir Starmer’s government were rolling back their commitment to change the ‘qualifying period’ for unfair dismissal from 24 months to day one. Now workers will have to have been in their job for at least six months to qualify, in a move that ministers hope will push the controversial employment rights bill through the House of Lords. But the U-turn has sparked anger among Labour MPs… The move is a breach of Labour’s 2024 manifesto – and backbenchers have not been quiet in their objections. Left-wing Labour MPs have hit out at the PM for stripping back the employment

Eliot Wilson

The Ajax scandal is worse than embarrassing

Luke Pollard, recently promoted to Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, must have looked forward to visiting General Dynamics UK in Merthyr Tydfil at the beginning of the month. The facility in south Wales builds the Ajax armoured fighting vehicle and its five variants (Ares, Athena, Apollo, Atlas, Argus: alliteration pays well in the defence sector), of which the British army has ordered a total of 589. The visit marked the vehicle’s initial operating capability (IOC), the development stage at which it is available in minimum, usefully deployable form. This was especially significant for Ajax because the platform has endured a torrid birth and evolution. When the army decided to

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Starmer’s workers’ rights U-turn is a small victory for business

A psychoanalyst might have some ideas as to why Keir Starmer’s thoughts have suddenly turned to the subject of unfair dismissal. But on the face of it, the government’s U-turn on giving workers the right to sue their employers for unfair dismissal from day one of their employment does seem to mark a change in its relations with business. The Employment Rights Bill had become bogged down in the House of Lords as peers and business leaders warned of the bizarre consequences of the legislation. The ability to sue for unfair dismissal would have provided a field day for job applicants who managed to land themselves a role for which they

Tucker Carlson

The strange death of England

Whatever happened to Britain, or the UK, or England, or whatever they’re calling it? We can’t even agree on what it’s called. But what happened to England, the England that, if you’re over 50, you grew up learning about, the England that controlled the world, the England that ran the largest empire in human history at the end of the first world war?  Britain, which is an island in a pretty inhospitable climate, controlled something like a quarter of the Earth’s surface – and not controlled in the way the United States controls the rest of the world with an implied threat or with economic ties through trade, but with administrators and

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Nigel Farage must come clean about his Dulwich College schooldays

The allegations concerning Nigel Farage’s conduct as a schoolboy have returned with unusual force, not because the country is suddenly preoccupied with the internal sociology of Dulwich College, but because Farage now leads a party that sits at the centre of the national debate. Any claim about his past, however old and recycled, is inevitably refracted through the lens of present politics. The BBC reports, the Guardian testimonies, and Farage’s own responses raise a set of questions that extend far beyond the details of adolescent behaviour. They touch on character, trust, political identity and the delicate task facing any new political movement seeking broad public legitimacy. If Farage admits he

Julia Lopez

What my run-in with Michael Gove can teach Labour MPs about digital ID

There are times in politics when a feeling of dread overwhelms. When your boss wants to go down a path you think is wrong. Spring 2021 brought one such moment for me, as vaccine passports were dangled as the key to our pandemic freedom. I suspect the Technology Secretary, Liz Kendall, experienced a similar feeling when told to front the Prime Minister’s mandatory digital ID plan. The OBR revealed this week that that plan will likely cost taxpayers a staggering £1.8billion. Ministers must realise that Britain could do without Keir Starmer’s enormously expensive, unpopular and troubling scheme. But will any of them yet be telling their leader? My suspicion is