Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Lucy Dunn

Will Starmer take up Badenoch's grooming gangs advice?

Plans for a national inquiry into grooming gangs are underway, but will the inquiry actually happen? The Labour-led probe has not yet started and has almost been derailed by survivors on the victim liaison panel dropping out, complaints about transparency and concerns about the scope of the inquiry. Today, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch set out her party’s preferred terms of reference for the inquiry – a move she insisted was not party political, but one that she hopes Labour will act on. Labour needs to show it has listened – even if that means taking recommendations from its political opponents The Tories want a judge-led inquiry which has a hard

Stephen Pollard

Jewish fans deserve the truth about Maccabi Tel Aviv's Villa Park ban

Everyone is familiar with the old insult that you can tell when a politician is not telling the truth because his lips move. Be that as it may, a variation of this has emerged, but this time when someone from West Midlands Police is giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee. Did West Midlands Police simply make stuff up? It’s difficult to avoid that conclusion It emerged on Sunday that when the chief constable, Craig Guildford and the assistant chief constable, Mike O’Hara, gave evidence last Monday on why they decided to ban Jews – sorry, Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv – from last month’s Europa League game at

Andy Jones

How Europe can turn the tide on Russia's underwater warfare

Europe is right now fighting an enemy it cannot see and protecting a vulnerability it has not mapped. Undersea drones are taking the conflict between Russia and the West below water. But these sea drones are not looking for soldiers or civilian targets: they are patrolling infrastructure thousands of metres below sea level, aiming to prevent vital communications cables from being severed. In a silent, deep-sea war, Europe and its allies are already counting the cost of Russian damage to its vital undersea cables In a silent, deep-sea war, Europe and its allies are already counting the cost of Russian damage to its vital undersea cables – the spinal cords that

James Heale

Lammy’s jury reforms face an uphill battle

If you speak to Labour MPs about looming battles in the new year, most are quick to mention the elections in May. But an almighty scrap is shaping up beforehand over David Lammy’s bid to strip back jury trials. There is deep unease about the Justice Secretary’s plan, with dozens of MPs expected to publicly criticise the proposals. Angela Rayner – regarded by some within the party as the queen over the water – is believed to share such concerns. She has reportedly told allies that there are serious unanswered questions about access to justice and whether restricting juries would really cut the court backlog of 80,000 outstanding cases. Public

Tim Shipman

Why Kemi is safer than Keir

12 min listen

This morning Kemi Badenoch has staged a presser setting out the terms for a new (alternative) national grooming gangs inquiry – a move that has reopened wounds for many survivors and intensified criticism of Labour’s handling of the existing process. What will this mean for the government, for survivors, and for the political fight ahead? Meanwhile in Scotland, the defection of former Scotland Office minister Lord Offord to Reform UK has sent shockwaves through the Scottish Conservatives – and raised fresh questions about the balance of power ahead of the Holyrood elections. Could Reform genuinely challenge Labour for second place? And how worried should Scottish Labour be as scandals continue

Terry Barnes

Aussies are enjoying England's Ashes meltdown

What a letdown for lovers of Test cricket in both England and Australia. After just six playing days, the Ashes series between the two old enemies is all but decided. England needs to win all three remaining Tests to regain the Ashes, a feat that only one side has ever achieved: the 1936 Australians, who had a young batsman named Don Bradman. The Australian media has relished the unexpected chance to put the boot into the beleaguered England side Having lost the first Test in Perth in record time, and in the second in Brisbane showed little of the patience and ball-by-ball judgment vital to Test success, the England team

Debbie Hayton

Why this trans person is troubled by a conversion therapy ban

Conversion practices are in the news again, at least if you listen to the BBC. We woke up to the Today programme on Friday recounting appalling stories of Electric Shock Aversion Therapy (ESAT) from years past. Further instalments were delivered on the corporation’s Six O’Clock News. Gay and lesbian people were subjected to those horrors in a futile attempt to change their sexual orientation. Outrageously, this happened within the beloved NHS. Following a BBC investigation, the government will now investigate the historical use of ESAT in NHS hospitals. Good, but this horse has already bolted. ESAT is not supported by professional bodies, and it is no longer used by NHS

Alex Klaushofer

Britain's water crisis is getting worse

When the taps run dry in Tunbridge Wells you know something has gone very wrong in the heart of Albion. Some 24,000 residents had their water supply cut off for almost a week after South East Water found that water at the local treatment plant was contaminated with chemicals. Schools closed, businesses lost money and, although supplies have resumed, residents have been told to boil water. The fiasco is illustrative of our national water crisis. In my part of south London, the streets literally course with water flowing from burst pipes. As I predicted in a piece for The Spectator eighteen months ago, the situation for Thames Water customers has worsened. One recent

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The BBC's anti-Semitism training is an offensive parody

The BBC has unveiled its compulsory training course for all staff on how not to be racist to Jews. I completed the online module and found it laughable, feeble and entirely beside the point. This isn’t education. It’s parody. A cartoonish exercise in HR-driven pseudo-virtue, dressed up as moral instruction. I have written before that if one were writing a sitcom about the modern BBC, and wanted to script a scene satirising its institutional absurdities, one might invent a plotline in which a woke producer commissions a documentary about the children of Gaza and secretly casts the 13-year-old son of a Hamas minister as its narrator. As we know, that’s

Sunday

Jim Lawley

Most of the England cricket team should be dropped

England’s cricketers have just crashed to a second humiliating defeat against Australia, leaving them 2-0 down in the five-match series. With occasional exceptions, we have batted, bowled and fielded atrociously. It was, as Sir Geoffrey Boycott has written in the Telegraph, ‘a horror show’. England only narrowly avoided an innings defeat, in the end losing this second match by eight wickets – the same massive margin as in the first Test. As I suggested before the series began, on their home turf the Aussies are approximately twice as good as we are: they usually do more in one innings (or one innings and a bit) than we can manage in two. It’s

Joe Bedell-Brill

Could benefits be withdrawn from young people?

Benefits could be withdrawn for young people not engaging with Youth Guarantee scheme The number of 16 to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training is now at almost a million, having risen sharply for the last four years. The government have announced an £820 million Youth Guarantee scheme to provide 350,000 work experience placements, and 55,000 subsidised jobs to young people. Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden was interviewed this morning, saying he wanted the issue to be a major ‘Labour cause’. On Sky News, Trevor Phillips asked McFadden if those who didn’t engage with the Youth Guarantee scheme might have their Universal Credit benefits removed. McFadden said: ‘They

Steerpike

Tories to move headquarters

You’re either in front of Mr S or you are behind. It was just six weeks ago that Steerpike reported that staff within Tory HQ were expecting to soon leave their longtime base on Matthew Parker Street. With the party’s lease up next summer, a new headquarters is needed. And today, the Conservatives have told their members that they have bought and now own a home outright. In an email seen by Mr S, Kemi Badenoch writes that: No rent. No lease. A permanent base in Westminster we can call our own. Our new home is a sign we are moving forward, putting our finances on a stronger and more

Druin Burch

The joy of receiving Christmas cards – even from people I loathe

These days I barely know what my own handwriting looks like; about my friends, the knowledge is all but lost. Seeing their pen strokes has grown rare. But, for a brief period each winter, that odd intimacy returns as Christmas cards – some with messages, most with just a scribbled name – land on my mat. I adore receiving cards. Even ones from people I cordially dislike, or frankly loathe, are welcome There used to be something exciting about the sound of the postman’s footsteps, of letters being pushed through the door, of their thump as they landed within. That was during the days when there was a great deal

Edward Howell

What are Ukrainian children doing in North Korea?

The regime of North Korea has continued to exploit the war in Ukraine to spread its propaganda. This week we learnt that Ukrainian children, abducted by Russia, are being sent to an infamous North Korean summer camp. The children have reportedly been taught to ‘destroy Japanese imperialists’ and heard from North Korean soldiers who destroyed the USS Pueblo, a spy ship captured and sank by North Korea in 1968.  This Ukrainian children have been at the Songdowon International Children’s Camp, located near the port city of Wonsan on the country’s east coast. Well known as a popular tourist hotspot for North Korean elites, Wonsan has recently gained infamy for the newly-opened

John Foreman

HMS Prince of Wales is not yet the finished product

Huge crowds of locals, plus families and friends of the crew, greeted the return home of the nation’s flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, last week. It was a fitting climax to a flawless, highly significant, eight-month, 40,000-nautical-mile deployment to the Far East. Sailors spoke about the emotion of their homecoming, pride in their hard work, and their desire for shore leave. In November, the Ministry of Defence announced that Britain’s carrier strike capability had reached Full Operating Capability (FOC). This means we will have one carrier always available for operations with 24 advanced F-35 stealth jets embarked. The UK is alone in having its carrier committed to Nato at short notice. But Full

Saturday

James Heale

The meaning of Lord Offord's defection

Malcolm Offord has today quit Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives to join Reform UK. The peer was unveiled at a press conference today in Falkirk, as Nigel Farage’s party ramp up their campaigning ahead of the Holyrood elections next year. Offord, a former minister, becomes the second sitting frontbencher to quit the Conservatives in recent months, following Danny Kruger’s departure in September. It means that Reform UK now boast their first peer in the House of Lords. Offord will stand down from the Upper House if he is elected to the Scottish Parliament in May. It is worth remembering that Offord enthusiastically backed Kemi Badenoch for leader Offord cited his Unionism as

Steerpike

Scottish Tory peer joins Reform

To Falkirk, where Nigel Farage has flown ahead of the Holyrood elections – to announce another big name member of Reform UK. Now Lord Offord has jumped ship to Reform – and he intends to stand for election in Scotland next year. The businessman was given a peerage in 2021 by Boris Johnson and even served as a minister of exports from 2023 until the election the following year. Malcolm Offord’s move marks the latest high-profile defection to Reform UK, its first member of the House of Lords – and Steerpike has heard whisperings he could become the party’s Scottish leader next year… Farage’s party is polling at around 20

James Tidmarsh

Paris is a city afraid

The New Year’s Eve concert on the Champs Élysées has been cancelled for security reasons. Paris was supposed to host its usual spectacle. A free open-air concert at the Arc de Triomphe, video projections on the monument and the midnight festivities that once drew close to a million people. Instead, the concert has been scrapped. It will be replaced on national television with a prerecorded concert filmed weeks ago with a handpicked crowd to mimic a celebration Paris no longer believes it can safely host. A capital once famed for its public life now performs it under studio conditions. It marks the collapse of what used to be one of

Lloyd Evans

Until Truss faces her enemies, she remains an irrelevance

Liz Truss is back. The ex-prime minister hosted a new current affairs show last night on Just The News, a multi-platform outlet. She’s not the first ex-PM to try her hand as a TV star. After Harold Wilson resigned, he briefly compered Friday Night, Saturday Morning, a BBC chat-show, which was considered a failure. Liz’s debut performance was a mixture of invective, self-justification and political brainstorming.  She opened with a barrage of bitter rhetoric.  ‘Britain is going to hell in a handcart,’ she announced, before adding coyly, ‘despite the valiant efforts of a certain prime minister in 2022.’  She laid into the ‘fake news BBC.’ ‘When they’re not lying about

Theo Hobson

Tommy Robinson wants to put 'Christ back into Christmas'? No, thanks

So Tommy Robinson is inviting us all to have Christmas with him. The far-right activist has announced that there will be a huge open air carol concert in central London on 13 December, a seasonal Unite the Kingdom rally. The aim, he says, ‘is to put Christ back into Christmas.’ Hmm, isn’t that what thousands of church services already do? Robinson is saying: we should be proud of our national religion. Is he wrong? Yes and no So what is Robinson’s motivation for wanting to stage a very large and very public Christmas event? Well, he makes it pretty clear. ‘We shouldn’t have to put this on’, he says. ‘There