Politics

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

Thursday

27 Nov 2025

Zack Polanski’s insane economics

When the ubiquitous Green party leader Zack Polanski was on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show singing the praises of wealth taxes last month, he said something that got my spider-sense tingling: ‘This isn’t about creating public investment, we can do that anyway, we don’t need to tax the wealthy to do that.’ On the face of it, this is a slightly odd thing to say. Other lefties, such as Richard Burgon MP, have argued that a wealth tax could be used to give more money to Our Precious NHS or remove the two child benefit cap. Polanski is right to say that we can have more ‘public investment’

James Kirkup

Britain is giving up on work

Work is good. Work generates wealth, makes people happier and, maybe, delivers salvation. The Protestant work ethic is much disputed among sociologists and economic historians, but most people accept that some level of work is both necessary and desirable. This makes it all the more troubling that, buried in the OBR data under the Budget, are signposts to a future Britain where fewer people work at all – and where those who do are working less. The Office for Budget Responsibility says the labour force participation rate is forecast to fall ever so slightly, from 63.5 per cent in 2024 to 63.4 per cent in 2029. A tenth of a percentage

Rory Hanrahan

Rachel Reeves may have just killed the Great British pub

It is just after tea-time on Budget day, and my pub is already half-empty. A few hours ago, Rachel Reeves stood up and, in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility’, drove the final nail into what remains of Britain’s hospitality industry. By failing to address the devastation that Labour’s decision to hike employers’ National Insurance did to pubs, restaurants and hotels, it could be game over for hundreds of beloved locals. Reevesageddon is not just a Budget. It is a requiem. Raise one last pint while you still can There was little in the way of good news for us publicans in the Budget, but there was plenty to make us

Rupert Hawksley

Reeves' Budget could mark the finish line for British horse racing

When Rachel Reeves confirmed in her Budget that horse racing will be exempted from rises in gambling taxes, there were cautious celebrations. Racing Post editor Tom Kerr described it as ‘a reprieve for the sport’s battered finances’. Trainer Mark Walford, referring to the industry’s ‘Axe the Tax’ campaign, told the trade newspaper: ‘Racing as a whole has got behind the campaign, and it shows what we can do.’ This was a disastrous – potentially existential – day for racing My advice would be to put the champagne away. This was a disastrous – potentially existential – day for racing. The tax exemption is essentially meaningless in the context of the broader

David Shipley

Epping is being punished by the asylum system

Just two weeks ago Epping lost its court battle to shut the Bell Hotel and expel unwanted asylum seekers from the town. Now it seems the state has decided to punish the town for its act of rebellion. Eight properties in the town are to be converted to ‘Houses in Multiple Occupation’ (HMOs) and will be used to house asylum seekers. The properties have been acquired by Clearsprings Ready Homes, which describes itself as ‘a provider of accommodation services to the Home Office’. The firm chose to join the legal battle over the Bell Hotel, no doubt because it had an interest in housing migrants in Epping. This is a multibillion

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The revelations about what the Gaza hostages suffered are the most painful yet

The Israeli hostages recently freed from Gaza have begun to speak, and among the new revelations is that some were subjected to sexual assault and degradation, including male hostages. They describe being stripped, groped, violated, and threatened at gunpoint. The scale and cruelty of what they endured should have triggered sustained, front-page attention in the UK, not least on the BBC. But it has not. The testimonies began surfacing in recent weeks. Rom Braslavsky, seized by Palestinian Islamic Jihad while recovering the bodies of murdered women at the Nova music festival, described being stripped naked and left that way for days. ‘They took all my clothes. Underwear too. Everything. They

Tim Shipman

Nick Thomas-Symonds: ‘The Brexit architects essentially ran away’

With his owlish expression and affable manner, Nick Thomas-Symonds looks more like the academic that he was, rather than the political bomb disposal expert he has become. Brexit is the greatest political issue for a generation, yet Keir Starmer has chosen to put this softly spoken Welshman in charge of defusing it. The Cabinet Office minister, responsible for post-Brexit negotiations with the EU, is following in the footsteps of Olly Robbins and David Frost, but his lack of public notoriety says much about how things have changed as we approach the tenth anniversary next year of the vote to Leave. ‘We have probably the one trade deal in human history

James Heale and Michael Simmons

Bring back the Budget tipple!

Of all Gordon Brown’s mistakes, perhaps the most sobering was his decision to end the tradition of drinking at the despatch box on Budget day. Commons convention holds that alcohol in the chamber is forbidden – with the sole exception of the chancellor when making his or her big speech. Rachel Reeves is known to like an Aperol spritz, though sadly not enough for her to restore this great custom. But we wanted to do our bit, so in protest at this abstemiousness we set ourselves a challenge: try every chancellor’s drink for which records are available, all in one sitting. The tradition of the ‘Budget tipple’ seems to have

Kwasi Kwarteng

I sympathise with Rachel Reeves

The British establishment cuts its deals with fish knives. If you want to catch this country’s business leaders and political grandees in their native habitat, go to a seafood restaurant. J. Sheekey in theatreland, Scott’s on Mount Street or Bentley’s off Piccadilly are all natural haunts for power players but the finest sole meunière (off the bone) is served at Wiltons of St James’s. It is the favourite lunching place of Lords Heseltine and Spencer, and Rishi Sunak is a regular too. So when I was enticed there last week by a couple of new business acquaintances, a corporate financier in his late fifties and a city solicitor, it was

Tim Shipman

Rachel Reeves’s road to ruin

Rachel Reeves is lucky that the name ‘omnishambles Budget’ has already been taken. When the entire document was published long before she got to her feet in the Commons, the only thing that would have made this most chaotic pre-Budget period more shambolic would have been if the Deputy Speaker had banned her from making her statement at all. Reeves described her second Budget as an expression of ‘Labour values’ but really it is a manifestation of Labour foibles. Much of the commentary beforehand concerned the risk of a ‘doom loop’ of tax rises and economic downgrades, but the Budget is more the culmination of a disastrous year for the

The Spectator

What is a ‘fair’ trial, Mr Lammy?

Why are jury trials so precious? According to one prominent alumnus of Harvard Law School, who was writing in protest at proposals to drop them during the Covid pandemic, they are ‘a fundamental part of our democratic settlement’. In a separate report, the author noted that, by deliberating ‘through open discussion’, juries deter and expose ‘prejudice or unintended bias’ since ‘judgements must be justified to others’. They added: ‘Successive studies have shown that juries deliver equitable results, regardless of the ethnic make-up of the jury or defendant.’ Trials without juries, they concluded in 2020, are thus ‘a bad idea’. That astute legal mastermind? One David Lammy, recently elevated to become

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: a shambolic Budget, Ukrainian plan and justice overhaul

Home Before Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility accidentally released its contents. She will increase the tax take to an all-time high of 38 per cent of GDP in 2030-31. She froze tax thresholds until the end of 2030-31 and introduced a council tax surcharge on properties worth over £2 million from 2028. She scrapped the two-child benefit cap. She froze fuel duty for only another five months but brought in a tax of 3p per mile on electric vehicles. The amount that can be added annually tax-free to a cash Isa was reduced from £20,000 to £12,000 (except for over-65s)

Wednesday

26 Nov 2025

Michael Simmons

Rachel Reeves’s Budget is a shambles

As Budget days go, today was unprecedented. The complete list of measures announced by Rachel Reeves – along with their costings and economic impacts – was leaked by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) an hour before the Chancellor took to her feet. The OBR apologised and called it a ‘technical error’. The headline is tax hikes to the tune of £26 billion, income tax thresholds will be frozen again and the tax burden will hit a record high at 38 per cent of GDP. Was this the most farcical Budget in history?

James Heale

Inside Reform's £1 million Budget blitz

It can be difficult for challenger parties to make much of an impact on the Budget, with parliament designed to emphasise the role of government and opposition. But Reform UK is determined to make a splash this week and reflect the dominant polling position that the party has enjoyed since April. Senior figures have earmarked a total of £1 million to be spent in the run-up and aftermath of Rachel Reeves’ Budget, to drive home the party’s position on tax and the wider economy. Tomorrow, the bulk of the outlay will be evident in the nation’s press. Double page spread adverts will run in the Telegraph, Times, Sun, Mail, Metro

James Heale

Rachel Reeves's Klarna Budget: spend now, pay later

After the frenzy of the Commons, comes the poring over the fine print. Rachel Reeves’s Budget is being studied across Westminster, following a chaotic lunchtime in which the OBR’s response was uploaded online an hour before her speech. That speech was heavily pre-briefed, with few real surprises. Taxes were hiked by £26 billion – though not as much as last year’s £32 billion. The level of fiscal headroom has been doubled to more than £22 billion. Growth will be up this year from 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent – but down from earlier projections by 2029. ‘The Chancellor is relying heavily on tax rises towards the back end

Lucy Dunn

Labour's Budget sparks North Sea fears

True to form, Rachel Reeves’s autumn Budget didn’t land smoothly. The publication of the OBR report she was supposed to unveil during her announcement meant that broadcasters, politicians and the public were more focused on scanning the leaked document than the speech she had been preparing for months. The headlines have focused on a huge uptick in welfare spending, stealth taxes which may or may not constitute a Labour manifesto pledge and the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap (Labour backbenchers can breathe a sigh of relief). What has received relatively less coverage is the North Sea – and just how energy-friendly Labour’s Budget is. Reeves’s fiscal statement will have

Tim Shipman

Rachel Reeves’s farcical Budget

15 min listen

Madeline Grant

Rachel Reeves is a true disaster artist

It is genuinely astonishing that Rachel Reeves isn’t accompanied by the Benny Hill theme at all times. Her ability to harvest the fruit of incompetence is without compare. She is the Nellie Melba of cock-ups, an anti-Midas in a pantsuit and a Lego hairpiece. Really, those of us who take joy from seeing a disaster artist hone their craft ought to have thrown bouquets at her from the gallery. Today was a real tour de force. Having trailed for weeks that this would be the Budget that restored her reputation, Reeves managed only to enhance her reputation… for screwing things up. Of course there were some excellent supporting performances; a

Ross Clark

The EV charging tax is the coward's way out for Rachel Reeves

One moral of the Budget is to beware of governments offering you incentives to buy a particular kind of car. On the advice of the then EU Transport Commissioner Lord Kinnock 25 years ago, the Blair government encouraged us all to buy diesel vehicles on the grounds they did more miles to the gallon and were therefore better for the environment. A few years later those who fell for the bait – including me – suddenly found ourselves treated like antisocial thugs, destroying kids’ lungs, and had our cars driven off the road by ULEZ zones. But at least we got the chance to drive around for a few years

Steerpike

Watch: Kemi Badenoch eviscerates Rachel Reeves

Kemi Badenoch had a head-start in preparing her response to Rachel Reeves’s Budget after this morning’s OBR leak. It was an opportunity she made the most of. The Tory leader’s blistering response in the Commons tore what was left of the Budget apart. But it wasn’t just Reeves’ policies that Badenoch went after: the attacks got pretty personal… Badenoch blasted Reeves’s statement as an ‘exercise in self-delusion’, before mocking the Chancellor over a recent series of interviews in which she claimed she was fed up of being ‘mansplained’ too. In a quite stunning evisceration, Badenoch tore into a rather uncomfortable looking Reeves: Madam Deputy Speaker, let me explain to the