Politics Archives

Wednesday

3 December 2025

What’s so great about juries?

Criticising m’learned friends has been a risky undertaking since a certain newspaper described a few beaks as ‘enemies of the people’ during the kerfuffle about Europe a few years back. In the age of populism, you are either a defender of the rule of law or an incipient fascist accusing an honest judge of being an ‘ex-Olympic fencer’. It is therefore with some trepidation that I’d like to suggest the government’s plans to restrict jury trials might not in fact signal the end of democracy. An absence of 12 angry men (or indeed women) at the trial of Burglar Bill probably won’t ‘break the increasingly thin connection between the state

Michael Gove

Why Rachel Reeves should go & would Corbyn be a better prime minister?

48 min listen

This week: Rachel Reeves reels as Labour’s Budget unravels – and a far-left Life of Brian sequel plays out in Liverpool. After a bruising seven days for the Chancellor, Michael and Maddie ask whether Reeves’s position is now beyond repair. Did Keir Starmer’s bizarre nursery press conference steady the ship – or simply confirm that the government is panicking? And is the resignation of the OBR chair a shield for Reeves – or a damning contrast with her refusal to budge? Then: the inaugural conference of Your Party delivers pure comic gold. As Zarah Sultana’s collective-leadership utopians clash with Corbynite diehards and Islamist independents, Michael explains why the far left’s

Tuesday

2 December 2025

Madeline Grant

David Lammy’s jury reforms aren’t bold – they’re brazen

King John placing his seal on Magna Carta 810 years ago is widely held to be a low point for the monarch and a boon for the rest of us. Now all those centuries later his work is about to be undone by none other than David Lammy who arrived in the House today to announce the partial abolition of trial by jury. The Sage of Tottenham makes an unlikely tyrant; his air is of someone who should be losing control of a children’s birthday party somewhere. Yet John wasn’t exactly a man of steel either – though he at least had a sort of animal cunning. We have gone from

Owen Matthews

Why Putin thinks destiny is on his side

The Kremlin pulled out all the stops for the visit of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow today. Accompanied by Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Witkoff and Kushner strolled through crowds on Red Square with minimal security after lunching at a fancy restaurant on Petrovka street. Not coincidentally, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi was also in town for a meeting with Russian Security Council head Sergei Shoigu, where Russia affirmed its support for Beijing’s One China policy. It was a sophisticated piece of great power signalling intended to send a multi-part message to Donald Trump. First and foremost, the Kremlin was showing off its new

Brendan O’Neill

The scandal of the Maccabi ban must not be allowed to fade

The scandal of the Maccabi Tel Aviv ban keeps getting worse. Now we discover that West Midlands Police (WMP), in their report calling for the barring of Maccabi fans from the football game against Aston Villa last month, cited an entirely fictitious football match. Their report said the last time Maccabi played in the UK was against West Ham in 2023. But no such clash took place. Which begs the question: what else in their Maccabi-mauling report was made up? The fictitious match came to light during the grilling of Craig Guildford, WMP’s chief constable, at the home affairs select committee yesterday. Lord Mann, the government’s adviser on anti-Semitism, pointed

Steerpike

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor could face MP grilling

Oh dear. It seems that the horror never ends for the Andrew formally known as Prince. Mountbatten-Windsor – as he must now be called – was formally stripped of his last remaining royal titles last night, as the anger over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal shows no sign of abating. And today it has got even worse for Andrew as MPs try to get in on the act too. Did someone say ‘photo opportunity’? The public accounts committee has this afternoon announced plans to launch a wide-ranging inquiry into the Crown Estate property leases held by the Royal Family. The onetime former Duke of York only paid a ‘peppercorn rent’ for his

Andrew Tettenborn

The worrying flaws in Lammy's plan to cut jury trials

David Lammy clearly spotted that he had set the cat among the pigeons when his plans to cut back on jury trials were leaked last week. Realising how many noses he had put out of joint by proposing to go further even than Sir Brian Leveson’s ideas of last July, in his speech to the Commons today he essentially returned to the Leveson scheme. Under the new rules, fraud trials will largely become judge-only. In addition, the aim is for anything with a likely sentence of three years or less to be tried by a judge alone in a new crown court bench division. For offences currently triable either way,

Oscar Edmondson

Lammy on trial over plans to scrap juries

12 min listen

Today we’re going to be talking about David Lammy, and his brand new plans to drastically reduce the number of jury trials in the UK in an attempt to address the backlog. With the backlog of cases due to be heard in courts already at 78,000, and heading for 100,000, the Justice Secretary believes that only radical solutions can tackle the ‘courts emergency’. But is he being too radical? This comes on the same day that Lammy announced that 12 prisoners have been accidentally released in the last three weeks. But first, the Budget fallout continues and there has been a resignation but – crucially – it’s not the Chancellor.

Steerpike

Watch: Jenrick rips into 'Lammy dodger'

It is David Lammy’s big announcement on juries today – so that means another outing for the Tory Trident, Robert Jenrick. The heat-seeking-missile of the Tory frontbench has been itching for a shot at his hapless opposite number, ever since the debacle over leaked prisoners at PMQs three weeks ago. So it was clearly with some relish that Jenrick rose in the Commons this afternoon to denounce the ‘Lammy dodger’ for briefing various statements to the press before first telling parliament. Not something the sainted Conservatives would ever do themselves of course… That teed up the Lord Chancellor for a fairly torrid time in the House. The Labour awkward squad

David Shipley

Why won’t Lammy tell us about prisoners released by mistake?

It’s now over six weeks since Hadush Kebatu’s ‘release in error’ sparked a two day manhunt, and highlighted our prison system’s disastrous habit of regularly releasing inmates who should remain in jail. Since then we’ve heard about the accidental releases of Kaddour-Cherif, a prolific criminal from Algeria who overstayed a visa six years ago, and Billy Smith, released on the day he received a 45 month prison sentence. The government has promised to get a grip, but today we learned that another 12 prisoners have been released in error in the past three weeks, and that two of them are still at large. It’s clear from these answers that the

James Heale

Lammy unveils plans to slash jury trials

David Lammy has this afternoon set out his plans in parliament to drastically reduce the use of jury trials in England and Wales. With the backlog of cases due to be heard in courts already at 78,000, and heading for 100,000, the Justice Secretary believes that only radical solutions can tackle the ‘courts emergency’. He has announced that jury trials will be scrapped for crimes carrying a likely sentence of less than three years. However, the changes will not apply to more serious offences such as rape, murder and robbery. Lammy believes his plans are proportionate, given the scale of the problem Lammy is depicting himself as the heroic defender

Debbie Hayton

A four-day week won't save teachers from burnout

Campaigners have urged Bridget Phillipson to give teachers in England and Wales a day out of school every week with no loss of pay. The 4 Day Week Foundation believes that shorter working weeks can reduce burnout, improve productivity and support better work-life balance. What’s not to like about that? Quite a lot, actually. The aim is not to introduce three-day weekends but allow teachers to work from home one day in every five. Teachers like me certainly need time to plan schemes of work, prepare lessons, mark our pupils’ work, and deal with the next crisis. We need more of it during the school day. But that does not

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Tulip Siddiq can’t turn her back on Bangladeshi politics now

A Bangladeshi court sentenced the Labour MP Tulip Siddiq to two years in prison in absentia on Monday. Siddiq, who stepped down as anti-corruption minister earlier this year, has been found guilty of ‘influencing’ her aunt, the former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, to secure a plot of valuable piece of land for her family outside Dhaka. Hasina was pushed out of power following massive demonstrators last year and has since been sentenced to death by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal. She is currently living in exile in India. It does appear that Siddiq is now complaining about the very forces in Bangladesh that propelled her to power in the first place Siddiq

James Heale

Starmer’s China policy seems stuck in the past

Prior to entering No. 10, Keir Starmer had little experience of foreign affairs. Yet in office, the subject has consumed a disproportionate amount of time, with a sixth of his premiership being spent abroad. So last night’s Lady Mayor’s Banquet speech at the Guildhall offered the Prime Minister a chance to set out his thinking. A year after his previous address, many of Starmer’s themes remained the same, as he summarised his own philosophy as ‘internationalism is patriotism.’ Yet reading Starmer’s speech, it is striking how little he seems to have been influenced by the events of the past year Europe – so crucial to Starmer’s worldview – naturally was

Matthew Lynn

Why it’s good the NHS is paying more for medicines

We have caved in to bullying from President Trump. It will put NHS budgets under even more pressure. And the Green leader Zack Polanski will probably start claiming on X that the entire health service will be sold off to American conglomerates. There will be plenty of critics of the deal between the UK and the US on pharmaceutical tariffs. But they ignore a simple point: it is a great deal for one of the country’s most important industries. Finally, the UK will now have a key competitive advantage over the EU President Trump is planning to impose punitive 100 per cent tariffs on medicines imported into the US, both to

Gareth Roberts

Labour are almost as deluded as the Your Party faithful

Kemi Badenoch has some thoughts on the Labour party. When pressed by the Telegraph on who or what would come after Rachel Reeves in the terrible event of her being defenestrated, the Tory leader mused: ‘They [Labour] are going to go through lots of different cycles of Labour MPs, some of whom are very similar to the ones that have gone to the Jeremy Corbyn party. You see what a rabble they are. Labour are actually not that much different.’ The thing that really unites the Your Party nuts and Labour MPs is their sanctimony Is that fair? Like many, my weekend was considerably enlivened by highlights from the livestream

Monday

1 December 2025

David Shipley

Prisoners playing video games with their guards is no bad thing

Another week. Another video from within a prison. More words of outrage. This time it’s a video showing a prison officer inside a crowded cell, playing Fifa with a prisoner. Is this a problem? Is prison more of a holiday camp than a punishment? Is this another example of prison officer misconduct, just like the cases of female staff having sex with inmates? Having been in jail I would say not. Prisons are strange environments. They function – or don’t – depending on whether staff and prisoners work together. Every prison in the country relies on inmates to cook and distribute food, laundry, property and post. For this to happen,

James Heale

Richard Hughes quits as OBR chairman

They think it’s all OBR – it is now. Political journalists should always be wary of that word ‘inevitable’. But from the moment it was revealed on Wednesday that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had accidentally leaked details of the Budget, it always seemed likely that this story only had one ending. Richard Hughes, the watchdog’s chairman, has tonight fallen on his sword and accepted responsibility for the data leak. It came two hours after a damning report was published into last week’s data breach, calling the incident the ‘worst failure in the 15-year history of the OBR’. In a pithy letter of resignation, Hughes defended the OBR’s work

Freddy Gray

Why did Jeffrey Epstein hate me?

45 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined once again by the University of Chicago’s Professor John Mearsheimer to discuss why Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan won’t work, how the war will ultimately be decided on the battlefield, and what happened when Jeffrey Epstein and Alan Dershowitz ran a smear campaign against him over his essay on the Israel lobby.

Stephen Daisley

Ireland should venerate Chaim Herzog

The Irish are in many ways the ideal neighbours. They’re quiet, industrious, peaceful, send their best talents to London, and turn out poets and playwrights we can pass off as English to gullible Americans. There are, unfortunately, one or two character flaws. They never tire of reminding you that your forefathers shot their forefathers, a reasonable complaint somewhat undermined by their fondness for ditties about their forefathers bombing your forefathers. Then there’s the, well, you know… the J-E-W thing. It’s raised its head again in a proposal before Dublin City Council to rename Herzog Park, which in 1995 was dedicated in honour of Chaim Herzog, who was born in Belfast