Politics

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

Wednesday

Eliot Wilson

‘De-escalation’ won’t work on Iran

As Donald Trump hastily dashed home from the G7 meeting in Canada to deal with the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel, Prime Minister Keir Starmer went to speak to reporters. The G7 resolution on Iran, he said, ‘was about de-escalation’. ‘The thrust of the statement is in accordance with what I was saying on the way out here, which is to de-escalate the situation, and to de-escalate it across the region rather than to escalate it,’ he added. The Prime Minister has clung doggedly to this line since the first reports came through early last Friday morning of massive and coordinated Israeli air strikes on Iran. That afternoon, Downing

James Heale James Heale

Assisted dying risks being Labour’s Brexit

On Friday, the Commons will vote on the third reading of the assisted dying bill. Most MPs expect it to pass by a narrower margin than the majority of 55 MPs last time. There has been a shift in momentum throughout the bill’s passage through parliament, with at least a dozen more names now voting against Kim Leadbeater’s legislation. This shift has coincided with the steady erosion of much of the goodwill which characterised second reading in November. The subsequent committee stage was characterised by fraught exchanges, with the changes Leadbeater made to the bill infuriating some colleagues. The private tensions within the Labour party were on public display last

Steerpike Steerpike

Foreign nationals convicted of a quarter of sex assaults on women

Britain’s grooming gangs scandal has dominated the news this week, after the publication of Baroness Casey’s review on Monday. Now data from the Ministry of Justice has emerged showing that over a quarter of sex assaults on women – that have been successfully prosecuted in the UK – were committed by foreign nationals. It’s quite the stat… The data, which came to light through Freedom of Information requests, revealed that of the 1,453 sex assault convictions on women in 2024, 26 per cent were foreign nationals. There are suggestions that the real total could be higher, given that those 8 per cent recorded as having perpetrators of ‘unknown’ nationalities could

Jawad Iqbal

Will Iranians rise up against the mullahs?

Iran’s crumbling regime is fighting a war to the death on two fronts. The first and foremost is the conflict with Israel. It is safe to say that the Israelis – so far at least – are winning comfortably. The other conflict is the fight the mullahs are waging against their own people. The outcome of that battle is much harder to predict. The initial success of the Israeli strikes has given Iranians an unprecedented chance to seize the moment and topple their oppressors. Can they do it? Will they do it? And what becomes of the country if it frees itself from despotic rule? The rift between Iranians and their rulers

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The real scandal of HS2

As if the saga of HS2 could not get any worse, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander will reportedly announce today that, actually, the railway line will not be open by its latest proposed date of 2033, and that 2035 is now more realistic. But I wouldn’t book your ticket just yet. Some analysts believe the line – which is a truncated version of the original proposal, only reaching Birmingham – will not be open for a couple of years or so after that. For some reason a Conservative government then decided the state should handle HS2, in spite of the lousy record of civil servants in managing such projects That will

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Why is the ONS saying inflation has gone down?

The rate of inflation remained flat at 3.4 per cent in May – still well above the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Bizarrely, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in their figures released this morning, claims this is down from 3.5 per cent the month before, even though just a couple of weeks ago they admitted that figure was overstated due to an error. Because of a policy not to revise inflation figures, that error lives on – leading them to announce the fiction that inflation has fallen. The reality is it has not. The result of stubbornly sticking to this no-revisions policy is a slew of misreporting

Stephen Pollard

Why Britain needs Israel to win against Iran

It’s understandable that the focus of coverage of Israel’s strikes on Iran, and the Iranian regime’s response, has been entirely on the potential regional consequences of Israel’s mission to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. But although this may seem more like a version of Neville Chamberlain’s infamous ‘quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing’ than an issue of immediate relevance to British national security, it is most definitely the latter. It is vital to our national security that Israel succeeds. For one thing, Iran operates hit squads in the UK with the explicit aim of assassinating British citizens it deems to be enemies. It’s said that

Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Why liberals ignored the grooming gang scandal

For many years, liberals refused to talk about the grooming gangs scandal. The systematic sexual abuse and rape of hundreds, possibly thousands, of vulnerable children by offenders from ethnic minorities was a story that too many people were happy to ignore. There was an effective prohibition on discussing it in left and liberal circles. Grooming gangs was a subject guaranteed to silence a dinner party. So, we decided to pretend that it wasn’t happening. Finally, the so-called great and the good have woken up to a scandal that was happening in plain sight Finally, the so-called great and the good have woken up to a scandal that was happening in

Tuesday

Lucy Dunn

MPs vote to decriminalise abortion

MPs have voted to make the biggest change to abortion laws in 50 years this evening, backing the decriminalising of abortion for women at any point in their pregnancy. An amendment to the crime and policing bill was passed by 379 ayes to 137 noes after MPs were given a free vote on the issue this evening, with several cabinet ministers voting in favour of the change.  Now women who end their pregnancy after 24 weeks gestation – or without the sign-off from two doctors, as has been the usual practice – will no longer face the threat of arrest and imprisonment for late-term abortion. The new amendment will not,

Madeline Grant

Starmer looked out of place in the mountains with Sky’s Beth Rigby

Sir Keir Starmer was doing an interview with Beth Rigby in the lush mountain landscape of Canada. Hardly a man who evokes the sweeping grandeur of nature, seeing the Prime Minister surrounded by mountains and pines was odd. It looked a little like someone had mistakenly cast a chartered accountant in the Sound of Music. What percentage is his approval rating? Seventeen going on sixteen of course. Seeing the Prime Minister surrounded by mountains and pines was odd Rigby asked whether the Prime Minister had any idea what President Trump was doing about the Middle East that was so important that he had to leave the G7 early. ‘I actually

Steerpike Steerpike

Ex-Tory MP pleads guilty to harassment

To Cardiff, where a former Conservative politician has pleaded guilty to harassing their ex-wife. Katie Wallis, formerly Jamie Wallis who represented Bridgend from 2019-2024, today admitted to sending unwanted messages both over the phone and via voice note and will be sentenced next month. Wallis had been in a relationship with ex-wife Rebecca Lovell for over 15 years, before divorcing in 2024. The 41-year-old former politician – who became the UK’s first transgender MP in 2022 – had lawyer Narita Bahra KC agree an eleventh-hour deal with the prosecution for a guilty plea, after first applying for an adjournment for a psychiatric report to show Wallis had experienced a ‘psychotic

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Rachel Reeves’s non-dom crackdown has truly backfired

Rachel Reeves may finally have seen sense. A report in this morning’s Financial Times suggests she is ‘exploring’ performing a 180 on the changes to inheritance tax rules which meant non doms would have to pay the death tax on their global assets – even on wealth earned before they came to the UK. As I explained in our magazine cover piece last month, the fact that these changes – which came into force in April – would apply retroactively is what really sent non-doms over the edge and led them to flee the country in large numbers, taking their wealth and not insignificant tax revenues with them. Rachel Reeves has to deal

Steerpike Steerpike

Poll: just 3 per cent of women back Stella Creasy’s abortion amendment

It is a big week for big Commons moments. On Monday, we had the long-awaited announcement of an inquiry into grooming gangs; today it is the battle of the abortion amendments. This afternoon Lindsay Hoyle will choose whether to call Tonia Antoniazzi or Stella Creasy’s amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill. Antoniazzi’s measure would allow abortion for any reason up to birth while maintaining criminal sanctions for doctors performing late-term or sex-selective procedures. Creasy, however, has adopted the more hard-line position of full decriminalisation in all circumstances. Now, Mr S has got his hands on some polling – and it is bad news for Stella. More than 2,100 adults

James Heale James Heale

Kemi Badenoch defends the Tories’ record on grooming gangs

Kemi Badenoch said that ‘survivors and their families’ have been ‘ignored for far too long’ as she appeared alongside those affected by the grooming gangs’ scandal. ‘What this morning is about is not the politics, but giving…(victims) a platform to say what they want to see from a national inquiry,’ the Tory leader said at a press conference in Westminster. The Tory leader was on less safe turf when she claimed, slightly implausibly, that she wanted to ‘take the politics out of’ the issue Marlon West, the father of grooming gangs’ victim Scarlett, asked about local-led inquiries and whether ‘local authorities are going to be answering their own homework.’ Fiona

Tim Shipman

Can you ‘take the politics out’ of the grooming gangs scandal?

13 min listen

Yesterday Yvette Cooper announced a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal after the Casey Review found that a disproportionate number of Asian men were responsible and that governments and authorities had failed to step in over fears of racism. Anxious to press Labour on their U-turn – memorably, Starmer accused the Tories of ‘jumping on the far-right bandwagon’ – Kemi Badenoch held a press conference, joined by victims of the gangs. ‘I’m not doing politics now, when I’m in the Houses of Parliament, when I’m in the Commons, I will do politics’, she said. But can you really take the politics out of the grooming gangs scandal? Elsewhere, Donald

Charlie Gammell

Israel isn’t close to victory over Iran

Amongst a swirl of pronouncements from Tel Aviv, Washington and Tehran – and against the dramatic backdrop of an Iranian TV presenter’s rather tired fire and fury being interrupted by the sound of bombs – Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Israel is close to “victory.” Yet despite Ayatollah Khamenei being hidden in a bunker, experiencing regular panic attacks and now shielded from the worst news of his battered nation, any talk of “victory” by the Israeli prime minister feels hollow and premature. Talk of human rights, revolutions and the evils of the Islamic Republic have been cast aside as luxuries As this war thunders into its fifth day, Iranians across the country

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The establishment was more afraid of ‘the gammon’ than the groomers

‘When history is written as it ought to be written’, said the great Trinidadian Marxist CLR James, ‘it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity’. On no historical calamity is this truer than the rape-gang scandal. When future scribes look back at this violent tear in the British social fabric, it is the forbearance of the public they will marvel over. It will dazzle them. These vile prejudices were the fuel of this scandal The spectre of public volatility has stalked this scandal from the start. The establishment’s irrational dread of the feral masses shaped its yellow-bellied decision-making. From the

Lara Brown

A grooming gang inquiry will expose Labour’s guilty men

Sir Keir Starmer claimed in January that those who were concerned about the systematic rape and abuse of little girls were ‘calling for inquiries because they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far right’. Yesterday, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, promised that victims would finally get the full national inquiry which campaigners have been demanding for so many years. If Starmer has any sense, he will bring out his party’s bodies willingly before he is forced to Cooper’s statement in the Commons was relatively encouraging. She conceded that much of the (admittedly shoddy) data around child grooming points to ‘clear evidence of overrepresentation amongst suspects of Asian and Pakistani

Jacob Heilbrunn

Will the Maga isolationists forgive Trump for Iran?

That was fast. In the space of a few weeks, President Donald J. Trump has gone from being the idol of the Republican isolationists to the hero of the hawks. Only a few days ago, the Wall Street Journal editorial page was complaining that ‘Maga isolationists want the President to pressure Israel to stop the war before Iran’s nuclear sites are destroyed’. Now, as Israel pounds Iran, Trump increasingly appears to be embracing the role, not of peacemaker, but of a war president – one ready and willing to unleash, or at the very least abet, fire and fury against the mullahs. The hawks are rejoicing, and they have plenty to rejoice about. ‘Bombs