Politics

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

Thursday

5 Jun 2025

Zia Yusuf resigns from Reform

10 min listen

Zia Yusuf resigned this evening from his position as chairman of Reform UK, saying: ‘I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time.’ This comes after he tweeted yesterday that it was ‘dumb’ for Sarah Pochin, Reform’s newest MP, to urge the Prime Minister to ban the burka during PMQs. Did he jump before he was pushed? And can Reform UK really claim to have ‘professionalised’ when this is the second high profile departure this year? Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale.

James Heale

Zia Yusuf resigns as Reform chairman

Zia Yusuf has tonight resigned as chairman of Reform UK. In a statement, he posted on X that ‘I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time, and hereby resign the office.’ He has worked for Reform for 11 months, during which time, he noted: ‘I have worked full time as a volunteer to take the party from 14 to 30 per cent, quadrupled its membership and delivered historic electoral results.’ It comes on the same day that the businessman appeared to call his party’s newest MP, Sarah Pochin, ‘dumb’ for calling on Keir Starmer to ban the burqa – despite

Iain Dale

From Thatcher to Truss, who’s haunting Mel Stride?

17 min listen

Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride delivered a speech today where he attempted to banish the ghost of Liz Truss and improve the Conservatives’ reputation over fiscal credibility. And he compared leader Kemi Badenoch to Thatcher, saying she too struggled at first and will ‘get better’ at the dispatch box. LBC broadcaster Iain Dale and the Spectator’s economics editor Michael Simmons join deputy political editor James Heale to unpack Stride’s speech, talk about Labour’s latest policy announcement over free school meals and discuss why both the main parties are struggling with fiscal credibility. Plus, Iain talks about his new book Margaret Thatcher and the myths he seeks to dispel. Why does he

Natasha Hausdorff

Why can’t Piers Morgan handle the truth about Israel?

As Israel continues to wage a defensive war against the terrorists who invaded and slaughtered hundreds of Jews on October 7, the Jewish State is under attack as never before in the West. I found this out for myself when I was invited on to Piers Morgan Uncensored to discuss the situation in Gaza. Piers Morgan asks for the truth but refuses to hear it. pic.twitter.com/2LtEgoMJ5h — Natasha Hausdorff (@HausdorffMedia) June 3, 2025 What my appearance and censorship on the ironically named “Uncensored” show demonstrated was a refusal, perhaps even a fear, to hear the reality, the facts and the law when it comes to the war against Hamas. This is in

Michael Simmons

The ONS blunders. Again

‘The ONS apologises for any inconvenience caused’ is becoming an all-too-familiar refrain from Britain’s statisticians. The latest mea culpa came after a blunder involving vehicle tax data led the Office for National Statistics to overstate April’s inflation figure. Initially reported as 3.5 per cent, the true figure was 3.4 per cent – only revealed once the Department for Transport corrected its own error on the number of cars subject to increased vehicle taxes. The latest mea culpa came after a blunder led the Office for National Statistics to overstate April’s inflation figure While civil servants at the DfT are to blame, it raises serious questions about the ONS’s quality assurance

James Heale

Mel Stride’s ‘mea culpa’ for Liz Truss

The Shadow Chancellor’s speech this morning was a predictable one. Mel Stride is the kind of Conservative who spin doctors love to send out on the media round: smart, well-briefed and able to stick to the party line. He is also the kind of Conservative who was very much not a fan of Liz Truss, in both temperament and in substance. Tory Kremlinologists will recall that he was one of the most ardent internal critics of her mini-Budget of September 2022, as the-then Treasury Select Committee chair. So, it was no surprise then that the top line from his speech was an apologia for Truss. ‘Never again’, promised Stride, ‘will

Lisa Haseldine

Germany can’t avoid conscription for ever

Germany’s new chancellor Friedrich Merz seems serious about his pledge to make the Bundeswehr the ‘strongest conventional army in Europe’. Yet less than a month into his chancellorship, a daunting realisation is dawning on Berlin: without resorting to conscription, there is little prospect of growing the German army or fulfilling Merz’s ambitious promise. Merz’s defence minister Boris Pistorius – the only SPD politician from Olaf Scholz’s administration to remain in the cabinet – is in Brussels today to commit Germany to raising defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2032. This spending would be split, with 3.5 per cent dedicated to core military spending, and the remaining 1.5 per cent used

Ross Clark

Could the Winter Fuel Payment fiasco bring down Rachel Reeves?

When the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that she was withdrawing the Winter Fuel Payment from most pensioners on the same day, last July, when she awarded fat pay rises to many public sector workers she perhaps imagined herself as striking a blow for inter-generational fairness. Working people would get more money – at least if they worked in the public sector – and wealthy retirees a little less. Yet it is fast becoming the an issue which could prove her undoing. The tragedy of the Winter Fuel Payment fiasco is that it leaves the far bigger problem untouched We now learn that the government’s partial U-turn will involve pensioners effectively

Matthew Lynn

Is the London Stock Exchange under threat?

When the fintech giant Wise floated its shares on the London Stock Exchange in 2021 it was widely seen as proof that the City still had a future as a centre for equity trading. This was London’s largest-ever tech listing: it was one of only a handful of new British companies with a global presence and it was hailed as the perfect example of how the London stock market could still be an effective home for growing businesses. Against that backdrop, its decision today to move its primary list to the United States is a crushing blow. Has Wise just killed the London stock market? A stock market needs a

Edward Howell

Is South Korea’s firebrand president up to the job?

Much akin to Britain on 4 July last year, South Korea is now veering leftwards. Seoul only had a protracted two-and-a-half, and not fourteen, years of conservative rule by a leader who declared martial law on a cold winter evening last December. But at a time when security in East Asia is increasingly precarious, the election of Lee Jae-myung as South Korea’s fourteenth president does not bode well for the future if the firebrand’s past statements are anything to go by. For a man who had ambitions to be as ‘successful as Bernie Sanders’ – a comparison which is hardly a point of pride – it was third time lucky.

Andrew Willshire

What James Cleverly gets wrong about net zero

The Conservatives were nearly wiped out at last July’s general election, and the party is currently trailing Nigel Farage’s Reform in the polls. You might think then that the handful of remaining ‘big beasts’ on the Tory benches would decide to try and work together. Instead, a split appears to be emerging in the party over net zero. James Cleverly took a thinly-veiled swipe at Kemi Badenoch’s green policy in a speech to the Conservative Environment Network (CEN) last night. In one of her first major policy interventions as leader, Badenoch abandoned the Conservatives’ support for the country reaching net zero emissions by 2050. But Cleverly has now argued that the party should

Alexander Baker

Is the UK-EU defence pact a threat to Nato?

The Nato meeting of defence ministers in Brussels today will give its participants an opportunity to discuss the issues facing the alliance in perhaps a more cordial, if frank, manner before the inevitably more theatrical leaders’ summit in The Hague at the end of the month. Much of the focus will be on proposed defence expenditure increases, not least in Britain, where following the publication of the government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) this week there were suggestions that Nato would ‘force’ Keir Starmer to raise defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. Next week’s spending review should cast light on how feasible this is, given current plans to reach

Svitlana Morenets

Did Trump just allow Putin to bomb Ukraine?

Donald Trump has had another one of his ‘good conversations’ with Vladimir Putin, this time to commiserate over Ukraine’s drone raid that destroyed dozens of Russian heavy bombers across four airfields on Sunday. Trump wrote on Truth Social that their 75-minute call was a ‘good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace’. Then, sounding more like the Kremlin’s press secretary than the President of the United States, Trump relayed Putin’s plan to retaliate against Ukraine. ‘We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides,’ Trump wrote, as though those very same planes

Rod Liddle

Kemi’s one chance at recovery? Trussonomics

You may have noticed that for some while the BBC News people have stopped referring to Reform UK as ‘far right’ or ‘hard right’. That’s not because Nigel Farage has tacked to the left a little on such policies as nationalisation; one characteristic of the left is that if they consider you ‘far right’, they will not commend anything you say, even if they fervently agree with it. You will never gain their favour, even if you join Greta Thunberg on her stupid and narcissistic boat expedition to Gaza and then pronounce your solidarity with all trans folk. This is one of the mistakes often made by people who are

Charles Moore

The EU can’t resist empire-building

A wearisome aspect of modern political polarisation is feeling forced to take sides. Until recently, I felt I could contemplate last Sunday’s Polish presidential election with friendly neutrality. Both sides, after all, strongly resist Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. In my one visit of any length to Poland, I was most kindly looked after by my publisher, all of whose friends supported the Civic Platform and mostly came out of Solidarity and related anti-communist dissident movements of the 1980s. On the other hand, I liked the way the Law and Justice party (in office at that time) opposed the extension of EU power and appeared to stick up for peasants

Andrew Gimson

Don’t write off Kemi Badenoch

In the great game of musical chairs that is British politics, it’s impossible to foresee which contestant will be left with nowhere to sit when the music stops. Keir Starmer won a landslide victory last July, but has since behaved like a child who has allowed the excitement to go to his head. He agreed immediately to cut the universal winter fuel payment, which made the government look ready to risk short-term unpopularity in pursuit of serious long-term goals. Yet when the unpopularity arrived, he abandoned the measure and with it any claim to long-term thought. As a contributor to one of Lord Ashcroft’s focus groups said this week: ‘He

James Heale

Nigel’s army: Reform’s plans for victory

‘I’ve changed my mind!’ It is a year this week since Nigel Farage uttered those fateful words, marking his decision to return as leader of Reform UK during the general election campaign. Much has changed in those 12 months. The party’s polling has doubled, membership has soared to 235,000 and new faces make up most of the backroom staff. Now that the party has hit 30 per cent in the polls, Reform strategists insist the vote share can go higher: 40 per cent is viewed as a realistic target. Zia Yusuf, the party chairman, likes to describe Reform as a ‘start-up’, breaking apart SW1’s monopolistic cartel. This high-ambition, high-growth strategy

Wednesday

4 Jun 2025

Madeline Grant

It didn’t take Starmer long to morph into Brezhnev

It has taken Sir Keir Starmer just under 11 months to enter his Brezhnev era. Portly, autocratic and reliant on past glories, the Prime Minister began today’s PMQs by reading a list that would make Borat proud of the infrastructural benevolences to make benefit glorious region of Red Wall. In Sir Keir’s world, there is no decay or decline: the economy is booming, pensioners and children are well cared for and the streets are safe. Notable by her absence was the Deputy Prime Minister: those windows of Downing Street won’t measure themselves The praesidium – sorry, Front Bench – lapped this up. Or those who turned up did. Absent was

Lucy Dunn

To spend or not to spend

16 min listen

Rachel Reeves unveiled billions of pounds of investment today for transport and infrastructure projects, as Labour attempts to demonstrate that next week’s spending review is not just about departmental cuts. However, most of the political noise today has centred on her announcement that the winter fuel cut will be reversed by the end of the year. But what does this all mean for the average voter, for the Chancellor’s fiscal headroom – and why is the government still blaming its own ‘fiscal rules’? James Heale and Michael Simmons join Lucy Dunn to unpack the Chancellor’s announcements and explain the economic jargon, plus a look at today’s PMQs. Produced by Patrick

Steerpike

Cleverly splits from Kemi on climate

Tree-hugging isn’t just for the Greens, it seems – as former Tory leadership contender James Cleverly will insist this evening. At a London event tonight, the ex-Foreign Secretary will make the case that Conservatives should care about the climate and urge his colleagues to reject ‘both the luddite Left and the luddite Right’ on green policy. ‘Conservative environmentalism doesn’t mean a choice between growth and sustainability,’ Cleverly will tell the Conservative Environment Network tonight in a dig at both the Labour government and Reform UK. The former Cabinet Secretary will speak this evening at the annual Sam Baker Memorial Lecture – where he will award Tory MP Andrew Griffith for