Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Niall Gooch

The Guardian’s desperate smears about Farage’s school days

Nigel Farage is the perfect folk devil for the British liberal left. He is robustly patriotic, cheerfully irreverent about modern pieties, and a Barbour-wearing libertarian smoker and beer-drinker. He represents – in both the literal and figurative sense – the Britain that the Sensible classes dislike and ignore and would like to see consigned to irrelevance: a Britain made up of ambitious City boys, the aspirational middle class, farmers, left-behind coastal towns and small business owners. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but there is something rather feeble and underhand about playing the informer on contemporaries from your schooldays What makes it worse for them is that none of their attacks seem

Max Jeffery

John Major is shouting at the void

They were John Major’s kind of people, the audience in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre in the Cheng Kin Ku Building at the London School of Economics last night. They filed in quietly, took their seats politely, and waited relaxedly for the ex prime minister. One man slouched, careless blotches of black dye on his thinning cirrus hair, while another sterilised his glasses with an individually wrapped wipe, going in every corner and crevice until it all looked stupidly clean. A third flicked through the Financial Times. It was 6:25 p.m., five minutes before Sir John was due. Only a man with no worries takes the morning’s news in the evening. Sir

Madeline Grant

Even Labour MPs are tiring of Starmer

With the country looking forward to Rachel Reeves’s big moment next week – in much the same way you would look forward to root canal treatment or a trepanning – it was no surprise that this week’s PMQs focused on tax and leaks. That the government seems to conduct policy formulation by Chinese Whispers is only half the irritation. The other half is how angry they get when this is pointed out. The Prime Minister acts genuinely hurt when anyone brings up the actual state of the country ‘Every week she comes along and speculates and distorts,’ yelled Sir Keir when Mrs Badenoch dared mention the disastrous Income Tax U-turn

Isabel Hardman

Labour's 'dog whistle politics'

11 min listen

Neither Kemi Badenoch nor Keir Starmer performed very well at Prime Minister’s Questions: both fluffed their lines early on. Badenoch managed to suggest the Budget had already happened, while Starmer got lost during an attack on Tory economic policy. But while Badenoch was back to the kind of poor delivery that had previously upset so many of her Conservative colleagues, Starmer still came off worse. The most interesting exchange was with Reform Chief Whip Lee Anderson, who goaded Starmer to ‘be a man’ and ensure that all the cancelled local elections go ahead next year. This facilitated an exchange about recent allegations regarding Nigel Farage’s behaviour when he was a

Svitlana Morenets

Zelensky must get a grip of his government

Vladimir Putin’s hopes of wearing Ukraine down in a war of attrition are no longer far-fetched. The country feels fragile, like it did in February 2022. Back then, Ukrainians rallied behind a president who stayed and shared a conviction that victory was possible. Today many are wondering whether defeat and the end of Ukraine’s statehood are drawing nearer than anyone would like to admit. A corruption scandal is engulfing Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. Russia is making gains on the battlefield. Ukraine’s tragedy is not only that Zelensky’s close associates were leeching off 15 per cent from contracts meant to fortify critical energy infrastructure, stealing from the country £76 million at the

Lisa Haseldine

Is Trump trying to strike a fresh deal on Ukraine?

With fresh wind in his sails after his success brokering a somewhat fragile peace in Gaza, Donald Trump has once again turned his attention back to Ukraine. According to reports, the US President’s team has secretly been working on drafting a new plan to end the war. Concerningly, though, once again that confidential plan is being hashed out with Russia – without any input from Ukraine or its European allies. Details of the plan are, as yet, scant – although a report by Axios suggests that it will be made up of 28 points falling under four rough headings: peace in Ukraine, security guarantees for the country, security in Europe

Eliot Wilson

Russia's spy ship is a warning to Britain – but are we ready?

As a Russian spy ship lurks on the edge of British waters, Defence Secretary John Healey had a message for Vladimir Putin: ‘We see you, we know what you’re doing and…we are ready.’ Unfortunately, the reality is that Britain isn’t quite as ready as it should be. Defence Secretary John Healey had a message for Vladimir Putin: ‘We see you, we know what you’re doing’ Healey revealed during a Downing Street press conference this morning that the Yantar, currently just north of Scotland, has fired lasers at RAF planes attempting to monitor its activities. It marks the first time that a Russian ship has taken this kind of action against

Isabel Hardman

Starmer did even worse than Badenoch at PMQs

Neither Kemi Badenoch nor Keir Starmer performed very well at Prime Minister’s Questions: both fluffed their lines early on. Badenoch managed to suggest the Budget had already happened, while Starmer got lost during an attack on Tory economic policy. But while Badenoch was back to the kind of poor delivery that had previously upset so many of her Conservative colleagues, Starmer still came off worse. Neither emerged well, but Badenoch’s poor performance matters far less given she is in opposition Badenoch wanted to ridicule the way Labour is handling the Budget, telling the Chamber: ‘Can the Prime Minister tell us why his government is the first government in history to

Steerpike

Watch: Labour minister's bizarre Chagos comments

Well, well, well. Baroness Chapman of Darlington – the international development minister – turned up to the House of Lords to address the UK government’s Chagos deal. Last October, Sir Keir Starmer’s government decided to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a move that has sparked outrage in several quarters – not least among the Chagossians themselves. Last month, polling by the Friends of the British Overseas Territories revealed that, er, 99.2 per cent of Chagossians want the isles to remain British. Talk about decisive! Not that Chapman appeared to acknowledge this when she spoke in the second chamber on the subject. Although concerns have been raised that

Ben Miller

Inflation is down, but it’s little relief for Reeves

For the first time since May, the Bank of England has inched a little closer to its 2 per cent inflation target. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics this morning show that last month the Consumer Price Index fell to 3.6 per cent from 3.8 per cent in September. Unfortunately for the government, the slight improvement offers limited relief ahead of the upcoming Budget next Wednesday. October marks the 13th consecutive month above the target. Food and drink inflation, a primary issue to the majority of voters, increased to 4.9 per cent from 4.5 per cent in September. To make matters worse, transport costs, another expense felt keenly

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump doesn’t want to talk about Epstein

The contrast could hardly have been starker. As Donald Trump palled around with Mohammed bin Salman in the newly gilded Oval Office, Congress was voting on a transparency act that would further expose Jeffrey Epstein’s grave misdeeds. Trump, who had worked overtime to try and quash the vote, was in his element with the Saudi crown prince. Transparency? Not a bit of it. Trump proclaimed that the crown prince ‘knew nothing’ about the death of Jamal Khashoggi who was, after all, ‘extremely controversial,’ the term that he often deploys to describe anyone he dislikes or finds nettlesome. The hero, or, to put it more precisely, heroine, of the day was Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene is a profile in courage. She stood up for Epstein’s victims

Rupert Yorke

Labour leadership plotters should be careful what they wish for

Take it from me: leadership challenges are the beginning of the end. Barely twelve months after Conservative feuding led to one of their biggest defeats in electoral history, the Labour party have listened, watched, reflected – and seemingly learnt zero lessons. Many arguments have been made as to why the Tories collapsed last year. Doomed flights to Rwanda, the rise of Reform, a high tax burden and prisons close to bursting have all been mooted. But as someone who worked in Downing Street across three administrations, the real reason stems from chronic divisions within the Conservative party: fourteen years of vacillating philosophies and rampant tribalism that manifested in not just

Michael Gove

Is Net Zero ‘mania’ over? And Labour’s migration crackdown

50 min listen

This week: a Commons showdown over asylum – and a cold shower for Net Zero orthodoxy. After Shabana Mahmood’s debuts Labour’s new asylum proposals, Michael and Maddie ask whether her barnstorming performance signals a new star in Starmer’s government – or whether the Home Secretary is dangerously over-promising on a problem no minister has yet cracked. Is her Denmark-inspired model workable? Can she get it past the Labour left? And are the right-wing plaudits a blessing – or a trap? Then: at COP30, the great climate jamboree struggles to command attention. As Ed Miliband charges ahead with his Net Zero agenda, the pair question whether Britain has finally passed ‘peak

Tuesday

Steerpike

Badenoch guns for the Guardian

It was all guns blazing from Kemi Badenoch today. The Tory leader has clashed before with the Guardian – most notably during last year’s contest when she lambasted the paper’s claims of ‘bullying and traumatising behaviour’ when serving in government. And the wokest outlet in all the West was firmly in her sights today when Badenoch gave her big economy speech alongside Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride. At her presser, the Essex MP was asked whether she sympathised with the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who says that she has been called racist slurs and told to go ‘back home’. She said that: Just this morning, I read this astonishing piece in

Dean Godson

Europe's leaders are finally waking up on immigration – but is it too late?

The impressive shift in the terms of trade of the immigration debate in the last 24 hours proves one unlikely proposition: that the British political marketplace actually works. Giorgia Meloni is the only leader of a major European country in these times who seems successfully to have united the grievances of losers and winners in a viable political coalition Nigel Farage was correct this morning to assert that the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood would not have spoken as she did but for Reform successfully conditioning the terms of trade in this Parliament. However, he in turn was forced to concede that her rhetoric, at least, deserved serious consideration – even as

Tom Slater

No, Shabana Mahmood isn't far right

We’ve become grimly accustomed to people throwing around the phrase ‘far right’. But seeing it flung at Labour home secretary Shabana Mahmood’s asylum reforms has felt particularly barmy – a new low from the liberal-left midwits who we all hoped couldn’t sink any lower. Mahmood’s punchy announcements this week, in which she laid out plans to fix our ‘broken’ asylum system, has gone down exactly as you might expect Mahmood’s punchy announcements this week, in which she laid out plans to fix our ‘broken’ asylum system, have gone down exactly as you might expect. The Guardian has accused her of entering into a ‘damaging arms race with the far right’. ‘Straight out of the

Michael Simmons

The net migration debacle is a blunder too far for the ONS

Another day at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), another apparent data mishap – this time on net migration figures. The agency published revised figures for 2021 to 2024 this morning, which set out a very different picture on who’s been coming in and out of the country. The ‘Boriswave’ was larger than previously thought For a start, the ‘Boriswave’ was larger than previously thought. When Brits are excluded, net migration is now thought to have peaked at over one million people in the year to March 2023 – some 110,000 higher than the previously estimated record high. Including Brits, there was a substantial downgrade in the revision. Total net

Jonathan Sacerdoti

What Trump's Gaza peace plan means for Israel

This may not be the conclusion Israel imagined when it launched its campaign in Gaza. Not all the hostage bodies are home. Hamas is bruised, but not broken. The region remains volatile. Yet even as combat continues, the United Nations Security Council, backed by an American administration long assumed to be ‘pro-Israel’, yesterday endorsed a resolution that places an armed international force in Gaza, sketches a vague pathway to Palestinian statehood, and outlines a governing arrangement in which neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority is central. For Israel this is a moment of profound uncertainty – a reminder that military operations, however successful, do not automatically dictate the shape of

Michael Simmons

Mahmood's right turn, as migration figures revised – again

19 min listen

Economics editor Michael Simmons and Yvette Cooper’s former adviser Danny Shaw join Patrick Gibbons to react to the Home Secretary’s plans for asylum reform. Shabana Mahmood’s direct communication style in the Commons yesterday has been praised by government loyalists and right-wingers alike, but her plans have been criticised by figures on the left as apeing Reform. Will her calculated risk pay off and how will success be judged? Plus, as ONS migration figures are revised – again – Michael restates his appeal for more reliable data. And how could migration data affect the budget next week? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

James Heale

How Nigel Farage would cut spending

At 94 per cent of GDP, UK government debt is the fourth highest among advanced European economies. With the tax burden at a record postwar high, there is increasing evidence to suggest that voters’ attitudes on public spending are hardening. Yet any political party proposing retrenchment faces the same problem: what cuts are they prepared to make that will not harm their electoral coalition? Nigel Farage offered his party’s answer to that question at a press conference this morning.  Reform’s ideology is perhaps best characterised by its in-house philosopher James Orr, who champions ‘the politics of national preference.’ The party’s diagnosis of Britain’s ails is that the balance of power between this