Politics

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

Tuesday

4 Nov 2025

Reform launches its own Research Department

Since returning to politics in May 2024, Nigel Farage has had one central goal: replacing the Conservatives as one of the two great parties of British politics. Having led in the polls since April, Reform UK has focused in recent weeks on the intellectual battle, by attracting bright thinkers on the centre-right. Danny Kruger MP defected last month, followed shortly by the academic James Orr. The former now heads the party’s ‘Preparing for Government’ unit; the latter is tasked with building the intellectual pipeline from the universities to a future Farage administration. Today, the party has sought to lay down a fresh marker. Reform is launching its own Research Department

Eliot Wilson

Trump's nuclear weapons testing is a dangerous idea

It is often difficult to discern the exact meaning of President Trump’s public statements. He does not consider words carefully, being a politician of pure and visceral instinct, but he is also not especially articulate, and this can produce ambiguous jumbles of language. Last week, minutes before he met President Xi Jinping of China at Busan Airport in South Korea, Trump made an extraordinary statement on his Truth Social platform: The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country… Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War

Cristina Odone

Bridget Phillipson must not abandon special needs children

Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education, has finally turned her attention back to her brief – and there is a big group of school parents who wish she hadn’t. Parents whose children have special needs are up in arms about the latest announcement that has come from the Department of Education. It was bad enough to hear that, given Phillipson’s other pressing commitments (her doomed attempt to be elected deputy Labour party leader earlier in the Autumn being one), the publication of the white paper on schools’ special needs (SEND) provision would be postponed until next year. Concern over this delay – sinister murmurings about a total overhaul of

James Heale

Reeves prepares the public for tax hikes

11 min listen

It is three weeks until the Budget – and Rachel Reeves wants to get her narrative out there. The Chancellor held an early morning press conference today to, in her words, ‘set out the circumstances and the principles’ guiding her thinking on 26 November. Her speech followed a familiar pattern. First, there was the evisceration of the ‘austerity’, ‘reckless borrowing’ and ‘stop go of public investment’ which characterised the last 14 years. In her 25-minute speech in Downing Street, one line in particular stood out: ‘If we are to build the future of Britain together’, Reeves said, ‘we will all have to contribute to that effort. Each of us must

Margaret Mitchell

Was Dick Cheney a hero or a villain?

Former US vice president Dick Cheney died last night aged 84. He arrived in Washington as a congressman for Wyoming, then became secretary for defence under George H.W. Bush and served for eight years as George W. Bush’s vice president. He was considered by many to have pulled the strings behind the Bush administration. Throughout his life, Cheney held that what he had done was necessary What is perhaps his most lasting legacy is the ‘Cheney Doctrine,’ which influenced America’s decision to engage in wars in the Middle East. He campaigned for a military response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which drove his conviction that any country, organisation or individual

James Heale

Badenoch has a new favourite word: work

After Nigel Farage’s address on Reform’s tax plans yesterday and Rachel Reeves’s effort to lay the groundwork for the Budget this morning, Kemi Badenoch completed the trifecta of economic speeches this lunchtime. Appearing at the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Conservative leader sought to wrestle back the limelight for her party, as pre-Budget speculation ramps up ahead of 26 November. In the era of multi-party politics, it is no longer good enough for Badenoch to simply bash Labour. With the Tories no longer commanding a monopoly on the right, she must focus her attacks on Reform too. Badenoch’s chosen battleground today was welfare. After the shambles of the summer, when

Gareth Roberts

Can the last 'working person' in Britain please turn out the lights?

Early morning surprises can be lovely, but not when they involve Rachel Reeves. Probably the last thing anybody wants to see as they wipe the sand from their eyes is the Chancellor looming over them. The sudden, unexpected appearance of Reeves at cock crow this morning – ‘My office, first thing, sharp!’ – felt like a dawn raid, the age-old military tactic for attacking when the human body is at its weakest. Well, it didn’t work. The recent wranglings over the exact definition of ‘working people’ wouldn’t fool a four-year-old We learnt today that despite Reeves having ‘fixed the foundations’ last year (don’t laugh!), ‘the world’ keeps throwing ‘challenges’ her

Andrew Tettenborn

The rise of anti-democratic human rights

Seventy-five years ago today the European Convention on Human Rights was signed in Rome by the 12 states, including Britain, that then formed the Council of Europe. There will be official celebrations: in Strasbourg tonight, a solemn ceremony of speeches and a gala classical concert at the Opéra national du Rhin, and in London next month a formal lecture by our recently-retired man in Strasbourg followed by a Foreign Office reception. But one thing is very noticeable: beyond the great, the good and the earnest (such as the human rights bar and organisations like Amnesty and Liberty), few care. Most of the public, and for that matter most of our

James Kirkup

Britain's stingy state pension is good news

That Britain has the least generous state pension in the G7 should be recognised for what it is: good news. The fact that it won’t be celebrated tells us a lot about the mismatch between policy and politics around pensions in the UK. The nature of Britain’s state pension isn’t an accident or a failure. It’s the product of deliberate design. For the past three decades, British policymakers have chosen to provide retirement income largely through private saving rather than tax-funded state benefits. They’ve done so quietly, but rationally. The alternative would be to copy France – a country that still treats the state pension as a social guarantee and

James Heale

What does Rachel Reeves really mean that we must all 'do our bit'?

It is three weeks until the Budget – and Rachel Reeves wants to get her narrative out there. The Chancellor held an early morning press conference today to, in her words, ‘set out the circumstances and the principles’ guiding her thinking on 26 November. One line in particular stood out: ‘If we are to build the future of Britain together’, Reeves said, ‘we will all have to contribute to that effort. Each of us must do our bit’ Her speech followed a familiar pattern. First, there was the evisceration of the ‘austerity’, ‘reckless borrowing’ and ‘stop go of public investment’ which characterised the last 14 years. Then came the global

Ross Clark

Budget tax rises will mark the beginning of the long end for Labour

So just what was the point in dragging political journalists out of bed to be addressed by Rachel Reeves in Downing Street this morning? We could – and should – have had the Budget by now. Instead, we got a half Budget speech – a desperate attempt to blame the Tories, a vague suggestion that taxes are going to go up (which we know anyway) without any details. We heard yet more about Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, despite the fact that they have been out of office for more than three years. Reeves herself has been in office approximately ten times as long as Truss and Kwarteng were. Reeves is fooling

Nigel Jones

Do black lives still matter?

It was an ethnic massacre so bad that it could be seen from space. Satellites picked up bloodied patches of soil in North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher, after Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) swept into the besieged city. Pools of blood and piles of bodies were identified. Thousands of people are feared to have died in the appalling violence. Many thousands more have fled for their lives. Others remain trapped in the city. Satellites picked up bloodied patches of soil in North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher The scenes of slaughter were so blatant that it should have brought marchers out on to the streets of London in passionate protest. But there

Daniel DePetris

The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is in danger of shattering

It’s been almost a year since Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that arguably held more power in Lebanon than the government itself, signed a ceasefire to end a ferocious two-month long war. The deal couldn’t have come at a better time; thousands of Israeli air and artillery strikes had pulverised southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s traditional base of operations, leading to a displacement crisis and killing close to 4,000 Lebanese. Whole swaths of northern Israel had been vacated due to Hezbollah missile attacks, forcing the Israeli government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to spend money on tens of thousands of civilians bunking in hotel rooms. But the agreement is wearing thin. The

Alexander Larman

Is it all over for Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie?

There is a saying, variously attributed either to Euripides or Shakespeare, that is something along the lines of ‘the sins of the father will be visited upon the children.’ By anyone’s reckoning, this is deeply unfair and wholly undeserved, but the treatment of Prince Andrew’s children, the Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, will soon bear out the dread-laden maxim. Virtually all the international attention has so far come upon their parents, the Andrew formerly known as Prince and the unduchessed Sarah Ferguson. But now, with the inevitability of good hangings preventing bad marriages, interest is going to alight upon them. A pile-on towards these young women is coming, and it will

Alexander Horne

Can the European Convention on Human Rights survive?

Today is the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights. In spite of its longevity, the Convention faces a number of challenges, and this is perhaps not the happiest of birthdays. In the UK the Convention faces a significant challenge. For the first time, both the Conservatives and Reform will enter the next general election pledging to withdraw from it The development of the ECHR was, in part, a response to the aftermath of the second world war and the serious violations of human rights which occurred during the conflict. Much is made by its supporters of the fact that British lawyers, such as Sir David Maxwell Fyfe

Joanna Williams

Grade inflation is harming a generation of school children

The national Covid-19 inquiry rumbles slowly onwards. Module 8, examining the impact of the pandemic on children and young people, drew to a close last month. Blast-from-the-past appearances from Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson meant the decision to shut schools and stop exams from going ahead for the best part of two years was subjected to scrutiny and buck-passing in equal measure. Since lockdown ended, concern has, rightly, been raised about so-called ‘ghost children’, who continue to be persistently absent from school rolls. Far less attention has been paid to the gaps in the education of those pupils who did turn up when schools reopened. Perhaps understandably, no one wants

Monday

3 Nov 2025

Madeline Grant

Jeffrey Epstein may yet wreak more havoc on Keir Starmer

Short of dressing the former Duke of York in a Carmen Miranda-style fruit headdress and attaching two Catherine wheels to each of his buttocks, the Labour party couldn’t have done much more to draw attention to one famous pal of Jeff Epstein this week – from threatening bills on the line of succession to the Secretary of State for Defence’s briefing that the former prince will have his naval ranks stripped from him. Thank heavens for that; it’s well known, of course, that no sexual deviant ever served in the Royal Navy. This is a fascinating tactic from the Labour party which reveals two truths. One: they believe the general public to

Steerpike

Blow for Scottish Tories as Reform gain another councillor

To Ayrshire, where a former Tory councillor who quit the party in July has defected to Reform UK. North Ayrshire councillor Todd Ferguson has made the leap to Nigel Farage’s party, following in the footsteps of multiple independent and former Conservative councillors across Scotland. The blow is even more painful for Scottish Tory party leader Russell Findlay as he is a regional MSP for the area. Another one bites the dust… Ferguson, who has been a councillor since 2017, quit the Conservative party in summer and has sat as independent – until now. He has become the third Reform councillor on North Ayrshire council, alongside Matthew McLean and Stewart Ferguson.

James Heale

Farage: trust me with the economy

15 min listen

With Reform leading in the polls, Nigel Farage is determined to ensure that nothing can impede its growth. This morning he sought to bolster his credibility on an area that the Tories think could be his Achilles heel: the economy. Reform’s £90 billion programme of tax cuts promised at the last election has been constantly used as a stick with which to beat its leader. So today, Farage took to the stage in the City, to – once again – formally bury ‘Our Contract with You’ – the platform on which he was elected in July last year. This morning’s speech was all about Reform claiming the mantle of fiscal

Gavin Mortimer

France is in the grip of a heist epidemic

The good news for the French police is that three of the four people suspected of carrying off the ‘heist of the century’ at the Louvre last month are in custody. The bad news is that the crown jewels they stole, worth an estimated €88 million (£76 million), have yet to be recovered. Given the audacity of the robbery, committed on a Sunday morning as the museum opened its doors to the public, it was assumed by many that the theft was the work of seasoned professionals. The profile of those arrested paints a different picture: they are petty criminals, hailing from Seine-Saint-Denis, the impoverished department north of Paris. The DNA