Politics

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

Friday

James Heale James Heale

Prince Andrew stops using his titles

Prince Andrew’s humiliation is near-complete. He has tonight agreed to immediately stop using his Duke of York title after ‘discussion with The King,’ his family and ‘with His Majesty’s agreement.’ In a statement, Andrew said that ‘I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first.’ It comes after weeks of growing pressure about his links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew’s statement is short, concise and lacks any apology or contrition. It does, however, contain a reassertion of his innocence: ‘I vigorously deny the accusations against me’. He will remain a prince – but will cease using the title bestowed by

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The farce of the Maccabi ban

Tel Aviv Bemusement seems to be the main emotion in Tel Aviv following the UK’s mad ban on Maccabi fans. A Maccabi supporter sipping an espresso in bustling Dizengoff Square doesn’t get it. ‘You’re keeping the fans out because you’re worried they’ll be attacked?’ He screws up his face. ‘You should stop the attackers, not the fans.’ He has a point. Britain seems to have rustled up a novel way to deal with Jew hatred – just hide away the Jews. No Jews, no anti-Jewish mob. No Maccabi fans, no violent outbursts of Israelophobia from that unholy, unhappy union of Islamists and leftists who think Israelis are demonic. Problem solved. 

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Is Trump on a roll?

30 min listen

Was this Donald Trump’s most phenomenal week yet? Freddy Gray and Kate Andrews discuss the President’s success in orchestrating a Gaza peace plan, his ‘Mean Girls style’ of dealing with world leaders, and how to interpret his comments about not being ‘heaven bound’. They also talk about how Trump might bailout Argentina – but only if Javier Milei wins upcoming elections. 

Lara Brown

Is the grooming gang inquiry headed for a whitewash?

Keir Starmer did not want to hold an inquiry into grooming gangs.  He did everything that he could to ignore the rape and torture of children which has scarred towns across England. Louise Casey’s audit of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse was almost certainly commissioned to get him out of a tough spot and get calls for an inquiry out of the papers.  It was only after Labour were left with absolutely no choice in the matter, damned by the scale of abuse documented in Casey’s report, that an inquiry was finally commissioned.  It should therefore be no surprise that before the inquiry has even begun, it is being undermined.

James Heale James Heale

Antisemitism, Chinese spies & GB’s economic fragility

14 min listen

It’s been a rough week for the government: the row over the collapsed Chinese spy trial has rolled on, all while the Chancellor has been trying to lay the groundwork ahead of next month’s budget. Then, overnight, another issue has emerged as fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv football team have been banned from attending a football game against Aston Villa next month, leading to accusations of antisemitism. Tim Shipman and Michael Simmons join James Heale to discuss the day’s developments. Tim reveals how the Chinese spy row has been picked up by American legislators, threatening to undermine the Five Eyes security alliance. Meanwhile Michael points out that the news

Edward Skidelsky

The battle for free speech in universities has only just begun

Earlier this week at HMS President – the Royal Navy Reserve’s base on the Thames – the government’s free-speech tsar, Arif Ahmed, delivered a quiet but unmistakable warning to the higher-education sector. Academic freedom, he told an audience of academics, politicians and policymakers gathered for a conference on the future of open inquiry, could not be regarded as secure merely because Parliament had legislated for it. It felt oddly appropriate that the message was delivered on the famous Tideway, just ‘downstream’ of Whitehall. At Durham University, ajob advert posted this month still contains requirements that appear to breach the new guidance At first glance, his claim might sound counter-intuitive. After

Nigel Jones

Banning Israeli football fans from Villa Park is a disgrace

The message could not be clearer: Israeli football fans are not welcome in Birmingham. I am no lover of football, but that doesn’t stop me feeling outraged and sickened by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans being told not to attend their Europa League game against Aston Villa next month. The seats at Villa Park that had been allocated to the Israeli visitors for the fixture will now remain empty. In Amsterdam, Maccabi supporters were attacked by anti-Semitic mobs The appalling decision to tell fans of the Israeli club that they are not permitted to attend the 6 November game – meekly accepted, of course, by West Midlands Police and Villa –

Euan McColm

Keep an eye on Joani Reid

If you’d like to know whether the Labour MP Joani Reid is any good, canvass the opinions of some of her colleagues in the Commons. You’ll hear that the 39-year-old is, variously, too big for her boots, an attention seeker, and, of course, a right-wing Zionist stooge. More than one comrade will tell you she’s only an MP because of who her grandfather was. It doesn’t matter that the much-admired trade unionist Jimmy Reid died in 2010 or that he was a member of the SNP at the time. He just fixed it for her, right? That’s how it works. But Reid, the MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven (a seat

Lisa Lee

What an overpriced glass of champagne taught me about Trump’s tariffs

An American in London, I frequently have occasion to return to my hometown of Los Angeles. In my latest trip this week, I changed my drink of choice because of President Trump. I passed over a French champagne in favour of a California red, and, in effect, became a case study on the transformative might of Trump’s policies. When I dumbfoundedly showed my US-based drinking mates the bar menu, they too marvelled at the exorbitant prices Fortune found me settling into a bar in Beverly Hills, in a swanky five-star hotel in one of the country’s poshest neighbourhoods, for a nip of drinks with former colleagues. Thinking to celebrate our

Jacob Heilbrunn

Has Trump fallen into Putin’s trap – again?

Sorry, Volodymyr. There won’t be any Tomahawk missiles headed to Ukraine now that president Vladimir Putin of Russia has talked on the phone with president Donald Trump, who called their session ‘very productive.’ What it will produce remains an open question. But it does seem to have resulted in a decision to hold an upcoming summit in Budapest. The bottom line: Putin has outflanked Ukrainian president Zelensky, who will meet at the White House with Trump today. Trump is a transactional president and he has business that he wants to transact with Russia, including, but not limited to, a peace deal between it and Ukraine. If anything, Trump, intent on winning

Sam Olsen

China really is a threat to Britain

When Dominic Cummings claimed this week that China had hacked into Britain’s most secret systems, the government rushed to deny it – understandably, given the political heat over the collapsed Chinese spy trial. But even if Cummings’ story proves false, the underlying truth remains: China has been systematically targeting Western networks for years, and extracting vast quantities of sensitive information. What is striking is not the allegation, but the reaction by a government so anxious not to call China a threat that it pretends not to see one. It is a surreal position, because the danger has been obvious for years. The truth is that China poses a greater strategic threat to Britain than any state since the

Daniel DePetris

Trump has a new European target in his crosshairs

There was a time not so long ago when Germany was US president Donald Trump’s favourite punching bag in Europe. During his first term in office, Trump had a penchant for biting Berlin’s ear off, blasting its political leadership as grossly incompetent, blaming the country for destroying itself by accepting a million refugees and wagging his finger at the Germans’ unwillingness to take more responsibility for their own defence. Trump hasn’t forgotten what happened in the lead-up to the Nato summit over the summer Yet those days are over. Trump, now in his second term, has a new European target in his crosshairs: Spain. The land of Tempranillo and Jamón

Thursday

Tim Shipman

US politicians: Dropping China spy case undermines Five Eyes 

As I revealed in the Spectator cover story this week, the US House of Representatives select committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has written to the acting British ambassador in Washington, James Roscoe, expressing dismay at the decision to drop the Cash-Berry spying case. The letter concludes by demanding whether US politicians were compromised by Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry (who deny any wrongdoing) I’ve now got hold of the letter from the committee chairman John Moolenaar. It is punchy stuff. ‘By dropping these charges, and allowing these individuals to walk free without trial, the UK risks establishing a dangerous precedent that foreign adversaries can target democratically-elected legislators with

Tim Shipman

The truth about Chinese espionage

13 min listen

Tim Shipman’s bombshell cover piece for the magazine this week explains how the collapsed spy trial blew up in the government’s face. As well as raising ‘serious questions’ about Keir Starmer’s judgment and Jonathan Powell’s role, ‘the affair reveals a Whitehall tendency to cover up the gory details of foreign spying in the UK’. According to Tim, four ‘highly credible sources in the upper echelons of the last government… have revealed that far worse scandals have been hushed up’. One, involving Russia, was suppressed ‘to avoid embarrassing a former prime minister’. The ‘most catastrophic breach’ saw China purchase a company that controlled a data hub used by Whitehall departments – thereby

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Who’s to blame for Britain’s slowing economy?

The economy is slowing down. GDP grew 0.3 per cent in the three months to August. As ever, services propped up Britain, growing by 0.4 per cent, while the production sector shrank by 0.3 per cent, according to Office for National Statistics data. We could have news of a stagnating economy confirmed just in time for Rachel Reeves’s Budget That growth over the last three months though was helped by a bumper June with the economy flat over the latest two months. If things don’t improve in the September data, then we could have news of a stagnating economy confirmed just in time for Rachel Reeves’s second Budget. Inflation too,

Eliot Wilson

Nato is far too complacent about Russian drones

Something is afoot in Nato’s airspace – but the alliance’s complacent response to the various incursions is rather troubling. In recent weeks, suspicious drones have intruded into the jurisdictions of Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Norway; identifiable Russian drones were tracked over Romania and shot down over Poland. Three Russian Mikoyan MiG-31 fighters violated Estonia’s airspace and loitered for 12 minutes before retreating when Italian F-35 aircraft were scrambled to intercept them. Putin is testing the alliance, pushing it little by little, upping the ante by increments to see what response he finds You might think that these various incidents would shake Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, out of his usual

Anastasia Piliavsky

Zelensky’s attack on Odesa is a step too far

In a single week, Kyiv has launched a triple attack on Odesa: on its language, history, and elected government. The city, which for almost four years has endured relentless bombardment and held Ukraine’s maritime front, now finds itself besieged by its own capital. With growing calls for an election, Zelensky appears to be clearing the field of rivals The most startling of these moves against Odesa is president Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to strip Gennady Trukhanov – the city’s three-times-elected mayor – of his Ukrainian citizenship and office. The charge is that Trukhanov holds a Russian passport, which the mayor flatly denies. Yet without a court hearing or any due process,

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Chinese spies, Vance’s rise & is French parenting supreme?

30 min listen

‘Here be dragons’ declares the Spectator’s cover story this week, as it looks at the continuing fallout over the collapse of the trial of two political aides accused of spying for China in Westminster. Tim Shipman reveals that – under the last Conservative government – a data hub was sold to the Chinese that included highly classified information; one source describes this to him as a ‘stratospheric clusterfuck’. Why do successive governments seem to struggle with UK-China relations? And, with many unanswered questions still remaining, what’s the truth over this case?  Host Lara Prendergast is joined by the Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman, arts editor Igor Toronyi-Lalic and deputy editor

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Can anyone stop J.D. Vance becoming president?

As Donald J. Trump flew to the Holy Land on Sunday to declare peace, his Vice-President took to the airwaves to address the rumbling civil conflict on the home front. J.D. Vance did not rule out invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act in order to quell the violent protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in several American cities. ‘The problem is the fact that the entire media in this country, cheered on by a few far-left lunatics, have made it OK to tee off on American law enforcement,’ he told NBC News. ‘We cannot accept that in the United States of America.’ This is now Vance’s familiar role. He’s not

Matt Ridley

Labour’s class war on moorland

This year has been a bad one for wildfires in Britain. In June, nearly 30,000 acres burned near Carrbridge in the Highlands. In August, a careless camper, I’m told, ignited 5,000 acres in the North York moors, setting off 18 unexploded shells, shrapnel from one of which narrowly missed a gamekeeper. The pollution from wildfires was ten times worse this year than in the wetter weather of last year. Yet Keir Starmer’s government has chosen this autumn to ban the one practice that has been preventing more such dangerous fires: the managed burning of heather on much of England’s moorland. In doing so, it has ridden roughshod over advice from