Politics

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

Friday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

The surprising fall of Germany’s populist far-left party

For all the alarm about the instability of German politics, the results of this month’s federal election campaign seem – on the surface – largely baked in. The conservative CDU party, led by the bullish Friedrich Merz, is expected to win, with approximately 30 per cent of the vote. The far-right Elon Musk-loving Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is predicted to come second with around 21 per cent.  But dive deeper, and the polls show that German politics is still very much in flux. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD party is fighting for third place with the Greens. And there are three parties which may well fail to meet the 5 per

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Why does Louis Theroux keep picking on Israeli settlers?

When is Louis Theroux going to make a documentary where he embeds himself with Hamas in Gaza? Or Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, or Qalqilya? Probably never, because he’d most likely come to a sticky end. His attempt to make a show about British Muslims who were sympathetic to Isis “fizzled out” Instead, Theroux is once again making a film about Jews in Judea and Samaria – the region known as the West Bank – focusing on so-called “settlers.” His last foray into this subject was The Ultra Zionists, in 2011, a documentary criticised by some for cherry-picking the most extreme and controversial voices from the settler movement to create a

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Can we trust the Tories on immigration? An interview with Chris Philp, shadow home secretary

38 min listen

On this special episode of Coffee House Shots, economics editor Kate Andrews is joined by shadow home secretary Chris Philp to discuss the Tories’ newly announced plan to tackle immigration. On legal migration, their proposal includes plans to end worklessness in order to stop the reliance on low-paid migrant workers. And on illegal migration, the line is ‘zero tolerance’ on small boats, including a removals deterrent much like the Rwanda plan, as well as other changes to the legal framework. One of the more controversial elements of their strategy is on citizenship. The Tories want to increase the period before migrants can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) from five to ten

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

How the judiciary fuel Europe’s migrant crisis

If Europeans wanted evidence that it is judges and not politicians who run their countries this month has proved it. At the start of February, the Rome court of appeal ordered that 49 migrants who had been rescued at sea and transferred to Albania – under the terms of an agreement struck between the two countries – be returned to Italy. It is the third time in four months that a court has intervened to thwart Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s attempt to combat illegal immigration. According to the judges, sending migrants to Albania is a contravention of an EU court ruling that member states must assess the safety of a

Thursday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Britain’s bureaucratic bloat, debating surrogacy & is smoking ‘sexy’?

40 min listen

This week: The Spectator launches SPAFF The civil service does one thing right, writes The Spectator’s data editor Michael Simmons: spaffing money away. The advent of Elon Musk’s DOGE in the US has inspired The Spectator to launch our own war on wasteful spending – the Spectator Project Against Frivolous Funding, or SPAFF. Examples of waste range from the comic to the tragic. The Department for Work and Pensions, Michael writes, ‘bought one Universal Credit claimant a £1,500 e-bike after he persuaded his MP it would help him find self-employment’. There’s money for a group trying to ‘decolonise’ pole dancing; for a ‘socially engaged’ practitioner to make a film about someone else getting

Steerpike Steerpike

How long will Sturgeon cling on in Holyrood?

To Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon is, er, not very busy. In fact, Mr S can reveal the SNP’s former Dear Leader has made a grand total of two spoken contributions in the Holyrood Chamber over the last 12 months. One was during a debate on Ukraine while another speech reminded MSPs that more needs to be done by her own government to protect Scotland’s young people. Talk about taking a back seat, eh? The former first minister may be keeping a low profile in the Scottish parliament but she has suggested, rather curiously, that she might not quit frontline politics just yet. It transpires that Sturgeon has submitted her application

Ido Vock

Will the Munich attack lead to a crackdown on asylum seekers?

Another day, another apparent attack by an asylum seeker in Germany. In Munich, a 24-year-old Afghan is alleged to have driven a Mini Cooper into a trade union demonstration. At least 28 people have been injured, 11 seriously, according to police. The alleged driver of the car, Farhad N, reportedly came to Germany in 2016 Bavarian Premier Markus Söder called the crash a “presumed attack”. Police say they don’t know whether there is a link to the Munich Security Conference, which is taking place in the city. The alleged driver of the car, Farhad N, reportedly came to Germany in 2016. His asylum application was rejected but he was issued

Oscar Edmondson

The Spectator’s war on government waste

11 min listen

It’s a double celebration for Rachel Reeves today. Not only is it her birthday, but the UK economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics’ latest report. December, when the economy expanded by 0.4 per cent (the market consensus had been 0.1 per cent), was the saving grace. This helped tip the final quarter of 2024 onto the right side of positive growth. But it’s not all rosy for the Chancellor. This morning’s update won’t take anyone in the Treasury off high alert, and there has been a development in the story about her CV. The BBC has been looking

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Car rams crowd in Munich, injuring at least 28

This morning, at around 10.30 local time, a white Mini Cooper ploughed into a crowd of more than 1,000 people in central Munich, south Germany. According to the local authorities, at least 28 people have been injured, with several suffering life-threatening injuries, including a child. Pictures from the scene show a battered car, with a smashed windscreen, surrounded by debris and discarded first aid material. According to Bavarian police, the driver of the car, who was arrested at the scene, is a 24-year-old Afghan failed asylum seeker. The man is reportedly known to the police and has a history of drug and theft-related offenses. The German newspaper Der Spiegel is

Steerpike Steerpike

Reeves faced expenses probe in previous job

As birthdays go, this is unlikely to be Rachel Reeves’s most enjoyable – thanks to an unexpected present from the BBC. Its journalists have been busy digging around the Chancellor’s CV claims – detailed in Mr S’s full timeline here – and the corporation has accused Reeves of exaggerating how long she spent working at the Bank of England. And, in a move that has become almost habitual for the Labour Chancellor in recent months, it appears ‘Rachel from accounts’ has changed her LinkedIn CV yet again… Reeves initially claimed in an interview with Stylist that she ‘spent a decade working as an economist at the Bank of England’ –

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MP WhatsApp scandal worsens

Uh oh. Former Labour health minister Andrew Gwynne was sacked and suspended at the weekend after some rather controversial message exchanges involving the MP were revealed. A second MP, Oliver Ryan, had the whip removed on Monday after his role in the controversial group chat – ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ – came to light. But now, as reported by the Times, more messages have been unearthed that paint the pair in an even worse light. The private group, for the eyes and ears of a select few Labour activists and MPs in Greater Manchester, was in use between 2019 and 2022. Amongst normal conversations were remarks deemed sexist, racist and derogatory

Matthew Lynn

Does Rachel Reeves’s industrial strategy even exist?

The Labour government was pinning everything on an ambitious industrial strategy to boost growth. It was meant to make the UK the fastest-growing economy in the G7, reboot the economy, raise real wages and generate all the extra tax revenues that were going to pay for improved public services. The trouble is, there is not much sign of it. First we were told that it would be published in the spring, and now it has emerged that we will have to wait until June to finally see it. It is increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that it may not actually exist.  Today’s GDP figures will have come as a

Andrew Tettenborn

Judges have finally backed a Christian who was sacked for LGBT posts

Finally, some good news on the free speech front: a Christian school worker who lost her job after sharing posts about gay relationships has won a crucial legal battle. Seven years ago, Kristie Higgs, a pastoral worker and mother at a primary school who held firm Christian views, used her private Facebook account to complain in colourful language about plans to rejig sex and relationships education in primary schools. One post referred to “brainwashing our children”. Another mentioned “suppressing Christianity and removing it from the public arena”. Higgs also called on her Facebook friends to sign a petition. She felt particularly exercised about suggestions that gender was a matter of

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

UK recession fears ease but Rachel Reeves has little to celebrate

The UK economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics’s latest report. December, when the economy expanded by 0.4 per cent (the market consensus had been 0.1 per cent), was the saving grace. This helped tip the final quarter of 2024 onto the right side of positive growth. Talk of recession will quiet down, at least for now. But this morning’s update is not going to take anyone in No.10 or the Treasury off high-alert. Monthly growth in December was stronger than expected, mainly thanks to a continued rise in services activity and a recovery in production from

Dalibor Rohac

Trump risks playing into Putin’s hands on a Ukraine peace deal

With the phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the quest for a peace deal for Ukraine is off to a troubling start. The conversation hinted at an eventual normalisation of United States-Russia relations and signalled that negotiations are likely to be led over the heads of Europeans – and Ukrainians – and possibly without input from Trump’s own Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg.  ‘As we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine’, Donald Trump wrote after his conversation with the Russian leader. ‘President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, ‘COMMON SENSE.’ We both believe very strongly

Adrian Pabst

What postliberalism really is

The election of Donald Trump and the advance of populism across Europe confirm that we have already entered a postliberal era. Our age marks the end of liberal hegemony that first emerged in the 1960s and 1970s before triumphing after the end of the cold war – the fusion of left-wing social-cultural liberalism with right-wing economic liberalism. Contemporary liberal thought – with its focus on the individual, negative liberty, subjective rights and utility-maximisation – fails to understand the world we live in or the nature of reality. Part of the reason is that much of 20th-century liberalism denies any notion of substantive, transcendent goods in favour of individual rights. Contemporary

Jawad Iqbal

Saudi Arabia’s beer ban shows why it shouldn’t host the World Cup

Football fans attending the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia will not be allowed to buy alcohol during their time there. Hands up anyone who is surprised. The sale of alcohol is outlawed in the desert kingdom, and penalties for consumption include flogging, jail or deportation. Prince Khalid bin Bandar Sultan Al Saud doesn’t come across as someone who spends much time in pubs The Saudis are also notoriously indifferent to the notion of human rights, so they’re hardly likely to respect the desire – some might describe it as a basic right – of some football fans to have a few bevvies before, during and after a match. The

Leah Pennisi-Glaser

Don’t cancel Neil Gaiman’s books

How far can Neil Gaiman fall? The acclaimed author has been accused of sexual misconduct by eight women. One of his accusers, a woman who had been babysitting Gaiman’s child, alleges that Gaiman offered her a bath before joining her in the tub naked and assaulting her. Gaiman denies the allegations against him. ‘I’m far from a perfect person,’ he has said, ‘but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.’ Whatever Gaiman did or didn’t get up to in his private life, we should separate the art from the artist Whether or not the allegations against Gaiman are true, the backlash has been swift. Gaiman’s upcoming creative projects

Jonathan Spyer

The case for ending the Israel-Hamas ceasefire

The question now facing Israel is this: will the war in Gaza recommence? The ceasefire agreement was signed less than a month ago, and it is already looking shaky.   The first phase of the deal has not yet been completed. Sixteen of the 33 Israeli hostages scheduled to be freed in this phase have been released, and so have 656 of 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. But Hamas has now announced the postponement of the release of an additional three hostages, which was scheduled to take place this Saturday. US President Donald Trump has expressed support for abandoning the phasing of the deal, and demanded that all hostages be released by Saturday at noon –

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Andrew Gwynne sacked, Trump saves Prince Harry and a £30m refund over moths

Home Andrew Gwynne was sacked as a health minister and suspended from the Labour party for making jokes about a constituent’s hoped-for death, and about Diane Abbott and Angela Rayner. Oliver Ryan, a member of the WhatsApp group where the jokes were shared, had the Labour whip removed and 11 councillors were suspended from the party. Asked about 16,913 of 28,564 medics registering to practise medicine in Britain last year having qualified abroad, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said there was ‘no doubt’ that ‘the NHS has become too reliant’ on immigration. The government issued guidance saying that anyone who enters Britain by means of a dangerous journey will normally