Politics

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

Wednesday

29 Oct 2025

Education officials are clueless about education

To understand why education reform – and school improvement – is so hard it helps to get inside the mind of the officials who are supposed to be driving higher standards. This week Jonathan Slater, a former Department for Education permanent secretary, published a report for UCL Policy Lab that perfectly illustrates many senior officials’ poor understanding of schools and of accountability in particular. Slater is, admirably, determined to improve educational outcomes for poorer children. But in my view he is also appallingly ignorant about how to actually achieve improvement. He repeats the call – from those anxious to cover up under-performance – to replace Ofsted inspections (other than for

Steerpike

Hermer takes aim at Kemi over China spy case

Back to the collapsed China spy case. Attorney General Lord Hermer is this morning giving evidence to the joint committee on the national security strategy about the matter. He has been quizzed on the context of the case, how it could have been handled differently and the legislation involved. But while Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has come under scrutiny about its involvement, now Lord Hermer has pointed the finger at the Tories and, er, Kemi Badenoch. Hermer told the committee that the former Conservative government was not ambivalent about whether China was an enemy or not. The problem, he said, was that ‘the government’s position was that it was

Jake Wallis Simons

What is Hamas doing at a five-star hotel in Cairo?

Imagine the horror of discovering that you have been rubbing shoulders with terrorists. No, I’m not talking about those gullible souls who join the Gaza marches in London, but about the British airline crew who had an unfortunate brush with Hamas at a five-star Marriott hotel in Cairo. Full marks to the Daily Mail, whose veteran photographer Mark Large snapped several of the 154 jihadis freed by Israel as they lived it up at the inexplicably named Renaissance Cairo Mirage City. What’s a terrorist to do? You recruit suicide bombers, oversee a bus bombing or murder a police officer, get banged up, luck out with early release as part of an

Ross Clark

No wonder Labour has failed to build more houses

Should anyone really be surprised at the House Builders’ Federation’s (HBF) warning that the government has little chance of hitting its target of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of this Parliament? The target of 300,000 new homes a year has become something of a holy grail for previous governments, too. If Boris Johnson and, before him, Gordon Brown failed in their housebuilding ambitions, why did the present government think it would do any better? The mistake of former housing minister Angela Rayner and others in the government was to imagine that the main problem with low rates of house-building was Tory-voting nimbys in the shires who were

Philip Patrick

Is Japan’s new PM the Thatcher to Trump’s Reagan?

‘My wonderful ally and friend’ is how Japan’s brand new, and first female, prime minister Sanae Takaichi described President Trump in her recent tweet. As has been commented in Japan, this is a bit strong given that the two have spent a total of one day together (Trump is visiting as part of a tour of South Asian). The accompanying photo shows the two in couple-y proximity inside a US army helicopter at Yokosuka naval base. Trump looks relaxed and happy. Takaichi? Positively smitten. Could we be witnessing the emergence of a new geopolitical power couple in the mould of Thatcher and Reagan? Takaichi is known to have been inspired

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas is testing Israel’s patience

In the wake of yet another rupture in the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the region finds itself suspended in an unstable equilibrium – tense, volatile, but for now, deliberately held back from tipping into open war. On Tuesday, Hamas terrorists launched a coordinated double attack against Israeli troops operating inside the designated ‘yellow zone’ in Rafah – territory under clear IDF operational control. First came sniper fire, killing Master Sergeant (Res.) Yona Efraim Feldbaum. Minutes later, anti-tank missiles struck an engineering vehicle. The attack, both fatal and brazen, represented a clear violation of the ceasefire, exposing not only the presence of armed Hamas cells within IDF-controlled space but

Jonathan Spyer

Will the Gaza ceasefire hold?

In the latest blow to the beleaguered Gaza ceasefire, Israeli aircraft this week struck targets in Gaza City after Hamas carried out an attack using rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire on IDF soldiers in the Rafah area. One Israeli reserve soldier was killed in the Hamas attack. The exchanges of fire took place amid continued Hamas stalling on the issue of the return of the bodies of slain Israeli hostages. There was widespread Israeli outrage this week after filmed evidence emerged showing Hamas fighters re-burying body parts of a murdered hostage whose corpse they claimed to have already returned. After burying the body parts of Ofer Tzarfati, 27, of Kibbutz Nir

Michael Gove

‘I was reported for bullying!’: inside the Home Office dysfunction & collapsed grooming gangs inquiry

55 min listen

To submit your urgent questions to Michael & Maddie, go to: spectator.co.uk/quiteright This week on Quite right!: the great Home Office meltdown. After a week of fiascos – from the accidental release of a convicted migrant to the collapse of the grooming gangs inquiry – Michael and Maddie ask: is the Home Office now beyond repair? Why is Britain’s most important department also its most dysfunctional? And what does it say about a civil service more obsessed with ‘listening circles’ and ‘wellbeing surveys’ than actually running the country? Then to Westminster, where Jess Phillips faces fury over the grooming gangs inquiry. Are ministers diluting the investigation to avoid awkward truths

Tuesday

28 Oct 2025

Luke Lyman

How Javier Milei won

In this episode, US arts editor Luke Lyman is joined by Kate Andrews, formerly of The Spectator, to discuss President Javier Milei’s landslide victory in the Argentinian elections this week. The polls were wrong – how did the self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist survive? Plus, Luke and Kate discuss Kamala Harris’s suggestion that she could run again in 2028.

Steerpike

Tories throw kitchen sink at two-way Reform race

To Barnet, where a council by-election will take place on Thursday. Former councillor Joshua Conway lost his Hendon ward seat after a change of jobs made him ineligible to serve on the council. Six candidates are in the running for the council seat – but the contest is shaping up to be a two-horse race between the Conservatives and Reform. But Mr S has noticed some rather curious goings-on in the former Tory safe seat… It would appear that the Conservatives are funnelling resource after resource into the council by-election campaign in the form of, er, very senior politicians. Not only has the party bussed in swathes of activists, Tory

Steerpike

Kruger: Pirate ship Reform has an ill-disciplined crew

Another day, another Reform press conference. Today the central London meet-up saw former Conservative MP-turned-defector Danny Kruger take to the podium to set out his plans to prepare the party for government. As James Heale wrote for Coffee House, Kruger wants to reduce civil servant numbers, end leases on a selection of Whitehall premises and better empower parliament. But he also turned his attention to his own (new) party too – setting out something of a vision of Reform’s evolution. ‘I’m going to start by risking a metaphor,’ Kruger warned his crowd. He went on: People keep asking me how I feel having left the sinking ship of the Tory

James Heale

Migration, the customs union & a £40bn black hole?

14 min listen

There are reports that the OBR will downgrade Britain’s productivity growth forecasts, increasing the size of the black hole facing the Chancellor at the end of the month. This continues the spate of bad news for the Chancellor on the economy – but can we trust the figures? James Heale and Michael Simmons join Patrick Gibbons to talk about what this means ahead of the budget, whether anger over the money wasted on asylum hotels can be linked to the cost-of-living crisis and what Rachel Reeves is doing in Saudi Arabia this week. Plus: is a debate over the customs union really what Britain wants right now? Produced by Patrick

Steerpike

Andy Burnham attacks Starmer (again)

Andy Burnham is back. After his humiliation at Labour conference, the Mayor of Greater Manchester has returned, hawking his conscience around once more. At last night’s London launch of his new book, Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain, co-written with Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram, Burnham attacked Starmer again. He criticised the ‘narrow and shallow’ way the Prime Minister runs his government, citing the handling of the two-child benefit cap rebellion. Though Mr S doubts No. 10 will heed Bottler Burnham’s advice… ‘No one lost the whip under Brown or Blair,’ Burnham complained when asked about the case of backbench rebel Ian Byrne. He then went further, arguing

Eliot Wilson

Is Keir Starmer right to sell Typhoon jets to Turkey?

Sir Keir Starmer is proving to be an unlucky prime minister. This week began with a demonstration of his haplessness. The Prime Minister travelled to Ankara to announce an £8 billion deal to supply the Turkish air force with 20 new Eurofighter Typhoons, beginning in 2030. Yet the political headlines in Britain were full of other more embarrassing issues: the collapsed China spy trial case, the accidental release of a convicted sex offender due for deportation, the aftermath of Labour’s humiliating loss of the Senedd seat in the Caerphilly by-election. The commercial deal with Turkey is important. Starmer described it in his strange, resentful, maundering way as ‘the biggest fighter

Steerpike

Labour polls at record low

When it rains for the Labour lot, it pours. Today’s YouGov poll for the Times shows Nigel Farage’s Reform UK with a ten point lead on the current party of government, with Labour tied with the Tories. More than that, the survey of 2,400 adults found that half of all those who supported Sir Keir Starmer’s army at the last election have since turned their backs on the reds. It’s yet another blow for Sir Keir – and his Chancellor hasn’t even announced her budget yet! The polling, carried out on 26 and 27 October, shows that almost a third of Britons would back Reform if a general election were

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas’s hostage remains deception is a new low

The grotesque return of a body part falsely presented as one of Israel’s remaining hostages marks a new low in Hamas’s campaign of calculated cruelty. Israeli authorities confirmed today that the casket transferred by Hamas did not contain the remains of any of the 13 captives whose remains are still known to be in Gaza. The part belonged instead to Ofir Tzarfati, a 27-year-old abducted from the Nova music festival and buried in Israel last December. Ofir’s body had already been recovered and laid to rest in Kiryat Ata. His headstone, chosen by his grieving family, bore a line that now seems almost unbearably tragic: ‘You were a world and

Matthew Lynn

A tariff alliance won’t stop Britain’s steel industry collapsing

The British steel industry has been staggering from one crisis to another for the whole of this year. Half of the industry has fallen into effective state control, and what’s left is teetering on the edge of collapse. The government has finally come up with a plan to rescue it. In collaboration with the US and EU, it wants to create a ‘ring of steel’ protecting all the major Western industries from cheap Asian imports. It sounds simple enough, but there is just one catch. This plan won’t do anything to fix soaring domestic costs – and that is the real problem. The government certainly needs to do something to

Melisa Tourt

Farage’s parliamentary grooming gang inquiry won’t work

Nigel Farage’s call this week for parliament to seize control of the grooming-gangs inquiry sounds superficially compelling. The government’s statutory inquiry has stumbled – survivors have resigned, the chair has stepped down, and momentum appears lost. Why not, Farage argues, bypass this chaos with a parliamentary investigation that can summon witnesses, operate transparently, and confront uncomfortable truths about ethnicity that others will not touch? Unfortunately, replacing a flawed process with a fundamentally unsuitable one does not constitute progress – merely a different type of institutional failure. Farage’s proposal, unveiled alongside resigned survivor advocate Ellie-Ann Reynolds, positions a select committee inquiry as the antidote to bureaucratic paralysis. The template, though Farage

Ross Clark

Rachel Reeves is doing her best to paralyse the housing market

We are still four weeks away from the Budget and already we have had virtually every tax rise floated before us by Treasury leaks. This is presumably in the hope of managing our expectations so that if we think the Budget is going to be really, really dreadful, we will be pathetically grateful to Reeves when it turns out merely to be fairly dreadful. Is the Chancellor really intending to impose an annual mansion tax of 0.1 per cent of the value of every home above £2 million? It plays to the Labour gallery alright; maybe the idea has even come from the undead at the heart of the cabinet:

Luke Tryl

Is the rise of Reform unstoppable?

The rise of Reform UK has at times seemed to defy gravity. From winning four million votes at the general election last year to emerging as the largest party at this year’s local elections, they have broken through ceiling after ceiling. What’s more, as the only party regularly hitting 30 per cent in the polls, in an era of mass electoral fragmentation, Reform could secure a landslide election victory, as across the UK seven parties split the vote between them. Is Reform’s rise unstoppable? Granted, we are still likely some three years out from another general election, but the contours of that vote do already seem to be coming into view,