Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Steerpike

Burnham dodges questions on Westminster return

Well, well, well. Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is back in the spotlight. Earlier this week, Norwich South MP Clive Lewis offered up his seat to allow Burnham to make a leadership challenge. Left-winger Lewis announced on the Beeb’s Politics Live that he would be happy to let Burnham take his seat to allow the Manchester mayor to return to the Commons and put ‘country before party, party before personal ambition’. How interesting… But when quizzed on whether he would take Lewis up on the offer, Burnham dodged the question. Speaking to the BBC this morning, the Manchester man remarked: I appreciate the support. But I couldn’t have brought forward

Debbie Hayton

There’s no easy way to manage single-sex spaces

Transgender people could be banned from single-sex spaces based on how they are perceived by other people according to the Times. The newspaper reports seeing a copy of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s transgender guidance that was handed to ministers in early September. The EHRC was never going to please both sides of what has become an impassioned debate. Now it seems that they have come up with a code of practice that will please neither. The gender identity lobby will hate it because it will require transgender people to put on some sort of performance to access spaces designated for the opposite sex. Meanwhile, those who have championed

Katja Hoyer

Why can’t Friedrich Merz just say sorry?

‘We live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world,’ began a seemingly innocuous speech by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last week. The words that followed earned him the wrath of the largest state in South America. Just back from the Cop climate summit in Belem, Brazil, Merz declared that his delegation had been ‘glad to return from that place’. When he’d asked the accompanying journalists if anyone would like to stay, ‘nobody raised their hand’. Appearing to compare their country unfavourably to Germany, Merz’s remarks offended many of Brazil’s leaders. President Lula hit back by suggesting Merz should have gone out to a bar or dancing in Belem before passing judgment

Jim Lawley

Spain's post-Franco democracy is on the rocks

‘Fine weather in Malaga’ proclaimed the banner headline of a Spanish newspaper in 1974 – that was the day’s big story. There was nothing about the country’s social and economic problems or the Carnation Revolution bringing democracy to neighbouring Portugal. After almost four decades in charge, the dictator Francisco Franco had effectively depoliticised Spain. ‘A century and a half of parliamentary democracy,’ Franco said, ‘accompanied by the loss of immense territory, three civil wars, and the imminent danger of national  disintegration, add up to a disastrous balance sheet, sufficient to discredit parliamentary systems in the eyes of the Spanish people.’ Yet once Franco died – fifty years today ­– a

David Goodhart

Is Shabana Mahmood Labour's Iron Lady?

Has the Labour party finally found its answer to Margaret Thatcher? Shabana Mahmood’s withering response to Lib Dem MP Max Wilkinson’s po-faced complaint about her language in the asylum debate this week must rank as the most devastating, and justified, playing of the race card in recent parliamentary history. Opposition to using every legal means to stop the boats, she implied, is a kind of luxury belief enjoyed only by those who aren’t at risk of being called a ‘F***ing P***’ in the street. Has the Labour party finally found its answer to Margaret Thatcher? Turning the tables on the racial justice panjandrums on her own side by citing her

Douglas Murray

Trump’s Epstein gamble

It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was a time during President Trump’s first term when Steve Bannon fitted the role – and relished playing it. Back then most days brought another media profile of the dark genius of the MAGA movement. The Guardian, New York Times and others were obsessed. Vanity Fair would send reporters to follow Bannon as he conquered America and, er, Europe. Documentary crews were perennially in tow. Indeed one documentary following Bannon around included a scene in which they followed him to the showing of another documentary about him from a crew who

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: an immigration overhaul, Budget chaos and doctors’ strikes

Home Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, proposed that refugees would only be granted a temporary right to stay and would be sent home if officials deemed their country safe to return to. They would not qualify for British citizenship for 20 years. To avoid drawn-out appeals, a new appeals body would be created. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects migrants’ ‘right to family life’, would somehow be weakened. Digital ID was invoked for the enforcement of checks on status. Opponents seized upon the possibility that, to pay for accommodation, migrants’ jewellery would be confiscated. Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, offered her party’s support if the

James Heale

Labour may have lost the countryside forever

Before the last election, Keir Starmer promised that his party’s relationship with the countryside would be ‘based on respect, on genuine partnership’. But, 16 months into his premiership, the government is shedding rural votes after Rachel Reeves’s changes to inheritance tax. Protesters wearing flat caps and riding tractors have become a familiar sight in Westminster, such is the outrage about the effect on family farms. At the most recent protests, Labour MPs in rural seats were reduced to begging the Treasury to pause the changes ahead of the Budget. ‘So many of my farmers are pleading with me,’ admitted Samantha Niblett, MP for South Derbyshire. In the words of Ribble

Tim Shipman

It’s time to dispose of the Budget

Denis Healey’s ‘caretaker Budget’ on 3 April 1979 is an odd focus for Labour nostalgia. It came a week after Jim Callaghan’s government had lost a vote of no confidence, paving the way for Margaret Thatcher’s arrival in No. 10. Healey was reduced to merely introducing the finance bill to maintain normal tax collection functions, and made no other announcements at all. But as chaos surrounds Rachel Reeves’s second Budget next week, one senior figure fondly recalled that simpler time. Healey began his 27-minute ‘non-Budget’ (as Geoffrey Howe called it) speech by confessing: ‘I feel a little bit like a man who turns up to play the leading role in

Wednesday

Steerpike

More Your Party splits as Sultana snubs Corbyn

Oh dear. As if there hadn’t been enough hiccups in the launch of new left wing group Your Party, it appears there has been another bump in the road. It transpires that Jeremy Corbyn has, er, not been invited to a rally on the eve of the conference hosted by the party’s co-founder Zarah Sultana. Awkward… Jezza’s spokesperson confirmed that the ex-Labour leader had not been asked along to Sultana’s Liverpool event – which has been described by Zarah herself as an ‘unapologetically socialist, anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist programme’. But while it has been sold as a Your Party rally, it is not an official party event – and its tickets are

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