Politics

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

Saturday

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

How Germany became a security liability

There were lots of smiles and some awkward football banter when German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock met her British counterpart David Cameron in Berlin earlier this week. Cameron was careful to tiptoe around Berlin’s recent security blunders, after an online call between German officials discussing British military activities in Ukraine was intercepted by Russia. Alliances aren’t just about money, they are also about trust and dependability Britain’s former prime minister is good at this diplomatic dance, and he made a valiant effort to not, in his words, ‘play into the hands of some Russian narrative about divisions between allies.’ But it’s hard to paper over the cracks these recent security

Natasha Feroze

Does Britain need new laws to tackle extremism?

21 min listen

Michael Gove is expected to announce a tougher definition of extremism in response to a rise in radical ideology, since the Israel-Gaza war. Are new laws really needed? Or could the current laws, if enforced properly, be the best way to tackle a decline in social cohesion? Natasha Feroze speaks to David Shipley, a film producer and writer and Professor Jonathan Githens-Mazer from the University of Exeter who specialises in counter-terrorism and extremism. 

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Only Nigel Farage can save us now

When the Prime Minister cannot be bothered to listen to the Budget it sends out a pretty big signal to the country that there’s nothing much in it. Rishi Sunak spent long chunks of Jeremy Hunt’s latest financial statement on Wednesday chatting away to Treasury Chief Secretary Laura Trott. It was a wholesome scene reminiscent of one of those joint social evenings that neighbouring boys’ and girls’ schools in pleasant Home Counties towns sometimes put on for their sixth-formers. Compared to listening to Hunt, it must have been a gas. Sunak’s semi-disengaged demeanour was emblematic of the Conservative benches in what was supposed to have been a key week in

Laurie Wastell

Labour’s ‘equalities’ dystopia

With Sir Keir Starmer creeping closer to No. 10 every day, attention is rightly being paid to the radicalism of Labour’s agenda. Many have pointed to the awful prospect of its Race Equality Act, which would entail vast social engineering by state bureaucrats in pursuit of racial ‘equity’. Labour backs a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ that arguably equates criticism of Islam with racism – amounting to something like a blasphemy law. Meanwhile, its chilling plans for a ‘trans-inclusive’ ban on conversion therapy could criminalise clinicians not taking an ‘affirmative’ approach to patients who present with gender dysphoria. In other words, Labour could make it illegal not to set vulnerable young patients on a path towards experimental drugs

Robin Ashenden

Lost friendships are a painful price of the Ukraine war

One thing you learn about war, if you are close enough for it to touch you, is that it splits the atom. Situations and relationships that have grown over time and seem to have deep roots – a life in fact – can be blown apart in a day. Now, over two years on from the start of Vladimir Putin’s ‘special military operation’ (which came at a time when I was living in Rostov-on-Don, an hour or two from the Ukrainian border), I’m still in touch with several Russians I knew back then. We find common ground, avoid certain topics and continue the conversation. But other friendships were killed stone dead,

John Foreman

Russia will not attack Nato

There is a lot of war fever about. In January, Grant Shapps, Britain’s tiggerish defence secretary, said the UK was in a ‘pre-war’ period. The West’s adversaries in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are mobilising, he said. Not wanting to be outdone, Shapps’s Labour shadow John Healey wrote in the Daily Telegraph: ‘If Putin wins, he will not stop at Ukraine.’ Timescales for when this conflict will come vary. Shapps said it could come within the next five years, whereas the estimates of European politicians range from three to eight years. Nato’s top military official warned that Europeans must be ready for a conflict with Russia within two decades. An

Friday

Steerpike Steerpike

Pro-Palestine protestor tries to derail ‘Social Fabric’ summit

A rich irony today at the ‘Restitch’ conference. A pro-Palestine protestor was forcibly removed from the stage as she attempted to derail Security Minister Tom Tugendhat’s speech with questions about Israel — at Restitch, ‘The Social Fabric Summit’. What better example of how ragged the community cloth of Britain has become, eh? The conference saw think tanks across the political spectrum unite, as Onward, Labour Together and Create Streets invited delegates to Coventry to enjoy a series of talks on social cohesion. As Tom Tugendhat walked to the podium, he was joined by an unexpected guest — in the form of a face-masked woman grasping a Palestinian flag. Labour and

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Why Germans don’t want to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine

Yet again the question of whether to send arms to Ukraine is plaguing Olaf Scholz’s chancellorship. The issue was once more thrown into sharp focus when Russian intelligence leaked a discussion by Bundeswehr officials on the probability of sending long-range Taurus missiles to Kyiv. A recording of the conversation was splashed across the world by Russian state media.  Scholz has spent the past week trying to get a grip on the debate over Taurus missiles and shut it down, even fielding questions from plucky students on a school visit as to why he had yet to relent: ‘I am the chancellor and that’s why’. But it seems the true reason

Eliot Wilson

Will Republican leaders apologise over ‘Stakeknife’?

‘Stakeknife’, a double agent who was an informant for the British Army while working within the innermost counsels of the Provisional IRA, probably cost more lives than he saved. That is the damning verdict of Operation Kenova, which has spent seven years – and £40 million – probing whether Stakeknife was effectively permitted to kill while the security forces watched on. Stakeknife’s identity has never been officially confirmed but it is accepted he was a Belfast man called Freddie Scappaticci, who died last year. Interned in 1971 along with figures like Gerry Adams and Alex Maskey, he was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) by 1974 and

Steerpike Steerpike

Meghan Markle’s PR push

The Queen of Privacy is doing it again. After a brief hiatus from the spotlight, the Duchess of Sussex has appointed a PR guru to help resurrect her UK image. Mr S isn’t all that surprised the Sussexes are setting their sights back on Britain — they were, after all, dubbed ‘Hollywood’s biggest losers’ at the end of last year. Meghan has employed an as yet unnamed professional public relations exec to help overcome her ‘popularity problem’ in the UK. The job role will also include time working on the Sussex’s not-for-profit Archewell Foundation. Eagle-eyed readers might remember this is the company that produced Meghan’s Archetypes podcast series which ran for a

Nigel Jones

Meet Portugal’s new hard-right kingmakers

Portugal goes to the polls this weekend for parliamentary elections and it looks likely to become the latest European country in which a populist hard right party shakes up politics. Chega – which means ‘enough’ – was only founded in 2019, yet it is forecast to more than double the 12 seats it won at the 2022 election. This would make the party, led by Andre Ventura, a charismatic former football pundit, potential kingmakers in a new conservative coalition government. Ventura is no stranger to controversy, not least over comments he made about Romani people (he has said the Portuguese government needs to ‘resolve the issue’). Yet the party’s right-wing

Bartek Staniszewski

Britain’s adoration of the NHS is nothing to celebrate

‘The NHS is, rightly, the biggest reason most of us are proud to be British,’ Jeremy Hunt said in his Budget this week. The Chancellor isn’t wrong: according to polling from last year, the health service is the top reason to be proud to be British among 54 per cent of British citizens; far more than our history (32 per cent), culture (26 per cent) or let alone democracy (25 per cent). But this is not something to be celebrated; instead, it is illustrative of the malaise that today affects British national identity. It is a sad reflection on how feeble British national identity has become Traditionally, there are two

Mark Nayler

Spanish soldiers have exposed the flaw in gender self-ID

Dozens of male Spanish soldiers have legally changed their gender, allegedly to claim benefits intended for women. In doing so, the soldiers have exposed the vacuity of Spain’s so-called ‘trans law’, passed last year by its Socialist-led government. Under Spain’s self-ID law, approved in February 2023 despite objections from the conservative opposition, feminist groups and elements of Spain’s ruling leftist coalition, anyone over the age of 16 can change their legal gender without psychiatric or medical evaluation. According to the Daily Telegraph, which reported the story, soldiers in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta are already taking advantage of its loopholes: 41 men have switched their legal gender to female, and four of have also changed their names. The majority of these

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Will the NHS step count app get people back to work?

Is there really any point to the NHS app monitoring people’s step count? This is the latest announcement from Health Secretary Victoria Atkins, who wants to use the app as the ‘front door to prevention’ and helping people back into work. It is easily caricatured as a modern-day Norman Tebbit ‘on yer bike’ measure, suggesting to the long-term sick that if only they walk 10,000 steps a day, they’ll get back into a job. Except perhaps they will. We have a number of problems with our current approach to illness. One of them is that we tend to view everything through a biomedical model when other interventions can be as,

James Heale James Heale

Why is Theresa May standing down?

13 min listen

Theresa May has announced that she will not seek re-election this year. The former prime minister said that launching her global commission on modern slavery and human trafficking meant she would not be able to spend as much time as she would like on constituency matters. James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman about the news.

Katy Balls Katy Balls

What May’s departure reveals about the Tory party

The tributes are pouring in for Theresa May after the former prime minister announced that she will be stepping down at the next election. In a statement in the Maidenhead Advertiser, her local paper, May reiterated her support for Rishi Sunak and said she was leaving to spend more time on ‘causes close to my heart’ such as the fight against modern slavery. Sunak has in turn praised her as a ‘relentless campaigner’. May’s former chief of staff Gavin Barwell has said that future prime ministers should follow her example by remaining in parliament for a time as a backbencher following a period in No. 10. May’s decision to step

Daniel Thorpe

Will Erdogan ever get to grips with Turkey’s sky-high inflation?

Inflation and the cost-of-living crisis dominates the agenda in Turkey, ahead of local elections at the end of March. Year-on-year inflation reached 67 per cent in February, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute, breaking a 15-month record and puncturing hopes that high interest rates would put a lid on rapidly increasing prices. For years, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a bitter opponent of high interest rates. ‘Interest rates are the reasons, inflation is the result,’ he roared regularly at political rallies, defying traditional economists. He cites Islamic traditions whereby high interest rates amount to usury, to justify his unorthodox monetary policies. Erdogan was a bitter opponent of high interest rates

Kasra Aarabi and Jason M. Brodsky

Iran is making a mockery of the US

Three sailors have been killed and four seriously wounded after the Houthis attacked the True Confidence merchant ship in the Gulf of Aden this week. According to US forces in the region, the 183-metre long ship was hit by a missile launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen. It’s clear already that the fingerprints of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – the Iranian regime’s paramilitary force – are all over this attack. For starters, the Islamic Republic of Iran had a clear motive. Until a few days ago, the True Confidence was owned by Oaktree Capital Management, a US based asset-management firm – and also the previous owner of the Suez Rajan tanker, which was seized by the US last year after being caught carrying Iranian oil. This latest