Politics

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

Saturday

18 Jan 2025

Lockerbie and the forgiveness fallacy

It’s clear who was to blame for the Lockerbie terrorist bombing: Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi paid over a billion dollars to relatives of the 270 victims of the attack after accepting responsibility. But viewers of Sky Atlantic’s Lockerbie: A Search For Truth, might feel that the USA and UK were somehow involved. Here’s a clue as to why that might be the case: it’s co-directed by Jim Loach, son of Ken, who seems not so much a chip off the old block as a chip off the old Trot block. Swire’s story resembles what a Sinn Féin critic like me calls the forgiveness fallacy Lockerbie’s hero is Jim Swire, who lost his

Angela Epstein

Why are so many BBC broadcasters going native?

Of the many characters created by the peerless Victoria Wood, one creation in particular lingers in the mind: namely the immaculately polished, but unashamedly snobbish television continuity announcer, who, with an assassin’s smile, treated her audience with utter contempt. ‘We’d like to apologise to viewers in the North. It must be awful for them,’ was one of her more cutting remarks. The hon hon hon bonhomie of French surnames – step forward President Macrrrrrron – is hard to take seriously Coming from Manchester, Wood was clearly making mischief with counterintuitive comedy. She was taking aim at how crisp, received pronunciation can make anything sound plausible. Had she not died in 2016, at

Jim Lawley

Spain’s expat tax won’t last long

‘There are only two families in the world, as a grandmother of mine used to say: the haves and the have-nots.’ Sancho Panza’s line in Cervantes’ famous novel was echoed by socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday when he worried that Spanish society was rapidly dividing into two classes: ‘Those who inherit properties from their parents and those who have to spend their lives working to pay the rent.’ Spain certainly has a severe housing crisis. Although the fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman is far below the 2.1 needed to maintain population, mass immigration means that every year the country needs to find homes for over half

Alexander Larman

What made David Lynch cool

When one of your favourite filmmakers dies, it is hard not to feel a deeply personal sense of loss; the punch in the viscera with the knowledge that someone who has created some of the most iconic pieces of cinema from the past half-century will no longer be bringing his inimitable and unforgettable personal voice into film. And so it has been with the dreadful news that the director David Lynch died on Thursday at the age of 78: not a young age, but when the likes of Ridley Scott and Clint Eastwood are still making major work in their eighties and nineties, it is an enormous shame that he

Friday

17 Jan 2025

Matthew Foldi

Will TikTok have a second life?

TikTok is hoping that 2025 can be its year – but what comes next for the social media company is truly anyone’s guess. Will someone buy it? Will it divest from its Chinese ownership? Will it exist in America next week (the app is fully banned in China as is)? Stay tuned. The social-media app is seeking yet another revival at the 11th hour. Despite a bipartisan bill signed by President Joe Biden that restricts the ability for foreign adversaries to run social-media companies in the United States, TikTok is activating its army of supporters once more (the app is presumably hoping that its child soldiers will not threaten to kill themselves or

Yossi Melman

Why Netanyahu won’t let the Gaza hostage deal fall through

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to claim his first major foreign policy achievement just days before his inauguration on Monday. If no last-minute obstacles arise, a long-anticipated hostage deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza could take effect as soon as this Sunday. But while Trump will emerge victorious from this situation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, will find himself humiliated and defeated. For nearly a year, fearing the collapse of his right-wing coalition, Netanyahu has worked hard to prevent the deal from concluding, using all sorts of excuses and hoping that Hamas would eventually derail it and be blamed for it. This has not happened.

Iain Macwhirter

Will the SNP come to its senses on North Sea oil?

Drill, baby drill. The mood on Net Zero is changing in the Scottish parliament where a majority of MSPs have signed a petition calling for a reversal on the ban on new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. This sea change in attitudes to the black stuff, if you’ll excuse the pun, could portend a dramatic reversal of the Scottish government’s opposition to fossil fuels in SNP leader John Swinney’s long-delayed energy strategy. The “presumption against offshore drilling” has been the centrepiece of SNP energy policy since Cop26 in 2021, when Nicola Sturgeon posed for selfies with Greta Thunberg. Sturgeon is gone, of course – and her clean

Kate Andrews

Will the IMF regret its backing for Labour’s Budget?

International investors may be jittery about the UK’s future, but the International Monetary Fund appears to be more optimistic. The IMF has published its World Economic Outlook report for January, which forecasts the UK will have the third-fastest growth in the G7 this year. It revises upwards its projection for 2025, by 0.1 per cent, to 1.6 per cent. The UK falling in after the United States and Canada does not make good on Labour’s promise to be the fastest growing advanced economy. But after a tumultuous week of gilt fluctuations, bad growth figures and an even worse retail sales update, it’s a good way to be ending the week.

James Heale

Trudeau’s assassin could be Canada’s next leader

Less than 24 hours after Mark Carney’s launch, Chrystia Freeland announced her bid to be the next Liberal party leader of Canada. The former finance minister – whose resignation last month triggered Justin Trudeau’s downfall – put out a pithy six word statement this morning. ‘I’m running to fight for Canada’, it said, simply. She intends to officially launch her campaign on Sunday, having already gained public endorsements from Mark Holland and Diane Lebouthillier. The leadership field has narrowed considerably this week as possible contenders Christy Clark, Dominic LeBlanc, Francois Phillipe Champagne and Mélanie Joly all ruled themselves out. It leaves Freeland and Carney as the only two serious candidates

Ian Acheson

Empty pledges won’t solve the knife crime epidemic

On 23 September last year at 6.30 p.m. in the evening in a street in Woolwich, London, Daejaun Campbell cried out, ‘I’m 15, don’t let me die’ as he bled out on a pavement after being stabbed. You probably won’t remember Deajaun but he was a one of nine children murdered by knives in London last year. He was a young black man in a city where victims and perpetrators often share the same ethnicity. An investigation by the Times has revealed that over half the 576 black people murdered by knives between 2013 and 2023 were aged between 16 and 24. London bucks a national trend that reports knife

Patrick O’Flynn

Is Badenoch bouncing back?

Conventional wisdom says the Tory leadership of Kemi Badenoch is close to crisis. This is perhaps because the prevailing political mood is much more heavily influenced by hindsight than by foresight. The manufacture of almost every opinion that gains the status of conventional wisdom depends on a time lag to allow its repetition and dispersal among mid-wit cadres. The polls seem to at least back up the view that Badenoch is in trouble; most aggregation sites put Reform above the Conservatives in terms of average ratings. Yet patterns of opinion recorded in polls are also based on a time lag, capturing the impact of events that first came to public

Annabel Denham

Why is WFH still as common as it is?

Have you seen Severance? If not, I urge you to cancel all evening plans and commit to binge-watching it for the next week. I’m not a PR for Apple TV+, or not a paid one at least, merely an optimist who believes the creators of this multi-award-winning show may have gifted mankind one of the best series of all time. It’s still early days, we’re only ten episodes in, but Severance could be proof that high-concept, done well, is unbeatable viewing. Apple certainly has a great deal riding on it: the new season’s budget was reportedly $200 million. And though the data are hard to come by, Apple TV+ is apparently watched less in one month than Netflix is

Damian Thompson

Did Muslim leaders help conceal the grooming gangs scandal? A fierce exchange of views

28 min listen

Welcome to one of the most heated exchanges of views in the history of the Holy Smoke podcast. In this episode, Damian Thompson talks to the distinguished Islamic scholar Dr Musharraf Hussain about the controversy surrounding the Muslim background of some of the accused in the crimes of Britain’s ‘grooming gangs’. Damian draws an analogy between the Catholic hierarchy’s cover-up of sex abuse by priests, and what he claims was the role of certain local Muslim community leaders in restricting debate about, and investigation of, abuse committed by men from Pakistani families. To say that there was no common ground between Dr Thompson and Dr Hussain would be putting it mildly, alas…

Oscar Edmondson

Labour caves on grooming gangs

14 min listen

There will be more inquiries into grooming gangs. After sustained pressure, the Home Secretary announced yesterday a series of local, government-backed inquiries, rather than a full public inquiry. Critics argue that this either doesn’t go far enough, or that Labour have been forced to go back on their word by certain figures on the right and are now making policy on the hoof. Will these new inquiries deliver an adequate resolution? Also on the podcast, Kemi Badenoch wasn’t the only one giving a big speech yesterday, Ed Davey had an event of his own. He is pushing for a new customs union deal with the EU. Have they not learnt

Steerpike

Humza Yousaf takes aim at media in Grazia photoshoot interview

Hapless Humza Yousaf has a lot more time on his hands after he was forced to quit as Scotland’s First Minister last year. Now it transpires that the former FM has enjoyed a sit down – and photoshoot – with Grazia Pakistan’s Beauty Editor to recount his brief stint in the top job. After his fall from grace in April last year, Mr S isn’t surprised the former Scottish leader is itching for a return to the limelight. Dotted among multiple pictures of Yousaf modelling various stately poses is the ex-FM’s interview. The SNP MSP discusses everything from his political awakening, why he was drawn to the pro-indy movement and

Andrew Tettenborn

Why is the High Court ruling on political consultations?

No one came out very well from the government’s High Court defeat yesterday morning over planned changes to long-term sickness benefit. A botched, hasty, penny-pinching wheeze, promoted by the Tories but ultimately backed by Labour, came unstuck. But there is a rather more profound difficulty with this episode. Even after reading the news, most people will still be very much in the dark about what was decided, why it matters, or what happens now. Judgments that leave us with this degree of uncertainty are perhaps an indication that something is straying into the legal field that shouldn’t be there. Judicial intervention in cases like this not only duplicates the political

Matthew Lynn

Rachel Reeves tries deregulation, but she’s bad at that too

If it was a Netflix mystery series, it would be the moment for the ‘big reveal’. After months of boasting about how she would make the UK the most competitive, dynamic, and indeed fastest growing economy in the G7 we finally have some idea of what Rachel Reeves is going to do to deregulate the UK. There is just one problem. She has opted for the worst possible way of loosening the rules – and Reeves will end up sparking an asset bubble. After summoning regulators to Downing Street yesterday to tell her how to boost growth, some details have started to emerge of what Reeves is planning. According to

Steerpike

Alastair Campbell finally admits what Tony Blair got wrong

No one expected this day to come – but here we are. Alastair Campbell, former Labour spinner and full-time Tony Blair fanboy, has – possibly for the first time ever – admitted his ex-boss and forever idol did actually get something wrong. Talk about a curveball! Speaking on the latest episode of his podcast with Rory Stewart, The Rest is Politics, Campbell revealed the one thing on which he did not see eye to eye to with Blair. Responding to a listener question on the ex-Labour PM’s remarks that ‘it’s hard to see what the objective reasons’ are for Britain now ‘spending vastly more on mental health’ than in the

Michael Gove

Michael Gove, Mary Wakefield, Mitchell Reiss, Max Jeffery and Nicholas Farrell

32 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Michael Gove offers up some advice to Keir Starmer (1:33); Mary Wakefield examines the rise of the ‘divorce party’ (7:28); Mitchell Reiss looks at the promise and peril of AI as he reviews Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope and the Human Spirit, a collaboration between the former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt, the former chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft Craig Mundie, and the late US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (13:52); Max Jeffery listens to The Armie HammerTime Podcast as the actor attempts to reverse his spectacular downfall (20:45); and, Nicholas Farrell reveals the time he got drunk with the ghost of Mussolini (25:24). Produced and presented by

Samuel Hughes

Could this infrastructure bill get Britain growing again?

Every so often, something unexpected happens in the Westminster village which disturbs the usual run of malicious gossip and misleading polling. This happened yesterday, when the whole village began buzzing about, of all things, infrastructure planning. The cause of this was a draft ‘National Priority Infrastructure Bill’, which you can read here, an oven-ready piece of legislation aimed at drastically liberalising infrastructure planning, released by Dr Lawrence Newport of the Looking for Growth campaign. Newport has form on attracting media attention. A young legal scholar, he sprang to national prominence in 2023 with his campaign to ban the Bully XL, an extremely violent dog that had been intentionally bred to pass through a

Hold on to your hats...

Saturday

Friday