Politics

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

Sunday

Max Jeffery Max Jeffery

A revolution in the arms bazaar

The global military-industrial complex and its outriders were rammed into a giant indoor pigsty. Dealers and manufacturers and military men and politicians and officials from murky agencies and guys in cowboy hats and sunglasses who only really came to have their photos taken with guns – all of them in a crush to use a printer. It was day one of the arms fair, and they had forgotten to print their credentials at home. ‘Someone’s going to faint!’ cried a failing voice. ‘You can’t do this to humans!’ yelped another. ‘Bro,’ said an American on the phone to someone, ‘this is a complete fuckshow.’ As the bundle swirled and groaned,

Bartek Staniszewski

Autists are the answer to Britain’s worklessness crisis

The UK’s worklessness problem is a well-documented crisis. Over six million people in the UK – almost a sixth of the working-age population – are on out-of-work benefits, a number that has nearly doubled in the last seven years. The government’s attempt to begin to address this with the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill ended in fiasco. Diagnoses for the spectacular rise in worklessness vary from the long-term effects of the pandemic through to a lack of well-paid jobs to the perverse incentives within the welfare system. But one notable culprit seems to have escaped the attention of policy wonks: autism. People with autism could therefore make up

Charlie Walsham

Graham Linehan is right: there needs to be a reckoning at the BBC

Ever since Graham Linehan’s bail restrictions were relaxed and the Father Ted creator was allowed back on X, he’s been firing off a blizzard of posts with the urgency of a man who senses that, for the first time in years, he is finally being taken seriously.  One post particularly caught my eye. It stated: ‘BBC Director General Tim Davie should resign for misleading the UK public on this issue.’ Linehan has occasionally exhibited a reckless tendency to stray into infuriated hyperbole on social media, a trait that has drawn criticism in the past and legal jeopardy in the present. But the suggestion made in this post is worthy of serious

Will Prescott

What Keir Starmer can learn from Ramsay MacDonald

Since Labour’s triumphant return to power barely a year ago, the party in government has floundered amid a struggling economy, a lack of political vision, and an inability to pass difficult reforms. Unfortunately for Keir Starmer, the situation could yet deteriorate much further. Just look at the implosion of the Labour government in 1931. Like the Starmer government almost a century later, Labour won the 1929 election on a relatively weak share of the vote. Former prime minister Ramsay MacDonald won 287 seats and just 37.1 per cent of the vote. Last July, Keir Starmer won 33.7 per cent of the vote. Much like 2024, the 1929 election also occurred

Saturday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

In praise of Peter Kyle

Call him a tech bro’, a hustler or even – hiss! – a Starmerite. But my word, I’m keen on my MP – and recently promoted business secretary – Peter Kyle, the Honourable Member for Hove and Portslade. That doesn’t mean I voted for him last time; I wasn’t going to assist Robbie the Robot into power. I voted Reform, being acquainted with the candidate Martin Hess and finding him both clever and good company. I did vote for Kyle the first time, and became acquainted slightly with him, too; as they say of the 1960s, if you can remember the Peter Kyle Election Victory Night Party of 2015, you

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Inside Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ rally

The ‘nonce party.’ That’s how Zarah Sultana described the Labour party at a rally in Brixton last night where the independent MP for Coventry South addressed supporters of her new movement, Your Party. She claimed to have posted numerous images of Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein on her X account, but her warnings went unheeded by Labour strategists. The lively rally opened with a videotaped greeting from Jeremy Corbyn, co-leader alongside Sultana, who affirmed his support for ‘Net Zero by 2030’, and a handful of benefit increases. After this formality, his name was barely mentioned. Sultana topped the bill ahead of seven activists who urged the crowd to oppose ‘the

Sam Meadows

Javier Milei is struggling

Is patience with Javier Milei finally wearing thin? The bombastic leader of Argentina was sent a clear message of discontent by the electorate last week when he lost the province of Buenos Aires in a landslide local election. Although the contest has little consequence for the national picture, it will be causing consternation in Milei’s camp. The province, which does not include the capital city’s metropolitan area, is home to roughly 40 per cent of Argentine voters. Such a heavy loss just over a month before national midterms is a serious cause for concern. Milei is used to winning. He swept into power in 2023 with a crushing defeat of

Robert Taylor

Why is Rachel Reeves encouraging high earners to retire early?

If I were Rachel Reeves, my absolute priority would be to incentivise high earners to work hard for as long as possible. After all, the 10 per cent of taxpayers with the largest incomes contribute over 60 per cent of all income tax receipts. So, keeping them onside and busy would, you’d have thought, be a no-brainer. With Labour’s changes, high earners, far from concentrating on work, are instead busy calculating how they can reduce their net worth But Reeves and co. clearly think differently, and have mandated that defined-contribution pensions, typical throughout the private sector, though not the public sector, will, from April 2027, be subject to inheritance tax. By

Damien Phillips

Would Israel carry out assassinations in Britain?

In October 1972, Wael Zwaiter, the representative for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Rome, returned to his apartment building on Piazza Annibaliano. After entering the lobby and pressing the button for the lift, he was ambushed by two Mossad operatives lying in wait who shot him 11 times and left him to die in a pool of blood.  Within hours, the four-man hit squad and their large support team had left Italy to return to Israel. The first retribution killing in response to the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics in September 1972 had been successful. Operation ‘Wrath of God’ was underway.  Over the next year, members of Black September (a breakaway militant faction of the Palestinian group Fatah) and the

Matthew Wilcox

Bored of Banksy

Another Banksy appeared this week, this time on the flank of the Grade I-listed Royal Courts of Justice in London. Naturally, the world’s news agencies leapt to attention. Not because of the image – a judge walloping a protester is the sort of wit you’d find on a novelty birthday card – but because the press can’t resist its favourite pantomime revolutionary. Within hours, it was boarded up and placed under guard. It was later scrubbed off the wall – a rare moment of good sense from the authorities. If only the same fate could befall the rest of Banksy’s wretched oeuvre. If only the same fate could befall the rest

Claire Jackson

When did libraries become so noisy?

Beside me, children sing the ‘Hokey Cokey’. I subconsciously put my left foot in – and out – under the desk, where I face an empty page. Willing concentration to return, I turn to a tried and tested method: staring out of the window. The small garden is a stage for white butterflies that flutter in the vista, ringing in the cyclical changes viewed from this spot. Snowdrops, daffodils, dandelions, grasslands, mud. The library was the last refuge of those in need of peace and quiet; now, the apple has been plucked from the tree ‘Woah, the hokey cokey cokey!’ The sharply increased volume makes me physically jump. To my

Tim Shipman

What does Trump want from his state visit?

16 min listen

Donald Trump touches down in Britain next week for his state visit and political editor Tim Shipman has the inside scoop on how No. 10 is preparing. Keir Starmer’s aides are braced for turbulence; ‘the one thing about Trump which is entirely predictable is his unpredictability,’ one ventures. Government figures fear he may go off message on broadcast – he is scheduled to be interviewed by GB News. A second state visit, especially during a second term, is unprecedented. But, as Tim says, ‘Britishness is fashionable in Washington’ and no-one likes ‘royal treatment’ more than Trump. So, can Starmer take advantage of the President’s ‘love of the deal’? Tim joins

Friday

Madeline Grant

Theresa May’s attack on the Assisted Suicide Bill was phenomenal

‘This was Parliament at its best’, so went the inane and factually incorrect mantra of Kim Leadbeater as her Assisted Dying Bill made its way through the House of Commons. It did so on the back of intense duplicity about its safeguards by its sponsors and by the simple fact that the vast majority of MPs are intellectually unimpressive and suckers for anecdote over evidence. The House of Lords was always going to be trickier ground for this Bill The House of Lords was always going to be trickier ground. Their Lordships have their failings but they are less likely to be moved by the highly manipulative campaigns from pressure

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

What’s driving political violence in America?

Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from south-west Utah, has been detained over the shooting of Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of Donald Trump. Author and anthropologist Max Horder joins Freddy Gray to discuss the cocktail of online hate and tribal divisions that’s fuelling America’s new era of political violence.

Liz Walsh

Micheal Martin is on the wrong side of the flag debate

Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin is keeping a close eye on the ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ campaign, and he does not like what he sees. According to Martin, society must say no. ‘Watching what is happening in the UK, I don’t like it. We, so far, have resisted a lot of what has transpired in other societies,’ he said, with a detectable whiff of sanctimony. Well good for us, but what Martin really means is that when it comes to English people raising English flags on English soil, it’s a case of Down with That Sort of Thing – before it catches on here. Even that most basic expression of expression of nationhood, flying

James Heale James Heale

Will Mandelson bring down McSweeney?

20 min listen

The fallout from Lord Mandelson’s sacking continues. All eyes are now on Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney – could he take the fall for Mandelson’s appointment? As Whitehall editor of the Sunday Times Gabriel Pogrund tells James Heale and Lucy Dunn, Mandelson and McSweeney’s relationship stretches back to New Labour. But, Pogrund warns, as McSweeney lay the foundations for Labour’s victory in 2024, losing him would mark a ‘revolution in the Starmer project’. Plus: after a slew of bad news for the government, there was one Labour victory this week – at the annual Westminster dog of the year competition. Megan McElroy interviews some of the MPs who

Steerpike Steerpike

Man arrested over murder of Charlie Kirk

To the US, where the FBI has been searching for Charlie Kirk’s shooter, after the 31-year-old was tragically killed while speaking at an Utah Valley University event. The Trump ally was a firm advocate of free speech and debate, and his death has shocked supporters across the world. The FBI has given a statement this afternoon after a man was arrested in connection with the incident, with Utah governor Spencer Cox confirming: ‘We got him.’ 22-year-old Tyler Robinson has named as the suspect, after a family member came forward with information that Robinson had implied he had committed the crime. The gunman was initially reported as on the loose –

Rory Hanrahan

Charlie Kirk could have been president

As with so many political assassinations across the Atlantic – the Kennedys, Martin Luther King –Charlie Kirk’s killer is likely to be some deranged individual, a lone wolf driven by fevered delusions, perhaps, or a sick, mentally ill person. His murder, though, is anything but mundane. Kirk was not just another talking head; he was a phenomenon, a young firebrand, a brilliant, charismatic, honourable man who believed in discourse over violence, who repeatedly warned us that, when we stop talking with those we disagree with, civil wars start. That he was also a young husband and father, whose children will never get to know their dad, is heartbreaking. Kirk helped

Stephen Pollard

What’s the real reason Spain and Ireland have a problem with Israel?

What do Ireland and Spain have in common? This week, the answer is Jews. On Monday, Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, came out with a truly bonkers – bonkers shocking, that is, rather than bonkers amusing – statement while announcing sanctions against Israel. Sánchez was angry that he couldn’t nuke the Jews (sorry, Israel): “Spain, as you know, doesn’t have nuclear bombs, aircraft carriers, or large oil reserves. We alone can’t stop the Israeli offensive. But that doesn’t mean we won’t stop trying. Because there are causes worth fighting for, even if winning them isn’t in our sole power.” Such a shame. If only Spain had nuclear weapons, then it could have