Politics

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

Friday

15 Aug 2025

Britain has a wind problem

Climate change is giving Britain more violent weather, with ever-increasing storms tearing down our trees and whipping up waves which erode our coastlines. No one ever seems to get into trouble for saying the above – as many did yet again during Storm Floris last week – in spite of it being the inverse of the truth. Actually, Britain has been experiencing a downwards trend in average and extreme wind speeds for the past four decades. There is little sign it has entered Ed Miliband’s head that he is trying to tap into a declining resource One place where they won’t be making that mistake, though, is the boardroom at German energy

Matthew Lynn

Mounjaro won’t be the last drug company to bow to Trump

If you need to lose a few pounds after enjoying the French or Italian food a little too much on your summer holiday, there might soon be a problem. The cost of one of the new weight loss drugs that has become so popular in recent months is about to get a lot more expensive. The American drugs giant Eli Lilly doubling the price of Mounjaro in the UK. The price of one diet pill does not make a great deal of difference. The trouble is, the decision was prompted by President Trump’s determination to make the cost of medicines a lot fairer between the United States and the rest

Gawain Towler

Farage should be allowed to appoint peers to the Lords

In Westminster, tradition often trumps innovation, and Nigel Farage’s latest demand has stirred the pot with characteristic vigour. The Reform UK leader has called on the Prime Minister to grant his party the right to nominate peers to the House of Lords, framing it as a correction to a glaring ‘democratic disparity.’ Far from a personal vanity project, this is a plea for proportionality in our unelected upper chamber, where Reform, with its four MPs, control of ten councils, and a commanding lead in national polls, remains conspicuously absent. As reported in the Times, Farage points to the Greens, who boast four MPs yet two peers, and the DUP with

Alexander Kolyandr

Can Putin extract an economic victory from Trump?

The Alaska summit taking place today isn’t just about war – economics looms equally large. Vladimir Putin, with his forces pressing forward in Ukraine, faces neither military urgency nor economic desperation to halt the fighting. For him, this has never been a territorial grab but an existential struggle against Western hegemony. His challenge is to decouple the war from bilateral cooperation with America: the former proceeds too favourably to abandon, while the latter promises diplomatic triumph and relief from mounting economic pressures. Putin’s delegation tells the story. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy for international investment, signal that sanctions and economic cooperation will be discussed. Putin

Steerpike

Defence Secretary blasts Farage as ‘Putin apologist’

Ding ding ding! John Healey was pulling no punches this morning as he took aim at Reform UK on the airwaves. Nigel Farage’s party has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer for presiding over a ‘democratic disparity’ because despite having four MPs and managing ten councils, the party has no representation in the House of Lords. But when quizzed on the accusation today on LBC, the Defence Secretary was having none of it. ‘I’m not sure that parliament’s going to benefit from more Putin apologists like Nigel Farage, to be honest.’ Shots fired! When pushed on whether this description may be a little strong, Healey refused to back down. He added:

Ike Ijeh

Make council houses beautiful again

When Tony Blair and his team were deciding which venue should host his first speech as Prime Minister after his landslide 1997 election victory, they did not choose Downing Street or Whitehall or Parliament. They instead chose a much more unlikely setting, the notorious Aylesbury council estate in south-east London. Why? Because New Labour presentational dark arts aside, it brutally epitomised the deprivation, devastation and despair of those Blair went on to refer to in his speech as ‘the forgotten people’, a dispossessed social diaspora with whom Britain’s failed council estates had become hopelessly synonymous. It is these people we desperately need to invigorate. This is why Policy Exchange are

Michael Simmons

GDP growth proves the Bank of England’s mistakes

Yesterday’s stronger-than-expected GDP growth raises questions for the Bank of England. Second quarter growth came in at 0.3 per cent (0.2 per cent per Brit) propped up by a strong 0.7 per cent in June alone. The rest of the national accounts however, paint a worrying picture when it comes to inflation. The GDP deflator – which is a measure of the overall level of prices in the whole economy – came in at 4.1 per cent year-on-year growth. That’s down slightly from the last reading but still more than double the Bank’s 2 per cent target. Nominal domestic demand was growing too, at more than 5 per cent –

Edward Howell

Kim Jong-un will be watching the Trump-Putin summit closely

When Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet in Alaska today, it will mark their first encounter since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Although the talks are likely to be dominated by questions of a ceasefire, possible division of territory, and how the three-year war will conclude, North Korea will likely be more than a small elephant in the room. Amidst amplifying ties between Moscow and Pyongyang, neither Putin nor Kim Jong-un looks likely to abandon the other in the short term, irrespective of whether any piece of paper – however preliminary – emerges from the Last Frontier. On Tuesday, Russian and North Korean state media announced that

Iain MacGregor

VJ Day taught us the fragility of peace

Victory over Japan Day – VJ Day – falls today, 15 August being the day in 1945 that Emperor Hirohito spoke to his people for the very first time to inform them of the country’s submission to the allies’ Potsdam declaration of unconditional surrender. Eighty years on, it will be an occasion shrouded in both relief and reflection. It’s a day that marks not just the end of the Pacific theatre’s tumult but also a profound turning point that reshaped the entire landscape of international affairs, collective memory, and national identities. The echoes of those tumultuous years still reverberate through the corridors of history, shaping our understanding of what peace

Max Jeffery

Bournemouth police are losing control

Who is Ritchie Wellman? He is a father, a boyfriend, an assistant operations manager at a local business and a part-time paedophile hunter. Right now, however, at 7 p.m. in a dusty car park down the road from Bournemouth pier, Ritchie is the commander of his own private policing unit, briefing his officers before their first patrol. He tells them not to assault anybody, not to be provoked, not to drink or smoke on the job, and to reassure the public if they are concerned by this new authority on their streets: ‘This is not a takeover.’ Ritchie is a normal guy, and he and his officers and others in

Patrick Kidd

Patrick Kidd, Madeline Grant, Simon Heffer, Lloyd Evans & Toby Young

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Patrick Kidd asks why is sport so obsessed with Goats; Madeline Grant wonders why the government doesn’t show J.D. Vance the real Britain; Simon Heffer reviews Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea; Lloyd Evans provides a round-up of Edinburgh Fringe; and, Toby Young writes in praise of Wormwood Scrubs – the common, not the prison. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

14 Aug 2025

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The hypocrisy of Tulip Siddiq

The corruption trial of Tulip Siddiq formally commenced in Bangladesh on Wednesday. Among other allegations linked to £3.9 billion worth of embezzlement, the Bangladeshi-origin Labour MP has been accused by the Anti-Corruption Commission of securing luxury property for her family in Dhaka, using her relationship with the country’s former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted and fled the country last August following mass protests against her rule. Prior to her election as the Labour MP for Hampstead in 2015, Siddiq, the granddaughter of Bangladesh’s founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, had been a spokesperson of her aunt Hasina’s Awami League in the UK even joining the former Bangladeshi prime minister

James Heale

Does European solidarity over Ukraine matter?

14 min listen

Ukraine’s President Zelensky has spent today with Keir Starmer at Number 10. This is in anticipation of tomorrow’s Alaska summit between Presidents Trump and Putin – where European leaders will be notably absent. Zelensky’s visit to the UK is designed to project an image of solidarity with Starmer, and European leaders in general – but does it really matter? And is Putin really closer to accepting a ceasefire? Tim Shipman and James Heale join Lucy Dunn to discuss Plus – Tim talks about his article in the magazine this week, for which he spoke to George Finch, the 19 year old Reform councillor who is leader of Warwickshire County Council.

Steerpike

The National’s latest journalistic mishap

Well, well, well. Back to Scotland’s self-identifying ‘newspaper’, which has planted itself at the centre of a row over the delisting of a gender critical book from a national library exhibition. Women’s rights campaigners flagged concerns after The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht – a selection of gender critical essays – was removed from the National Library of Scotland’s Dear Library exhibition, after having been previously selected. The Times ran the initial story, titled ‘censorship row as library bans gender-critical book’. The National then took it upon themselves to claim this wasn’t true – insisting the National Library had ‘debunked’ accusations of censorship. But Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper doesn’t appear to

Steerpike

Portcullis House costs through the roof

‘Smashing Westminster’s glass ceiling’ is generally hailed as a good thing – except when it is the taxpayer left holding the bill. In the heady days of the new millennium, Portcullis House (PCH) was opened at a cost of £235million. As the newest part of the parliamentary estate, it was expected to last for 200 years when it opened in 2001: a shiny new modern temple of democratic delight. Yet, barely two decades on, the place increasingly seems to be falling apart. The building’s distinctive glazed roof has recently had a number of issues, including broken panes, falling bolts and a number of high-profile leaks. Just like the government, eh?

Ross Clark

The hot weather has become workshy Britain’s latest excuse

Who are all these people who keep being photographed on Bournemouth beach and elsewhere, frolicking in the midday sun? None of them, obviously, work for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) or the TUC. None of them can possibly be members of the Unite union, nor Unison, nor the GMB. It is little wonder that UK productivity is on the floor – and falling in the public sector How can I be so sure? Because if they were, they would be surely sheltering indoors, in the shade, with the fan on and their feet immersed in a bucket of cold water. All these organisations have been lobbying the government for

Steerpike

NHS Fife admits it broke the law over single-sex changing room

Well, well, well. Scottish health board NHS Fife has admitted to the UK’s equalities watchdog that it was in breach of the law when it allowed a trans doctor to use a single-sex changing room without first doing an equality impact assessment. Now NHS Fife has been ordered by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ‘carry one out immediately’. Yet given the watchdog first contacted the health board in, um, February to remind bosses of their obligations to ‘assess and review’ new policies around single-sex spaces – which NHS Fife failed to do – Mr S hasn’t much faith about the health board getting its act together… The revelation

Steerpike

Lammy refers himself to watchdog over Vance fishing trip

Dear oh dear. Foreign Secretary David Lammy met with US Vice President JD Vance at the weekend to discuss the wars in Gaza and Ukraine over a spot of fishing. Lammy’s attempts at chumminess haven’t gone all that well however. Vance told Fox News that Washington is ‘done funding’ Kyiv, the Foreign Secretary failed to catch a single fish at his retreat in Kent and now Lammy has had to refer himself to the environment watchdog after he was found not to have a valid rod licence. Talk about a reverse Midas touch, eh? Anglers in England and Wales aged 13 or over are required to have a rod licence

Michael Evans

What will happen in Alaska?

The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska could be the flop of the century or turn out to be the first step towards negotiating a ceasefire in Ukraine and eventually an end to the war. The White House has been trying to downgrade expectations of any breakthrough and has described the meeting on Friday as an opportunity for President Trump to listen to President Putin’s pitch and assess whether the Russian leader actually wants peace or not. Trump says he will be able to do this within two minutes. While it might be sensible to lower expectations, always a favourite ploy of political leaders, the Anchorage summit might just be different. First

Jenny Lindsay

Kate Forbes’s treatment at the Edinburgh Fringe was a farce

Summerhall is one of Edinburgh’s largest Fringe venues, also running year-round exhibitions and artistic performances. This past week, it has also played host to the city’s latest site-specific beclowning show, with artists so reportedly ‘terrified’ by Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes being in the building, they had to set up a ‘safe room’ on the day she was booked to be there. Forbes is apparently so dangerous to your average avant-garde theatre-maker or performance poet, using Summerhall’s many spaces for their Fringe run, that management at the venue issued a grovelling apology to these notional adults: A fragility and intolerance of others, an anti-arts politics even, has been permitted to