Politics

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

Monday

Helena Busiakiewicz

Let the prisoners cook

After Hashem Abedi allegedly attacked three prison officers with hot cooking oil at HMP Frankland last weekend, there has been a crackdown on inmates using kitchens. Self-catering facilities have been suspended in separation facilities like the one that housed Abedi, the convicted terrorist who helped his brother plan the Manchester Arena bombing. This is a sensible approach, but this horrific incident cannot be allowed to overshadow the important work done in food education in prisons. I’ve been working for prison food charity Food Behind Bars (FBB) for nearly four years, teaching in men and women’s prisons across the UK. Throughout my time there, I have come to understand that cooking

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Keir Starmer’s Easter message wasn’t offensive

Fun though it is to bash Keir Starmer for everything he says or does, there’s surely a point at which the self-respecting anti-Starmerite will want to cut the man a bit of slack – if for no other reason than that if the spite grows too ridiculous you will sound deranged, and it will recruit the odd floating voter to his cause out of sympathy.  Such a point, I submit, might be the Prime Minister’s Easter message. Sir Keir, or some minion, put out a tweet yesterday saying the following: ‘Wishing a very happy Easter to Christians across the UK and around the world, as they celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

William Wright

The plight of Bethlehem

War seldom has true victors – and for Bethlehem, where tourism once accounted for approximately 70 per cent of income, the Israel-Gaza conflict has left businesses shuttered and livelihoods in ruins. Since the October 7 attack, my home country of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs has classified Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank under its highest Level 4: “Do Not Travel” risk advisory. Earlier this month – despite my better judgement – I ventured into Bethlehem to witness firsthand the impact of the Israel-Gaza war on the city’s economy and dwindling Christian population. ‘There are dozens of hotels in Bethlehem, and they’re almost all empty.’ Under the Oslo

Sunday

Steerpike Steerpike

Labour MPs rage against trans ruling fall-out

Happy Easter Sunday to LGBT+ Labour. Today’s Mail on Sunday splashes on leaked messages from a WhatsApp chat of MPs who all belong to the campaign group. The paper claims that Labour ministers are now plotting to defy the Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday that the legal definition of a woman should be based on biological sex. A judgment that not all within Labour seem to agree with… In the messages, sent on Thursday evening, Culture Minister Sir Chris Bryant joined an attack on Baroness Falkner, chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who earlier that day had said that the ruling – that a woman is defined by biological

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Ed Miliband is talking nonsense about energy prices – again

I guess I must be one of Ed Miliband’s ‘siren voices’. Writing in the Observer today, the Energy and Climate Secretary complains about people he thinks: ‘Would keep Britain locked in dependence on global markets we don’t control. They will also make up any old nonsense and lies to pursue their ideological agenda, the latest example being their attempt to use the crisis facing the steel industry for their deeply damaging agenda.’ He goes on to assert: ‘UK Steel says that it is the “UK’s reliance on natural gas power generation” that leaves us with higher prices than international allies – not too much clean energy, but too little.’ Steady

Damien Phillips

The US-Iran nuclear talks are doomed to fail

US and Iranian diplomats are meeting in Rome this weekend for further talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, in what looks set to be another forlorn bid to rein in the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism – and a regime which makes North Korea look like a paragon of good faith. In some ways, the new talks feel like déjà vu. The Gulf state of Oman has resumed its role as the go-between for the US and Iran, with its embassy in Rome providing the venue for the latest phase of talks and its foreign minister Badr Al Busaidi mediating what the Iranians insist will be ‘indirect’ negotiations. Oman has maintained

Francis Pike

Putin’s Russia is part of a global Orthodox revival

Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch, was found hanged in his Sunningdale home in March 2013. Born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents, Berezovsky converted to Russian Orthodoxy in 1994. His leap of faith, I suspected, was more political than spiritual. ‘So why,’ I asked him at dinner one evening, ‘do you buy Russian Icons?’ Berezovsky told me that he tried to bribe Vladimir Putin with motor cars, but he refused them. He was more successful with gifts of Russian Icons, which Putin passed on to churches and monasteries. Throughout his political career, the Russian president has taken care to look after the Russian Orthodox Church. Does this reflect a genuine religious belief?

Margaret Mitchell and James Vitali

RC vs CofE: which church should a young Christian join?

There has been discussion over the past few weeks that Britain’s young people are undergoing a religious revival. This Easter weekend, we asked two young writers to write about their church. The Spectator’s Margaret Mitchell is Catholic; Policy Exchange’s James Vitali is Anglican. You can read the discussion below. Margaret Mitchell There’s an episode of The Simpsons that gives an excellent argument for Catholicism. Bart gets sent to Catholic school where he becomes interested in the faith, while Homer becomes taken with the pancake suppers and bingo. Marge is not happy about this. She has a daydream about arriving at Protestant heaven to find WASP-y types with jumpers tied around

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

What could France possibly teach America about free speech?

Nearly 300 academics have contacted a French university after it declared itself a safe space for those looking to flee Donald Trump’s America. Aix-Marseille University on the Mediterranean coast responded to the president’s pursuit of American universities he deems to be anti-Semitic by launching a ‘Safe Place for Science’ programme.  Described as a ‘scientific asylum’, the French university will offer three years of funding for up to 20 researchers. So far 298 academics have applied, including staff from Yale, Stanford, Columbia and Johns Hopkins University. Liberation, a left-wing French newspaper, says that some of the applicants have described ‘sometimes chilling accounts from American researchers about the fate reserved for them by

Saturday

Lisa Haseldine Lisa Haseldine

Why Putin wants a truce

At 4 p.m. UK time today, Russian troops were instructed to temporarily lay down their weapons in Ukraine. The order, issued by Russian president Vladimir Putin to mark the Easter weekend, is nominally in force for 30 hours until midnight on Easter Monday. ‘We are proceeding on the assumption that the Ukrainian side will follow our example,’ he said. All military operations, the President added, would supposedly be halted during that time period. From Putin’s statement it doesn’t look as if this ceasefire was discussed with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, or anyone from his administration, before he announced it. But it appears that for the rest of this weekend

Nicholas Farrell

Giorgia Meloni is Europe’s most important leader

Giorgia Meloni has confounded her critics yet again as she proves herself to be the most important leader in the European Union. She has shown in the past two days that she is the vital bridge between America and Europe. As a result, Italy looks set to play a major role on the world stage which it has never done before since the founding of the Italian Republic in 1948 after the defeat of Mussolini’s fascist regime. In Washington on Thursday, where Meloni met Donald Trump for a bilateral summit, she achieved a major breakthrough when the US President accepted her invitation to come to Rome ‘to meet Europe’ about

Svitlana Morenets Svitlana Morenets

Giving Putin Crimea will not end the war

When Volodymyr Zelensky speaks of the Ukrainian territories under Russian control, he always calls them ‘temporarily occupied’. The phrase, first used by Zelensky’s predecessor, has been engraved into Ukrainian politics since 2014, after Vladimir Putin seized Crimea. That terminology is more than symbolic – it’s a promise that Ukraine will one day, even if it takes decades, reclaim all of its land. Now, Donald Trump wants to take that chance away. Trump is reportedly considering recognising Crimea as part of Russia in exchange for a ceasefire in Ukraine. And if the peace agreement isn’t reached soon, he threatens to walk away. ‘If for some reason, one of the two parties

Katy Balls Katy Balls

10 years of politics as Balls bows out

21 min listen

Katy Balls joins Coffee House Shots for the last time as the Spectator’s political editor. Having joined the magazine ten years ago – or six prime ministers in Downing St years – what are her reflections on British politics? Katy’s lobby lunch partner from the Financial Times Stephen Bush joins Katy and Patrick Gibbons to try and make sense of a turbulent political decade, work out where the greatest risk is to the current Labour government, and attempt to make some predictions for the next ten years.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons. 

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The march of the trans mob is over

I wake up in a good humour most mornings, but today I started the day feeling that this country – which seems, in so many ways, to have been sleepwalking in a hall of distorting mirrors for so long – had taken a definitive step towards the overthrow of the crazed, tyrannical cult which has inexplicably gained power all around the world. In the process of dignifying a male sexual fetish – autogynephilia – into the latest human rights crusade, careers have been ruined and reputations wrecked by trans activists and their creepy ‘allies’: all in the name of the ultimate patriarchal plan; to colonise everything won by women, from

Friday

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

Why Putin is keeping Trump waiting for a Ukraine deal

There is an odd contradiction in Russian attitudes to the current negotiations with the United States. On the one hand, a sense that the window of opportunity may be closing, on the other no real rush to take advantage of it, or at least to offer Donald Trump any concessions to show willing. Mikhail Rostovsky, a columnist in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, put it best when he noted that the window is likely to close at the end of this month, which marks the end of the first hundred days of Donald Trump’s second term: ‘No one expected Trump to fulfil his boastful campaign promise and stop military actions during

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Meloni’s mission to ‘make the West great again’ will infuriate Macron

Giorgia Meloni met Donald Trump in the White House on Thursday and stated her ambition to ‘make the West great again’. The Italian prime minister is closer to the Trump administration than any other Western European leader, and later today in Rome she will host J.D. Vance. The American vice-president could be described as Meloni’s ideological soulmate, and it was noteworthy that when Meloni spoke of her ambition to reinvigorate the West she added: “When I speak about (the) West mainly, I don’t speak about geographical space. I speak about the civilisation, and I want to make that civilisation stronger.” This will be music to the ears of Vance This

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Katy Balls, Olivia Potts, Benedict Allen, Cosmo Landesman and Aidan Hartley

40 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Would Trump really bomb Iran, asks Paul Wood (1:38); Katy Balls interviews Health Secretary Wes Streeting on NHS reform, Blairism and Game of Thrones (8:38); Olivia Potts examines the history – and decline – of the Easter staple, roast lamb (18:25); the explorer Benedict Allen says Erling Kagge and Neil Shubin were both dicing with death, as he reviews both their books on exploration to earth’s poles (22:13); Cosmo Landesman reflects on what turning 70 has meant for his sex life (28:46); and, Aidan Hartley takes us on an anthropomorphic journey across Africa (33:55).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Easter special: in praise of faithful dissent, a conversation with Nigel Biggar and Mary Wakefield

24 min listen

The Easter issue of the Spectator includes two provocative articles exploring aspects of Christianity.  Nigel Biggar, Regius professor emeritus of moral theology at Oxford University, now a Conservative peer, celebrates the heroic ‘faithful dissent’ of Christian heroes such as Thomas More and Helmuth von Moltke, who lost their lives rather than defend injustice.  Meanwhile Spectator columnist Mary Wakefield interviews Roman Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s inspired by his holiness but depressed by his use of ‘C of E bureaucratese’ to uphold liberal orthodoxy on subjects such as gender ideology. But, she says they can share an uncomfortable space together within faith. In this episode of Holy Smoke, Nigel and Mary join Damian Thompson, who

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Labour Together? Party morale & the threat of Reform

11 min listen

Former Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth and Patrick Maguire from The Times join Katy Balls for her penultimate Coffee House Shots podcast as The Spectator‘s political editor. Since losing his seat at last year’s general election, Ashworth has been CEO of Labour Together – but not for much longer as he exclusively reveals on the podcast. Less than two weeks to go from the local elections, and only a few months away from marking one year in power, what is morale like in the Labour Party? While Patrick reflects on who might, or might not, be feeling happy, Ashworth provides more reasons for Labour supporters to feel bullish – particularly when thinking about the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The Deborah Mattinson Edition

29 min listen

Deborah Mattinson joined the House of Lords as a Labour peer in February. Her involvement in politics began when she worked alongside Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould to create Labour’s Shadow Communications Agency for Neil Kinnock. In 1992 she co-founded Opinion Leader Research, and she went on to advise Tony Blair ahead of the 1997 election and later became Gordon Brown’s chief pollster. In 2021 she was appointed Director of Strategy for Keir Starmer, a position she held until stepping down following last year’s landslide victory. On the podcast, Deborah tells Katy Balls about growing up as a Labour supporter with a father active in local Tory politics, the work