Politics

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

Thursday

Neve Gordon

Israel must leave Syria

As I walked through Vienna last weekend, I happened upon several protests organised by Syrian refugees celebrating the downfall of Bashar al-Assad, the butcher from Damascus. People were singing, some even crying, as they rejoiced the end of the father-and-son al-Assad dictatorship, which had lasted 53 years.   The protestors had not yet seen the images of tens of thousands of released political prisoners, the slaughterhouses, or the underground torture chambers, but they had already seen enough. They were among the 12 million people who were displaced during the Syrian civil war and many of them undoubtedly had family members or close friends who had been among the over half million

James Heale James Heale

The role of political spouse has changed completely

The changing nature of political power was neatly demonstrated in Westminster yesterday. In the House of Lords, members debated Labour’s plans to purge parliament of its hereditary peers. Yet down the corridor in the Commons, that same principle seems alive and well. Ten Labour MPs are descended from former members, including scions of the Benn, Kinnock and Chamberlain families. The trend is certainly a cross-party one: a tenth of all Conservative MPs have had family members serve as Honourable Members. They include Victoria Atkins, Andrew Mitchell, Jerome Mayhew and Bernard Jenkin, whose fathers served as ministers under Mrs Thatcher. But the shift between the last parliament and this is the

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Why 2025 could redefine politics

Santa will have a tricky time this year fulfilling all the Christmas wish lists in Westminster. Keir Starmer is desperately hoping for a change in the political weather and Kemi Badenoch would like an in with Donald Trump. Ed Davey dreams that Labour’s electoral troubles will get so bad that proportional representation starts to look appealing. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, wants to avoid what usually happens with him and keep his party from falling out. Come the new year, all four leaders will have their eyes on May’s local elections. The 21 county councils, ten unitary authorities and one metropolitan district are up for grabs for the first time since 2021.

Katy Balls and Michael Gove

‘I will die protecting this country’: Kemi Badenoch on where she plans to take the Tories

‘It’s like a start-up,’ Kemi Badenoch explains of her new job, as she plumps down on a sofa in the Spectator offices. A month into her tenure as Conservative party leader and she is discovering the upsides to being out of power. ‘Everyone around me in the leader of the opposition office is there because of me – not because they happened to be there when I got there. That changes the dynamic quite a bit.’ ‘What’s a lunch break? Lunch is for wimps. I don’t think sandwiches are a real food’ She says the ‘biggest difference’ so far between being a secretary of state and leader of the opposition

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Full list: the MPs scrutinising the Assisted Dying Bill

At the end of November, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults Bill passed its second reading with a majority of 55 in favour. Now, the MPs who have been selected to sit on the bill committee have been revealed. Find the full list – including each parliamentarian’s party and how they voted on the issue – below. Kim Leadbeater, Labour: Aye Stephen Kinnock, Labour: Aye Sarah Sackman, Labour: Aye Bambos Charalambos, Labour: Aye Dr Marie Tidball, Labour: Aye Dr Simon Opher, Labour: Aye Jake Richards, Labour: Aye Rachel Hopkins, Labour: Aye Lewis Atkinson, Labour: Aye Kit Malthouse, Conservative: Aye Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst, Conservative: Aye Tom Gordon, Liberal Democrat: Aye

Steerpike Steerpike

Could Reform and the Tories form an electoral pact?

As if 2024 hadn’t been packed full of elections, eyes are already moving to next year’s local polls – and it seems some quite interesting conversations are taking place. According to Bloomberg, it transpires that Tory and Reform party branches in parts of the country have held discussions about working together in next year’s council elections to push out Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot. And so the plotting recommences… According to reports, talks have included the idea that Conservative associations could stand down candidates in certain areas where Reform might be better placed to defeat Labour – while Nigel Farage’s lot would return the favour where the Tories stand a

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Kemi Badenoch is bad at PMQs

Flunked it again, unfortunately. Kemi Badenoch chose poor tactics at PMQs. She made flabby speeches instead of hitting the PM with short, sharp questions.  She led on immigration – one of the Tories’ weakest topics. Sir Keir Starmer immediately mentioned the ‘open border’ policies that allowed nearly a million migrants to arrive in a single year. Kemi got specific. She said Sir Keir had opposed deportations for foreign-born criminals. One of these convicts went on to commit homicide. ‘He was able to stay here and murder because people like this man campaigned against deporting criminals. Will he apologise for signing these letters?’ A tough question but Sir Keir pulled off

Charles Hecker

Why Carlsberg left Russia

Carlsberg, the brewing giant whose presence in Russia transformed that country’s beverage market, has left. What remains is the lingering residue of a boozy party that peaked too soon, ended in a brawl and left many questions dangling. As it heads for the exit of Russia’s brutal, wartime asset reallocation process, Carlsberg – a flagship Danish company – takes with it something close to $322 million. This is the price reportedly struck for the sale of Carlsberg’s presence in Russia to a company called VG Invest that, according to the Financial Times, looks like a management buy-out.  It is not certain precisely how much cash Carlsberg will take home as it surrenders

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Farming chief weeps at Labour’s tax raid

The public outrage at Labour’s family farm tax isn’t going away any time soon. Today farmers from across the country have driven their tractors to Westminster in yet another protest at Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tax on agricultural assets, as countrymen fear for the future of family-owned farms. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot insist the majority of farms will be unaffected but their pleas for calm have landed on deaf ears as the Starmtroopers continue to lose rural supporters over the matter. As frustrated farmers gathered outside of parliament today, the issue was also being discussed inside the walls of Westminster. The President of the National Farmers’ Union Tom Bradshaw cut

James Heale James Heale

Have Labour got a grip of the prisons crisis?

12 min listen

Labour are planning to publish a 10-year plan to get on the front foot when it comes to the prisons crisis. Shifting from the previous government’s preference to run the system hot to a policy of early release and carving out more places, the headline figure is that there will be 14,000 more prison places by 2031. But the fear today is that these won’t be enough to tackle the critical lack of space in UK jails. So, will Labour’s ongoing sentencing review advocate for greater leniency for certain offenders? And will the public see that as justice being served? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Danny Shaw, former

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Starmer and Badenoch clash over immigration at PMQs

Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch had quite an angry clash at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. The Tory leader attacked on immigration, something Starmer had previously mocked her for avoiding. The questions and answers quickly descended into a bit of a grudge match about who actually cared about it. Badenoch’s first question was why immigration had not been named as a priority when Starmer ‘relaunched yet again’ last week. Starmer immediately crowed that ‘now she wants to talk about immigration’, accusing the Conservatives of a ‘one nation experiment in open borders’. He had a good line – though didn’t deliver it particularly well – that Badenoch was ‘furious about what she

Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

Javier Milei’s medicine is working

The economy would crash, the markets would be in open revolt, and he would swiftly be evicted from office by the IMF, and replaced by some ‘grown-ups’. When Argentina elected its chainsaw-wielding, libertarian President Javier Milei a year ago, the economic and political establishment confidently predicted he would only last a few weeks. And yet, not only has Milei managed to stay in power, all the evidence suggests that he is turning Argentina around. The real question now is this? Will a stagnant and moribund Europe pay attention? With inflation running at 25 per cent a month, with the largest IMF loan in history to pay back, and with the

Steerpike Steerpike

Is Humza Yousaf picking a fight with GB News?

Back to Scotland, where it appears hapless Humza Yousaf is still trying to stay relevant by going after, er, GB News. The failed former first minister of Scotland is said to be considering his options against the channel after a new report into GB News suggested Yousaf would have a ‘very strong case’ if he reported the broadcaster to media watchdog Ofcom over its treatment of the ex-FM. Good heavens… The document, released by the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), has slammed the channel over an ‘excessive’ focus on Muslims bordering on an ‘obsession [that] regularly demonises their beliefs’ – noting that almost 50 per cent

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Labour’s planning reforms look like a way of punishing Tory voters

Is the government’s housing policy aimed principally at increasing the stock of homes and making them more affordable or at punishing Tory voters? I ask because of its obsession with Nimbys and the green belt. According to Keir Starmer last week the planning system exerts a ‘chokehold’ over the housing supply. Writing at the weekend Angela Rayner declared: “I won’t cave into the blockers as the last government did”. You have to be blinkered to think that the reason young people find it so hard to get on the housing ladder is mainly down to Nimbys True, Nimbys exist. Green belts help to strangle cities – green wedges would be better,

Mark Galeotti Mark Galeotti

How Putin will make Assad pay for his exile

‘Brave Assad fled to Putin. Where will Putin flee?’ asked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky after the Syrian dictator escaped embattled Damascus for Moscow at the weekend. Assad was granted asylum in the Russia capital on the ‘humanitarian grounds’ he had denied his own subjects for so long. But what kind of life is Putin offering him? On the face of it, the answer is a rather opulent one, even if in practice it means becoming part of one of the most rarified zoos of all: Putin’s collection of ex-dictators. West of Moscow, a little way beyond the city’s MKAD orbital motorway along the A-106 Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse, lies the village of

Debbie Hayton

In defence of Connie Shaw

Here is a philosophical question for our universities to ponder. Should the ‘D’ in ‘EDI’ extend to diversity of opinion? If it doesn’t, this acronym so beloved of HR departments and external ‘training providers’ shouldn’t be worth the candle. But heaven help anyone who speaks the truth about sex and gender within some places of education. Say the wrong things and the thought police might check your thinking and ensure that you are cancelled. Connie Shaw, a third-year philosophy, religion and ethics student at Leeds University is one of the latest victims. Back in October, Shaw wrote a blog in which she called out some of the more egregious examples of

Michael Evans

Jolani has learnt from history

The victorious Syrian rebel leader now in control of Damascus has already learned a key lesson in history. After his forces swept into the capital, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, head of the Islamic militant group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), might have been expected to lay waste to all the institutions which had helped to keep the repressive Assad dynasty in power for 53 years, but instead he chose pragmatism. He announced he would do business with the Syrian government and wanted civil service staff to stay in their jobs to keep the country functioning. This doesn’t make al-Jolani or Ahmed al-Sharaa as he now wants to be called (his real name

Tuesday

James Heale James Heale

Gaza independents to register new party

There has been much focus in recent weeks on Reform’s potential impact on British politics. But a rival quintet of insurgents has been quietly making their own plans too. In July, four independents were elected to parliament on a staunchly pro-Palestine ticket: Shockat Adam in Leicester South, Ayoub Khan who took Birmingham Perry Barr, Adnan Hussain won Blackburn and Iqbal Mohamed, victorious in Dewsbury and Batley. They have since formed an ‘Independent Alliance’ with Jeremy Corbyn, who stormed back in Islington North, and are referred to as ‘the Gaza five.’ Supporters are now understood to be stepping up their efforts to strengthen ties between members of the group. In the

James Heale James Heale

Spending review: a return to austerity?

13 min listen

Preparations are stepping up for the government’s spending review, due in June. The Chancellor has taken a more personable approach to communicating with ministers, writing to them to outline how they plan to implement the Budget – with a crackdown on government waste and prioritising key public services. So, expect money for clean energy, the NHS, and more ‘difficult decisions’. Will Rachel Reeves’s war on waste work? How will this all go down within the Labour Party and the Cabinet? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Stop idolising Luigi Mangione

So according to the modern left, killing the fascists of Hamas is ‘genocide’, but killing a CEO and father of two is ‘justice’? How else are we to make sense of the creepy idolisation of Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting dead of Brian Thompson, chief executive of the American health-insurance firm UnitedHealthcare? Seriously, the swooning over Mangione is a new low for the ‘very online’ left. This was just desserts for America’s unfair system of health insurance, they insisted Thompson was slain on the streets of Manhattan last Wednesday. He was 50 years old, a dad and he’d been boss of UnitedHealthcare for three years. Almost instantly, even