Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

Joe Bedell-Brill

Could benefits be withdrawn from young people?

Benefits could be withdrawn for young people not engaging with Youth Guarantee scheme The number of 16 to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training is now at almost a million, having risen sharply for the last four years. The government have announced an £820 million Youth Guarantee scheme to provide 350,000 work experience placements, and 55,000 subsidised jobs to young people. Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden was interviewed this morning, saying he wanted the issue to be a major ‘Labour cause’. On Sky News, Trevor Phillips asked McFadden if those who didn’t engage with the Youth Guarantee scheme might have their Universal Credit benefits removed. McFadden said: ‘They

Steerpike

Tories to move headquarters

You’re either in front of Mr S or you are behind. It was just six weeks ago that Steerpike reported that staff within Tory HQ were expecting to soon leave their longtime base on Matthew Parker Street. With the party’s lease up next summer, a new headquarters is needed. And today, the Conservatives have told their members that they have bought and now own a home outright. In an email seen by Mr S, Kemi Badenoch writes that: No rent. No lease. A permanent base in Westminster we can call our own. Our new home is a sign we are moving forward, putting our finances on a stronger and more

Druin Burch

The joy of receiving Christmas cards – even from people I loathe

These days I barely know what my own handwriting looks like; about my friends, the knowledge is all but lost. Seeing their pen strokes has grown rare. But, for a brief period each winter, that odd intimacy returns as Christmas cards – some with messages, most with just a scribbled name – land on my mat. I adore receiving cards. Even ones from people I cordially dislike, or frankly loathe, are welcome There used to be something exciting about the sound of the postman’s footsteps, of letters being pushed through the door, of their thump as they landed within. That was during the days when there was a great deal

Edward Howell

What are Ukrainian children doing in North Korea?

The regime of North Korea has continued to exploit the war in Ukraine to spread its propaganda. This week we learnt that Ukrainian children, abducted by Russia, are being sent to an infamous North Korean summer camp. The children have reportedly been taught to ‘destroy Japanese imperialists’ and heard from North Korean soldiers who destroyed the USS Pueblo, a spy ship captured and sank by North Korea in 1968.  This Ukrainian children have been at the Songdowon International Children’s Camp, located near the port city of Wonsan on the country’s east coast. Well known as a popular tourist hotspot for North Korean elites, Wonsan has recently gained infamy for the newly-opened

John Foreman

HMS Prince of Wales is not yet the finished product

Huge crowds of locals, plus families and friends of the crew, greeted the return home of the nation’s flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, last week. It was a fitting climax to a flawless, highly significant, eight-month, 40,000-nautical-mile deployment to the Far East. Sailors spoke about the emotion of their homecoming, pride in their hard work, and their desire for shore leave. In November, the Ministry of Defence announced that Britain’s carrier strike capability had reached Full Operating Capability (FOC). This means we will have one carrier always available for operations with 24 advanced F-35 stealth jets embarked. The UK is alone in having its carrier committed to Nato at short notice. But Full

Saturday

James Heale

The meaning of Lord Offord's defection

Malcolm Offord has today quit Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives to join Reform UK. The peer was unveiled at a press conference today in Falkirk, as Nigel Farage’s party ramp up their campaigning ahead of the Holyrood elections next year. Offord, a former minister, becomes the second sitting frontbencher to quit the Conservatives in recent months, following Danny Kruger’s departure in September. It means that Reform UK now boast their first peer in the House of Lords. Offord will stand down from the Upper House if he is elected to the Scottish Parliament in May. It is worth remembering that Offord enthusiastically backed Kemi Badenoch for leader Offord cited his Unionism as

Steerpike

Scottish Tory peer joins Reform

To Falkirk, where Nigel Farage has flown ahead of the Holyrood elections – to announce another big name member of Reform UK. Now Lord Offord has jumped ship to Reform – and he intends to stand for election in Scotland next year. The businessman was given a peerage in 2021 by Boris Johnson and even served as a minister of exports from 2023 until the election the following year. Malcolm Offord’s move marks the latest high-profile defection to Reform UK, its first member of the House of Lords – and Steerpike has heard whisperings he could become the party’s Scottish leader next year… Farage’s party is polling at around 20

James Tidmarsh

Paris is a city afraid

The New Year’s Eve concert on the Champs Élysées has been cancelled for security reasons. Paris was supposed to host its usual spectacle. A free open-air concert at the Arc de Triomphe, video projections on the monument and the midnight festivities that once drew close to a million people. Instead, the concert has been scrapped. It will be replaced on national television with a prerecorded concert filmed weeks ago with a handpicked crowd to mimic a celebration Paris no longer believes it can safely host. A capital once famed for its public life now performs it under studio conditions. It marks the collapse of what used to be one of

Lloyd Evans

Until Truss faces her enemies, she remains an irrelevance

Liz Truss is back. The ex-prime minister hosted a new current affairs show last night on Just The News, a multi-platform outlet. She’s not the first ex-PM to try her hand as a TV star. After Harold Wilson resigned, he briefly compered Friday Night, Saturday Morning, a BBC chat-show, which was considered a failure. Liz’s debut performance was a mixture of invective, self-justification and political brainstorming.  She opened with a barrage of bitter rhetoric.  ‘Britain is going to hell in a handcart,’ she announced, before adding coyly, ‘despite the valiant efforts of a certain prime minister in 2022.’  She laid into the ‘fake news BBC.’ ‘When they’re not lying about

Theo Hobson

Tommy Robinson wants to put 'Christ back into Christmas'? No, thanks

So Tommy Robinson is inviting us all to have Christmas with him. The far-right activist has announced that there will be a huge open air carol concert in central London on 13 December, a seasonal Unite the Kingdom rally. The aim, he says, ‘is to put Christ back into Christmas.’ Hmm, isn’t that what thousands of church services already do? Robinson is saying: we should be proud of our national religion. Is he wrong? Yes and no So what is Robinson’s motivation for wanting to stage a very large and very public Christmas event? Well, he makes it pretty clear. ‘We shouldn’t have to put this on’, he says. ‘There

Julie Burchill

The comedy genius of Zarah Sultana

As both of the great Spectator writers Madeline Grant and Gareth Roberts have pointed out here recently, the element of farce in British politics is notable as never before. Miss Grant opined that ‘It is genuinely astonishing that Rachel Reeves isn’t accompanied by the Benny Hill theme at all time… a shambles, but then which arm of the comedic and decaying British state isn’t? We’re probably only ever a couple of resignations away from Mr Tumble becoming the Rail Ombudsman.’ The idea of the ‘swivel-eyed-loon’ has completely moved camp from the right to the left While in a piece entitled ‘Labour are almost as deluded as the Your Party faithful’

Arabella Byrne

How to live gracefully in a ‘granny annexe’

There comes a time in every Boomer Granny’s life when she must consider the ‘granny annexe’ as a viable demesne. For Sarah Ferguson, that time has come. Disgraced, broke and soon to be booted out of Royal Lodge, Fergie is reportedly considering her daughter Princess Beatrice’s Cotswold ‘cowshed’ as her next billet. And while this is not the monstrous wedding-cake mansion that is Royal Lodge, it is still apparently a des res, with neighbours in the unnamed Cotswold village claiming that the property has recently had a refurb. Fergie can no doubt expect an open-plan kitchenette in Edward Bulmer hues, a fair few Pooky lampshades and a Loaf bed in the lead-on bedroom. Perfectly suitable for a woman who once flaunted her ability to adapt to any circumstances, declaring herself ‘a chameleon

Tom Baldwin

‘Superadvisers’ and the Starmer paradox: who really runs No. 10?

25 min listen

This weekend’s Coffee House Shots digs into the growing debate over whether Keir Starmer should tack left on the economy as voters peel away to the Greens and Lib Dems – and why some in Labour think its migration stance is now more popular with their own voters than ever. Are Labour tacking left? But beyond policy, a deeper question looms: is Westminster’s obsession with ‘super-advisers’ drowning out the government’s message? Tom Baldwin argues that leaks, briefing wars and the hunt for the next ‘power-behind-the-throne’ are undermining Labour’s ability to tell a coherent story, while Tim Shipman asks why Starmer still struggles to communicate the values that drive him. James

Friday

Tim Shipman

Has Reform peaked?

The week ends as it began, with Keir Starmer outlining plans to curb child poverty, news that Rachel Reeves won’t face a formal investigation into whether she misled the markets over her Budget, ministers growing bolder about opposing Brexit and questions about the future of the war in Ukraine. For me the most interesting question of the week is whether we can credibly ask for the first time: has Reform peaked? Public anger at both Labour and the Tories remains palpable and Farage remains overwhelmingly the greatest beneficiary of the protest vote I interviewed Nigel Farage earlier this week for the Christmas double issue of the magazine so keep your

Steerpike

Watch: Zack Polanski's bizarre migration remarks

To BBC Question Time, where the leader of the Green party made a rather interesting intervention on migration last night. Zack Polanski’s party preaches that billionaires, not Britain’s borders, are to blame for the country’s woes and their migration policy states that, if elected to government, they will ‘stop putting people in prison because of their immigration status’, ‘give all residents the right to vote’ and ‘treat all migrants as if they are citizens’. However Polanski’s comments about why Britain needs migrants have, er, rather raised eyebrows – to put it mildly. He remarked on the Beeb that: ‘One in five care workers are foreign nationals. Now, I don’t know

Gus Carter

Inside the world of Reform’s mystery money man

Nigel Farage keeps eclectic company. Reform is not a party of slick spin doctors or career politicians. Instead, it is staffed by people like George Cottrell, the minor aristocrat and former convict, who acts as Farage’s fixer. He is, according to Farage, ‘like a son to me’. I’m told that Cottrell is often seen in the Reform offices in Millbank helping the party, although he is still described by party staff as a simple ‘unpaid volunteer’.  Cottrell, 32, has always had an air of dodginess about him. In 2016 he spent eight months in an American maximum security prison for wire fraud relating to an international money laundering conspiracy. He

Lucy Dunn

Keir Starmer says ending child poverty is Labour’s ‘moral mission’

Tackling child poverty is this government’s ‘moral mission’, Keir Starmer insisted today. The Prime Minister has unveiled plans that he claims will lift some 550,000 children out of poverty by the end of the decade. The headline announcement of the government’s child poverty strategy came in last week’s Budget when Rachel Reeves announced that, after months of dithering, Labour would scrap the two-child benefit cap. While a number of the measures in today’s policy bundle have already been announced, there are a few new elements. These include the provision of upfront childcare support for parents on universal credit who are going back to work, £8 million to stop families being

Steerpike

Farage: Corbyn and Sultana should ask me for tips

To Reform’s Nigel Farage, who managed to dominate headlines today after he took a pop at the Beeb on Thursday afternoon. But that wasn’t all he was there to discuss: he blasted the Labour government’s decision to delay mayoral contests until 2028, he made another barb about Sir Keir Starmer’s digital-ID scheme and insisted he was completely comfortable with accepting a £9 million sum from generous donor Christopher Harbone. And the Reform party leader also dished out some advice for his political opponents… When quizzed by Mr S why he had not yet appointed a leader for the Welsh and Scottish Reform parties ahead of the Senedd and Holyrood elections

Angela Epstein

Boycotting Israel could kill Eurovision

What exactly is the point of Eurovision? It can’t be about the music. Britain, the nation that gifted the world the Beatles, David Bowie and the Spice Girls, has been scraping the bottom of the scoreboard for years – thanks to a string of forgettable, frankly embarrassing entries that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a boozy holiday camp open-mic night. The UK hasn’t been alone in putting forward dire entries, but perhaps that then has always been the point. Much to the delight of the millions who watch and feast on Eurovision’s glorious banquet of kitsch and camp – a ding-a-dong smorgasbord where spectacle is compulsory and, for many countries,

Patrick Gibbons

Brexit's back – and so is Truss

16 min listen

There has been a flurry of UK-European activity across Britain this week, with the German state visit in London, the Norwegian Prime Minister signing a defence agreement in Scotland and the British-Irish council meeting in Wales today. Perhaps then it’s inevitable that speculation over closer ties between the UK and the EU has re-emerged. Could Labour seek to rejoin the Customs Union? Would this help or hinder Reform? And would the EU even stomach it? Plus – Liz Truss launches a new show today. Will she say anything new? James Heale and Charles Grant from the Centre for European Reform join Patrick Gibbons to discuss. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.