Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

James Heale

Could Labour lose London?

After Gorton and Denton, where next? The scale of the Green triumph in Manchester has sent shockwaves through Sir Keir Starmer’s party. Much has been written about looming losses in Cardiff and Edinburgh. But the Greens – with their appeal to urban professionals, young Muslims and the economically disaffected – pose a threat in the place that many took to be Labour’s strongest heartland: London. “We have almost as many MPs there as Scotland and Wales combined,” notes one aide. “Some are getting a bit nervy.” Jitters are understandable. For ten years, Labour has ridden a wave of post-Brexit cosmopolitan feeling to boast ever-greater gains and now has 58 MPs

labour london
britain
Douglas Murray

If only Britain was as important as Iran thinks it is

I am becoming rather fond of Prime Minister Starmer’s major foreign policy announcements. In early January, after US forces swooped into Venezuela and took President Maduro to New York to face trial, Keir Starmer was keen to get straight out in front of the cameras. There he said that he wanted to stress that “the UK was not involved in any way in this operation.” As though the whole world had been expecting to hear that the British armed forces were indeed central in snatching the narco-terrorist from Caracas. This week it was again Starmer’s turn to stand behind a podium, British flags behind him, and deliver another statement that

Saturday

Spectator Editorial

The Iran war has exacerbated the failure of European energy policies

The history of the global trading system is a story of narrow and vulnerable waterways: the Suez and Panama Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Straits of Dover and the Skagerrak, which defends the entrance to the Baltic. But none has the power to seize up the global economy as much as the Strait of Hormuz. Barely 30 miles wide at the narrowest point and bounded on one side by the state of Iran, this passage is used for a quarter of the world’s oil supplies and a fifth of its liquified natural gas (LNG). As we have now discovered, the consequences of disruption are severe: on the day that

energy

Friday

Sam Olsen

Trump isn’t the greatest threat to the Special Relationship

Britain’s refusal to fully back the United States over strikes on Iran has triggered an unusually public transatlantic row. It has also revived an old question about the future of the so-called “Special Relationship.” When Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, many in Westminster doubted Keir Starmer could build a workable relationship with him. The two men could hardly be more different in temperament or politics, and predictions of an early rupture were widespread. For a time, however, Starmer appeared to defy those expectations. Britain weathered Trump’s latest tariff wars better than most countries, and the Prime Minister seemed to have found a cautious way of managing

special relationship
Freddy Gray

Will the Iran war propel Gavin Newsom to the presidency?

“I’m very angry about this war,” said Gavin Newsom, the California Governor, on stage yesterday. Newsom has a memoir, Young Man in a Hurry, to plug, and a serious bid for the presidency in the offing. Like many other ambitious Democrats, he spies in Donald Trump’s new war an opportunity to cause grave damage to the Republicans in November’s midterms – and in the 2028 presidential election, too.  “Six Americans dead, including a young man from Sacramento,” he said, beating his chest in a nauseatingly theatrical manner. “You have a President who still cannot explain the rationale. Why now, and what’s the endgame?” Operation Epic Fury, now into its sixth day,

Ben Clerkin

Like that poor dog, Kristi Noem turned out to be untrainable

When Kristi Noem disclosed she once shot the family dog, Cricket, because Cricket was “untrainable”, the world wrote her off as unfit to be Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate. According to a new book, her dog-killing ruthlessness was, in fact, one of the key reasons Trump picked her for Homeland Security Secretary. It may have helped that Trump doesn’t like dogs.  Now that uncompromising approach has been her downfall. Trump has finally snapped and fired her for overshadowing his administration’s immigration achievements – achievements she has made – by turning public sentiment against ICE. There was the crackdown in Minnesota and the protester killings, but also the spending of hundreds

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)
Daniel McCarthy

America’s last war in the Middle East

Win or lose, Donald Trump has begun the last war the United States is ever likely to fight in the Middle East. That might sound wildly optimistic, but what it really means is that war with Iran has been decades in the making. If the mission succeeds, it will mark the end of an era. And if it fails, this war will have exhausted what’s left of America’s willingness to remake the region by force. It’s not just that Iran puts the case for regime change to the ultimate test. America’s relationship with Israel is also on trial. That relationship has been strained lately by the war in Gaza –

neoconservative

Thursday

Eliot Wilson

Does Trump really have ‘whatever it takes’ to win in Iran?

With Operation Epic Fury in its sixth day, it is hard to tell how long the current United States military campaign against Iran will last. It may not be swift; yesterday, the Senate rejected a resolution to halt further action. Meanwhile, President Trump has been alarmingly indifferent to the question: Whatever the time is, it’s OK, whatever it takes. Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth struck a different note with reporters: “This is not Iraq, this is not endless.” Yet he has refused to rule out deploying

iran
Tim Shipman

‘Whose side are you on?’: how Keir Starmer alienated Britain’s allies over Iran

The American-Israeli attacks on Iran were publicly called Epic Fury, but behind the scenes it is Britain’s handling of the war which provoked that reaction – not just from Donald Trump but from the UK’s allies in the Gulf. A Labour peer was in Washington when the first missiles slammed into Tehran on Friday evening and Keir Starmer refused to voice support. A member of the Trump administration told the peer: “Britain used to not contribute that much, but you were a good ally. Now you’re contributing nothing and you’re not even a good ally.” A version of events has quickly become established: a Prime Minister with a near-religious belief

starmer
Neal Pollack

Kid Rock’s political evolution

The celebrity circles surrounding the second Trump administration are pretty thin. Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, Adam Sandler’s close friend Rob Schneider and a scant few others support the President in ways loud and quiet. But other than pop star Nicki Minaj, whose residence in Trumpistan has caused a lot of head-scratching, no entertainment celebrity occupies a more prominent place in the MAGA firmament than the musician Robert Ritchie, better known to the world as Kid Rock. “I call him Bob,” Trump once said. Kid Rock, the second most famous white rapper from Detroit, has long been in Trump’s social circles. He was a guest at Mar-a-Lago before either he or

Travis Aaroe

MAGA shouldn’t try to build a new moral order

Americans increasingly suspect that the entire social order is a sort of elaborate swindle. Billions of their taxpayer dollars were found to have gone to mysterious “learing centers” with no students. Federal agencies have paid $2.8 trillion in such mistaken transfers since 2003, according to government figures. There is serious discussion about whether a clique of pedophiles was ensconced at the highest levels of society. When asked, “Do you think the system is rigged in America?” 70 percent of citizens reply “Yes.” They are waiting for someone to tell them what has gone wrong and who is to blame. So naturally, America’s populist movement has decided that what the moment

John Jenkins

Why Iran is not Iraq

At the moment, a lot of people – notably including the British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer – are comparing the current war with Iran with the Iraq invasion of 2003. Do they have a point? There are several common claims of comparison, some good, some bad. When Saddam fell, there was little appetite in Iraq for a western-aligned replacement The principal claim, in Starmer’s case, is that what happened in Iraq means the UK should steer well clear of any further involvement anywhere. It reminds me of the final scene in that magnificent film, Chinatown. A private detective moves to intervene to stop a horror unfolding but one of

Wednesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

The Texas Republican revolt

Following last night’s primaries, Texas Democrats have a clear Senate candidate in James Talarico. Texas Republicans have a civil war. Ken Paxton and John Cornyn are headed for a nasty and expensive three-month runoff that will culminate in an election on May 26. Cornyn has made no secret of his disdain for Paxton, deeming him a “dead weight.” Are Texas Republicans facing an Alamo scenario, a last stand as the Democrats swarm over their defenses to reclaim the Lone Star state and the Senate majority? More than 2.4 million Texans cast ballots in the Democratic primary, the highest number in nearly two decades. The significance of Talarico’s victory over Jasmine

Andrew Cockburn

Does Trump even know why he invaded Iran?

Napoleon is supposed to have defined strategy as “on s’engage, et puis on voit,” loosely translated as “get stuck in and then see what happens.” Donald Trump is not normally deemed Napoleonic, yet in his approach to strategy he appears to have taken the great general’s precept to heart, launching initiatives without much forethought regarding consequences or further steps in the light of unexpected developments. When the consequences turn out to be unwelcome, he swiftly readjusts, discarding the initial scheme in favor of an alternative course of action, as often as not headlong retreat. Thus the swingeing Liberation Day tariff regime unveiled with much fanfare in April 2025 was swiftly suspended

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Will Iran descend into civil war?

33 min listen

Freddy is joined by historian and former diplomat Charlie Gammell. They discuss the situation in Iran, whether the US is heading for a decisive confrontation, and examine the regional consequences: proxy warfare, Gulf energy security, Pakistan’s delicate position, and migration pressures on Europe.

David Loyn

Chaos in Iran spells trouble for the Taliban

The US-Israeli attack on Iran presents an opportunity to get rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan. If there is a collapse of central authority in Iran, tens of thousands of Afghan former soldiers living in exile there could use the power vacuum to mobilize, return home and fight against the Taliban. There are several resistance groups who have advanced plans to fight but need a reliable haven outside the country to launch attacks inside Afghanistan. Iran, which has a 600-mile border with the country, could be the launchpad they need. This represents a unique opportunity for Afghanistan, as for the first time the country faces conflict on both sides. While

Robert Skidelsky

What comes after America’s retreat?

What is happening to the “rules-based international order” despairingly invoked by bewildered European leaders? The broad answer is that we are living through the retreat of American hegemony, masked by bluster and marked by contradictions. The retreat has two aspects, economic and geopolitical. Economists talk about Trump’s tariffs breaking up the free-trade order; geopoliticians about the Trump Corollary breaking up the NATO system. These are part of a single, reasonably coherent story. But the retreat is not as straightforward as it sounds. How does the bombing of Iran fit into it? What do people mean when they talk about a global “rules-based order”? The starting point must be the UN

Ben Clerkin

Did Israel bounce the US into war?

Operation Epic Fury has developed from a war to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons into a political war of blame. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Marco Rubio told reporters at the Capitol last night. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them [Iran] before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.” The rationale came as a surprise to lawmakers. It sounded as though Israel had effectively bounced America into military action. Trump had told the American people from the outset that the war was to defang Iran of

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The Middle East’s Muslims are cheering Khamenei’s death

The killing of ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes on Saturday was cheered by many Iranians who have suffered innumerable atrocities under his ruthless Islamist rule of the country. While the diaspora were vociferous in their jubilation over the death of Iran’s supreme leader, many in the country also braved violent crackdowns to rejoice in the streets. These Iranians chanted the slogan that has become a common anti-Khamenei refrain over the past four decades: “Death to the Islamic Republic.” The chant has echoed alongside others: “death to the dictator… death to Khamenei” of the 1999 student marches; the 2009 election protests; the 2019 agitation against economic policies; the 2022 demonstrations over

Monday

Charles Lipson

What Iran means for the world

The Israeli-American air campaign against Iran will have profound global repercussions. What those repercussions will be depends on two crucial factors. First, will the bombing campaign remove the Shi’ite Islamist regime from power? We do not yet know if the campaign can accomplish that ambitious goal without foreign troops on the ground. If the US and Israel can do that, it would be an unprecedented achievement. Second, if the Islamists are removed, will the successor regime be stable and effective? Will it be able to control the streets and countryside, prevent successful breakaway regional movements, and begin the arduous process of rebuilding the country? Can the factions currently opposing the