Politics Archives

Monday

30 Jun 2025

On the Israel-Syria border, death is always close

Syria’s new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, is desperate to stay on the sidelines of the Iran-Israel war. Most middle eastern states have strongly condemned Israel for its surprise attack on Iran, but the Syrian government has been conspicuously silent. Since coming to power in December 2024, Al-Sharaa’s forces have confronted Iran-backed militias in many regions of Syria, and moved to curtail Tehran’s soft power by expelling Iranian clerics and closing Shia religious centres. The rag-tag collection of Sunni-Islamists, who now form a large part of the Syrian army, have a long list of scores to settle with the Shiites and their main patron. But, simultaneously, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes

Melanie McDonagh

Should Chris Coghlan be denied Holy Communion?

It is not, it’s fair to say, a universal view among Catholic priests that MPs who vote the wrong way on assisted dying and the decriminalisation of abortion up to birth should be punished by excluding them from communion. But so it has turned out with Chris Coghlan, the Lib Dem MP for Dorking and Horley. He voted for assisted suicide and didn’t vote at all on the Antoniazzi amendment allowing women to abort up to birth. Now he’s complaining that his parish priest is intent on denying him communion at mass. Or as he put it on X: My Catholic Priest publicly announced at every mass he was denying

Michael Simmons

Britain is facing a doomy economic future

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has confirmed the economy grew by 0.7 per cent in the first three months of the year. The figures, released this morning, are the ONS’s second attempt at estimating growth in the first quarter and, unusually, the GDP growth number was unrevised from the initial estimate. The strong growth – the fastest pace in a year – between January and March could be the last bit of economic good news Chancellor Rachel Reeves is able to celebrate this year as this set of numbers cover the period before her £25 billion raid on employer national insurance came into effect. It does, however, confirm that

Sam Leith

The bluster and waffle of George Freeman

Retromania is well and truly upon us. Neil Young just headlined Glastonbury. Noel Edmonds is back on the telly. And a Tory MP has been turned over by a Sunday newspaper in a cash-for-questions scandal. Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1997. The humiliated party this time around is George Freeman, a former science minister in Rishi Sunak’s government. He left frontline politics before frontline politics had the chance to leave him – and he was last heard from moaning in 2024 that he was unable to afford a £2,000-a-month mortgage on his £118,000 ministerial salary. After that, he found a side-hustle that better answered his needs – advising

Gavin Mortimer

Meet France’s new anti-green movement

A new anti-green social movement is gathering momentum in France seven years after the Yellow Vests rocked the establishment. The ‘Gueux’, which can be translated as ‘beggar, peasant or outcast’, held a series of demonstrations on Saturday at ports across France. The principal grouse are wind turbines, many of which are scheduled to be constructed offshore in the coming years. Fishermen are angry because the turbines will concrete the seabed, forcing them to fish further out and increasing their already hefty fuel bills. Saturday’s protests were also supported by farmers, particularly those belonging to the Coordination Rurale union, whose members are mainly smallholders and resent the biggest farming union which is

Steerpike

Labour contenders jockey for position

They say you should never waste a good crisis. And that certainly seems to be the mantra of certain senior figures within the Labour party, given their prominence in recent days. First, there was Wes Streeting out on the Sunday airwaves. Asked about the ‘Death, death to the IDF’ chant at Glastonbury, the Health Secretary told Victoria Derbyshire: I’d also say to the Israeli embassy, get your own house in order. What happened in the West Bank this week by Israeli settler terrorists needs to not only be condemned, it needs to be acted upon. And Israel cannot continue to look the other way while its own people are carrying

Sunday

29 Jun 2025

Laurie Wastell

Bob Vylan was grotesque, but arrest would be wrong

It is with some measure of irritation, I must confess, that I am drawn away from this balmy weekend to discuss the idiotic antics of a so-called musical act by the name of ‘Bob Vylan’. At Glastonbury on Saturday, the frontman of the English ‘punk duo’ led the crowd in a chant. First it was just ‘Free, free Palestine’; but then it became ‘Death, death to the IDF’. They also aired the implicitly genocidal pro-Palestine slogan: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ The whole ghoulish spectacle was broadcast live on the BBC (which has subsequently apologised). It is precisely our hypersensitivity to distasteful speech that led to Lucy Connolly’s arrest In my view, there can be no doubt that this was a grotesque and deeply anti-Semitic display. In calling for the

Rod Liddle

The Guardian: let babies vote

I think I have just located Peak Guardian. It can be found on page 57 of the newspaper’s latest Saturday magazine, ‘Saturday’. And it rests under the headline: ‘Should we give babies the right to vote?’ In the piece, a woman called Laura Spinney advances the case for ‘ageless voting’. She accepts that a common first reaction to ageless voting is ‘laughter’. But the woman adds: ‘Then people start to think and often they end up saying they can’t find any serious objections.’ Later she expands upon her thesis: ‘…children are observant and can ask questions that are troubling because they are so fundamental: questions about war, meat, money, love

Brendan O’Neill

Glastonbury has become a sinister festival of anti-Semitism

They’re chanting for the death of Jews at Glastonbury. Yesterday a swaying mob of faux-virtuous poseurs blithely howled for ‘Death, death to the IDF’. They’ll say they were being political. ‘It was an anti-war cry, not an anti-Jew cry’, they’ll insist today, as the hangover lifts and the horror of their noisy clamour for the death of those they hate finally dawns on them. But such thin excuses won’t wash, not this time. That’s what Glastonbury felt like yesterday: a woke Nuremberg rally It was the punk rap act Bob Vylan that appeared to whip the crowd into a frenzy of Israelophobia. The lead singer first got them chanting ‘Free,

Steerpike

Exclusive: Met won’t prosecute Kneecap over ‘Kill your MP’

How low is too low? Kneecap seem determined to find out, judging by their never-ending mission to troll the UK. But last month even the West Belfast trio seemed to go too far, after a video emerged of them calling for the death of British MPs. It prompted a grovelling statement from the band, insisting that they would not incite violence against any individual. Real hard men, eh? Of course, cynics suggested that Kneecap’s capitulation had less to do with genuine remorse and concern for the likes of David Amess’s family, and more to do with an effect on ticket sales. But now the not-so-funny trio can sleep easy, for

Lisa Haseldine

Mikhail Khodorkovsky: ‘The West isn’t ready for Putin’s hybrid war’

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is sounding the alarm. The end of the war in Ukraine, whenever it comes, won’t mean the end of Vladimir Putin, he says – nor the Russian threat to the West. Moscow, he says, has never been very good at demobilising restless, traumatised soldiers. ‘There is a 600,000-strong group that took part in the fighting. The question for Putin is: ‘What to do with this group?’. Khodorkovsky fears that he knows the answer. ‘These tensions will naturally arise after two or three years,’ he says. ‘And then Putin’s way of thinking kicks into gear. And Putin’s mentality? He has already relieved such points of tension four times [during

Mary Dejevsky

Junior doctors won’t stop striking? Sack them

The medics we knew and loved as ‘junior doctors’ were redesignated ‘resident doctors’ as part of their last pay settlement in September. If this was intended to boost their (already considerable) ‘self-esteem’, however, it seems not to have produced any maturing of their professional attitude. Less than a year after ending their last strike, they are balloting on striking again, in pursuit of a pay rise of 29 per cent (repeat, 29 per cent, no decimal point) to add to the 22 per cent they wrung out of the newly-elected Labour government. In a questionable attempt to increase the franchise, the British Medical Association (BMA) launched a free three-month membership

Rory Hanrahan

Red tape is ruining Britain’s pubs

Takings were falling. Regulars were drifting away. Our pub was in a bad way. It was clear that things needed to change. But, paralysed by fear of an employment tribunal in a legal system tilted against employers, we felt trapped. If we sacked the managers and replaced them, we could find ourselves embroiled in a messy legal case that could cost us everything. So, drowning in paperwork, warnings, hearings, improvement plans, and risk assessments, we endured. Running a pub felt less like hospitality than surviving a siege of bureaucracy. That was when I saw it. This wasn’t just one bad incident. Our beloved pub was being strangled in red tape.

John Curtice

Brexit betrayal is driving Tory voters into Farage’s arms

Since returning to the political front line during the middle of last year’s election campaign, Nigel Farage has enjoyed remarkable success in his stated quest for Reform for replace the Conservatives as the principal party of the right in Britain. The latest British Social Attitudes (BSA) report, published this week, helps explain how and why he is succeeding. Boris Johnson rose to success in 2019 thanks to his ability to appeal to socially conservative Britain. These were the voters that provided the core vote for Leave in 2016 and which now voted to ‘get Brexit done’. However, disenchanted with how Brexit has turned out and deeply distrustful of how the

Nicholas Farrell

Trump cannot be a fascist

The global left and their many friends in the media are insisting with increasing hysteria that Donald Trump is imposing fascism on America. Their apocalyptical narrative is as simple as it is false: President Trump has begun the transformation of the USA into a fascist state. But the feverish intensity with which this tall story is told cannot conceal its mendacity. Trump has not, as fascists do, created blackshirt hit squads to terrorise and torture opponents, nor courts to jail them without just cause. And no rational observer believes his aim is to replace political parties with a one-party cult, or democracy with dictatorship. But above all, perhaps, the story is

Saturday

28 Jun 2025

Steerpike

Watch: Glastonbury crowd chant ‘death to the IDF’

Is this year’s Glastonbury line-up the worst ever? There’s Kneecap, of course: those tough-talking IRA cheerleaders who simply LOVE revelling in the imagery of terrorist violence, right up until the point it risks costing a British state grant – or actually serving some jail time. But it seems they now have some fierce competition in the moron stakes from Bob Vylan, an English punk duo. Their music (predictably) focuses on being black in the UK and how terribly tough it is to live in one of the most prosperous, peaceful and established democracies on Earth. So with all their penetrating insight and profoundly original thought, it is no surprise that

Steerpike

Starmer changes his tune on peerage rules

Sir Keir Starmer seems to be changing his mind a lot these days. Whether it is welfare cuts or the ‘island of strangers’ speech, a grooming gangs inquiry or winter fuel, the Prime Minister is struggling to keep consistent line on much at present. So it is perhaps no surprise then that the Labour leader has changed his tune on the rules around peerages too. In a little-noticed statement to parliament, snuck out last Thursday, Starmer provided an update on the ‘roles and responsibilities of all parties involved in making nominations to the House of Lords.’ He addressed the subject of the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC), saying that:

Steerpike

Tory MP in new ‘cash for questions’ row

Just how many of the 121 Tory MPs elected last summer will be there by the end of this parliament? Already, Patrick Spencer has lost the whip after being charged with two counts of sexual assault. And now, George Freeman finds himself in hot water after the Sunday Times reported allegations about his second job as a £60,000-a-year paid adviser to eco-innovators GHGSat Limited. The former Science Minister reportedly submitted queries to ministers about the sector the firm operates in, potentially handing the company a commercial advantage. He also asked a director at the environmental monitoring company to tell him ‘what to ask about’, in exchanges that may have breached

Steerpike

Lord Falconer’s selective constitutional memory

Good old Charlie Falconer. For more than 15 years now, the noble Lord has been trying, desperately, to ram assisted dying through parliament. Kim Leadbeater’s Bill represents his eighth attempt at legalising suicide following previous efforts in 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2022 and 2024. Now, with a narrow majority of just 23 MPs backing Leadbeater’s legislation, Falconer clearly senses the victory that has eluded him for so long… The New Labour grandee penned a piece in the Times last week headlined ‘Assisted dying will end the anguish. We won’t let wreckers derail it.’ It concluded that MPs had ‘decided the law must change. The Lords will scrutinise and improve

James Heale

Why Keir Starmer is worried about Wales

Keir Starmer’s address to the Welsh Labour conference this morning was exactly the kind of speech we expected. With eleven months to go until a difficult set of devolved elections, the Prime Minister fell back on the greatest hits to play to the party faithful. Labour is the party with the ‘interests of working people at their heart’ and ‘it always will be’, Starmer said. The Senedd elections next May risk producing a ‘backroom stitch-up between the Tories, Reform and Plaid’ with ‘working families left to pick up the bill.’ He reeled off various achievements: the minimum wage increase, workers’ rights, the carer’s allowance and, most significantly, a ‘record uplift to