Politics

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

Wednesday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Britain is not out of the woods on rising inflation just yet

Price rises have unexpectedly eased. The Consumer Price Index rose by just 2.6 per cent in March, down from 2.8 per cent the month before and slightly lower than analysts’ expectations of 2.7 per cent. The figures, just published by the Office for National Statistics, show that the slowdown was driven by falling fuel costs and flat food prices compared to a year ago. Most of the fall was due to lower prices at the pumps, with both petrol and diesel down by 1.6p last month. Meanwhile, prices in some sectors continued to rise – most notably in education, where costs jumped by 7.5 per cent year-on-year, largely due to the introduction

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Is France too weak to stop the violent attacks on its prisons?

A wave of violence is sweeping France as gunmen attack the country’s prisons. In some cases, vehicles belonging to prison staff have been set alight and in other incidents bullets from AK47s were sprayed at the gates. In the eastern city of Nancy, a prison officer was threatened at his home. The violence began on Sunday evening and is ongoing: overnight three vehicles were set ablaze outside Tarascon prison in the Côte d’Azur region, and a fire was started in an apartment where a prison guard lives close to Paris. Graffiti was also sprayed on the wall. No one has been hurt but the coordinated attacks, carried out the length

Cristina Odone

It’s not the government’s job to prepare kids for school

Today, every parent of five-year-olds will find out what school their child will be going to in September. The likelihood is that they will get one of their top choices – last year, 93.2 per cent of families received an offer from their first choice of primary school. Reception class is the introduction to ‘proper’ school, and the tiny tots will do more duck-duck-goose than A-B-C. But today’s children arrive incapable of even this light schedule. As we now have heard so often, many arrive in nappies and many will not know how to speak properly or play nicely. Almost half of teachers say parents have no idea what being school-ready means. And the

Pieter Cleppe

Is Brussels finally cracking down on NGOs?

Over in Brussels, a scandal has erupted over the role of ‘non-governmental organisations’, or NGOs, in European Union decision making. In a new report, the European Court of Auditors, the EU’s in-house financial watchdog, has criticised the European Commission’s ‘opaque’ monitoring of how EU funds are distributed to these organisations. Between 2021 and 2023, the EU dished out €7 billion to 90 NGOs through various funds, focused on environmental policy, migration or science. According to the Court of Auditors,  30 of these NGOs received more than 40 per cent of EU funds between 2014 and 2023 – some €3.3 billion. That may only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to NGO funding. The auditors warned

Tuesday

Catriona Stewart

What could the For Women Scotland judgment mean for women’s rights?

Following months of deliberation, the apex court in the United Kingdom is to rule on For Women Scotland vs The Scottish Ministers. The case has been brought by a grassroots group of gender-critical women backed by JK Rowling. It focuses on the legal constraints surrounding statutory guidance issued by the Scottish ministers on the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. Despite claims to the contrary, the Supreme Court will not on Wednesday decide an answer to the question ‘what is a woman?’ Rather, it is to rule on how ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are defined for the purposes of the law. This may seem a pedantic distinction but, in a

William Atkinson

What Vance understands about Suez

As with so many of the aphorisms and witticisms attributed to Winston Churchill, it is impossible to verify whether the greatest Briton actually ever said that ‘Americans can always be trusted to the right thing, once all the other possibilities have been exhausted’. But that expression immediately came to my mind when reading J. D. Vance’s UnHerd interview – and over a remark entailing Churchill’s prime ministerial successor, to boot. Vance’s real message to Europe? Anthony Eden woz rite. The Vice-President said much of interest. The news that the UK and US are close to signing a ‘great agreement’ on trade had the Ftse 100 rallying. Vance’s claim that that ‘you can’t separate American culture from European

John Foreman

Of course Britain’s military chiefs should be meeting with China

It’s quite something when the Chinese Ministry of Defence is more transparent than its British equivalent. Despite the Prime Minister on assuming office promising ‘transparency in everything we do’, a flying visit to Beijing last Wednesday by the UK chief of defence staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, only emerged via a Times scoop a day later. Official silence from an habitually opaque UK MoD about the first such visit for 10 years ceded the information advantage to China, allowing it to paint a rosy, false picture that Radakin had discussed deepening engagement and cooperation with his Chinese equivalent, General Liu Zhenli. This in turn prompted outrage from UK China hawks who accused Radakin of engaging in ‘a

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Has a US-UK trade deal inched closer?

13 min listen

As Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs keep shifting, leaving countries scrambling to react, there has been some good news for Keir Starmer and the Labour government. Speaking to UnHerd, the US vice-president J.D. Vance spoke up the UK’s chances of securing a trade deal. While this would be a win for Starmer, questions remain over the substance – from agriculture to food, what would be included? And can we really believe it will happen? The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls and deputy US editor Kate Andrews join Patrick Gibbons to discuss.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Steerpike Steerpike

Louise Haigh’s officials lose two phones a week

Just what is it with the Department for Transport and phones? Back in November, Louise Haigh was forced to quit as Secretary of State after allegations about missing mobiles came to light. Then, last week, the Rail Minister Peter Hendy was revealed to have texted while, er, driving a Routemaster bus at rush hour. And today, Steerpike can reveal that the ministry’s mobile phone woes are not just confined to those at an elected level… For it seems that DfT officials have been following Louise Haigh’s lead in misplacing their electronic paraphernalia. A response to a parliamentary question by Tory peer Lord Leigh has revealed that more than 80 mobile

James Heale James Heale

Reform remix Farage’s greatest hits

In truth, there was little that was new in Nigel Farage’s speech today. For more than a decade, he has positioned himself as commander of the ‘people’s army’, fearlessly ‘parking our tanks on Labour’s lawn.’ First, it was Ukip, then it was the Brexit party. Now, his chosen vehicle to crush the establishment is Reform. All the greatest hits were played at today’s party rally: taxes are too high, migration is out of control and working class strongholds have effectively been abandoned. His Durham members lapped it up appreciatively, buoyed by a week in which Reform outflanked the government on British Steel. But while the songbook was familiar, Farage offered

Steerpike Steerpike

Reform UK split on new youth wing

There was great excitement at the end of last year when it was reported that Reform UK was considering launching its own youth wing. For generations, pimple-faced politicos have offered a rich seam of stories for the press. Whether it is drunken Tory boys at Port and Policy night or NUS apparatchiks decrying Israel, the student politicians of today are all too often the Fleet Street headlines of tomorrow. But it is perhaps the thought of its Zoomer enthusiasts ending up splashed on the front of the Mirror that is encouraging some within Reform to think again about an autonomous youth wing. Mr S has heard rumblings for weeks that

Ross Clark Ross Clark

We have more to fear from net zero than from Xi Jinping

The threat by the Chinese company Jingye to close down Britain’s last two blast furnaces, in spite of the offer of help from the government, is yet more reminder of the perils of doing business with a potentially hostile state. Whatever the motives for Chinese companies to get involved in the running of critical UK infrastructure, there is a threat that they will wield their power in ways that are not helpful to UK energy and industrial security – to put it mildly. Yet none of this seems to have deterred Ed Miliband last month when he visited Beijing and – it now emerges – signed a ‘clean energy partnership’

Eliot Wilson

J.D. Vance’s disdain for Europe has never been clearer

Being vice president of the United States is a strange role. John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s understudy for his first two terms, dismissed the office as ‘not worth a bucket of warm piss’, but it was the first incumbent, John Adams, who put his finger on its one transcendent quality. ‘I am vice president. In this I am nothing, but I may be everything.’ That nod to ‘everything’ makes Vice President J.D. Vance important. By the next presidential election in November 2028, Donald Trump will be 82, and unless he defies any rational reading of the 22nd amendment, he cannot continue as president. That places Vance in the pound seats

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is Britain really going to get a trade deal with the US?

Donald Trump loves Britain and loves the King; therefore we can expect a trade deal. That is the gist of J.D. Vance’s interview with UnHerd. Whether that means anything in practice is another matter. Evidently, the President’s love and affection was not enough to spare us from a 10 per cent tariff on exports to the US (and 25 per cent for cars). While Trump changed his mind last week and delayed most tariffs for 90 days there was no delay to the introduction of the 10 per cent tariffs, which will apply to all countries. All that happened as a result of last Thursday’s pullback was that Britain lost

Steerpike Steerpike

Could Labour hand British Steel to another Chinese owner?

The Labour government has a British Steel-sized problem that doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon. Sir Keir Starmer’s army took control of the production plant on Saturday after parliament was recalled in a rare move. Legislation was pushed through both houses to prevent the closure of the UK’s only virgin steel producer after Chinese company Jingye threatened to turn the blast furnaces off. But despite the whole affair raising questions about why a Chinese business had been allowed to control a crucial UK production plant in the first place, now industry minister Sarah Jones has suggested that the Labour lot is, er, not ruling out another Chinese owner

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Hashem Abedi should never have been in this country

If there has been one constant in Hashem Abedi’s miserable life it has been the determined failure of the British state to protect its citizens from men like him. Abedi is accused of inflicting ‘life-threatening injuries’ on three prison officers in an attack at HMP Frankland on Saturday. Injuries are said to include ‘burns, scalds and stab wounds’, with Abedi reported to have scalded the guards with hot cooking oil and stabbed them with improvised weapons. Two men remain in hospital as of writing. Abedi was jailed for a minimum of 55 years after being found guilty on 22 counts of murder for his role in the Manchester Arena attack. Hashem helped his brother

Jane Stannus

Why have Canada’s conservatives backed euthanasia?

There’s two weeks left before Canada’s federal election, and we’re dying over here. Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney seems more and more likely to walk away with the top job, while Poilievre is busy bowing and scraping before the sacred cows of the left. This week, Poilievre decided, for some reason, to pledge to keep euthanasia legal. He said his government would not expand the eligibility for assisted suicide, but that people would ‘continue to have that right.’ This makes no sense. Canada’s euthanasia regime is the brainchild of the Liberal party, forced upon Canada by an activist Supreme Court with a majority of Liberal appointees, and it developed

Matthew Lynn

Is Donald Trump ready to weather a US recession?

A recession now looks even more certain for the United States than it does for the UK. Output has flattened. The chaotic implementation of Donald Trump’s tariff regime has left businesses bewildered. And consumers will soon be facing huge price rises. Of course, the States might well emerge in better shape at the end of it. The trouble is, President Trump has done nothing to prepare the voters for the pain ahead – and he will find a downturn very tough politically.  It is probably one of the less controversial calls Goldman Sachs has ever made. The bank’s chief executive David Solomon argued yesterday that the ‘prospect of a recession

Jonathan Edwards

Trouble is brewing for the Tories in Wales

Next year, the people of Wales will elect their seventh national parliament. For the first time in a quarter of a century of devolved governance, its implications will be felt way beyond Offa’s Dyke. Westminster should be taking notice of the potentially seismic political developments at play, which look set to smash the established political order and could be a harbinger for the future of politics at a UK level. To give context for those unfamiliar with Welsh politics, the Senedd (Welsh parliament) resembles the Westminster orthodoxy in many ways, in that the main two parties are Labour and the Conservatives. Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, has on occasion shaken

James Heale James Heale

Nigel Farage turns his guns on the Red Wall

Much of the commentary on the local elections has focused thus far on the Tories’ southern discontent. But today, Nigel Farage will turn his guns on the north of England, as he seeks to position his party as the real challenger to Labour across swathes of the so-called Red Wall. Key voters in these northern constituencies broke with Keir Starmer’s party over Brexit, elected Boris Johnson in 2019 but then switched back to Labour in protest at the Tories last July. Given the government’s subsequent woes, Farage clearly now senses an opening. This afternoon’s speech has been heavily trailed, with a column in the Sunday Express and the splash of today’s Sun. ‘Britain