Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Madeline Grant

Keir Starmer has no interest in answering Kemi Badenoch’s questions

In the last 48 hours the government of Sir Keir Starmer has ended a link between the House of Lords and the Anglo-Saxon Witan by booting out the hereditary peers and beginning the process of removing the right to trial by jury which goes back to Magna Carta. He probably, genuinely, believes this to have been a good couple of days in the office. After this bout of constitutional vandalism, Sir Keir came to one thing he probably also wants to abolish but currently cannot: PMQs. Mrs Badenoch tried to ask him about fuel duty – Sir Keir, however, thought he had detected a change in Tory tone and policy

Oscar Edmondson

Starmer should be honest about why he picked Mandelson

15 min listen

This afternoon we have had the first tranche of documents released by the government relating to the process by which Peter Mandelson was chosen to be US ambassador. Whilst we have got a clearer picture on the big question – how much Starmer and the government knew about Mandelson’s association with Epstein – Labour are not out of the woods. Quotes from Jonathan Powell reveal that the vetting process was rushed and that – he thought – they didn’t dig deep enough. There is also the small matter of Peter Mandelson’s request for a payout of over half a million pounds. Oscar Edmondson, Tim Shipman and Isabel Hardman discuss. Produced

Starmer should be honest about why he picked Mandelson
Matthew Lynn

Replacing Churchill with wildlife on our banknotes is a mistake

The Bank of England has announced that pictures of wildlife will replace famous faces on our banknotes. A cute kitten, perhaps? Or a puppy doing some tricks? Or, given that China may well have hacked into the system, even a panda bear? Whichever animals end up making the cut, it’s goodbye to Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, JMW Turner and Alan Turing – and the proud tradition of honouring our greatest Brits. What a travesty. There is nothing wrong, of course, with wildlife pictures in themselves. But on a bank note? Seriously? In reality, paper money, at least since we came off the gold standard, has always been a bit of

Tim Shipman

Revealed: Keir Starmer’s new plan to get closer to the EU

A Labour MP, reflecting on the problems the Prime Minister faces over the war in Iran, observed this week: ‘Keir got it right, but things keep going wrong.’ His point was that Starmer kept Britain out of the Israeli-American air strikes, a position popular both with the parliamentary Labour party and the electorate, yet the impact of that conflict has laid bare three serious problems at the heart of the British state. First, there has been a fracturing of relations between Starmer and Britain’s defence chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton. Second is the vulnerability of the economy to energy price shocks. Third is Ed Miliband’s net-zero crusade, which

Today

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Suicide drones hit Tehran as instability mounts inside Iran

Overnight on Wednesday, around 100 Basij soldiers were killed across Tehran by dozens to hundreds of suicide drones in a covert operation some are comparing to Israel’s previous pager operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The drones hit Basij bases, motorcycles, and vehicles, targeting IRGC, Basij, and special forces checkpoints. Inside Israel, political debate is intensifying over the war’s long-term objectives Iraq also experienced a heavy night of strikes against pro-Iranian militias. At the same time, the regime in Iran continues its efforts at self-preservation through sustained attrition from within Iran and on other fronts. Earlier on Wednesday, Washington issued a clear warning to Iranian civilians to stay clear of naval vessels,

Maurizio Geri

The Iran war has exposed the world’s maritime chokepoint

The war with Iran is exposing a vulnerability at the heart of the global gas market: the extraordinary concentration of liquefied natural gas supply in the Persian Gulf. Qatar alone accounts for roughly a fifth of global LNG exports, almost all of it passing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. The conflict has illustrated how easily a single maritime chokepoint could interrupt a significant share of the world’s gas trade. Even if the war ends soon, the vulnerability it has exposed will not disappear US president Donald Trump has suggested the conflict may soon end, describing the campaign as largely achieved and possibly over “very soon.” The Gulf monarchies also appear eager for a

Atbin Moayedi

How the Islamic Republic tried – and failed – to destroy Iranian culture

The Islamic Republic in Iran is not only at war with the United States and Israel. For years, the country’s government has been waging war on Iranian culture. Music, poetry, storytelling, dogs, dancing, singing, art, dice and card games, romance, tolerance and the honouring of women are central to Persian culture and its ancient history. Yet under the Islamic Republic, these cherished expressions are banned or stigmatised, especially when pursued by women. Their departure from the country they love is one of the most poignant brain drains in history In the dark, dystopian times immediately following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, couples holding hands or a man so much as

Yesterday

Isabel Hardman

Starmer and Badenoch were like squabbling kids at PMQs

Prime Minister’s Questions today saw a leader under repeated attack for a ‘screeching U-turn’ and their suitability to be Prime Minister called into question. Unusually, though, Keir Starmer was the one making that accusation, rather than being on the receiving end of it. He came to the chamber determined to tell Kemi Badenoch that she had made the wrong call on whether to join the US-Israeli action in Iran and that he, therefore, didn’t need to take lectures from her. Badenoch was, as it happens, not really lecturing Starmer; she just wanted to know whether he was going to go ahead with the planned rise in fuel duty in September. The Prime

Madeline Grant

David Lammy’s depraved new world

Beamish, the living history museum in County Durham, invites visitors to ‘step into the past’. It shows how people lived in the early 20th century and attracts plenty who want to see what life was like in a simpler and – in some ways – better time. On Tuesday evening, we had a Beamish moment in the House of Commons. Sir Geoffrey Cox rose to speak on the subject of the government’s abolition of jury trials. The Tory grandee brought real expertise that is rare these days in the Commons. Unlike the numerous MPs who claim the title despite having actually just sat on HR tribunals for the Cats Protection

Rod Liddle

Has Reform peaked?

Murton is a rather frowsy former pit village in County Durham, about half a dozen miles down the A19 from Sunderland. Chip shops, tanning salons, elderly people with no teeth on mobility scooters, huge cannabis farm in the disused old Co-op store which has just been busted by the Old Bill. It almost became a ghost town after the pit closed in 1991, but they built a largeish retail park on the outskirts so people could spend money they didn’t have on useless shit and bad food. Its north side has one of the lowest average incomes in the county (£34,400) and a much lower than average life expectancy. Benefit

Simon Hunt

Why shouldn’t Nigel Farage invest in crypto?

The nation is – apparently – in shock. After giving endless speeches about how much he loves cryptocurrencies, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has revealed that he himself has invested in a crypto firm called Stack. Despite being accused of ‘grift’, Farage is far from the first politician to hold stocks and shares that risk overlapping with his professional duties. Indeed, it is hardly an established convention that politicians must divest all their assets upon entering Parliament. There are, in fact, plenty of examples to the contrary. The Sunak family, comfortably the wealthiest-ever occupants of Downing Street, have a net worth of north of half a billion pounds thanks to

Ross Clark

Slavery reparations will be the next Chagos betrayal

Well, who would have guessed? Emboldened by Mauritius’s success in persuading Keir Starmer to surrender the Chagos Islands – which were never even part of Mauritius in the first place – the African Union is reported to be planning to take Britain to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to demand reparations for slavery and colonisation. Their case is pretty feeble, and for reasons which ought to be obvious. You can’t compensate slaves who lived 200 years ago by making cash transfers to nations from which they were taken, especially when the tribal kingdoms which existed when the slaves were taken were themselves involved in the slave trade. Moreover, the

Steerpike

Trail hunting battle looms for rural lobby

Tally ho! That sound you can hear is Keir Starmer’s barmy army charging into the fray once more. Having waged war over the Chagos Islands, assisted dying and hereditary peers, now the Labour party has found another cause on which to burn precious political capital: trail hunting. This is the process whereby hounds following a scent-based trail rather than live animals, following the ban in the New Labour years. A decision that Tony Blair rued bitterly in his memoirs… Ministers promised a consultation on trail hunting in early 2026, with an announcement expected this month. But opponents are not sitting on their hands, with a serious fundraising operation in the

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The Al-Quds march should have been banned years ago

The government has approved a request from the Metropolitan Police to ban the annual Al-Quds day march in London, which was due to take place this Sunday. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said the decision was necessary to prevent ‘serious public disorder’. The Met cited the expected scale of the protest, the likelihood of large counter-demonstrations, and the wider tensions generated by the conflict in the Middle East. Each year the same scenes returned: Hezbollah banners, chants celebrating the ‘resistance’, speakers denouncing Zionism as an open expression of hostility towards Jews The march itself will not take place. A stationary protest may still occur under strict conditions. While this is a

Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump is tarnishing Brand America

Donald Trump has become something of a sole man. His cabinet members and White House visitors report that the President has developed a penchant for handing out $145 (£108) Florsheim shoes in an effort to up their sartorial game. In his Life of Johnson, Boswell reported that Dr. Johnson recoiled at an ‘eleemosynary supply’ of charitably donated shoes as an impecunious student at Christ Church, Oxford, and threw them away with indignation. Trump’s followers have no such freedom of action. ‘All the boys have them,’ one official told The Wall Street Journal, which ran a picture of his administration leaders obediently lined up and wearing the same shiny black leather numbers. Despite Trump’s best efforts, however, the administration

Michael Murphy

Should Reform really have backed Trump’s Iran war?

As the opening salvos of a possible third world war were fired across the Middle East, Britain’s once peerless navy was nowhere to be seen. HMS Dragon, one of our ‘Daring-class’ air-defence destroyers, sat idle in Portsmouth for a week after a drone struck a British base in Cyprus, partly because MoD contractors dare not work out of hours. It is unclear what the Tories and Reform thought was to be gained from rattling blunt sabres in support of this conflict If only our politicians showed the same insouciance. Instead, Kemi Badenoch has been pictured sitting resolutely in a tank, an impressive feat given how few remain in existence. Badenoch

David Shipley

Why the state wants to clamp down on homeschooling

The government’s new cohesion strategy, ‘Protecting What Matters: Towards a more confident, cohesive and resilient United Kingdom’, has attracted attention because of its introduction of an ‘anti Muslim hostility’ code, its erasure of the English as an ethnic identity, and its quite confused and bizarre messaging. What has so far gone unremarked is its Mussolinian energy regarding education. This goal is clear. A whole raft of new rules will apply to schools. There will be obligatory citizenship classes, including a promise to ‘raise awareness of threats to democracy’. This takes on a rather more sinister tone when you realise that elsewhere the document redefines patriotism to mean agreeing with the

Laurie Wastell

Multicultural Britain is becoming harder to defend

‘Britain’s most precious asset is our diverse and cohesive democracy’, trilled the opening of a government social cohesion plan just two years ago. The very fact the plan had to be created may have suggested otherwise, but back then, the captains of the multicultural state were at least still trying to keep appearances up. Multiculturalism now expects ordinary Brits to channel the Blitz spirit just to live in their own country. Two years later, following scores of appalling crimes by asylum seekers, ever more revelations about the rape gangs, Islamist terrorism, country-wide anti-immigration riots and blatant electoral sectarianism, those going to bat for multicultural Britain can scarcely muster the strength

Mani Basharzad

Why the Venezuela model would be a disaster for Iran

What next for Iran? Donald Trump appears to have a plan: the Venezuela model. The US president has hinted that, just as with the South American nation, he wants to try working with elements inside the existing regime, rather than backing exiled opposition figures. The biggest massacres in Iran’s recent history happened under so-called reformers ‘We have a formula, Venezuela, smart country,’ he said this week. ‘We’ve taken out 100 million barrels of oil which is now in Houston…being taken care of and made so beautiful in refineries.’ But if Trump really is planning on copying his playbook for Venezuela in Iran, he should be warned: it will be a

Patrick West

Why do Britain’s councils hate patriotism so much?

The war waged by those in authority on those who make overt displays of patriotism shows no sign of relenting. This campaign against Englishness and Britishness has never been an open, honest one, undertaken with manifest intent. This is a devious war pursued through crafty bureaucratic means and framed in the timorous language of health and safety. This offensive began as a response to events last summer, when, under the banner of ‘Operation Raise the Colours’, many individuals took it upon themselves to attach St George’s and Union flags to lampposts throughout England. In response, many councils, prompted by complaints from some who felt ‘uncomfortable’, or run by those who

Lara Brown

The social media moral panic

There is rarely much to commend Keir Starmer for. But on Monday he blocked an amendment to the schools bill which would have required all social media companies to ban under-16s from using their products. In voting against this legislation, MPs have preserved anonymity on the internet, resisted further state powers over what we see online and avoided caving in to a moral panic gripping Westminster. I don’t want to lavish too much praise on the Prime Minister just yet. The sweeping powers brought in by the Online Safety Act already censor most of online life. Unless you provide companies like Substack and X with identification, you aren’t able to watch speeches in parliament about grooming gangs or content which refers to ‘illegal immigration and people smuggling’.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Will Donald Trump avoid the mistakes made by George Bush in Iraq?

26 min listen

Trump has signalled that the Middle East war could be ‘over ​soon’ and pledged to lift sanctions after talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Freddy Gray is joined by Jacob Heilbrunn and Robert Bryce to discuss why Trump was potentially unprepared for Iran’s retaliation, what could come from the talks with Putin, and why Britain can only get their energy prices down by drilling.

Will Donald Trump avoid the mistakes made by George Bush in Iraq?
Stephen Daisley

Why Alba failed

Farewell, then, Alba, the little party that tried to take on the Scottish political establishment and learned, as others had before it, that the establishment always wins. You can join it but you can never beat it. When Salmond went, so did Alba’s soul Just to rub salt into the wound, the party has imploded only two months before the Scottish Parliament elections. And that was Alba’s only real purpose: to contribute to a pro-independence majority at Holyrood which, so the notion went, would then notify Westminster that Scotland was leaving. This was the plan set out by the late Alex Salmond in which he would have played the part

Michael Gove

Is Britain still a great power? – and why Ed Miliband should go

42 min listen

This week: Michael and Maddie discuss the escalating crisis in the Middle East and ask a bigger question about Britain’s place in the world – is the UK still a great power, or has the conflict exposed just how limited our influence has become? They debate whether Britain has any real choice but to follow America in foreign policy, what the war reveals about the country’s diminished military capabilities, and whether Westminster is finally confronting the reality of Britain’s global position. Also on the podcast, they examine the growing backlash against Ed Miliband’s energy agenda. With war in the Middle East sending shockwaves through global energy markets, has Labour’s push