Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Madeline Grant

Danny Kruger is Reform’s best recruit yet

In fairness, I suspect plenty of Tory MPs are looking for reasons to get out of party conference this year. East Wiltshire MP Danny Kruger – who this afternoon appeared at the Faragean elbow to defect to Reform – has probably found the single best, if drastic, get-out-clause available.  Kruger isn’t the first MP to tread this path of course, but because of his character and standing within the party he leaves, this defection isn’t like the others. Nadine Dorries has probably fallen out with more people before breakfast than most of us will manage in a lifetime. Andrea Jenkyns seemed to have defected with the sole purpose of finding

Matthew Lynn

Can Trump force Nato to get tough on Russian sanctions?

The pipelines would be sealed off. The supertankers would be left in the ports, and the wells would have to be capped. When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, it was confidently assumed that sanctions on Moscow’s oil and gas industry would be so punishing for its fragile economy that it would quickly force Vladimir Putin to plead for a settlement. Unfortunately, it has not worked out like that. Instead, the sanctions against Russia have been widely flouted. In response, President Trump has demaned that Nato makes them stick. But would sanctions really work and cripple Putin’s war machine?  President Trump was in typically robust form. Over the weekend, he

Ross Clark

The NHS is right to drive a hard bargain for new drugs

It is not often that the NHS gets accused of being too good at negotiating down costs. But that seems to be gist of the case levelled against it regarding the cost of drugs. AstraZeneca has paused the expansion of a research facility in Cambridge and US pharmaceutical firm Merck has cancelled a plan to invest £1 billion in a research centre in London. In both cases the blame has been cast on the tight-fistedness of the NHS in not paying enough for drugs. If you don’t pay, goes the argument, then you won’t get investment in new drugs.     We have to accept that we are never going to get new

James Heale

Why Danny Kruger’s defection matters

This morning Nigel Farage unveiled his latest defector: Danny Kruger. The Wiltshire MP boasts impeccable Tory credentials. He served as David Cameron’s speechwriter, Boris Johnson’s political secretary and Robert Jenrick’s campaign manager just last summer. His defection today will therefore come as a serious blow to those who argue that the Conservative party stands a better chance than Reform of winning the next election. Kruger told a press conference in Mayfair that his former Tory party were ‘finished as the main opposition to the left’. His argument is that Reform is the ‘new home’ of conservatism. His new role in Reform is ‘preparing the party for government’  – a theme

Steerpike

Danny Kruger defects to Reform

Another day, another defector joins Reform. This time it’s Tory MP Danny Kruger, who has joined Nigel Farage’s outfit to lead the party’s ‘preparations for government’ – despite the politician never having held a ministerial job himself. The first sitting Conservative politician to defect to Reform since last year’s election gave a punchy statement at Farage’s London presser this morning, telling his audience: I hoped after our defeat last year that the Conservative party would learn the obvious lesson, that the old ways don’t work, that centrism is not enough, that real change is needed. But no. We have had a year of stasis and drift and the sham unity that comes from

Steerpike

Alastair Campbell apologises over false Charlie Kirk claim

Well, well, well. It’s not often that onetime New Labour spinner Alastair Campbell expresses any form of contrition. But after he made a pretty startling claim about the late political activist Charlie Kirk – who was shot and killed last week – the communications director-turned-podcaster has been forced to concede that on this occasion, like on many others, he was in fact wrong. Speaking on his podcast The Rest of Politics, Campbell bleated within hours of Kirk’s death that ‘it is important that we don’t lose sight of some of the views that he expressed because they were horrific’. He went on to fume: ‘I remember one clip I saw

Gavin Mortimer

Pope Leo is naive about Europe's migrant crisis

Giorgia Meloni has not cracked Italy’s migrant crisis. On the contrary, the number of migrants crossing the central Mediterranean is on the rise once more. A total of 47,313 migrants have crossed this year up to 12 September, which is 3,000 more than the same period in 2024. The vast majority makes land on the island of Lampedusa, like the 228 who disembarked on the small Mediterranean island on Sunday. Their three boats had departed from Zawiya and Homs in Libya, and the passengers were predominantly Egyptians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans. Lampedusa is struggling to cope with the numbers of arrivals despite a system of transferring the migrants to

Gareth Roberts

Tommy Robinson’s ascent was entirely avoidable

There’s a certain thrill in saying, ‘I told you so.’ We all relish the moment when our warnings are vindicated, when the world finally catches up with our foresight. But this time, I genuinely take no pleasure in it. I said Britain would begin to crack, and now it is.  I’m exhausted by those who, years later, grudgingly admit that I was right. I’d much rather be mocked for overreacting, my words dismissed with a snarky ‘this aged well’. At least then, the worst wouldn’t have come to pass. The recent Unite the Kingdom demonstration, led by Tommy Robinson, brought this into sharp focus. Figures like Laurence Fox and Katie

Sam Leith

Was Charlie Kirk's murder the senseless act of an internet troll?

We are in the grip of old habits. We assume, most of us, that when a prominent political figure is assassinated, the motive for the killing is political. So it was with Charlie Kirk’s assassin. Before anything was known about the killer, President Trump’s allies and outliers decided that it was a symptom of the murderous violence of soi-disant antifascists on the left. When it emerged, subsequently, that our man was from a republican family and that he potentially may have been part of the white supremacist ‘groyper’ movement, anti-Trump types chalked it up to the violence of the Right.  There may have been more justification for the latter position

Lisa Haseldine

The AfD's mission to seduce West Germany is paying off

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party continued its westward march in popularity across Germany yesterday, securing third place in the local elections in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Preliminary results show that, alongside the outcomes of mayoralty and district administrator elections which took place in the state, the far-right party won 14.5 per cent of the vote across the 396 municipalities which went to the polls. The liberal SPD party came in second with 22.1 per cent, while the CDU – the governing party in Berlin – secured a third of the vote, with 33.3 per cent. The German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, will be breathing a small sigh of

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The truth about the 'Unite the Kingdom' march

On Saturday morning, I skipped synagogue and went to the Tommy Robinson march instead. By the time I arrived at Whitehall to collect my press pass for the Unite the Kingdom rally, the sun was shining and the stage was still being set up. I had optimistically planned to go straight to Shabbat prayers and return by 1 p.m., when the march was expected to reach its endpoint. But that proved unrealistic. So I stayed put, somewhat overdressed in a suit, and spoke with two Scottish women setting up tables of homemade cakes and snacks backstage. One told me she had been volunteering for Tommy Robinson ever since she first

Sunday

Joe Bedell-Brill

Sunday shows round-up: Peter Kyle on Mandelson’s ‘singular talent’

Chaos continues to follow the prime minister, as damning emails between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein were made public, forcing Keir Starmer to sack the UK ambassador to the US just days before Trump’s scheduled state visit. Details of the emails were reportedly given to Downing Street on Tuesday, but Starmer defended Mandelson in the House of Commons on Wednesday, apparently not knowing about the contents of the emails until Wednesday evening. On Sky News this morning, Business Secretary Peter Kyle told Trevor Phillips that Starmer had taken ‘decisive action’ hours after coming across the emails. Phillips asked Kyle how it was possible that the vetting process had not brought

Max Jeffery

A revolution in the arms bazaar

The global military-industrial complex and its outriders were rammed into a giant indoor pigsty. Dealers and manufacturers and military men and politicians and officials from murky agencies and guys in cowboy hats and sunglasses who only really came to have their photos taken with guns – all of them in a crush to use a printer. It was day one of the arms fair, and they had forgotten to print their credentials at home. ‘Someone’s going to faint!’ cried a failing voice. ‘You can’t do this to humans!’ yelped another. ‘Bro,’ said an American on the phone to someone, ‘this is a complete fuckshow.’ As the bundle swirled and groaned,

Bartek Staniszewski

Autists are the answer to Britain's worklessness crisis

The UK’s worklessness problem is a well-documented crisis. Over six million people in the UK – almost a sixth of the working-age population – are on out-of-work benefits, a number that has nearly doubled in the last seven years. The government’s attempt to begin to address this with the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill ended in fiasco. Diagnoses for the spectacular rise in worklessness vary from the long-term effects of the pandemic through to a lack of well-paid jobs to the perverse incentives within the welfare system. But one notable culprit seems to have escaped the attention of policy wonks: autism. People with autism could therefore make up

Charlie Walsham

Graham Linehan is right: there needs to be a reckoning at the BBC

Ever since Graham Linehan’s bail restrictions were relaxed and the Father Ted creator was allowed back on X, he’s been firing off a blizzard of posts with the urgency of a man who senses that, for the first time in years, he is finally being taken seriously.  One post particularly caught my eye. It stated: ‘BBC Director General Tim Davie should resign for misleading the UK public on this issue.’ Linehan has occasionally exhibited a reckless tendency to stray into infuriated hyperbole on social media, a trait that has drawn criticism in the past and legal jeopardy in the present. But the suggestion made in this post is worthy of serious

Will Prescott

What Keir Starmer can learn from Ramsay MacDonald

Since Labour’s triumphant return to power barely a year ago, the party in government has floundered amid a struggling economy, a lack of political vision, and an inability to pass difficult reforms. Unfortunately for Keir Starmer, the situation could yet deteriorate much further. Just look at the implosion of the Labour government in 1931. Like the Starmer government almost a century later, Labour won the 1929 election on a relatively weak share of the vote. Former prime minister Ramsay MacDonald won 287 seats and just 37.1 per cent of the vote. Last July, Keir Starmer won 33.7 per cent of the vote. Much like 2024, the 1929 election also occurred

Saturday

Julie Burchill

In praise of Peter Kyle

Call him a tech bro’, a hustler or even – hiss! – a Starmerite. But my word, I’m keen on my MP – and recently promoted business secretary – Peter Kyle, the Honourable Member for Hove and Portslade. That doesn’t mean I voted for him last time; I wasn’t going to assist Robbie the Robot into power. I voted Reform, being acquainted with the candidate Martin Hess and finding him both clever and good company. I did vote for Kyle the first time, and became acquainted slightly with him, too; as they say of the 1960s, if you can remember the Peter Kyle Election Victory Night Party of 2015, you

Lloyd Evans

Inside Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ rally

The ‘nonce party.’ That’s how Zarah Sultana described the Labour party at a rally in Brixton last night where the independent MP for Coventry South addressed supporters of her new movement, Your Party. She claimed to have posted numerous images of Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein on her X account, but her warnings went unheeded by Labour strategists. The lively rally opened with a videotaped greeting from Jeremy Corbyn, co-leader alongside Sultana, who affirmed his support for ‘Net Zero by 2030’, and a handful of benefit increases. After this formality, his name was barely mentioned. Sultana topped the bill ahead of seven activists who urged the crowd to oppose ‘the