Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Brendan O’Neill

The usual suspects were curiously quiet about Iryna Zarutska's brutal murder

Did Iryna Zarutska’s life matter? Judging by the delayed, sheepish media coverage of her killing in North Carolina last month, it seems not. Apparently the violent death of this young, beautiful refugee to the United States was a non-event, undeserving of the liberal rage and tsunami of pained thinkpieces that tend to follow other senseless killings in the US. For two weeks her tragedy was disregarded, her suffering ignored. The suspect is one Decarlos Brown Jr, a mentally ill, African-American vagrant. He has been charged with first-degree murder We need answers on the cold indifference of the activist class and the media establishment to this abominable slaying of an innocent.

William Moore

Royal treatment, neurodiverse history & is everyone on Ozempic?

45 min listen

First: a look ahead to President Trump’s state visit next week Transatlantic tensions are growing as the row over Peter Mandelson’s role provides an ominous overture to Donald Trump’s state visit next week. Political editor Tim Shipman has the inside scoop on how No. 10 is preparing. Keir Starmer’s aides are braced for turbulence. ‘The one thing about Trump which is entirely predictable is his unpredictability,’ one ventures. And government figures fear he may go off message on broadcast – he is scheduled to be interviewed by GB News. It is rare for leaders to receive a second visit, especially those in their second term. But, as Tim says, ‘Britishness is

Sam Olsen

Will Nato pass – or fail – Russia's great test?

Poland woke yesterday morning to what its prime minister, Donald Tusk, called an “unprecedented violation of Polish airspace.” In the early hours, a “huge” swarm of Russian drones – at least 19 by Warsaw’s count, perhaps 23 according to Polish media – crossed the frontier during overnight strikes on Ukraine. Polish and Nato fighters scrambled, including Dutch F-35s, to bring them down. Airports were closed as air-raid sirens wailed. In one village, falling debris from an intercepted drone crashed into a residential block. For Vladimir Putin, Ukraine is not the goal but the stepping stone This was not business as usual. Drones have strayed into Poland’s skies before, but this

Rod Liddle

The misplaced sympathy for Angela Rayner

One evening last week I came home, flipped on the TV and saw on the news what must surely be a eulogy for some sainted figure who had been taken from us prematurely, such was the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Mother Teresa, I wondered? Isn’t she dead already? Only as I sat down with my cup of tea and saw a photograph of a woman with what looked like a dead fox on her head did I realise that the lamenting was on behalf of Our Blessed Lady of the Ginger Growler and the Vapes who had, apparently, resigned. It would not have surprised me, from the tone

The Spectator

Starmer’s survival depends on going against his instincts

Athelstan has long faded from public imagination, despite being the king who, in 927 ad, first united England. But thanks to a campaign by historians such as Tom Holland, David Woodman and Michael Wood, the 1,100th anniversary of his coronation last week was celebrated with a memorial service, a new biography and the naming of a train in his honour. Athelstan’s kingdom fragmented after his death, but its brief unification reminds us of the deep history of England and its constitutional order. What followed from Athelstan was the rule of law, parliamentary sovereignty, Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights: principles that have survived for centuries and inspired imitation across

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Angela Rayner resigns, Poland downs Russian drones and Israel bombs Qatar

Home The government shuddered when Angela Rayner resigned as housing secretary, deputy prime minister and deputy leader of the Labour party after being found to have breached the ministerial code by Sir Laurie Magnus, the independent adviser on ministerial standards. He said she had followed advice from a legal firm when not paying enough stamp duty on her new flat in Hove, but ignored a recommendation to seek expert tax advice. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, called her ‘the living embodiment of social mobility’. He then threw himself into a great big cabinet shuffle, in which Yvette Cooper became Foreign Secretary and was replaced as Home Secretary by Shabana

Nadine Dorries

Why I gave up on the Tories

The days between my leaving the Tories and joining Reform were an odd uneven time. It was the hardest decision I have ever made – I’d been a Conservative party member for 30 years, after all. Before the announcement, only three people knew what I was planning to do. In Westminster almost everything leaks so we kept the information tight. Once I had made up my mind, Nigel Farage and I held several clandestine meetings in a secluded room in a Mayfair members’ club to decide how to break the news. I initially rather fancied defecting on the eve of the Conservative party conference, for maximum impact. But in the

Tim Shipman

Winston, Windsor and ‘private time’: inside Trump’s state visit

The first time Donald Trump was on an official visit to the UK, in July 2018, he was deep in conversation with Theresa May during the state banquet at Blenheim Palace when his interview with the Sun dropped, offering a range of unwelcome thoughts about the then prime minister and her handling of Brexit. May’s communications team decided to let her enjoy the meal before dealing with the fallout. When the President lands in Britain next week for another two-day jamboree of pomp and politics, Keir Starmer’s aides know what to expect. ‘The one thing about Trump which is entirely predictable is his unpredictability,’ one ventures. The potential landmines lie

James Heale

The return of Keir vs Andy

When Labour MPs met to hear from their leader on Monday, there was one group who felt particularly aggrieved. In the government’s reshuffle following the resignation of Angela Rayner, the party’s powerful north-west caucus had suffered a ‘machine gunning like nothing else’, in the words of a senior party official. Some 40 per cent of the reshuffle casualties are from this region. The changes risked, in the words of one aide, ‘reopening the whole Keir and Andy psychodrama’. Within hours, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, had duly attacked Keir Starmer’s new ‘London-centric’ line-up. Lucy Powell, a close Burnham ally, who was sacked as leader of the Commons, announced

Wednesday

Madeline Grant

Even Rachel Reeves pitied Keir Starmer at PMQs

Statute 343.36 in the US state of Minnesota reads thus: ‘No person shall operate, run or participate in a contest, game, or other like activity, in which a pig, greased, oiled or otherwise, is released and wherein the object is the capture of the pig’. I hope, for the sake of the integrity of their state laws, no Minnesotans were watching Prime Minister’s Questions today. There was one little piggy very much at large, greased and squealing, trying to avoid capture. Its name? Sir Keir Starmer, KCB. It started badly. The first big bad wolf to come a-knocking was Dr Luke Evans. He did so in a calm and collected

Steerpike

Six questions Lord Mandelson must answer over his Jeffrey Epstein links

Can Lord Mandelson cling on as Our Man in Washington? That is the question all of Westminster is asking this morning. The British ambassador to the United states did a grovelling interview with the Sun‘s Harry Cole today in which he admitted that he had continued his association with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein ‘far longer than I should have done.’ It comes after a congressional investigation discovered that the Labour peer had referred to Epstein as his ‘best pal’ in a birthday message he wrote for the convicted sex offender in 2003. What did Mandy tell Starmer about his relationship with Epstein before being appointed Ambassador? Mandelson told Cole

Freddy Gray

Mandelson's Epstein problem is not going away

When King Charles hosts Donald Trump for the state banquet at Windsor Castle next week, the dignitaries should know better than to mention Jeffrey Epstein. Inevitably, however, Epstein’s ghost will hang over proceedings, the paedo-Banquo at the feast. In the coming days, the details of Mandelson’s bond with Epstein may end up overshadowing all talk of the special relationship The royal family will entertain the President, though the Duke of York will (surely?) stay away. He no longer works for the crown and everyone knows why. Trump, meanwhile, will still be batting away suggestions that in 2003 he contributed a puerile drawing to Epstein’s 50th ‘birthday book’ – a strange

James Heale

Badenoch skewers Starmer over Mandelson’s Epstein link

12 min listen

Kemi Badenoch has just skewered Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions on the topic of Peter Mandelson’s association with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.  Badenoch learned from her mistakes last week and devoted all six of her questions to trying to get Mandelson fired as British Ambassador to Washington. She pointed out that the victims of Epstein had ‘called for Lord Mandelson to be sacked’, and then asked whether Starmer had been aware ‘of this intimate relationship when he appointed Lord Mandelson to be our ambassador in Washington’. It was potentially her most convincing performance yet and she managed to pull together diffuse threads of world and domestic affairs into

Isabel Hardman

Badenoch has learned from her PMQs mistakes

Kemi Badenoch learned from her mistakes at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, and devoted all six of her questions to trying to get Peter Mandelson fired as British Ambassador to Washington. Badenoch devoted all six of her questions to trying to get Peter Mandelson fired as British Ambassador Last week, she tacked on random observations about Angela Rayner to questions about the economy – though today she did still try to claim credit for the former deputy prime minister’s departure. The annoyance in the Tory party at this missed open goal had been palpable, and so Badenoch got straight to it in her first question. Pointing out that a Nato

Patrick West

Why Reform's critics say they're fascist

To smear your opponents as fascists or Nazis has always been the perennial temptation of those who seek to terminate an argument – or have no argument of their own. It’s the last resort of the callow, the ignorant and the desperate. And it’s an argument that just won’t go away. They’re doing this – and McDonnell is joining in – because it’s the last thing they’ve got left Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell deployed it in all tawdry gruesomeness yesterday. Speaking at a fringe event at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference, the MP said: ‘Reform are a protest fascist organisation. We’ve seen it in the Thirties. What they

John Ferry

It’s rich of Nicola Sturgeon to criticise flag-waving

The audacity of it! The hypocrisy! First, Nicola Sturgeon says yesterday in a TV interview that she’s ‘not that into flags’ and tells us all to ‘calm down about flags’. Then, later in the day, her successor as first minister, Humza Yousaf, chimes in with one of those creepy walking-while-talking videos in which he informs us that ‘Hate wrapped in a Saltire is still hate.’ Scotland’s flag ‘belongs to everyone’, he mawkishly intones. This, of course, comes in the context of Operation Raise the Colours, the flag raising campaign seen by some as a robust exercise in patriotism but criticised by others as intimidatory and racially motivated. The movement has spread to

Euan McColm

The Scottish Greens don't seem to care about saving the planet

Anyone continuing to labour under the misapprehension that the Scottish Green party is primarily concerned with matters environmental should stop doing so, immediately. Yes, the Greens have long attracted those who hold standard left-wing views on issues from the economy to Palestine to gender ideology – but the raison d’être was always saving the planet, wasn’t it? No longer. Today, the Scottish Green party is, first and foremost, a trans rights organisation. Interviewed by Martin Geissler for a BBC Scotland Scotcast episode this week, recently-elected party co-leaders Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay made this abundantly clear. In fact, anybody who does not accept that trans women are women seems to

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Why Nepal’s Gen Z overthrew its government

Nepal’s prime minister KP Sharma Oli has resigned after nationwide demonstrations descended into bloodshed. At least 22 people have been killed and hundreds injured in the country’s deadliest protests for nearly two decades. Spearheaded by the Nepal’s disaffected youth, the ‘Gen Z protest’ has evolved into one targeting the corruption of the government coalition led by the Congress and Communist parties. The protests were triggered by the government’s decision last week to issue a blanket ban on 26 social media platforms After events took a violent turn on Monday when authorities unleashed fury on the protestors, killing at least 19, demonstrators responded by targeting state institutions in Kathmandu. They ransacked government buildings, including the country’s parliament, and targeted politicians’ homes. Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar, the wife

Limor Simhony Philpott

Starmer must hold his nerve on Palestine Action

Keir Starmer is hardly famous for his grit. But the proscription of Palestine Action is one issue on which the Prime Minister must hold his nerve. Nearly 900 supporters of Palestine Action – a banned terrorist group – were arrested last weekend alone Nearly 900 supporters of Palestine Action – a banned terrorist group – were arrested last weekend alone. The organisation’s supporters – and critics of the proscription – claim that the sheer number of arrests means the current approach isn’t working. It simply isn’t sustainable, they say, to apprehend hundreds of ordinary people for showing support for Palestine Action. They’re wrong: Palestine Action is a dangerous organisation that

Stephen Daisley

Six questions the National must answer

Scottish daily the National is known for its inimitable approach to journalism. The mainstream media bombards SNP ministers with impertinent questions about missed NHS targets, widening attainment gaps, and delayed ferries. The National, on the other hand, does proper reporting, like its front page denouncing the inclusion of Reform on a Question Time panel, the hard-hitting coverage of a Tory politician’s quip about Nicola Sturgeon’s hairdo, and an uncompromising expose on a Labour candidate’s ‘deeply disrespectful’ attitude towards the Gaelic language. While other newspapers fixate on the actions of government, the National is out there bravely holding the opposition to account. This is the lifeblood of democracy: journalists willing to