Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Dalibor Rohac

Poland's divisions are bad news for Europe

Against the background of turbulent transatlantic relations, the visit this week of Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, to Washington was deemed a success. US president Donald Trump affirmed continuation of US commitment to Poland’s security and invited Poland to join G20, in a testament to the country’s impressive economic record. Yet the trip also leaves a bitter aftertaste by exposing the depth of Poland’s political divisions. These splits are starting to affect Poland’s ability to throw around its weight on the global stage – precisely at a moment when Poland’s voice is more needed than ever. The world is not standing still, waiting for Poland to sort out its affairs Poland

Kristina Murkett

Free childcare shouldn't just be for working mothers

This week, we had a rare example of a family-friendly policy coming into effect: working parents of children aged 9 months or over will now have access to 30 hours of free childcare a week during term time. I should be elated by this news: I went back to work part-time after 11 months of maternity leave on Monday. My son is now at a childminder 3 days a week, and so this policy is saving me roughly £360 a week (a full-time nursery place in Oxford, where I live, will easily set you back £2,000 a month without any funding).  Yet my feelings are mixed at best. Partly this

Rod Dreher

Graham Linehan's arrest exposes Britain's soft totalitarianism

A softer version of totalitarianism has been gnawing its way through the British body politic like a cancer for many years now. With the Graham Linehan arrest at Heathrow this week, it seems to have metastasized into something entirely malignant. If Linehan’s arrest isn’t a bright red line for Britain, what on earth would be? If Linehan’s arrest isn’t a bright red line for Britain, what on earth would be? A decade ago, living in the United States at the dawn of the Great Awokening, I began hearing from older people who had fled to America from the Soviet bloc, seeking freedom. They were telling me that the things they

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Why do western activists keep quiet about Africa's LGBT crackdown?

Burkina Faso’s transitional legislative assembly passed a bill this week to outlaw homosexuality – making it the 32nd out of 54 African countries to criminalise homosexuality. The legislation, enacted under the military junta-run country’s new Persons and Family Code, penalises ‘behaviour likely to promote homosexual practices’ with prison sentences up to five years. The move is part of Burkina Faso’s military leader Ibrahim Traoré’s vocal crackdown on ‘western values’. Burkina Faso has now become the 32nd out of 54 African countries to criminalise homosexuality. Neighbouring Mali, also run by a military junta spearheaded by Assimi Goïta, passed a similar ban in November. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Abdourahamane Tchiani’s Niger, which

The Spectator

The high price of Britain’s misguided energy policy

Britain’s energy policy is a mess. We have the highest energy prices in the developed world, which is damaging competitiveness, crippling our economy and accelerating the decline of our industries. This is not just economically illiterate, but also environmentally counterproductive and socially regressive. The drive to reduce carbon emissions produced by the UK may seem noble but it is an organised hypocrisy. We import goods produced elsewhere by nations far less scrupulous about their energy sources and end up off-shoring our emissions, and indeed jobs. Our domestic production of carbon looks lower on paper but our overall consumption remains the same – and the impact on global climate is nugatory

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Keir Starmer’s reshuffle, Graham Linehan’s arrest and get ready for Storm Wubbo

Home Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, told the Commons that new applications for refugee family reunion visas would be suspended. She later said in a radio interview: ‘I have St George’s bunting. I also have Union Jack bunting.’ An injunction stopping the Bell Hotel, Epping, from housing asylum seekers was overturned by the Court of Appeal. Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, and Mohammad Kabir, 23, reported to be Afghan asylum seekers, pleaded not guilty to charges in connection with the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton on 22 July. Only 56 migrants arrived in England in small boats in the seven days to 1 September. Tommy Robinson, the right-wing agitator, faced

Gareth Roberts

The glorious campness of Reform

It’s a very serious and rancorous time in Britain. Social strife is simmering. The asylum system is at breaking point. The lines on the economics graphs are all going in unsettling directions – the ones you’d prefer to see going down are going up, and vice versa. And inevitably the Overton window is shifting. Though perhaps not in the way any of us expected. Reform is currently odds-on to form the next government. Nigel Farage’s party meets for its conference in Birmingham this week at 35 per cent in the polls. But that’s not because it’s bracingly right-wing. Or not just. It’s because Reform is camp. At a time when

Tim Shipman

‘He’s like a passive-aggressive Gordon Brown’: inside Keir Starmer’s No.10 reshuffle

Isaac Levido, the Tory election strategist who helped secure Boris Johnson’s landslide victory in 2019 and saved the Tories from oblivion in 2024, says (with the wisdom of grim experience) that ‘politicians are confidence players’. They perform best when their tails are up. In 2019 he had a candidate with his tail up who took the public with him. In 2024, in Rishi Sunak, he had a leader who had suffered a major crisis of confidence and projected a self-fulfilling air of doom. This eternal truth is likely to be reinforced on Saturday when Nigel Farage takes to the stage in Birmingham for the first party conference speech he has

Wednesday

Steerpike

Tories seek 'digital army' to take on Farage

It is a tough time for the Tories right now. Nigel Farage’s grinning face appears to be everywhere, as the Conservatives desperately try to find fresh relevance in opposition. One idea that some senior figures within Conservative Campaign Headquarters have alighted upon in recent months is creating a new ‘digital army’. The hope is that ever-online true-blue types will function in the same way that Reform’s internet supporters do for Farage: amplifying the party’s message and posting support for leader Kemi Badenoch. This evening saw the last salvo in this e-initiative. An email went out to the Tories’ young guns, urging them to volunteer for instruction in the nation’s capital.

Ross Clark

Of course tax rises won't help economic growth

What’s the most idiotic question ever posed by an interviewer? There was the real-life Sally Jockstrap who asked David Gower whether he considered himself a batsman or a bowler. Or the Radio 1 DJ who asked Marc Almond – at the height of his fame with Soft Cell – whether he was going steady with a girl. But my nomination goes to Anna Foster on the Today programme this morning. In the midst of an interview with economist Mohamed El-Erian about Britain’s dire fiscal state, she suddenly posed: ‘Would raising taxes at this stage, would that help growth?’ I had to listen back on the catch-up facility to check that

Freddy Gray

How authoritarian is Trump 2.0?

33 min listen

On this episode, Nick Gillespie, Reason’s editor at large, joins Freddy to discuss whether Trump 2.0 is really as authoritarian as people say. Is he closer to a gangster than a dictator? They also discuss tariffs, the weaponisation of the Justice Department, and the state of free speech in the UK.

Danny Shaw

The Met can’t blame politicians for the Linehan arrest

If it had been a sketch in one of his many comedy shows, it would surely have been rejected as too absurd.  After landing at Heathrow on a flight from Arizona, Graham Linehan, the Irish comic who created Father Ted, was arrested by five armed police officers for tweets that he had posted five months ago. The 57-year-old was told he was being held on suspicion of a public order offence. He was taken to a police station and questioned for several hours, before being released on police bail.  The Commissioner is correct to say that police should not be ‘policing toxic culture wars’. We need them to focus on real crimes such

Steerpike

Watch: Farage warns Congress about UK speech laws

Prime Minister Keir Starmer took aim at Nigel Farage in PMQs today for not being in the Chamber. In fact, the Reform leader is on the other side of the Atlantic, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee on the state of free speech in the UK. The timing couldn’t have been better for Farage, what with the release of Lucy Connolly from prison (after she was incarcerated over a social media post) and the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan providing extraordinary case studies for the Clacton MP. And the Reform politician was not holding back. First saying that he would have brought Connolly with him, had she not been restricted

Madeline Grant

How could Badenoch fail to skewer Starmer this time?

It was taxes that eventually did for Al Capone. And Spiro Agnew. And Judy Garland. So now the taxman’s bell tolls for Big Ange – who has often presented herself as a sort of mix of all three of those figures. The hard-partying working-class girl turned union bruiser turned second most powerful politician in the land.  Scandal has become second nature to Labour ministers, to the extent that they now have a sort of standard issue hangdog look to wear in Parliament which indicates to the world that bringing up their bad behaviour is actually not very #BeKind, and so when you think about it, they’re the real victims. Ange

Tim Shipman

PMQs: Rayner defended as Badenoch flops

17 min listen

Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch faced off in the first Prime Minister’s Questions following summer recess. With the date of the Budget announced that morning, the economy was expected to dominate – which it did, to the surprise of most MPs, who expected Badenoch to attack over the Angela Rayner tax row. The deputy prime minister had admitted that morning she underpaid stamp duty on her flat in Hove. The leader of the opposition did question Starmer on it initially, but as political editor Tim Shipman says she more than missed an open goal. Tim joins Isabel Hardman and Lucy Dunn to discuss how damaging the row is for Rayner

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer comes to Angela Rayner's defence at PMQs

Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer clearly didn’t spend their summer breaks working on their performances at Prime Minister’s Questions. Today’s exchanges between the two leaders fell quickly into the usual meandering grudge match of accusations about blowing up and running down the economy, and ministers resigning or not resigning. Each question was ostensibly about the economy but included a barb about Angela Rayner’s tax affairs, and each answer offered a rambling defence of Labour’s policies, the standard criticism of Tory mess and a defence of Rayner. We learned very little, and Starmer was neither under pressure nor impressive. Mind you, perhaps we did learn that Starmer is more prepared to

Simon Diggins

China's parade spells trouble for Taiwan

The massive military parade in Beijing today definitively marks the end of the post-World War Two era. Nominally, the 80th Anniversary of China’s victory in ‘The War against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War’, it has been used by China’s president Xi to, in the words of Reuters, ‘…demonstrate Xi’s influence over nations intent on reshaping the Western-led global order’ – an order that began with the end of World War Two. Sharing the podium with Xi – but not invited to review the parade – were presidents Putin of Russia and Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Their client status to China is also clear: without China’s financial and industrial support, Putin

Angus Colwell

Why In Our Time must go on

‘Hello’. It’s strange to think that Melvyn Bragg has said that for the last time on In Our Time. That was how every show started – more than 1,000 of them. Each episode began with the minimal courtesy, and then we’re off: ‘Hello. In 61 AD, an east Anglian queen took on the might of the Roman empire and lost’. All In Our Time listeners have wondered when this day would come. Bragg is 85, and with age, the episodes slowed slightly, and his voice had become slightly breathier. Bragg’s powerful mind did not wane, but his age always meant there was a time limit. The brilliance of In Our Time has been said before, in many

Steerpike

Rayner admits she didn't pay enough stamp duty on second home

To the Deputy Prime Minister, who has been in the spotlight over the last week over accusations she avoided tax on one of her properties. Angela Rayner has now given a rather revelatory interview in which she admits that she didn’t pay enough stamp duty on her Hove residence, she has referred herself to the independent adviser on ministerial standards and has even considered resigning over the whole affair. Crikey! Rayner has referred herself to the independent adviser on ministerial standards Speaking to Sky’s Beth Rigby, Rayner admitted that she underpaid stamp duty on her seaside flat in Hove, incorrectly paying the lower rate of tax on the residence after

Steerpike

Zack Polanski: the police were right to arrest Graham Linehan

The arrest of comedian Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport this week over his Twitter posts sparked outrage across the country – but you can count on the Greens to take an opposing view. While shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has condemned the move as ‘ridiculous’ and Health Secretary Wes Streeting has even suggested the law could be changed to ensure forces are more focused on tackling in-person crime, the new leader of the Greens, Zack Polanski, told the Beeb that he, er, backs the decision. Speaking to presenters on BBC Newsnight, Polanski fumed that Linehan’s tweets about transgender people – available here – were ‘totally unacceptable’. He went on: I