Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Steerpike

Prince Harry loses control of charity after bullying row probe

Back to the monarchs of Montecito, who are not have a good time of it at the moment. It transpires that Prince Harry has lost his battle for control of the charity he launched in his mother Princess Diana’s memory – after the charities watchdog blasted him for his part in a ‘damaging’ bullying row. Dear oh dear… As Mr S wrote in April this year, the Charity Commission commenced an investigation after ‘concerns [were] raised’ at Prince Harry’s African charity, Sentebale, over bullying in the boardroom. The opening of the probe comes after Harry, his co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and their trustees stepped down after a falling out over funding with

Madeline Grant

Migration has radicalised middle England

One of the symptoms that something has truly shifted is unrest in unlikely places. The sleepy heartlands of middle England suddenly becoming not so sleepy but angry and active. Few places have a greater claim to fit the latter description than my home county, Warwickshire.  A stone’s throw away from my grandparents’ old home in North Warwickshire is a village called Meriden – so called because it claims to be the geographical centre-point of the country; the middlest of middle England. It is solidly, stolidly small-c conservative – not radically so. The MPs for the Warwickshire parliamentary constituency were generally Tories of the county variety. Warwickshire largely turned out for the King

Michael Simmons

Has Rachel Reeves created a £50 billion fiscal black hole?

The Chancellor’s black hole is getting bigger and tax rises are coming. That’s the judgement of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) whose model of the UK economy has forecast she must find £50 billion of revenue or cuts if she’s to return to the £9.9 billion of fiscal headroom she left herself in the spring.   Some now believe the gap is so large Reeves may have to break Labour’s manifesto pledge not to increase income tax, VAT or employee national insurance Reeves’s self-imposed and ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules require her to abolish the deficit by the end of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) five-year forecast. NIESER’s

Matthew Lynn

Could Trump kill Britain's pharma industry?

The global trading system is adjusting to the tariffs levied by the United States: for most goods they look likely to settle at roughly 15 per cent. The microchip industry will carry on much as before, the auto manufacturers will adjust, and even if it means drinking more Californian instead of French wine, the drinks trade will settle down. There is just one exception: pharmaceuticals. President Trump is determined that drugs should be manufactured on American soil. And if he follows through on that, Britain risks losing one of its last major industries. The tariffs on pharma imports will start with just a few percentage points, but the plan is

Druin Burch

We need more unemployed doctors

In medicine, the working year begins today, as freshly qualified doctors start and others rotate to new attachments. Mismanagement means that a huge number will, unusually, be unemployed: as late as the end of July, the BMA said a third of all junior doctors had no jobs to go to in August.  Understandably, juniors are upset – so much so that fixing this catastrophe could end the strikes both amicably and affordably. Solving today’s problem offers an opportunity to make the NHS both better and cheaper. This year’s crop of unemployed doctors is a disastrous glitch. In a better-run system, unemployment could be a valuable feature. Doctors should not be

Ross Clark

It's time to crack down on civil service sick days

Are civil servants throwing sickies en masse in protest at being forced to go back into the office to work three days a week? The order to return to the office, made by the previous government, seems to have coincided with a sharp rise in the number of days which staff are taking off sick. At the Home Office, staff took an average of 7.4 days of sickness absence in 2024/25, up from 6.6 days in 2023/24. At the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MCLG), the average absence rate for staff in its core department rose from 5.0 days in 2023 to 5.6 days in 2024. In the

Gavin Mortimer

Starmer has given control of Britain's borders to France

Britain’s ‘one in one out’ migrant deal with France takes effect today, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued a stark warning to anyone considering making the journey across the Channel. ‘We send a clear message – if you come here illegally on a small boat you will face being sent back to France.’ The ‘one in, one out’ treaty with France hardly takes back control of Britain’s borders In a manner of speaking. The terms of the treaty state that Britain will lodge a request with France for returning a migrant within 14 days of their arrival in Britain. The French will then study the request and, if they agree

Lucy Dunn

The ghost of Sturgeon looms large over the SNP

Nicola Sturgeon may be stepping down as an MSP next year, but that doesn’t mean she’s done with Scottish politics. Instead it seems like her 32-year-old mini-me, Màiri McAllan, is being primed by the former first minister and her allies to become the party’s future leader. The remarkable similarities between the pair suggest Sturgeon sees a little of herself in McAllan, who also signed up to the SNP at the age of 16, went on to study law at the University of Glasgow, and caught the attention of a first minister before her career took off. Although she remains relatively unknown outside SNP and media circles, Sturgeon’s protégée and former special adviser is racking

Tuesday

Steerpike

More Brits worried about immigration than health

Another day, another poll. This time YouGov has found that almost six in ten Brits say that immigration is one of the most important issues facing the country – almost double those who rate health as their number one concern, and more than double those worried about crime. Crikey! Fears about immigration have climbed by four percentage points compared to a fortnight ago, to 56 per cent. Healthcare ranked almost equally with immigration in June last year, but since then border control has become more important to Brits. Meanwhile concern about crime has risen three points in the last few weeks – coinciding with Reform’s ‘Lawless Britain’ campaign that has

Steerpike

Labour voters: Kyle's Savile comment was 'inappropriate'

Back to the Online Safety Act which, since it came into force just over a week ago, has sparked outrage across the country as social media posts showing rioters fighting with police have been suppressed while those referring to sexual attacks have been automatically flagged as pornographic. As the Spectator‘s cover piece noted last week, footage from a protest outside the Britannia Hotel in Leeds, which showed police officers restraining and arresting a protestor, now can’t be easily accessed in Britain. But while opposition leaders like Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage have slammed the legislation, Mr S has been rather intrigued to find out who exactly supports it. More in

Gavin Mortimer

What France's fight against Islamism can teach Labour

So far this year France has deported 64 individuals from its database of radical Islamists. More are planned in the coming weeks and months, putting the minister of the interior, Bruno Retailleau, on course to surpass last year’s total of 142. A senior unnamed prefect was quoted in yesterday’s Le Figaro declaring: We are very committed to this issue; it is an ongoing effort by the state, given what is at stake. It is even monitored weekly by the (interior) minister at the central level. Retailleau is supported by his predecessor, Gérald Darmanin, who has been the Minister of Justice since last December. It was Darmanin who last year commissioned

Ian Acheson

How police chiefs can win back Britain's trust

Policing and crime commissioners haven’t exactly fired up the public imagination since they were introduced in 2012. PCCs were intended to make police forces more accountable, but you’re more likely to come across one in the headlines for personal misconduct than their crime-fighting zeal. However, there are some signs of change in the air thanks to our crisis of illegal migration. Hampshire and the Isle of Wight’s PCC Donna Jones revealed yesterday that she had been effectively told to ‘shut up for the sake of diversity’ by a new Labour minister after comments she made on the widespread disorder last August following the Southport attack. The government still hides behind

David Shipley

Reform’s trans prisoner policy is a mess

Reform are in the headlines again, this time over confusion about their policy on trans prisoners. Yesterday Vanessa Frake, former prison governor and Reform’s UK justice adviser, said that trans women should not automatically be removed from women’s prisons, preferring an individual risk assessment. Nigel Farage seemed to echo this view, deferring to her experience and saying ‘it’s basically about risk assessment’.  This announcement put the party at odds with the recent Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of ‘sex’. It also put it at odds with reality. There is nothing decent about choosing to prioritise the demands of a very small number of men over the needs and rights

Stephen Daisley

Ed Davey should stick to his silly stunts – not lecture us on Gaza

Ed Davey’s got this Middle East business figured out. The Liberal Democrat leader has tweeted — because, honestly, what else is there to do as Lib Dem leader other than tweet? — his latest insight into the Gaza war: ‘Now the Hamas terrorists behind the October 7 atrocities are trying to erode support for recognition of a Palestinian state by falsely claiming it would be a victory for them. Hamas do not represent the Palestinian people and have no future in Gaza with a two-state solution.’ I know who we can ask about what the Palestinians really think. Let’s ask…the Palestinians That’s nice, Ed. Now, I’m not suggesting you’re a

Oscar Edmondson

Britain can learn from France on migration

12 min listen

It’s the big day for Starmer’s one-in, one-out migrant deal with France. The scheme, which was agreed during the state visit last month, comes into effect today – but Yvette Cooper and other figures in Whitehall remain suspiciously evasive when it comes to putting a number on returns to France. Immigration is, of course, the problem of highest salience across the country, and made even more pressing by recent riots at migrant hotels, giving far-right opposition parties plenty of ammunition. Polling shows that 40 per cent of Reform supporters would consider voting for Labour next time if the number of small boat arrivals fell. So, will it work? Will it

Steerpike

Farage clarifies Reform's female prisons stance

To Reform UK, which is in its third week of its crime crackdown campaign which looks to tackle ‘Lawless Britain’. The party claimed Monday’s press conference was the most significant one yet, with two new recruits unveiled. The first was former MEP Rupert Matthews, who – after 40 years as a member of the Tory party – has switched sides to become Reform’s first police and crime commissioner. He immediately took aim at Labour’s early prison release scheme and claimed jails were full ‘of foreign criminals who should be deported the day they are convicted’. And the second was former prison officer Vanessa Frake, the party’s new justice tsar whose comments

The Spectator

The Spectator and Douglas Murray win defamation claim brought by Mohammed Hijab

The Spectator and Douglas Murray have today won a defamation claim brought by Mohammed Hegab, who ‘lied on significant issues’ in court and gave evidence that ‘overall, is worthless’. The judge rejected Hegab’s claim because the videos he publishes are ‘at least as reputationally damaging to him as the article’ Hegab, a YouTuber who posts under the name Mohammed Hijab, claimed that an article about the Leicester riots published in September 2022 had caused serious harm to his reputation and loss of earnings as a result. Hegab travelled to Leicester in September 2022 after disturbances between local Muslims and Hindus there had begun, and gave a speech to a group of Muslim men,

Ross Clark

The OBR has seen sense on migration. Will Rachel Reeves?

High levels of migration might not always be good for community relations if large numbers of new arrivals descend on one neighbourhood, but at least it helps boost GDP by providing Britain with a source of eager workers whom employers struggle to find in Britain. That sums up the view of some economists, but it has just been thoroughly rejected by one important voice. David Miles, who sits on the committee of the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR), has written today that it is wrongheaded to think that Britain can solve its economic problems by opening its doors to overseas workers. Even a migrant on the average UK wage will

Eliot Wilson

How will the army's new Gurkhas fight without any guns?

The British Army’s newest formation, the King’s Gurkha Artillery (KGA), has unveiled the cap badge it will wear. This is a huge moment of symbolism for any army unit: the army is a federation of battalions and regiments which attract and inspire fierce loyalty, and it is at that level that British soldiers seek their real collective identity. 117 pages (seriously) of the Army Dress Regulations specify how cap badges are worn. In this case, however, the new badge – the crossed Gurkha khukhuri and a field gun representing the Royal Artillery – is concealing at least as much as it represents. I am absolutely in favour of raising more