Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

What’s happening in southern Syria – and why Israel is involved

Over the last 24 hours, southern Syria has seen a sharp escalation in violence involving Syrian government forces, local Druze militias, and Israeli airpower. The developments centre on the city of As-Suwayda and the surrounding region, home to much of Syria’s Druze population, and have drawn renewed attention to the complex relationship between the Druze community, the Syrian regime, and Israel. Prospects for normalising relations between Israel and Syria have significantly worsened The Syrian army has begun heavily shelling areas in and around As-Suwayda. Israeli aircraft launched strikes against regime positions in Suwayda and Daraa, and reportedly targeted a military convoy belonging to Abu Amsha, a Turkish-backed militia commander. Then,

Lucy Dunn

Physician associates must be better regulated

Recent years have seen an explosion of a new kind of medical role across the NHS: physician’s associates (PAs). Yet while their numbers are increasing in hospitals and GP practices – and all major political parties have committed to expanding the role further – today’s review into the job role have revealed some rather disturbing findings.  The report by the president of the Royal Society of Medicine, Professor Gillian Leng, found that despite approximately 4,000 physician and anaesthesia associates working across England and Wales, there remains limited data on whether the staff were safe or unsafe. Given the concerns of both the public and doctors – and the fact that

James Heale

Reform will exploit the Afghan scandal to the full

The Afghan data leak is the kind of scandal which is perfect for Reform UK. It involves gross incompetence, profligacy and the complicity of both major parties. The Tories took the decision to allow thousands of Afghans into the country secretly; Labour continued the super-injunction which stopped that fact from being reported. Both Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf are now gleefully savaging the last Tory government for decisions taken in late 2023. Two ministers in that Home Office at that time were Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick. She left the Home Office on 13 November; he followed on 6 December. Allies of both say that official records will show that

Eliot Wilson

Are we sure the Afghan data debacle won't happen again?

‘Afghanistan’ was the heading of Defence Secretary John Healey’s statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday – a word that hardly does justice to a three-year saga involving a catastrophic security breach and loss of data by the Ministry of Defence, a superinjunction and billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Ministers and civil servants cannot be allowed to make policy and spend taxpayers’ money without any kind of oversight. That is not how a democracy works The bare bones of the story are these. In February 2022, the details of nearly 20,000 Afghans who had applied to come to the UK after the Taliban had seized power, as well

Mel Stride

Mel Stride: 'what I would do differently'

12 min listen

Last night, Rachel Reeves was the headline act at the Mansion House dinner. In her speech, she made the case that ‘Britain is open for business’ and that we must ‘stay competitive in the global economy’. Critics would say it is hard to claim to be open for business while having also overseen a £25 billion national insurance tax raid that is now known to be costing thousands of jobs. She began by stressing that, despite what recent reporting might suggest, she is ‘okay’ – the economic indicators, however, suggest that the economy is far from okay. Just this morning, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that inflation hit

Steerpike

Rael Braverman quits Reform after attacks on Suella

A day is a long time in politics. Just 24 hours ago, the husband of former Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman was a signed-up member of Reform UK. This morning, however, Rael Braverman announced that he has left Nigel Farage’s party – ‘effective immediately’. Life comes at you fast, eh? It comes after the party hit out at Suella on Tuesday following the revelation that a Ministry of Defence leak in 2022 had endangered the lives of thousands of Afghans, resulted in launch of top secret Operation Rubric and cost the taxpayer over £7bn. Taking aim at the former Conservative government, Reform UK’s ex-chairman and current head of DOGE Zia

Alexander Larman

MasterChef must die

As Oscar Wilde didn’t quite put it, for one MasterChef presenter to depart because of a scandal may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness. After Gregg Wallace received his P45 from the long-running BBC cookery show, his co-presenter John Torode has also been given the boot, having allegedly made a racist remark during filming in 2018 – a claim Torode denies. It is clear that all is not well behind the stove. Wallace and Torde’s antics have made MasterChef a joke Wallace and Torde’s antics have made MasterChef a joke. The stories about Wallace that have dominated the headlines over the last week have long

Ross Clark

Britain can't afford to let migrants live on benefits

When the history of the next election comes to be written, we may end up asking: was the turning point for its outcome the moment that Keir Starmer’s government backtracked on its welfare reforms in the face of a backbench revolt? The fiasco, which eliminated the government’s hopes of saving £5 billion a year, has made any welfare reform during the current Parliament impossible.   Britain has become the benefits office of the world The cost of that is becoming more evident by the day. Figures revealed this morning show that there are currently 3.6 million people receiving Universal Credit who are under no obligation whatsoever to look for work. They

Matthew Lynn

Cutting bank holidays for French workers is a bad idea

Banning the baguette, perhaps? Or making it compulsory to eat a sandwich at your desk at lunchtime? If you think hard enough, it is possible to imagine reform that would create more anger in France. Even so, prime minister Francois Bayrou’s plan to scrap two public holidays is right up there. Bayrou wants to reduce France’s 11 public holidays in a bid to kick-start France’s economy. Bayrou said Easter Monday had ‘no religious significance’, and the whole nation had to work and produce more. He said that bank holidays had turned the month of May into a gruyère – a Swiss cheese full of holes. He said that bank holidays had turned

Steerpike

Sandie Peggie cleared of NHS misconduct

To Scotland, where the nurse at the centre of a trans tribunal against NHS Fife has been cleared of all gross misconduct allegations. On Tuesday night, Sandie Peggie’s lawyer said that the health board had cleared the nurse of four gross misconduct allegations – following Peggie’s suspension in January 2024 after complaining about sharing a changing room with transgender medic Dr Beth Upton. Peggie then lodged a complaint of sexual harassment or harassment related to a protected belief under the 2010 Equality Act while earlier this year Dr Upton had made an allegation of bullying and harassment against the nurse. The case regarding single sex spaces was heard for ten

Michael Simmons

Rising inflation shows how the Bank of England is failing

The rate of inflation climbed to 3.6 per cent in June – up from 3.4 per cent in May. That’s well above the 2 per cent target that the Bank of England consistently misses. It begs the question why the Bank’s governor, Andrew Bailey, spent the weekend talking up rate cuts, when as one former Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member put it to me recently: ‘The job is not yet done’. This morning’s inflation figures, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), show much of the increase in prices was driven by motor fuel costs, but clothing and footwear, leisure activities and booze were up too. Food inflation has increased

David Shipley

The 'morons' who chopped down the Sycamore Gap tree don't deserve prison

Our trees – oak and beech, soft and ancient, sycamores, whose seeds spin and tumble away every autumn – are one of the most beautiful things about England. I love them all – and have nothing but contempt for someone who needlessly destroys a tree which has taken decades, or centuries, to grow and might live for decades, or centuries, more. Despite this, I am deeply concerned by the way our justice system has treated Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers, the two men from Cumbria who hacked down the famous Sycamore Gap tree in September 2023. At Newcastle Crown Court yesterday, the pair were sentenced to four years and three

Andrew Tettenborn

The flaw in the CofE's £150 million victims' fund

To much fanfare, the Church of England this week instituted a plan, funded to the tune of some £150 million and overseen by a well-respected City law firm, to compensate the victims of abuse carried out by church officials. So far, so good. But when we are talking big money like this, eligibility needs to be carefully circumscribed, with tough boundaries set. Unfortunately, one doubts whether the new Abuse Redress Measure, which set up the scheme, does this. However well-intended, it actually risks a worryingly unpredictable and at times arbitrary use of church funds. If you don’t like this, feel free to leave: but you shouldn’t be able to sue

Tom Slater

'Climate denial' shouldn't be illegal

You can tell the environmentalists are on the back foot. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is issuing doomsday proclamations in parliament, branding Reform and the Tories ‘unpatriotic’ for refusing to go along with his deranged Net Zero policies. And now Labour donors are also calling for ‘climate denial’ to be criminalised. Because nothing says ‘we’re winning the argument’ like locking up your opponents. No wonder Dale Vince is rattled Green tycoon Dale Vince, a man whose woeful politics can be accurately inferred from his appearance, donated £5million to Labour ahead of the last General Election. Ever since, he’s been publicly dispensing increasingly crazed – and often totally self-serving – advice to the government he helped put into

Tuesday

Michael Simmons

No, Rachel Reeves: Britain doesn't look 'open for business'

Rachel Reeves wants Britain to become a shareholder democracy. In her annual Mansion House speech to the City’s bankers, accountants and financial advisors, she said ‘for too long, we have presented investment in too negative a light’. She’s right. These changes are unlikely to unleash the ‘big bang’ of prosperity and tax revenues the Chancellor badly wants and badly needs The Chancellor meant that regulation – which she called the ‘boot on the neck of business’ – has led to too many scary warnings about the risks of investing and not enough talking up of the benefits. She’s referring to the legally mandated ‘investment carries risk’ type messages you hear

Freddy Gray

Trump – the conventional foreign policy President?

28 min listen

Trump has said he’s “very, very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened severe tariffs against them if there’s no deal on Ukraine within 50 days. He’s also sending more weapons to Ukraine in coordination with NATO. What’s behind his change of heart on foreign policy, and how’s his MAGA base responding? Freddy Gray is joined by deputy US editor Kate Andrews, and Sergey Radchenko, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. You can watch this episode here.

Freddy Gray

Why does Trump like Starmer so much?

12 min listen

It can now be revealed that a Ministry of Defence data leak has cost the UK some £7 billion and put thousands of Afghans at risk of death. A dataset containing the details of nearly 19,000 people who applied to move to the UK following the Taliban takeover was released in error by a British defence official in February 2022. Ministers were informed of the debacle in August 2023; since then, an unprecedented super-injunction has been in place to stop the press from reporting details. What does this mean for successive governments? Also on the podcast, Donald Trump gave a surprise interview to the BBC overnight in which he changed

Ross Clark

Rachel Reeves's mortgage reforms reek of desperation

Just how desperate is Rachel Reeves to achieve her elusive economic growth? Desperate enough, it seems, to risk a rush of repossessions in a future housing crisis. One of the big announcements in her Mansion House speech this evening, it has been reported, will be a new, permanent mortgage guarantee scheme, plus changes to mortgage eligibility to make it easier for homebuyers to borrow high multiples of their income and take out high loan-to-value mortgages. The UK economy is horribly reliant on the housing market for growth What could possibly go wrong? Reeves looks like she will be following the example of Gordon Brown, who presided over an era of

James Heale

The MoD Afghan leak is a national embarrassment

Some days the British state really does embarrass itself. It can now be revealed that a Ministry of Defence data leak has cost the UK some £7billion and put thousands of Afghans at risk of death. A dataset containing the details of nearly 19,000 people who applied to move to the UK following the Taliban takeover was released in error by a British defence official in February 2022. The unauthorised data breach was committed by a soldier as he tried to help verify applications for sanctuary in Britain Ministers were informed of the debacle in August 2023; since then, an unprecedented super-injunction has been in place to stop the press

Freddy Gray

Is Texas eating Hollywood?

20 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by editor-at-large of The Spectator World, Ben Domenech. They discuss why Hollywood productions are being drawn away from California to states like Texas, and what this could mean for the future of filmmaking in America. Ben writes about this in the new edition of Spectator World, and you can subscribe to the print magazine here: https://thespectator.com/subscribe