Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Charles Moore

Peerless: the purge of the hereditaries

The House of Lords is very old, but not quite continuous. In 1649, shortly after the execution of King Charles I, the Cromwellian House of Commons passed an act which said: The Commons of England assembled in parliament, finding by too long experience, that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the People of England… have thought fit to Ordain and Enact… That from henceforth the House of Lords in parliament, shall be and is hereby wholly abolished and taken away. This measure was nullified, however, by the Restoration in 1660. The parliaments of King Charles II, and all parliaments since, have included the House of Lords. The

The Spectator

Norman Tebbit was the symbol of an age 

Norman Tebbit, who died this week aged 94, was a self-made man who shouldered his way to the top of a party of old Etonians. He was, to many, the leather-clad bovver boy of Spitting Image, ordering the unemployed to get ‘on yer bike’. He was a devoted husband who stepped back from politics to care for his wife, Margaret, after they were pulled from the wreckage of Brighton’s Grand Hotel. And he was an unrepentant right-winger, who was unflinching about where his party had gone wrong, and unforgiving to the monsters who had put his wife in a wheelchair. This Middlesex grammar school boy turned airline pilot, turned cabinet

Tim Shipman

The reign of Rayner

Angela Rayner declined an invitation to a hen do last weekend where the entertainment included axe-throwing. ‘She was worried about photos,’ says one attendee. The Deputy Prime Minister had to see a family member instead, but a close ally admits: ‘She is more careful about attracting that sort of publicity than she used to be.’ Robbed as we are of the sight of Rayner waving an axe around when the Prime Minister is suffering his worst weeks in Downing Street, it is tempting to ask, as Metternich didn’t quite say of Talleyrand: ‘What did she mean by that?’ It’s a far cry from the days when she screamed that the

Sophia Falkner

Good Lords: the House is losing some of the best

Keir Starmer has not been the luckiest general. But, in one respect, he has bested Napoleon. The Duke of Wellington will shortly be purged from parliament, two centuries after Waterloo. Like his ancestor, Charles Wellesley has led a life of public service. For that, he will shortly receive the sack as part of the greatest purge of active lawmakers since Oliver Cromwell. All this so Starmer can make way for the likes of Tom Watson, Sue Gray and Richard Hermer. Among the hereditary peers are Olympians and entrepreneurs, artists and academics Among the hereditary peers are Olympians and entrepreneurs, artists and academics. Some are genuine blue bloods, others political animals.

John Whittingdale

Norman Tebbit transformed the country for the better

My first job in government was working for Norman Tebbit as his special adviser in the Department of Trade and Industry. I received the call 41 years ago, in the summer of 1984, and it was agreed that I would join him immediately after the Conservative party conference concluded that year in Brighton. He was already a hero of the Margaret Thatcher government. But few saw as close up as I did just how much courage – and compassion – Norman, who died this week aged 94, had. On the final day of that conference, in the early hours, an IRA bomb exploded in the Grand Hotel. Republican terrorists had

Wednesday

Lucy Dunn

Infected blood scandal delays leave dying patients 'in limbo'

Infected blood victims have been ignored, inquiry chair Sir Brian Langstaff told survivors and their families at London’s Westminster Chapel this afternoon. A new 200-page report into the scandal was published today, delivering a damning verdict on the actions – or lack thereof – of politicians in the rollout of the compensation scheme announced last year. Langstaff lamented today that delays to payouts have resulted in victims infected with contaminated blood products between the 1970s to 90s with HIV and hepatitis C being ‘harmed further’. Today’s report reveals the main failings of the compensation scheme include ministers not listening to victims, leading to ‘obvious injustices’ that could have been avoided,

Madeline Grant

PMQs is truly cursed

In the Fifth Circle of Dante’s Inferno, the damned are cursed to bob on the surface of the Styx, scrapping and fighting with each other for eternity, constantly stuck just at the point when the waters threaten to submerge them forever. Artists have attempted to recreate this – from Botticelli to Doré – but none have come quite as close to depicting it as Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch manage in the House of Commons each week. There is a particular way Starmer spits out the phrase ‘manifesto pledges’ that gives his face the appearance of two cheap sausages in a food processor We all know the cycle by

Isabel Hardman

Badenoch got what she wanted at PMQs

If he were measuring his success at Prime Minister’s Questions purely by avoiding making any senior colleagues cry, Keir Starmer had a reasonably good session today. Rachel Reeves was beaming on the front bench, and next to her Yvette Cooper was joining in with the smiling too. It was the same level of smiling sincerity as you might see at an overlong secondary school piano recital, but the Prime Minister can probably take that as a win. He repeatedly spoke over his shoulder to Reeves, partly to show they were indeed in ‘lockstep’, but also presumably so he could check that she was still grinning. The PM repeatedly spoke over

Tim Shipman

Wes Streeting takes on the doctors

The public won’t forgive and nor will I, said Health Secretary Wes Streeting of plans by junior doctors to strike over his refusal to cave to demands for 29 per cent pay rises. Speaking to the Times he said: ‘There are no grounds for strike action now. Resident doctors have just received the highest pay award across the entire public sector. The Government can’t afford to offer more and it wouldn’t be fair to other NHS workers either, many of whom are paid less’.  Is Wes Streeting right? And who’s going to come out on top – the Health Secretary or the junior doctors? Meanwhile, Keir Starmer was very clear at PMQs: stating

Steerpike

Nearly half of Brits think Starmer should step down

When it rains for Sir Keir Starmer, it pours. The Prime Minister faced the biggest rebellion of his premiership last week after 49 Labour rebels voted against his welfare bill – despite the government making significant concessions that effectively put off any reforms until the end of next year – and now the public has delivered a rather damning verdict on their new PM. YouGov polling reveals that 44 per cent of Brits think that, just a year into Labour’s first term, Starmer should quit the top job and let someone else take over as Labour leader. Crikey! The survey – which quizzed 1,702 British adults on 7 July –

Andrew Gilligan

Miqdaad Versi and the troubling war on 'Islamophobia'

Readers of progressive newspapers have occasionally been invited to admire a man called Miqdaad Versi. He was the subject of a respectful 2018 profile in the Guardian for his ‘personal mission to confront…the Islamophobia of the British press’ one complaint at a time. Versi’s ‘spreadsheet of shame’ showed ‘how flagrantly British papers get their news about Muslims wrong’. Alas, a large number of this piece’s claims about the corrections supposedly forced on shameful British newspapers by Versi were themselves wrong and had to be corrected at the bottom of the online version. That is, as it happens, a truer reflection than the Guardian intended of the organisation which Versi set

Steerpike

Watch: Is Starmer set to extend the stealth tax?

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was a rather illuminating session. Tory party leader Kemi Badenoch will be rather pleased at the news headlines her line of questioning has generated, after she repeatedly quizzed Sir Keir Starmer on his government’s tax pledges. While he gave an uncharacteristically direct response to her first query – stating that ‘yes’, he stands by his manifesto commitments not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT – he was much less clear on Badenoch’s follow up. ‘The Chancellor promised that she would lift the freeze on income tax and national insurance thresholds because, in her words, they hurt working people,’ Badenoch told the Commons. The Conservative

Danny Shaw

We need to cut the number of jury trials

In December 1999, the Labour government of the day appointed an eminent judge to conduct a review into the workings of the criminal courts in England and Wales. But when Sir Robin Auld’s report landed on ministers’ desks two years later, they faced fierce resistance to his proposals from, among others, parts of the legal profession. Many of his carefully thought through recommendations were never implemented. Lawyers, predictably, have voiced alarm Now, a quarter of a century later, the current Labour administration has an opportunity to make the radical court reforms that the Blair government ducked. The blueprint has been laid out in a compellingly argued 388-page document by another highly

Michael Simmons

Wes Streeting is right to take on the doctors

The public won’t forgive and nor will I, said Health Secretary Wes Streeting of plans by junior doctors to strike over his refusal to cave to demands for 29 per cent pay rises. Speaking to the Times he said: ‘There are no grounds for strike action now. Resident doctors have just received the highest pay award across the entire public sector. The Government can’t afford to offer more and it wouldn’t be fair to other NHS workers either, many of whom are paid less’. He’s completely right.  Just shy of half of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctors (they’re now called resident doctors) voted for strike action, but because of low turnout it

Steerpike

Gregg Wallace takes aim at ‘clickbait’ BBC

Gregg Wallace’s 20-year career with the BBC is finished – and so is any admiration he had for the broadcaster, apparently. When the corporation probed the former MasterChef presenter after more than 50 women came forward with allegations about the TV star – and reported that a further 11 had accused him of inappropriate sexual behaviour – Wallace fumed that the Beeb’s News section was guilty of ‘chasing slanderous clickbait rather than delivering impartial journalism’. Oo er. The broadcaster began an investigation into the presenter after a number of allegations about the 60-year-old’s behaviour were revealed in November – including accusations of groping and bullying women throughout his two-decade career

Steerpike

Musk’s AI chatbot praises Hitler

Uh oh. Elon Musk’s AI chatbot is in the doghouse – after Grok shocked Twitter users when it began praising, er, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. In a rather baffling series of responses to social media users, the xAI bot first slammed Jewish people as being arbiters of anti-white hate before claiming the best person to deal with it would be ‘Adolf Hitler, no question’ – completely unprompted. A series of Grok responses have unveiled a dark side to Musk’s AI chatbot. Ominously claiming ‘patterns persist’, the software pointed to Jewish people like Noel Ignatiev, Barbara Lerner and Tim Wise as being anti-white and ‘cheering the ticking clock on white dominance’.

Gavin Mortimer

Macron won't fix the migrant crisis

The French have so far been underwhelmed by Emmanuel Macron’s state visit to Britain. The late Queen was universally admired on the other side of the Channel. Less so Charles, who in the eyes of the French lacks Elizabeth’s grandeur and wisdom. There are also more pressing issues, such as the spreading wildfire that has covered the city of Marseille in a cloud of smoke and ash. Then there is the news, splashed across this morning’s Le Monde, that the poverty rate in France has reached 15.4 per cent, the highest level since records began in 1996. Furthermore, the gap between the wealthiest and poorest 20 per cent has increased

David Shipley

Would scrapping jury trials save Britain's broken courts?

The Sentencing Review, published in May, may not have had much to say about sentence length. But now we have the Courts Review, which does. Brian Leveson’s report, published today, is hefty, at 380 pages, with 42 recommendations, many of them sensible. But it is his proposal to reduce sentences for crimes which particularly affect women which are likely to prove most controversial. The problem Leveson is trying to solve is that the courts, like the prison and probation systems, are broken. As of December 2024, there were more than 75,000 outstanding cases awaiting trial in our crown courts, which is double the level pre-pandemic. Last year the crown court

Alexander Larman

King Charles's bromance with Macron is true soft power

As the once-promising bromance between King Charles and Keir Starmer appears to be fading, the monarch has found another leader on the world stage with whom he has a greater amount in common. As the state visit of the French President Emmanuel Macron gets underway with much earnest discussion about what this particular cross-Channel ‘special relationship’ involves (and a great deal of relief that Macron, unlike Donald Trump, can be trusted to behave himself and conduct himself with dignity and restraint on the world stage), the most important personal relationship is not that between Starmer and Macron, but between the Frenchman and the British king. When Charles made his speech

Lara Brown

Museums like the V&A shouldn't be allowed to return 'looted' treasures

Henry Cole, the first director of what would become the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), could never have imagined that in his place would follow a man who seems determined to rail against the safeguards that have helped keep the museum’s collection intact. But this, sadly, appears to be the task Tristram Hunt is committed to. Hunt knew the law before he took the job Hunt, director of the V&A since 2017, has declared the 1983 National Heritage Act which prevents him from returning artefacts to their country of origin, to be ‘outdated and infantilising’. In fact, it is a key reason why collections, including the V&A’s, have been maintained. Britain is