Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Michael Gove

Who’s having a worse week: Keir or Kemi?

20 min listen

It’s bad news all round for Labour and the Tories. An MRP poll out today forecasts that if an election were held tomorrow, Labour would not only lose its majority, but fall behind Reform to become the second-largest party. The Conservatives would be reduced to a mere 46 seats, placing them fourth behind the Lib Dems. But that’s just the beginning of their collective woes. On the Labour side – despite Keir Starmer’s charm offensive and ongoing talks with Labour MPs about potential changes to welfare policy – the number of rebels appears to be growing. The feeling increasingly is that someone might have to go, and calls for ‘regime

James Heale

Can Keir Starmer save his Welfare Bill?

The Prime Minister has never been a huge fan of the press. But there is an apt Fleet Street phrase to describe his screeching shift in tone on the great Labour welfare rebellion: reverse ferret! Just yesterday, he was all bullish talk, claiming that the more than 100 Labour MPs who want to vote down his Welfare Bill were little more than ‘noises off’. But this morning in parliament, he has adopted a much more emollient approach. It comes after six more MPs backed a rebel amendment overnight, bringing the total to 126 – around half of those Labour MPs who do not hold a government role. The marked change

Helen Whately

Our benefits system isn’t helping people with mental health problems

There are moments in politics when you have to say something people won’t want to hear. This is one of them. Our welfare system is in crisis. By 2030, one in every four pounds raised through income tax will be spent on health and disability benefits – more than the entire UK defence budget. In increasingly dangerous and uncertain times, no one could claim that this is sustainable. Drastic action is needed, and after a year in office Labour have finally cobbled together a set of welfare cuts. Sadly, their ham-fisted plan solves nothing. There is growing evidence that what we’re doing isn’t helping people with their mental health For

Freddy Gray

Why Venice deserves Jeff Bezos’s wedding

13 min listen

Jeff Bezos is getting married in Venice – but not everyone is celebrating. Venetians have staged small protests, accusing the billionaire of symbolising the city’s takeover by the ultra-rich. But is this anything new? Associate editor Owen Matthews joins Freddy Gray to discuss.

James Kirkup

Labour's welfare rebels will regret their revolt

A Labour government facing a rebellion over welfare reform is something of a dog-bites-man story – Labour never finds this issue easy. But the nature of the current rebellion tells us something novel and revealing, not about the policy, but about the modern Member of Parliament. Yes, principle and policy matter here, but what’s really driving dissent on Labour’s backbenches is not ideology, but geography. Or more precisely, constituency geography. Many of the Labour MPs likely to defy the leadership on welfare cuts are not old lags or even rebels by temperament. Many are new to Westminster, elected in the 2024 landslide that gave Labour power. And their rebellion is not

Eliot Wilson

Why does Starmer want to grow Britain's nuclear arsenal?

The government published its National Security Strategy 2025 earlier this week, a strange pushmi-pullyu document building on some policy reviews and anticipating others. It is disappointing and unfocused. The national security strategy was accompanied by an announcement perhaps just as significant: the government will buy at least 12 Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning strike fighters which are ‘dual capable’, that is, they can deliver both conventional and nuclear weapons. These aircraft will give the Royal Air Force a nuclear role for the first time since 1998, and the UK’s nuclear capacity will no longer be reliant on the Royal Navy’s Vanguard-class ballistic missile submarines. Keir Starmer has a peculiar and unsettling

Jim Lawley

Spain won't escape Trump's wrath for its Nato rebellion

At yesterday’s Nato summit in The Hague, all but one of the 32 leaders agreed to increase their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP as President Trump has been demanding. The exception was Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. His insistence that actually 2.1 per cent will be enough has enraged President Trump.  Trump described the Nato summit’s achievements as ‘tremendous’, celebrating its recognition of the need for other Nato members to take up the burden of the defence of Europe. He added that ‘it was 2 per cent [of GDP] and we’ve got it up to 5 per cent’. But he had harsh words for Spain, describing the

Owen Matthews

For Trump, solving Ukraine won't be as easy as Iran

For the moment, at least, the world seems to be going Donald Trump’s way. Instead of setting the Middle East ablaze, Trump’s air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have been met by a single, casualty-free Iranian counterstrike on the US’s al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. And though Tehran described the attack as ‘mighty and successful’, it emerged that Iran had actually warned the Qatar authorities in advance of the strikes – a message that they immediately passed on to the Americans. At the Nato summit in the Hague this week, European leaders lined up to support Trump’s demand that they ‘pay their way’ and boost their defence spending to 5

Lara Prendergast

War and peace, why restaurants are going halal & the great brown furniture transfer

45 min listen

This week: war and peace Despite initial concerns, the ‘Complete and Total CEASEFIRE’ – according to Donald Trump – appears to be holding. Tom Gross writes this week’s cover piece and argues that a weakened Iran offers hope for the whole Middle East. But how? He joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside Gregg Carlstrom, the Economist’s Middle East correspondent based in Dubai. (01:51) Next: why are so many restaurants offering halal meat? Angus Colwell writes about the growing popularity of halal meat in British restaurants. This isn’t confined to certain food groups or particular areas – halal is now being offered across restaurants serving all sorts of cuisine, from

Tom Gross

We should welcome regime change in Iran

On the first night of what Donald Trump has called the ‘12-day war’ between Israel and Iran, someone spray-painted a message in Farsi on a wall in Tehran: ‘Thank you, Israel. Hit the regime hard – and leave the rest to us.’ That graffiti encapsulated the feelings of many millions of Iranians. If you doubt this, you can read (in translation from Farsi) opposition accounts such as ManotoOfficial and IranIntlTV on Instagram or Telegram, which in the past two weeks have been posting countless messages and comments in support of Israel. These accounts are widely seen by people inside Iran, who use VPNs to get around the regime’s online censorship

James Heale

Small boats are causing Labour big problems

Summer is here – and for some in Labour it cannot come soon enough. After a tricky first year in office, the parliamentary party is in fractious mood. More than 100 of Keir Starmer’s MPs are raging against his welfare cuts; others are fuming about Israel. Some aides in No. 10 hope recess will give the government a much-needed chance to catch its breath. ‘Everyone needs a lie-down,’ says one party manager.  Yet in one corner of Whitehall, summer brings no respite. The Home Office is braced for a season of bad headlines: two more months helplessly watching small boats cross the Channel every day. Warm weather increases the likelihood of

Tim Shipman

‘It’s Liz Truss territory’: how bad are things for Kemi Badenoch?

Around 5 p.m. on Monday one of Kemi Badenoch’s aides was having a drink with a friend in the Two Chairmen pub in Westminster. Over a pint of IPA he explained how the Conservative leader was planning to thrust herself more forcefully into the public conversation. ‘We know the pace needs to quicken,’ he admitted. ‘Reform are sucking up the political oxygen.’ Badenoch inherited a ‘party on its knees’, the basics of which needed overhauling. ‘We’d love to be doing more fun viral social media stuff, but Kemi is sitting down and getting on with it.’ That same afternoon, just over 100 yards away, outside the Westminster Arms, Robert Jenrick,

Wednesday

Steerpike

Wonks team up to ‘Fix Britain’

It is a year ago next week that Labour won the general election. ‘The adults are back in the room!’ proclaimed Treasury minister Darren Jones, shortly after the result. Yet, 12 months on, it seems governing is proving somewhat more difficult than many first thought. Luckily, a group of wonks, hacks and thinkers are on hand to offer the Labour lot a useful dollop of advice… For tonight sees the launch of a new cross-party group of figures concerned about the state of the country. The ‘Fix Britain’ campaign is the brainchild of Munira Mirza, onetime head of Boris Johnson’s No. 10 Policy Unit. She and a group of likeminded

Freddy Gray

How did Zohran Mamdani win?

20 min listen

Against all odds, Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assemblyman and proud ‘Muslim democratic socialist’ won as as the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor. Aidan McLaughlin wrote about this for Spectator World. On this episode of Americano, Freddy Gray speaks to Aidan about how Mamdani defeated the favourite Andrew Cuomo, whether his success is attributed to TikTok and whether Zohran is really the voice of the ‘oppressed’.

James Heale

Welfare rebellion: why Starmer – and Reeves – should be worried

17 min listen

Keir Starmer is facing war on both fronts. He is in the Netherlands to talk about defence and announce a major change in the UK’s nuclear posture in response to rising challenges in the Middle East. But everyone in Westminster wants to talk about a different kind of warfare: the warfare over welfare. MPs will vote on the government’s controversial welfare bill, after more than 120 MPs signed a reasoned amendment that would effectively stop the bill in its tracks. What has been most concerning for the government is how organised the rebellion appears, with many picking up on the mutinous mood since Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill. The government

Madeline Grant

Rachel Reeves looks increasingly petrified

Sir Keir Starmer was in the Hague. I know, I know, you’d have thought they would have done Blair first. Sorry to get your hopes up, but the Prime Minister was in fact there for the Nato summit. He was doubtless bringing to bear all the soft power which the government had bought by paying to give away the Chagos. Ha ha. You heard it here first, Keir Starmer: geopolitical anti-Viagra. The main thrust of Ange’s answers was: ‘Yeah but no but the Tories’ Anyway, all this meant that the deputy PM was in the hot seat again. The first question that Big Ange faced wasn’t a question at all but

James Heale

Starmer stands by his welfare bill

Keir Starmer is in the Netherlands to attend the Nato summit – but that is not the subject which is gripping everyone back home. This afternoon, the Prime Minister held a press conference to confirm that the UK will shortly be expanding its nuclear deterrent by buying a squadron of American-made fighter jets. It is the most significant change in Britain’s nuclear posture since the end of the Cold War. Yet the attendant hacks chose to focus on a rather different conflict. The welfare bill dominated today’s PMQs in Starmer’s absence and is clearly the obsession of MPs here in Westminster. With 120 Labour rebels now publicly confirmed, would the

Brendan O’Neill

Zohran Mamdani and the Hipster Intifada

I see Generation Intifada has a new hero. Those rich white kids who never leave the house without their keffiyeh and who love to annoy their parents by saying ‘Globalise the intifada!’ are falling at the feet of this political idol. At last, they cry, a man who ‘gets it’ and who might even prise open the eyes of the dim and uneducated to the terrible injustices of our cruel world. Why use a word that you know will trigger in Jews the most hellish memories of persecution and death? It’s Zohran Mamdani. Of course it is. The meteoric rise of this 33-year-old ‘democratic socialist’, who last night became the

James Heale

Angela Rayner had a bad PMQs

With Keir Starmer at Nato, the hospital pass of this week’s PMQs was handed instead to Angela Rayner. The welfare row is tearing apart the Labour party, with more than 120 MPs now committed to voting against the changes to disability benefit next Tuesday. In such circumstances, the obvious choice to fill in for Kemi Badenoch was the shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride – the man who had previously held the work and pensions brief from 2022 to 2024. Given Labour’s woes, today was always going to be a difficult day for Rayner. Sir Mel certainly made it so, opening with a decent crack about her recent leaked memo to

Jawad Iqbal

Mark Rutte is right to suck up to 'daddy' Donald Trump

Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary-general, has two jobs. The first is to lead the 32-member alliance at a time of unprecedented threat and challenges. His other equally significant task is to keep America, and in particular President Donald Trump, on side. Rutte’s ability to sweet talk Trump is one of the reasons why he got the job of Nato chief Rutte is in effect tasked with doing and saying whatever it takes to keep Trump sweet. Why so? For the simple and obvious reason that, without the US leader’s support, Nato is in even bigger trouble than ever. That is why the criticism of Rutte in some quarters for lavishing praise