Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Sunday

Steerpike

Ash Regan's prostitution blunder

To Scotland, where once Britain’s greatest schools were found. These days, sadly, that can no longer be said, thanks to the SNP’s mismanagement over the past 18 years in office. One of those who served as a minister in its wretched regime was Ash Regan, who held the Scottish Government’s Community Safety brief from 2018 to 2022. Having failed to win the party leadership in 2023, she now sits as an MSP in the Alex Salmond fan club that is the Alba party.  Her latest Holyrood initiative is to restart the debate on prostitution north of the border. Regan is championing a new ‘Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill’ which

Joe Bedell-Brill

John Healey: 'Russia is attacking the UK daily'

John Healey: ‘Russia is attacking the UK daily’ Defence Secretary John Healey was interviewed today ahead of the government’s publication of the Strategic Defence Review, which will warn that new technology is significantly changing the nature of war. On the BBC, Laura Kuenssberg asked Healey if there is a risk that Russia would attack the UK. Healey said the UK defence system already deals with thousands of cyberattacks, many of which come from Russia, which is why the government is putting in ‘an extra £1bn to create a new cyber command’. Healey warned we are in ‘a world of growing threats’, and that the Strategic Defence Review will set out

Tom Slater

Thom Yorke has exposed the intolerance of the 'pro-Palestine' set

Thom Yorke has done us all a great service by exposing how unhinged, intolerant and, frankly, bigoted much of the supposedly ‘pro-Palestine’ set is.  The Radiohead frontman and bandmate Jonny Greenwood have for years now been locked in a bitter beef with Israelophobic fans and fellow musicians, due to their dogged refusal to treat Israelis like moral lepers and insistence on still playing to – and with – them. In 2017, Radiohead ploughed ahead with a big tour show in Tel Aviv, despite outrage from all the usual suspects. Roger Waters even called Yorke a ‘prick’, which I suppose would only really sting if you subscribed to the old adage ‘it takes one to

James Heale

What is Robert Jenrick up to?

It has been another good week for Robert Jenrick. At a time when many of the shadow cabinet are struggling to make an impact, his video on fare-dodging in London has certainly caused a stir. The 58-second clip – in which Jenrick, like some Tory Batman, accosts Tube passengers walking through barriers – has now been viewed nearly 15 million times. It prompted a Newsnight discussion, acres of coverage and begrudging private praise from opposition politicians too. Such videos are not some mere fluke but rather, the product of much time and effort by Jenrick and his aides. He has learned from masters of the craft like Pierre Poilievre, the

Damian Reilly

The Limitless Pendant is an uncool trip into the tech nerd future

The problem with the future is it is very obviously no longer being created by cool people. Instead, it belongs to autistic nerds who want nothing more than to be a computer. Cool people invent things like surfboards, Ray-Bans and Triumph Spitfires. Nerds make profoundly uncool things like cars that drive themselves and the absurd Limitless Pendant device that I have been attempting to wear. The Pendant records everything you say, and everything anyone near you says Let me start this review by stating I hope the Pendant – yours for $199 – fails very hard. It is an awful and life-negating device that subjugates any human stupid enough to

Kitty Thompson

Reeves could leave farmers with Diddly Squat

The powers that be at Amazon seem to have an uncanny talent for releasing each new series of Clarkson’s Farm just as British politics descends into fresh farming chaos. The new series is no different. At the exact moment that I am watching Jeremy Clarkson and the cast of Diddly Squat farm get their government-funded agri-environment schemes in order for the year, over in Whitehall, Rachel Reeves is plotting how to cut the budget that pays for them.  A recurring theme so far in the show’s fourth series has been the jibes directed at the government for paying farmers for seemingly non-food things, like establishing wildflower meadows. Initially, this does seem strange.

Jawad Iqbal

Paris Saint-Germain's win was a triumph for sportswashing

Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) are champions of Europe for the first time in their history. They demolished Inter Milan 5-0 in the Champions League Final in Munich. Football clubs have become the playthings of autocratic nation states with bottomless pockets Forget the Premier League and the sporting abomination that is the revamped Fifa Club World Cup. The Champions League is the pinnacle of club football -the competition that every top team wants to win. The final was billed as a mouth-watering clash of opposites: youth and free-flowing football (PSG) versus experience and the nous to always find a way to win (Inter). But the final was a huge anticlimax: PSG dominated the match

Andrew Doyle

Is the 'woke' movement really over?

‘I was with some doctors last week who said there is no such thing as biological sex.’ It sounds like the rambling of a madman or a drunk, but these words were uttered last week at the Charleston literary festival in East Sussex by Lady Brenda Hale, former president of the Supreme Court. Personally, I would avoid doctors who lack this rudimentary knowledge of the human body. They might start asking me about the regularity of my menstrual cycle. Wokeness has destroyed lives. Children who are gender nonconforming have been persuaded that they are ‘born in the wrong body’ The ubiquity of wokeness has meant that we have grown accustomed

Klaus Dodds

Britain urgently needs an Antarctica strategy

Now that a deal has been struck with Mauritius over the Chagos Islands, the government’s focus should be on the UK’s southernmost overseas territories. There are three of them: the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (SGSSI) and the British Antarctic Territory (BAT). As increasingly tense geopolitics make the world more hostile, these territories are becoming ever more vulnerable. If Britain wants to secure its presence here in the face of the looming shadows of Argentina, Russia, China and the US – to name a few – Labour urgently needs to start thinking about how it does so. The Strategic Defence Review (SDR) for 2025 is expected

James Graham

Why is your pension fund so obsessed with net zero?

Legal & General is Britain’s largest asset manager, with over £1 trillion on its books. Every pound it manages should be dedicated to achieving the highest possible returns. This matters a lot: L&G manages over five million pensions in the UK. But in recent years, the asset manager has been particularly concerned with fashionable causes, instead of being entirely focused on making sure your retirement is secure. Individuals already fund net zero schemes via their taxes. They should not be forced to pay an effective additional tax, via lower returns, to fund net zero with their retirement savings That is why I recently attended their AGM. I wanted to learn

Damian Thompson

Is God an Englishman?

32 min listen

Bijan Omrani joins Damian Thompson to talk about his new book God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England. They discuss the spiritual and cultural debt the country owes to Christianity. The central question of Bijan’s book is ‘does it matter that Christianity is dying in England?’. The faith has historically played a disproportionate role in many areas of English life that we take for granted now – for example, by shaping both charity and the welfare state. Yet this is influence is often ignored as congregations shrink and the UK slides into secularism. But are there unexpected grounds for hope? The publication of God is an Englishman has coincided with a modest but surprising

Claire Fox

Disposable vapes are fantastic. Naturally, they’re demonised

Forty a day for forty years – that’s a hell of a lot of cigarettes – but je ne regret rien. I loved smoking. But note the past tense because, eventually, for all the clichéd health reasons you can imagine, I had to give up. Despite always knowing it was a matter of life or death, I dreaded packing it in. Smoking has been so much part of my persona for decades; I just couldn’t imagine life without puffing away. All the usual smoking cessation options didn’t work, from gum to patches, Alan Carr to NHS counselling. Until eventually, on the recommendation of no less than two NHS doctors, I tried disposable vapes.

Jimmy Nicholls

No, Zoomers: life wasn't better before the internet

Almost half of 16 to 21-year-olds wish they had grown up without the internet. A similar portion are even calling for a social media curfew, with a quarter wanting phones banned in schools, according to research from the British Standards Institution. Really? The truth is that Zoomers – those born between 1997 and 2012 – don’t know how lucky they are to have come of age during an era in which they had access to the web. The truth is that Zoomers don’t know how lucky they are While my own generation of Millennials were early guinea pigs for Facebook, Twitter and – for the connoisseurs out there – MSN Messenger,

Saturday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Israel faces a brutal choice

For months, Israel has faced a relentless barrage of criticism over its conduct in Gaza – from western governments, UN agencies, and media outlets that once claimed to be her allies. Central to the condemnation are the humanitarian circumstances: civilian suffering, limited aid access, and Israel’s temporary obstruction of some relief efforts. What has gone largely unreported, however, is that the bold new strategy in place may now be altering that equation entirely – a direct aid delivery mechanism, led by American contractors, that is not only reaching civilians more effectively but also weakening Hamas from within. You would never have guessed from the way some world leaders have condemned

Svitlana Morenets

Zelensky is in an impossible position

The Ukrainian president said this week he hopes the war will end by next June. Not this summer. Not this year. But in 12 months’ time. Sanctions, he believes, and four years of gruesome war will finally hit the Russian economy, pushing it into a deep budget deficit. The IMF’s latest forecast sort of backs this up. Russia’s GDP growth is set to slow to 0.9 per cent next year, down from over 4 per cent in 2024. Most of Russia’s workforce is already employed and its central bank’s key interest rate is at 21 per cent. Still, for many Ukrainians, Russia’s downfall feels like yet another fairy tale. They’ve

Lucy Dunn

Should cannabis be decriminalised?

21 min listen

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has called for possession of small amounts of cannabis to be decriminalised following a report by the London Drugs Commission. The report has made 42 recommendations, which include removing natural cannabis from the Misuse of Drugs Act. Former cabinet minister, now Labour peer, Charlie Falconer and Tory MP Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst join Lucy Dunn to discuss whether now is the time to decriminalise cannabis. For Lord Falconer, who chaired the Commission, the present law doesn’t work and he explains the principles behind the review; Neil, however, believes that the proposals send the wrong message that cannabis is harmless. He argues that a balance needs to

David Shipley

Tommy Robinson and the truth about jail beards

When Tommy Robinson walked out of prison this week, he was unrecognisable. The far-right activist, who was jailed for contempt of court, was sporting a huge bushy beard as he emerged from HMP Woodhill. Robinson looked more like a man who had been marooned on a desert island, or lost in the mountains, than someone who had spent a few months in a Category B prison in Milton Keynes. Robinson’s prison beard made me think of my own. When I was locked up at HMP Wandsworth, I grew a beard even wilder than Robinson’s. For the first six months in prison, I didn’t touch my facial hair, letting it grow

Matthew Gould

Israel is going too far

I have kept my silence on the Middle East for ten years. I left Israel in 2015, after five years as British ambassador, as the first Jew in the role. Since then, I have turned down every request to be a talking head. Neither the world nor my successors needed another ex-ambassador pundit. But I now feel obliged to break my silence, just once, to say that the Israeli government’s treatment of the Gazan population is both wrong and self-defeating. And that it is not anti-Israel or pro-Hamas to say that withholding humanitarian aid is not the answer. The situation is the opposite of straightforward. It is not just that

Chas Newkey-Burden

Why shouldn't vegans be catered for in an apocalypse?

You know you’ve arrived when professors start thinking about how to look after you during a major emergency. As a vegan, I was thrilled to read in the Times this week that Professor Tim Lang, a professor of food policy, has told the government that us meat-dodgers must be catered for in any ‘food apocalypse’. Speaking at the Hay Festival, Lang said that if a cyber attack or military strike from Russia destroyed Britain’s ‘vulnerable’ food chain, the contents of ration packs would need to bring comfort to a shaken public. We’d all be ‘in psychological shock’, he explained, so we’d need to have food that we’re ‘familiar and comfortable with’. In

Gavin Rice

Britain needs to reindustrialise

In recent years, governments looking for good news on growth have sounded increasingly desperate, like a doctor looking for signs of an improvement in a terminally ill patient.  In the first quarter of this year Britain’s economy grew by 0.7 per cent, slightly higher than expected – a fact seized upon by this already beleaguered government. Both Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer have clung furiously to the belief that we are ‘the fastest growing economy in the G7’, a fact only true on the most selective of snapshots. Our industrial energy costs – among the highest in the world – are killing off what’s left of UK production Both statements mask