Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Matthew Lynn

Britain’s America deal is paying off

Exports would be impossible. The supply chains would be snarled up. And trade restrictions would destroy the economics of the industry. We have been lectured endlessly on how our departure from the EU would destroy the British car industry. But hold on. It is now finding a new niche as an offshore manufacturing hub for the American market – and that is only possible because of Brexit. The Japanese auto giant Toyota has today announced a major new investment in the UK. It’s a plant in Derbyshire will start making GR Corolla’s, a popular high performance model in America. The reason is simple. Right now, Japanese cars shipped across the

Theo Hobson

What Alasdair MacIntyre got right – and wrong

Alasdair MacIntyre, who died last week, was one of the most influential thinkers of the past 50 years. It is hard to think of any other philosopher writing in the late 20th-century who has had such an impact. He might be less famous than Foucault or Derrida, but it is his conservative brand of postmodernism that launched a fairly coherent intellectual movement. For a few decades its adherents were mostly academics; now it has become politically influential too. Like those aforementioned Frenchmen, he was a powerful critic of the rational Enlightenment. And like them, his thought was strongly shaped by Marxism, and its critique of liberal political assumptions. But unlike

Michael Simmons

Is the welfare state about to expand?

18 min listen

James Heale and Michael Simmons join Patrick Gibbons to discuss the speculation that Labour could scrap the two-child benefit cap. Is this just red meat for the left of the party or is it a sign that public opinion around welfare has shifted? And, with mixed messages on the economy, can the country afford to scrap it? This comes just a week after Labour’s partial U-turn over the winter fuel allowance so, with pressure also increasing from Reform, is the welfare state about to expand? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

James Heale

The welfare state is Nigel Farage’s new battleground

What, if anything, can stop Nigel Farage? That’s the question many in Westminster are asking as they try to reconcile themselves to the rise of Reform UK. The party has soared to 30 per cent in the polls – and is now seeking further gains. Farage’s speech this morning was his attempt to make hay from Labour’s woes on welfare. Reform, he pledged, would scrap both the winter fuel cut and the two-child benefit cap, while introducing a new tax allowance to reward married couples. It was all part of Farage’s pitch to frame himself as the defender of the welfare state, besieged by cuts at home and invaders from

Steerpike

Farage sides with Lowe over Lucy Connolly

Nigel Farage has not seen eye-to-eye with his former colleague Rupert Lowe about much lately, but the outrage sparked by the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly has them both on the same page. The wife of a Conservative councillor was jailed last year over an offensive tweet about the riots of last summer – and last week, her appeal against her sentence was quashed. Now, in a London speech, the Reform UK leader has condemned Connolly’s incarceration, with the Clacton MP telling reporters: ‘I want to make it absolutely clear: Lucy Connolly should not be in prison.’ The 42-year-old mother was sentenced to 31 months imprisonment in October after posting on

Lisa Haseldine

Is a mood shift on Ukraine underway in Europe?

Following years of requests, pleas and false starts, Ukraine has, it appears, definitively been given permission to fire missiles deep into Russian territory. Since the start of Moscow’s invasion in 2022, Kyiv had been banned from attacking military targets on Russian soil with western-made weapons. Now, after three years of war, it appears Ukraine’s allies have indeed decided to allow it to retaliate as it sees fit. The news of the change of tack by Ukraine’s allies came yesterday from Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor. Speaking at an event in Berlin, the Chancellor revealed that ‘there are no longer any range restrictions on weapons delivered to Ukraine. Neither by the

Michael Simmons

IMF: Britain will need to raise taxes if it wants to keep spending

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned Britain faces ‘difficult fiscal choices’ if it is to meet ever increasing spending pressures. The fund predicted a surge in public spending, driven largely by commitments to welfare, health, and pensions. According to the IMF, these policies will push public spending as a share of GDP up by 8 per cent by 2050. The message is clear: unless revenue is increased – i.e even more tax rises  – the UK will need to confront ‘tough policy decisions’ about the future role of the state and the scale of public services it can afford to deliver. Crucially, the IMF noted that the government’s ability to

Ian Acheson

The police have questions to answer after the Liverpool car incident

Could the carnage and horror that played out on the streets of Liverpool city centre yesterday have been averted? We now know that 24 people were hospitalised, four with very serious injuries, when a car drove into crowds attending Liverpool’s Premier League championship victory parade. Merseyside constabulary, undoubtedly stung by their mishandling of the Southport attack details, which contributed to a week of national rioting last year, were commendably quick off the mark. We knew very quickly that the individual believed to be the driver of the vehicle was a 53-year-old white British man from the city. While the motive remains unknown, terrorism has been firmly ruled out.  A liberal democracy

Ross Clark

Is Rachel Reeves prepared to raise taxes?

Some of the most infamous words in politics are ‘read my lips, no new taxes’ – uttered by George H.W. Bush as he accepted the nomination as the Republican candidate for the 1988 US presidential election. It helped him win that year but contributed to his downfall in 1992 as he failed to stick to his promise. We can argue how much of Bush’s defeat by Bill Clinton had to do with the broken tax promise and how much was to do with recession, but ‘read my lips, no new taxes’ should certainly have been on Rachel Reeves’s mind in recent months. The tragedy of Starmer’s Labour is that it

Monday

James Heale

Man arrested after Liverpool parade car crash

A 53-year-old man was arrested on Monday after a car ploughed into a crowd of Liverpool supporters during their Premier League trophy parade. Thousands were out on the streets to celebrate when the car drove through the crowds and collided with pedestrians, shortly after 6 p.m. The incident occurred in the heart of Liverpool city centre, with emergency services quick to arrive on the scene. Witnesses described a scene of panic as fans left the parade area, telling local media that the driver went past a police van before mounting the kerb. At a press conference at 11 p.m on Monday night, Merseyside emergency services provided an update on the victims affected

Steerpike

Watch: Macron's wife caught shoving him in face

Oh dear. It seems there’s trouble in one couple’s Parisian paradise after French president Emmanuel Macron was caught on camera being shoved in the face by his wife Brigitte as the pair landed in Vietnam. The footage spread furiously across social media – with the Elysée Palace initially denying the images were real before eventually admitting that they were indeed authentic. Talk about a tête-a-tête, eh? The video, captured by the Associated Press news agency in Hanoi on Sunday evening, revealed the president standing at the door of the plane as it opened. Out of nowhere, his wife’s arms flew at him as Brigitte pushed her husband in the face

Ian Proud

The crisis facing the Royal Navy

General Sir Gwyn Jenkins is stepping into the role of First Sea Lord at a difficult time, with the Royal Navy’s fleet in a sorry state. On 22 April, Carrier Strike Group 25 (CSG25) set sail on an eight-month publicity tour, leaving British waters sparsely defended. Keir Starmer posed on the flight deck of HMS The Prince of Wales, his battleship grey hair perfectly set like a middle-aged Ken doll. He said the CSG25 shows ‘the UK’s leadership on global issues and security and defence’. It really doesn’t. Britain could only field one of its two carriers, one destroyer, one frigate and one attack submarine. The Royal Navy also has

Steerpike

Poll: trust in Starmer on migration falls again

Oh dear. It seems that all Keir Starmer’s talk of an ‘island of strangers’ really wasn’t worth it. For a new poll for The Spectator by Ipsos shows that faith in the Prime Minister has not improved after his big speech on borders earlier this month. Just 25 per cent of the public now trust him to ‘have the right immigration policies’ – a six point drop for Labour since January 2024, the last time Ipsos asked this question. Reform, meanwhile, stayed consistent, with 37 per cent of the public backing them on this question. Looks like office isn’t everything… Fieldwork for the new poll was conducted from the 16th

Michael Murphy

George Simion: the football ultra who nearly took Romania

Bucharest, Romania Surely it’s only a matter of time before someone writes Children of the Deal: a portrait gallery of populists, showmen and media-savvy impresarios moulded in Donald Trump’s image. When that book appears, George Simion may well warrant the opening chapter. In the basement of a Lebanese restaurant in central Bucharest, he holds court, poised to become Romania’s next president. ‘This is Romanian,’ he says, waving a hand over the mezze. ‘Like the Gulf of America… I’ll have an executive order to declare it Romanian.’ The room laughed. So did Simion. He was joking. Probably. Simion is not, by any conventional measure, a traditional politician. A former football ultra and

James Heale

Russia seizes on Kemi's 'proxy' comment

It has not been an enjoyable bank holiday weekend for Kemi Badenoch. The Sunday Times contained not one, but two, critical stories of the Tory leader. The first was about her choice of car in government; the second about a recent shadow cabinet meeting at which her MPs were instructed on ‘management theory and values.’ Labour opponents outside the party were quick to leap on the first story; Tory critics are circulating the second as proof of her ineffectiveness. Badenoch had one of the prized slots on the Sunday morning round to answer back. On GB News, Camilla Tominey credited her guest for shouldering the burden on media commitments –

Rod Liddle

Alan Yentob was what the BBC should be

Let us create a hypothetical situation in which we have a state funded broadcaster in perpetuity. Who would you wish to run this goliath? I know some of you are sullenly answering “Lee Westwood”, but let us move on from the politics of the issue. I thought about this question when listening to Tony Hall – Lord Hall- lamenting the death of Alan Yentob on the radio yesterday. Tony is a good, decent, man and a very competent administrator. I hope he will not mind too much if I say that in my dealings with him I saw a sharp and wary political intelligence, but no shaft of brilliance and

Alexander Larman

There will never be another Alan Yentob

In the excellent BBC comedy series W1A, which poked a harsher degree of fun at its makers than many would have believed credible, there is one especially amusing throwaway gag. The hapless Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) is taken on a tour of Broadcasting House, and briefly veers into a meeting room, where, to his surprise, he sees Salman Rushdie and Alan Yentob engaged in a game of arm wrestling. Both men look up at him in pained surprise, and a baffled Fletcher makes his excuses and leaves.   I was reminded of this moment yesterday when the news broke of Yentob’s death, at the age of 78. My initial response was

Michael Gove

Why is antisemitism so pervasive? Irving v Lipstadt 25 years on

31 min listen

This spring marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark judgment in the infamous Irving v Lipstadt Holocaust denial case. David Irving sued American academic Deborah Lipstadt after she had described him as a Holocaust denier in her 1994 book, for his claims that Jews had not been systematically exterminated by the Nazis. Given the burden of proof in English libel law being on the defence, it was up to Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin to prove her claims were true that Irving had deliberately misrepresented evidence. In 2000, the Judge found in her favour. Deborah Lipstadt and the lawyers that represented her, Anthony Julius and James Libson, join Michael Gove

Neil Clark

Bring back Whitsun!

Bank Holidays are like buses- you wait ages for one before they all come along at once. Tomorrow will be our fourth state-mandated day off since the 18th April. It might be another golden opportunity to head to B & Q and buy bags of compost. But isn’t it all a bit much? Don’t get me wrong. I love Bank Holidays, and I think we should have more of them. But why do so many of them come in an April and May cluster? After tomorrow we have nothing till late August – and then no more until Christmas. Reinstating Whit Monday would be a welcome affirmation that we are

Gavin Mortimer

Could France's next president come from the Yellow Hats?

When Donald Trump first burst onto the political scene in 2016, comparisons were drawn with a 1950s Frenchman called Pierre Poujade. The BBC called him the ‘grandfather of populism’, the first post-war politician to lead a revolt against ‘being told what it is acceptable to think about issues like globalisation, migration and Europe’. Poujade was a provincial shopkeeper who was so fed up with what he saw as the corrupt and degenerate Paris elite that in 1953 he formed his own party, the Union de Defense des Commercants et Artisans. In the legislative elections in 1956, they won 2.4 million votes, enough to send 52 MPs to sit in the