Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Ian Acheson

Good riddance to Police and Crime Commissioners

So farewell then, Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs). The government has just announced that this weak and useless experiment in local democracy will be terminated. Few people will notice outside the cottage industry of ineffectual crime busters who will be receiving redundancy notices. That’s part of the problem. Elected PCCs were introduced in 2010 as a flagship Conservative commitment to get police chiefs to respond to local priorities on crime. Instead, they become symbols of wasteful bureaucracy, partisan meddling and bungling oversight. They were set up to replace opaque and often toothless policing authorities composed of local councillors. It has taken 15 years to work out that replacing one set

Tim Shipman

Politics or economics – which is Labour worst at?

11 min listen

It’s been another bruising week for the British economy. New GDP figures reveal that growth has almost flatlined, inching up by just 0.1 per cent between July and August – a sign, many fear, that the UK is drifting into deeper malaise. With the budget less than a fortnight away, can the Chancellor square the circle of sluggish growth, tax pressures and a restless Labour party? James Heale speaks to Tim Shipman and Paul Johnson about the mounting economic uncertainties, the Treasury’s lack of a clear tax strategy, and the political doom loop the government now finds itself in. Are Labour’s early missteps catching up with them – and will

Sam Dumitriu

Nuclear Anglesey is something to celebrate

On the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales sits Wylfa nuclear power station. For 44 years, until its final reactor closed in December 2015, it provided over a thousand well-paid jobs and clean, reliable energy. At its peak, it generated almost half the electricity in Wales. If there’s one thing the locals want more than a third Menai Crossing – the nearest A&E is on the mainland and only accessible via two beautiful, but fundamentally not fit for purpose, bridges built in the first half of the 19th century – it is for nuclear generation to return to the island. It’s not hard to see why: after the last reactor

Jacob Heilbrunn

The Epstein files continue to haunt Donald Trump

The main thing that has made the Epstein files seem politically (as opposed to morally) significant is that Donald Trump remains obsessed with preventing them from seeing the light of day. He thus devoted much of Wednesday to importuning Republicans such as Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert not to back their release. ‘Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican,’ Trump declared, ‘would fall into that trap.’ But senior Republicans are expecting mass vote defections in the coming week as legislators prepare to vote for a disclosure bill sponsored by Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene says that releasing the files is ‘not only the right thing

Ross Clark

Has Rachel Reeves crashed the economy?

If Rachel Reeves was hoping for a glimmer of good news in today’s GDP figures, she has been left disappointed. We now have a whole year of data since she delivered her first Budget, and it does not look good. Labour’s promise to put ‘growth, growth, growth” at the heart of the economy looks increasingly forlorn. She may have to rethink her standard attack line of accusing Liz Truss of ‘crashing the economy’, on the grounds that it could equally well apply to her. When Labour came to power in July 2024, economic growth was enjoying a fillip – GDP had increased by 0.6 per cent over the previous quarter.

Freddy Gray

Why does the American right take itself so seriously?

The American right has a problem: it can’t stop talking about itself. Commentators, academics and journalists of what used to be called a ‘conservative’ persuasion all tend to think that their ideas are tremendously interesting. And, in the way a difficult child becomes argumentative when he or she isn’t getting attention, they fight. They fear irrelevance and so they fall out with each other and take sides in order to prove to themselves that they have something worth saying. Things become messy and nasty and everybody gets carried away – usually in the hope of grabbing their own slice of an all-too easily distracted online audience. (Why else am I

Gavin Mortimer

A decade after Bataclan, France is more divided than ever

Ten years ago today, Islamist terrorists massacred 130 people in a coordinated attack across Paris. It was the heaviest loss of life on French soil since the second world war, and those who perished – as well as the 350 who were wounded – will be remembered today in a series of commemorations. Emmanuel Macron will visit the six sites where the terrorists struck, among them the Stade de France and the Bataclan concert hall, and the president will also inaugurate a memorial garden at Place Saint-Gervais, opposite Paris City Hall. According to the Élysée Palace, the day will be an opportunity for the nation ‘to honour the memory of

Edward Howell

Why Taiwan matters to Japan

It was only a matter of time before Japan’s Iron Lady would be targeted by China. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi mentioned how Tokyo might resort to force were Beijing to take military action over Taiwan: ‘If there are battleships and the use of force, no matter how you think about it, it could constitute a survival-threatening situation,’ she said. In response, China’s consul-general in Osaka, Xue Jian, threatened, on Monday, to ‘cut off’ the Japanese prime minister’s ‘filthy neck…without a moment’s hesitation’. Xue’s vitriolic online reaction, which he subsequently deleted from his X account, underscores how China’s wolf-warrior diplomacy has anything but abated. Yet, the incident highlights a more important

William Moore

BBC in crisis, the Wes Streeting plot & why 'flakes' are the worst

36 min listen

Can the BBC be fixed? After revelations of bias from a leaked dossier, subsequent resignations and threats of legal action from the US President, the future of the corporation is the subject of this week’s cover piece. Host William Moore is joined by The Spectator’s commissioning editor, Lara Brown, arts editor, Igor Toronyi-Lalic, and regular contributor, Melanie McDonagh. They also discuss the drama of this week’s Westminster coup plot, and Melanie’s new book about why Catholicism attracted unlikely converts throughout the twentieth century. Plus: what’s the most bizarre excuse a friend has used to back out of a social engagement?

Lionel Shriver

The UK's tax take, take, take

Helping her country ski ever more steeply down the wrong side of the Laffer curve, Rachel Reeves may be preparing to violate Labour’s manifesto and raise income tax – perhaps a suitable juncture at which to examine just how wacko the UK tax code is already. Start with the duplicity of ‘national insurance’. This unhypothecated add-on simply pours into the Treasury’s coffers as plain taxes. Yet much of the populace still believes that NI specifically funds the NHS. This is misunderstanding by design. The sly mislabelling is a resentment blocker. In truth, the employee basic tax rate is a straight-up 28 per cent, not 20 as advertised. The mooted Reeves

The Spectator

Labour isn’t working

Labour: the clue should be in the name. In March, Keir Starmer branded Labour the ‘party of work’. If ‘you want to work’, he declared, ‘the government should support you, not stop you’. Even as his premiership staggers from crisis to crisis, that mission remains. If Labour doesn’t stand for ‘working people’ – however nebulously defined – it stands for nothing. As such, this week’s unemployment figures are more than just embarrassing for Starmer; they are a betrayal of his party’s founding purpose. Unemployment has risen to 5 per cent – its highest rate since February 2021, in the middle of the third lockdown. There has been a 180,000 reduction

Douglas Murray

Justice in war is messy

At the end of last month, a judge in Belfast issued a verdict that was both right and wrong. The case related to a man known to the public only as ‘Soldier F’. He was one of the members of the Parachute Regiment involved in the events of the day in January 1972 that became known as Bloody Sunday. That day 13 members of the public were shot dead during a civil rights march in Londonderry that turned violent. The precise details are probably more heavily documented than those of any other day in history thanks to the Saville Inquiry, which became the longest and costliest legal inquiry in British

Tim Shipman

Inside the Wes Streeting plot

Keir Starmer is stuck in a catch-22. If he is to avoid the threat of continual leadership challenges, the Prime Minister will need to deal with what every poll shows are the public’s three overriding concerns: the cost of living, rampant illegal immigration and the state of the NHS. But if serious progress is made in any of these areas, it is likely to turn the minister responsible into a viable leadership candidate. Let’s call it catch-25. Rachel Reeves at the Treasury has a monumental task and is politically tied to the Starmer project, so she can be ruled out. Of the other two key issues, most progress has been

Wednesday

Kitty Thompson

Polanski should be afraid of TikTok

There are few sights more unsettling than a politician trying to get ‘down with the kids’. Last week it was Zack Polanski’s turn. The new Green Party leader appeared on TikTok, lip-syncing along to Nicki Minaj with a climate activist as his contribution to the viral ‘What’s going on?’ trend. Rather than being met with rapturous applause, viewers that haven’t drunk the Green Kool-Aid were left asking what on Earth was going on.  Although there is nothing wrong with politicians trying to appear human, many seem to forget that politics is supposed to be a serious business If you want to reach the youth, you don’t go on Newsnight. You

Tim Shipman

Wes for PM?

19 min listen

Conspiracy or cock-up? Westminster is abuzz after what appears to be a plan to decapitate Wes Streeting has spectacularly backfired. A flurry of late-night briefings designed to shore up Keir Starmer’s position turned personal against the Health Secretary, suggesting he was plotting a coup in advance of the Budget and in anticipation of – what many expect will be – a poor showing at the local elections. Streeting was left to defend himself on the media round, confidently declaring he was a ‘faithful’ and he also joked that he doesn’t know the whereabouts of Shergar and believes the moon landings are real. There is only one clear winner from this

Madeline Grant

Keir Starmer can’t even commit governmental suicide

It’s not often the Prime Minister gets a derisive laugh from the House of Commons for telling them that he had meetings with ministerial colleagues that morning. However No. 10 making a complete hash of a coup against the PM (or was it actually a pre-emptive coup against the Health Secretary?) meant that once again Sir Keir was in the chamber having to answer questions about the chaos caused by his government outside. The No. 10 debacle is really good stuff The No. 10 debacle is really good stuff. These people can’t even commit governmental suicide properly. This was the Day of Dupes meets Mean Girls, meets the Chuckle Brothers.

Charlie Walsham

Inside the BBC’s impartiality meltdown

As I watched Tim Davie and Samir Shah’s all-staff call on Tuesday, I became increasingly bemused and frustrated. It was impossible to tell from watching that the BBC is facing one of the greatest crises in its history. The fact that the call was hosted by an in-house spin doctor set the tone for softball questions and unchallenged responses.  Despite quitting in disgrace over the impartiality row, Davie seemed remarkably buoyant, babbling a word-salad eulogy to the corporation he has steered to the very edge of a precipice. It was insufferable.   It’s something of a bitter irony that many of my colleagues are at their balanced best when reporting on

Maxwell Marlow

The Waspi women don't deserve a penny

Worry not, dear taxpayer, there are more bills for you to pay. Not only must you pay for the lockdown that kept you in your cramped apartment for a disease that didn’t affect you, and don’t forget the deficit payments of over £100 billion a year – really, you should just shrug it off. Even if you have your expensive degree, which creates negligible returns, and levelled with record living costs and taxation, you can of course pay for more benefits for a small minority of retired people who didn’t pay attention to changes in their state pension benefit. Let’s be clear – in 1993 when Ken Clarke announced a change to

Steerpike

Flashback: Streeting predicts he will be PM

Well that was jolly fun. Kemi Badenoch gave Keir Starmer an almighty pasting at PMQs, predictably lacerating him over the anonymous briefings about Wes Streeting. But – in fairness to Labour’s forces of darkness – the Health Secretary has not exactly been shy about his future intentions. As he told the Guardian in June 2023, he has ‘never been ashamed of aiming high and going as far as my talents will take me.’ And now, an old clip is circulating on the Tory WhatsApp groups. It was filmed in 2018 and features a succession of MPs being asked who will be Prime Minister in ten years’ time. Some of the

Isabel Hardman

Only Wes Streeting came out well from PMQs

Who won PMQs this week? Not Kemi Badenoch, nor Keir Starmer for that matter. In fact, the real winner wasn’t in the chamber at all: Wes Streeting emerged from the session in even better shape than he was before Downing Street decided to launch an extraordinary briefing round against him. The jokes about the instability at the top of the government began even before the exchange between the leader of the ppposition and the Prime Minister. When Starmer gave his conventional first answer, that he had been having ‘meetings with ministerial colleagues and others’ this morning, there were loud guffaws from the benches opposite. Then Tory Lincoln Jopp offered Starmer