Politics Archives

Friday

6 February 2026

Can Russia trust its old ‘little brother’ China?

The lovefest between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin continued this week. A video call on Wednesday saw the Russian president cooing that, “for Russian-Chinese relations, it’s safe to say that any time of year is spring” and his Chinese counterpart telling his “old, dear friend” that their two countries needed a “grand plan” further to deepen ties between them. Of course, the realities are a little less harmonious. Beijing is supplanting Moscow in regions where it once held sway Russia’s need for energy sales, industrial machinery and dual-use equipment (in other words, things that are not weapons, but still of value in war, such as trucks and bandages) has made

Jonathan Spyer

Trump must help Iranians bring down the Islamic regime

With diplomatic talks between the US and Iran set to take place in Muscat, Oman, today, the prospects for de-escalation between the two countries appear slim to non-existent. Teheran is clear that it is prepared to discuss only its nuclear programme and has so far refused the White House’s demands to put its ballistic missile programme, support for regional proxies, and internal repression on the agenda. With diplomacy on the verge of faltering, preparations for an American military strike are proceeding apace. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group has now reached Middle Eastern waters and the area for which United States central command is responsible. Additional military assets – F15E

Michael Gove

Q&A: Is Rishi Sunak English – or British?

25 min listen

To submit your urgent questions to Michael and Maddie, visit spectator.com/quiteright. In this week’s Q&A, Michael and Maddie unpack the controversy over whether Rishi Sunak is English or British – and why a debate about national identity has become so politically charged. Is Englishness a civic identity, an ethnic one, or something more elusive? And why has the Labour party increasingly reached for accusations of racism when the question is raised at all? Also this week: are claims that Britain is drifting towards civil unrest alarmist scaremongering – or a warning we should take seriously? And finally, they reflect on the earliest political moments that shaped them – from Margaret

William Moore

AI will bring down Keir Starmer – if Peter Mandelson doesn’t first

43 min listen

Is Britain ready for Artificial Intelligence? Well, bluntly, ‘no’; that’s the verdict if you read several pieces in this week’s Spectator – from Tim Shipman, Ross Clark and Palantir UK boss Louis Mosley – focused on how Britain is uniquely ill-placed to take advantage of the next industrial revolution. Tim Shipman’s cover piece focuses on how the Labour government is approaching AI – there are some positives but, overall, Britain’s creaky bureaucracy is blocking progress. To discuss this week’s Edition, features editor William Moore is joined by political editor Tim Shipman, commissioning editor Lara Brown and the Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine. Are you a tech-optimist or part of the

AI will bring down Keir Starmer – if Peter Mandelson doesn’t first

Thursday

5 February 2026

Isabel Hardman

Do MPs really want to save the Houses of Parliament?

Is there a building in Britain more important than the Palace of Westminster? Depending on who you listen to today, parliament is so important that MPs and peers really must agree to an expensive restoration that would see the Palace being emptied and rebuilt either in stages or all at once – or is it so important that MPs and peers should resist this dangerous plan with all their might? The building is crumbling, at risk of a catastrophic and preventable fire, and has neither proper sanitation nor adequate access. Everyone accepts those facts, but what MPs cannot agree on is what to do about them. Today the restoration and

Stephen Daisley

Why Labour should stand by Starmer

Labour MPs want shot of Keir Starmer over the Peter Mandelson scandal. There is nothing new in that sentence until the mention of the former ambassador. Mandelson’s reported disclosure of government information to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is the latest pretext, but before that it was because he rebuffed the Waspi women, and before that because Andy Burnham wanted the job, and before that because he’s sunk Labour’s chances ahead of May’s Scottish elections, and if you keep going back there was Gaza and gender and the winter fuel payment debacle. The experience of government is not what Labour MPs expected. The Labour party is a mass-membership moral superiority

Christopher Snowdon

Netflix’s documentary poses some hard questions for Lucy Letby’s supporters

I often tell friends they should read up on the Lucy Letby case because it is not going away. People will be talking about it for decades, possibly centuries. Even if she confesses, some people won’t believe her. A working understanding of the events at the Countess of Chester hospital in the mid-2010s will soon be as essential to social discourse as a rudimentary knowledge of the Premier League table, so you might as well do the prep now. The lies. The disturbing comments. The gaslighting. The falsification of medical records. The bizarre scribbling The case is so vast that it can swallow you up. The first trial took ten months

Michael Simmons

The Bank cuts growth prospects by a quarter

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has just voted to hold interest rates at 3.75 per cent. While market expectations and pundit’s predictions overwhelmingly foresaw a hold, the vote came in slightly tighter than expected at five against four. The decision came alongside new forecasts from the Bank that predict inflation falling back to the 2 per cent target from April, in what will be a relief to the government and indeed the rest of us. In even better news for Rachel Reeves, in the Bank’s ‘Monetary Policy Report’, also released today, it gave the government some credit for ‘developments in energy prices including from Budget 2025’. Better

Stephen Pollard

Watch out for Kemi Badenoch

The political focus is, quite rightly, now on Sir Keir Starmer. You hardly need me to point out how tenuous his hold on office now is, or why. But there is one key aspect to that ‘why’ which has been relatively unremarked on. Yesterday Kemi Badenoch scored a direct hit on the Prime Minister when she asked him at PMQs, repeatedly, if he knew when he appointed Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the US about his ongoing friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after the paedophile’s initial conviction. Starmer twice evaded the question; it was only when Badenoch came back with it for a third time that he made the admission that

James Heale

Could the herd move on Starmer?

11 min listen

James Heale, Tim Shipman and Oscar Edmondson discuss the continuing fallout over the Mandelson scandal. The mood amongst Labour MPs is pretty dire – following a bruising PMQs and a government climbdown over the release of Mandelson’s vetting files – but is it bad enough for Labour MPs to challenge Starmer? And could his chief of staff – and close Mandelson ally – Morgan McSweeney be in the firing line? How long ago the decision to block Andy Burnham seems now…

Vincent MacMaster

How Starmer will still keep us in the dark on the Epstein scandal

In a display of candour that was as refreshing as it was deeply alarming, the Prime Minister stood at the despatch box yesterday and confirmed what many had whispered but few expected him to breathe: he knew. He knew that Peter Mandelson had maintained his personal friendship with the late Jeffrey Epstein well after the financier’s conviction for soliciting prostitution from a child. And yet, with the nonchalance of counsel advancing an implausible brief in court, the Prime Minister sent the Dark Lord to Washington anyway. If the legislative shackles weren’t enough, the administrative ones are even tighter The Prime Minister’s admission was met with hushed awe in the Commons.

Steerpike

Reform unveil their Welsh leader

With 91 days to go until the Senedd elections, Reform are polling second – so it’s probably about time that they actually unveiled their leader. At a press conference in Newport this morning, Nigel Farage produced not just one rabbit but two. First, there was the long-awaited defection of James Evans after his expulsion from the Tories last month. Then, there was the announcement of Dan Thomas as the actual leader. ‘Who?’ asked most of the accompanying hacks… Thomas might lack a national profile but he boasts both roots in the Valleys and experience of local government. A former Barnet Council leader from 2019 to 2022, he switched to Reform

Eliot Wilson

Parliament’s modernisers have been foiled

Parliament is pointless without debate. It is there in the definition of the word itself: the Old French parlement derives from parler, to talk or discuss. Parliament is a forum in which our elected representatives debate how we live as a society and a nation. It has not been as effective or interested in that central purpose as it should for some years. This week, however, a House of Commons select committee drew a line in the sand and prevented debate being further marginalised. Being in the Chamber and participating in the main business of the House should never be seen by MPs as ‘wasting’ their time In December 2024,

James Kirkup

Gordon Brown deserved better than Peter Mandelson’s treachery

Peter Mandelson may just have achieved the impossible. He has made me feel sorry for Gordon Brown. When I was a lobby correspondent in the 2000s, I spent a great deal of time covering Brown, first as chancellor, then as prime minister. I did not emerge from the experience with a particularly warm impression of the man. He was thin-skinned, prickly, self-righteous and often very, very angry. He is not, as his public image sometimes suggests, a cuddly saint. Many colleagues would take a similar view. Brown – a sensitive man, always quick to detect a slight, real or imagined – came to believe that he had been the victim of betrayal

Matthew Lynn

Musk’s SpaceX is worth every penny

As the hype builds for the reported $1.5 trillion (£1 trillion) IPO of Elon Musk’s SpaceX later this year, there will be plenty of critics who argue the company’s marketing has more hot air than one of its rockets. It has been claimed by some that the IPO will be worth more than the top seven companies currently listed on the London Stock Exchange – including century-old giants such as Shell, HSBC and AstraZeneca – combined. And yes, sure, there is probably an element of wishful thinking in these reports, as there often is with Musk. But SpaceX also has the potential to become one of the giants of the

Piotr Wilczek

The Mandelson scandal is so typically British

Peter Mandelson’s resignation from the House of Lords – and the Labour party – is all rather undignified. The Epstein emails reveal that Mandelson’s relationship with the disgraced paedophile amounted to far more than just casual chitchat. Still, there is something ironic and typically British about the current spectacle. Mandelson’s departure from the Lords was announced by the Lord Speaker on Tuesday with the air of someone who regrets something rather minor, like a faux pas at high tea rather than a resignation from such a senior position. No midnight raids, no congressional hearings, just a police investigation and a few pointed questions in parliament. This is a combination of

Wednesday

4 February 2026

Madeline Grant

Labour’s invertebrates are deserting Keir Starmer

It was always going to be a good one wasn’t it? There was almost a sense of guilt watching today’s PMQs. My fellow sketch writers and I felt like the people who slow down to get a good view of a particularly horrific pile-up on a dual carriageway. Confirmation of this came when the Prime Minister dispensed with his usual embarrassing self-congratulatory monologue at the start of PMQs and simply told the House he’d had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. One hopes that the latter category includes the Metropolitan Police. We started with a little hors d’oeuvre of Labour incompetence. A nondescript Scottish MP had been primed to talk

James Heale

Keir Starmer is losing his own MPs over Mandelson

There is a sulphurous mood in the House of Commons today. Peter Mandelson hangs over Westminster, amid ongoing revelations about his contact with Jeffrey Epstein. At PMQs, Kemi Badenoch gave another impressive performance. She forced Keir Starmer to admit that he knew at the time of Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador that he had remained friends with Epstein after his conviction for child sex offences. That confession changed the narrative from a story about process to a debate around judgement. Angry Labour MPs are now discussing whether Starmer can survive. Questions about a leader’s authority are par for the course at a time when their party is struggling. The danger

Tim Shipman

The Mandelson scandal could spell the end for Starmer

15 min listen

Another impressive PMQs from Kemi Badenoch – but she had plenty of ammunition to deploy after the Peter Mandelson scandal took a bleaker turn this week. The Prime Minister clearly wanted to make a strong statement in his first answer to Kemi Badenoch, saying that ‘Mandelson betrayed our country, our parliament and my party’. He added: ‘He lied repeatedly to my team when asked about his relationship with Epstein before and during his tenure as ambassador. I regret appointing him.’ He then listed the actions he had taken to strip Mandelson of his title, remove him from the Privy Council, and refer material to the Metropolitan Police. The whole thing

The Mandelson scandal could spell the end for Starmer

Tim Shipman

Is Keir Starmer prepared for the AI-pocalypse?

Is there any area of public policy which Keir Starmer’s government has got right? ‘Where very little is working, AI is a bright spot,’ says a former adviser. ‘They’ve started well but they are now in danger of blowing it.’ When Labour came to power they consigned much of the past 14 years of Tory rule to the dustbin. But Starmer poured resources into Rishi Sunak’s AI Security Institute and published an AI Opportunities action plan in January last year, declaring (very un-Starmerishly) that he wanted to ‘mainline AI into the veins’ of the economy. Last week an audit found that 75 per cent of the proposals had already been