Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

4 February 2026

The British should have their holy places

I think by now most of us can spot a double standard when we see one. So let me try two out on you. In what situation is it acceptable to denounce an MP or parliamentary candidate as ‘not very British’ or even someone who ‘doesn’t get our values, our culture, or our history’. When it is said by a Reform candidate about an MP from an ethnic minority? Or when Jeevun Sandher MP says it about Matt Goodwin, the Reform party candidate for Gorton and Denton? Doubtless you have already guessed the correct answer. The above phrase was used this week by Labour’s Sandher to denounce Goodwin, and as

Ross Clark

The glaring flaw in Keir Starmer’s AI plan

Like Harold Wilson and his ill-defined ‘white heat of technology’, Keir Starmer has latched on to artificial intelligence as the saviour which is finally going to jolt Britain’s sluggish economy into growth. He once even suggested it would help fill potholes. A year ago he launched his AI Opportunities Action Plan, which is supposed to give the industry a huge boost through the designation of ‘AI Growth Zones’. But there is a big hole in Starmer’s plans. How are we going to power an industry that has become as voracious in its energy needs as the steel, shipbuilding and other heavy industries which it might one day replace? The high

James Heale

‘It’ll be a photo finish’: inside the Gorton and Denton by-election

British by-elections are often prolonged affairs, dragging on for months. Yet in the Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton – once home to Myra Hindley and the Gallagher brothers – campaigners are on a frantic dash to canvas the 82,000 voters before polling day on 26 February. ‘It is a proper three-horse race,’ says one. ‘And it’s coming down to a photo finish.’ Gorton has been red since the days of Ramsay MacDonald – but now a WhatsApp scandal threatens to end Labour’s hegemony. Andrew Gwynne, the departing MP, has quit over a series of lewd messages. Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, blocked from standing to replace him, has instead become

Steerpike

Starmer squirms over Phil Shiner links

It’s Wednesday so that means another ritual humiliation for Keir Starmer at PMQs. As his government limps towards the May elections, the weekly spankings by Kemi Badenoch often seem to blur into one. But this week’s session will stand out in the annals for the sheer torrent of criticism directed at Starmer over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as the British ambassador to Washington. Oh Mandy… But while Labour MPs fume over another fine mess which Starmer has got them into, Mr S was intrigued by the beleaguered premier’s response to a different line of questioning this lunchtime. On Monday, Mark Francois, the Tory shadow defence minister, raised the

Isabel Hardman

The question Starmer didn’t want to answer about Peter Mandelson

Prime Minister’s Questions today highlighted Keir Starmer’s weakness, and not just when it comes to Peter Mandelson. The Prime Minister made clear in his first answer to Kemi Badenoch 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. If I knew then what I know now, he would never have been anywhere near government.’ He then listed the actions he had taken to strip Mandelson of his title, to remove him from the Privy council, and to refer material to the Metropolitan Police.

Tom Slater

Peter Mandelson and the phoney moral superiority of Labour

When Keir Starmer’s Labour was flung into power by the implosion of the Conservatives, the chattering classes were gripped by almost comical levels of delusion. We were assured this assortment of third-rate managerialists were about to usher in a new age of calm, competence and principle. Surely, the Peter Mandelson scandal has finally put paid to all that. Sleaze defined New Labour, and it didn’t just sully the so-called Prince of Darkness Of all the supposed virtues that were projected on to Starmer’s incoming Labour government, the notion it would rid British politics of sleaze was almost adorable in its naivety – not to mention its wilful blindness to not-too-distant

Ian Acheson

‘Supermax’-style prisons for terrorists are overdue

David Lammy had a good outing yesterday – they are as rare as hen’s teeth when you’re leading the Ministry of Justice – so he ought to take the win. The Deputy Prime Minister was in the House of Commons to make a statement on a report by Jonathan Hall KC into prison terrorist separation centres, following a horrific attack on officers at one of these units in HMP Frankland last year. Convicted Islamist Hashem Abedi, responsible for the Manchester Arena bomb atrocity in 2017, allegedly attacked prison staff in the separation unit last October, attempted to murder three officers by stabbing them with improvised weapons and scalding them. It

Lara Brown and John Power

‘I want to stop the Antichrist’ – can Peter Thiel succeed?

Last December, we flew to Los Angeles to interview Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech tycoon and co-founder of PayPal. We discussed globalisation, artificial intelligence, and the rise of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani. But one subject seemed to particularly exercise Thiel: the Antichrist. He promised to expand on this when we next met – which is how we ended up in the back room of a Cambridge college, surrounded by theologians, venture capitalists and AI engineers, to hear Thiel describe the end of humanity. Standing in front of Gustave Doré’s illustration of Satan’s fall in Paradise Lost, Thiel, a can of Diet Coke in his hand, explained why the most

Nick Carter

Our armed forces are hollow – and our enemies know it

When you’re the chief of the defence staff, the head of the British armed forces, it’s never a good sign if your phone rings on a Sunday evening and it’s the permanent secretary. On this particular Sunday, in March 2021, the reason for the call was the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, which was due to be published the following week. Although we had been closely involved in the work, the permanent secretary had been told that the chancellor had approved a settlement that would lead to punishing cuts. Something had to be done. I fully expected to get sacked or resign in protest when I

Gavin Mortimer

Why Macron has declared war on X

Investigators from the Paris prosecutor’s cyber-crime unit raided the offices of X in the French capital on Tuesday in what Elon Musk described as a ‘political attack’. The raid was part of an inquiry into whether X, which Musk has owned since 2022, has violated French law. In particular, the prosecutor’s office said it was investigating complicity ‘in possession or organised distribution of images of children of a pornographic nature…sexual deepfakes and fraudulent data extraction by an organised group’. X has denied any wrongdoing. Musk and the former chief executive of X, Linda Yaccarino, have been asked to attend hearings in April. Yaccarino, who left the company last year, echoed

Nick Cohen

Peter Mandelson betrayed his country

In 2008, Maggie Darling, wife of the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, invited journalists to a briefing at 11 Downing Street on the collapse of the global financial system. An appropriately Chekhovian scene awaited us when we reached the first-floor drawing room. Outside the wind was blowing a gale, lashing leaves and branches onto the windowpanes. As it howled, we stood around waiting for the Chancellor – and we kept on waiting. Where was he? What was going on? The level of betrayal is staggering. I have never seen anything like it in British politics. You would have to go back to Kim Philby spying for the Russians to find

David Shipley

Our prisons are getting worse under Labour

Ever since Labour was elected, every time there has been another disaster in our jails, or another set of terrible data, it has been briefed that ‘this government inherited prisons in crisis’. To be fair to the government, the Tories did leave our jails broken, overcrowded and crumbling, but this line has also been a useful shield for Labour, distracting from their own record. In this they have been helped by how long it takes for official reports and statistics to be published. There was always going to be a lag before Labour’s prison strategy could be judged. Unfortunately for them, with today’s publication of a National Audit Office report

Mary Dejevsky

How did Starmer misjudge Mandelson so badly?

If there is anything less edifying than the newly-released emails implicating Lord Mandelson in some very bad behaviour, it is the stream of politicians and others in the UK piling in on the already disgraced peer. Mandelson was never to be trusted, we are told; he should never have been allowed to return to a public position, where his reputation and that of the government and the country were bound up with each other. We should remember, of course, that a good number of those suggesting police action and demanding he be stripped of his peerage, include some of the very people responsible for his repeated comebacks, including his most

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Britain’s shameful tolerance for terrorism

The news that Shahid Butt, a man convicted of terrorism who served five years for conspiring to bomb the British consulate in Yemen, is standing as a pro-Gaza candidate for Birmingham City Council has shocked many. Butt was jailed in 1999 as part of a terror plot linked to Abu Hamza, yet now seeks public office representing constituents in the Sparkhill ward. The spectacle of a man with a terror conviction campaigning on a platform of Palestinian solidarity while dismissing his past as youthful ‘mistakes’ has understandably provoked outrage. From Birmingham to Gaza, the pattern is consistent: British institutions have developed a tolerance for terrorism and extremism But if Butt

Michael Gove

Mandelson scandal: 'from tawdry friendship to something sinister'

46 min listen

This week: Michael and Maddie examine the fallout from the Epstein files and ask how a story of questionable judgment became a far more serious test of trust at the top of British politics. As new revelations emerge about Peter Mandelson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein, has a tawdry association escalated into a question of the national interest? And what does the affair reveal about Keir Starmer’s judgment – and the risks of relying on political experience over proper scrutiny? Then: the growing generational backlash over student loans. With graduate repayment thresholds frozen and interest rates soaring, are younger voters being systematically squeezed to prop up an unsustainable system? Finally: the

Tuesday

3 February 2026

Isabel Hardman

Met launches criminal investigation into Peter Mandelson

Once again, Keir Starmer’s government has ended up talking about scandal, rather than policy: something the Prime Minister once levelled as an accusation at the Tories. Health ministers had hoped to spend today talking about improving cancer treatment, but instead we are settling into an entire week dominated by Peter Mandelson. The Met have now announced they are launching a criminal investigation over allegations that Mandelson leaked sensitive information to Epstein Starmer has been rushing to remove any trace of the ex-Labourite, passing to the Metropolitan Police a ‘dossier’ of evidence suggesting Mandelson could have leaked market sensitive information on the 2008 banking crash, and asking his officials to draft

Druin Burch

The latest junior doctors’ strikes aren’t about pay

Junior doctors have voted to extend their strikes – by a whisker. Turnout for yesterday’s vote collapsed to less than 53 per cent – a whisker above the threshold needed to make it legal. Framed as a pay dispute, the strikes are the result of a needlessly ruined career structure, and a government perversely willing to leave British doctors unemployed. The strikes started after an early February 2023 ballot in which turnout was more than three quarters and 98 per cent were in favour. In the following strikes, support remained at or above 90 per cent, but turnout kept dropping. In March 2024 it was 62 per cent, last July

James Heale

Gorton & Denton by-election: everything you need to know

10 min listen

Coffee House Shots is on the road today. James Heale and Megan McElroy have travelled up to the frozen north to speak to the candidates who are lobbying locals in the lead-up to the Gorton and Denton by-election. This is the seat vacated by Labour’s Andrew Gwynne, and made famous by Keir Starmer refusing to let Manchester mayor Andy Burnham contest it and complete his return to Westminster. Reform are giving it everything they’ve got – selecting academic and GB News presenter Matthew Goodwin – while some polling suggests that the Green party could do well. Who is in pole position?

Stephen Daisley

Why are men still in women’s prisons?

The women are at it again. For Women Scotland (FWS), specifically. They’re the pressure group who took on the Scottish government, which believes men are women if they say so, and secured a Supreme Court judgment that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act refers to biological rather than ‘certificated’ sex. Now they’re back in court taking on the same government over its policy of allowing some male prisoners who identify as trans to be held in the female estate. Aidan O’Neill KC, who is representing FWS, suggested to the Court of Session on Tuesday morning that the Scottish government was doubling down as ‘a political calculation’ and that women locked up

Alexander Larman

The Epstein files have exposed the extent of Fergie’s greed

Since the latest tranche of the Epstein files was released over the weekend, the people who have been most embarrassingly affected by them include Peter Mandelson, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Bill Gates. Yet inevitably, attention has turned to Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, who is emerging spectacularly poorly from the scandal. This is thanks to a series of revelations that portray her as, variously, greedy, an appalling judge of character and someone seemingly willing to figuratively pimp her children, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, while she sought to obtain the money that she craved from Epstein. Many distasteful details were revealed in the first files released last year. In the