Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Rakib Ehsan

Britain doesn’t need yet another equalities quango

Labour has evidently not learned from its recent troubles with the Sentencing Council over guidelines which risked undermining the very foundations of the criminal justice system. The government now has plans to create a new enforcement body to tackle ‘pay discrimination’ against ethnic minorities and disabled people. The equalities minister, Seema Malhotra, has set up a call for evidence which will search for advice on the planned formation of an equal pay regulatory and enforcement unit – a proposed quango that would work with the trade union movement to strengthen the implementation of equal pay rights. In a statement plucked straight from the ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ playbook, Malhotra declared that

Matthew Lynn

Is the worst of the market crash over?

The FTSE-100 is up by a couple of hundred points. Germany’s DAX has added 400 points, and in Tokyo the Nikkei 225 rose by 6 per cent overnight. After the wild trading ever since President Trump announced the imposition of huge tariffs on all of America’s major trading partners, some stability appears to have returned to the financial markets. Is the worst of the slump over? It is far too early to predict that with any confidence – but there are two reasons for thinking it might be. It remains to be seen how the markets unfold over the next few days. There could well be a bankruptcy or two

Alexander Kolyandr

Russia can’t escape the fallout of Trump’s tariff war

When Donald Trump unveiled his table of tariffs in Washington last week, there was one country that was conspicuously absent from his list: Russia. The White House’s argument was that there was no point slapping tariffs on trade with Moscow because the existing sanctions in place against it meant there was negligible bilateral trade going on between the two countries. Despite this, the global trade war that has erupted will still impact Russia, threatening to undermine Moscow’s economic stability, stifle its already slowing growth and amplify its strategic dependence on Beijing. Trump’s trade realignments will further marginalise Russia as an energy supplier The White House’s justification for excluding Russia from

Ian Williams

China won’t win its ‘fight to the end’ against Trump

China has accused Washington of ‘blackmail’ and said it will ‘fight to the end’ after Donald Trump threatened overnight to impose an additional 50 per cent tariff on Chinese imports. At the same time, President Xi Jinping is seeking to present himself as a responsible champion of the international trading system and defender of globalisation against the Trump wrecking ball. Neither position bears scrutiny; the latter is almost laughable, since it is Beijing’s persistent disregard of international rules that has fuelled the anger in America in the first place. It all smacks of desperation and not the ‘super economy’ of CCP propaganda As part of its strategy, the Chinese Communist

Alexander Horne

Parliament will be relieved Philip Green has lost his human rights case

In a decision that will be welcomed by many in Parliament today, the European Court of Human Rights dismissed a claim by prominent businessman Sir Philip Green. Green had argued that his right to a private life and a fair trial had been infringed when a Labour Peer, Peter Hain, made a statement on the floor of the House of Lords claiming Green had been accused of sexual harassment and bullying by former employees. The employees in question had signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and so Green had obtained an interim injunction (pending a trial) and anonymity order from the Court of Appeal after he learned that the Daily Telegraph planned

William Clouston

Why tariffs work

To travel by train through America’s rustbelt is to witness the real reason for Trump’s tariff revolution. Miles upon miles of derelict factories and decaying industrial architecture stand as monuments to trade policies which have gutted America’s manufacturing heartland and undermined the families – and the towns – which depended on it. In electing the Trump-Vance ticket last year American voters have called time on decades of elite indifference to industrial production and the liberal trade policies which have accompanied it. It turns out that the transitory profit secured by executives who out-sourced thousands of US industrial jobs to cheaper jurisdictions is no compensation for the loss of your industrial

Steerpike

Prince Harry: I was ‘singled out’ in security row

The monarch of Montecito is, er, back in the UK. Prince Harry has returned to Britain for a two-day hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in a last-ditch attempt to win automatic state-funded security for his family whenever they return to Britain. He may have stepped down as a working prince five years ago, but it seems the royal renegade is missing the perks… The Duke of Sussex embarked on the 10,000-mile return trip from California in a bid to win back taxpayer-funded security arrangement for him and his wife, Meghan, and their children. The matter is thought to be a rather significant factor in Harry’s falling out with

Alexander Larman

The true purpose of King Charles’s Italy trip

After some recent bad news for King Charles in the form of an – admittedly fleeting – setback in his ongoing cancer treatment, you could hardly blame him for wanting a brief respite from the gruelling health challenges that he has faced. And respites don’t come more glamorous or enjoyable than the state visit that he and Queen Camilla are currently undertaking to Italy. It is appropriate that the trip coincides with their 20th wedding anniversary this week. The published itinerary suggests that fun, rather than onerous duty, will be the guiding spirit of the four days that they will be spending in Rome, Ravenna and other locations in the

Steerpike

Tories lose major donor prompting HQ closure fears

Just as the House of Commons is about to rise for Easter recess, Her Majesty’s Official Opposition has been hit with some rather unfortunate news. As revealed by the Guardian, the Tories have lost one of their biggest donors – in a move that could, insiders believe, lead to the closure of the party’s headquarters in the north of England. Good heavens… The paper heard from two Conservative sources that HomeServe founder Richard Harpin – who has donated £3.8 million to the party since 2008 and was ranked by the Electoral Commission as the Tories’ 10th biggest donor in 2023 – has now put a pause on his funding. It’s

Tim Knox

Is the ‘Office for Value for Money’ just another quango?

Who can possibly be against any attempt by any government of any political colour to get better value of money? After all, public sector productivity – which has been basically flat over the last 25 years despite all the advantages of new technology – is at heart a question of doing just that. So we should all welcome that Rachel Reeves in her first budget set up the Office for Value for Money in the very heart of the Treasury. With its similar title to the Office for Budget Responsibility (which has of course been criticised for taking over responsibility for the budget), perhaps here at last would be a

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas has a history of using ambulances for war

Before the facts had even settled, western media outlets rendered their verdict: Israel was guilty. Guilty of deliberately targeting ambulances. Guilty of murdering humanitarian workers. Guilty because in the court of international opinion, Israel’s guilt is the default setting. Only later did the complicated reality emerge. Israeli forces near Rafah, acting on intelligence that Hamas operatives were exploiting ambulances for military purposes, opened fire on a suspicious convoy. People were killed, including members of the Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defence. But rather than approach the incident with caution and historical awareness, media outlets like the New York Times and Sky News rushed to enshrine a narrative of Israeli barbarism – a

Irwin Stelzer

Trump is tearing up the Old World Order – as promised

Seems there is a bit of ruckus on the stock markets of the largest capitalist country in the world, the one with deepest of all capital markets. Donald Trump has decided to lay waste to the globalised, market-based world trading order, and return to the protectionist state of affairs that served the nation so well in the 1930s. It would be foolish of me to join the army of talented prognosticators predicting a recession, unless it doesn’t happen, and the even braver ones who can see just how much each company’s earnings will be affected by the New World Trading Order, if the earnings indeed are affected. We do know

Hamish McRae

The crash is not as bad as it seems

It’s that moment of supreme uncertainty. We do however know the question. Is this a regular sell-off, with the S&P500 nudging into bear market territory, but then steadying in the next few months before a gradual recovery? Or is this a true crash, akin to those of October 1929, October 1987, October 2008, or most recently March 2020, in which case we are less than halfway down the peak? The strategists have of course been crawling over the data of previous crashes, but the analogies never really fit. There has not been a trade war akin to what may be developing now since the 1930s, when the world economy was

Jane Stannus

Canada is more conservative than politicians think

Finally, some good news for Canada’s Conservative party. For the first time since the federal election was announced, a poll last week showed them in the lead, and polls over the weekend show them closing in on the Liberal party. They’re not where they were, but it’s progress. In early January, the much-loathed Trudeau was stepping down, both Liberals and the New Democrats were highly unpopular, and the Conservatives, with a no-nonsense economic platform were considered a shoo-in for the next election. But thanks to Canada-US tensions over border security and tariffs, Liberals have been topping every poll since the beginning of the election campaign. The Conservative’s Pierre Poilievre is staying

Monday

Michael Simmons

Are Reeves’s fiscal rules really ‘ironclad’?

This afternoon, Keir Starmer recommitted to not raising income tax, VAT or employee National Insurance for the duration of this parliament. At the same time, he reiterated his support for Rachel Reeves’s ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules. Are both possible? Answering a question from GB News’s Chris Hope at a visit to the Jaguar Land Rover factory in the West Midlands the Prime Minister said: ‘We made that commitment in the manifesto and we were absolutely clear about it going into the Budget and the Spring Statement, and that is a commitment we’ve made and a commitment we will keep.’  In response to an earlier question from Sky, he also stood by

David Shipley

What the Southport Inquiry needs to do

The Southport killings were horrific, but should they have happened at all? We already know that the government’s counter-extremism programme, Prevent, failed to identify the risk Axel Rudakubana posed. That’s a key question which the Southport Inquiry, the first stage of which began on Monday, aims to answer. The Home Office has said that the inquiry will ‘leave no stone unturned in uncovering how this attack happened and to not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure’. To that end the Southport Inquiry is to be ‘statutory’, meaning it will be able to compel witnesses to attend and give evidence under oath, require the production of documents

Steerpike

Trump hits back at China’s retaliatory tariffs

Stock markets around the world continue to plummet but Donald Trump has his mind on other matters: his tariff war with China. The American president has this afternoon hit back at Beijing’s announcement on Friday that it would impose retaliatory tariffs of 34 per cent on US goods following Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ levies last week. Unleashing a fiery tirade on Truth Social today, Trump has fumed that if Xi Jinping does not withdraw his tax increase, the US will impose ‘additional tariffs on China of 50 per cent’ and terminate all scheduled talks with foreign power. Talk about pulling no punches, eh? Last Wednesday, the White House said it would

Lucy Dunn

Is Trump the new Truss?

15 min listen

The fallout from Trump’s tariffs continues. Last week, Donald Trump ended the free-trade era that has underpinned growth for decades (and potentially also heralded the end of globalisation). Markets around the world have taken a nosedive, prompting fears of a global recession. The only (brief) reprieve was when stock markets rallied because of a misunderstanding regarding comments made by Trump’s economic adviser. Once these had been clarified, the Nasdaq dipped once again. Republicans are starting to turn on Trump – including Elon Musk, who has been sending out some coded tweets. The strength of the reaction from the markets has drawn comparisons between Trump and Liz Truss, whose mini-Budget spooked

David Christopher Kaufman

What Bibi and Trump get from each other

For all of their political similarities – imperiousness, indifference, more than occasional impunity – Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s canniest shared superpower is their ability to manipulate their public narratives. Case in point: Netanyahu’s sudden visit to Washington this week, which comes as both he and Trump battle the near-term uproar over their long-term political agendas.  The official reason for Netanyahu’s visit, it seems, is to discuss Trump’s new tariff edict – slated to place a 17 per cent levy on Israeli goods when it goes into effect next week. Despite the sizeable figure – which is certainly worth a challenge – the visit feels contrived. Far more economically important nations will be hit

Philip Patrick

Trump is bending Japan to his will

‘National crisis’ was how Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba described the fallout from President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs in a speech on Friday. That was strong language from the normally measured Ishiba, but was borne out by the bloodbath in the Nikkei stock exchange over the last few days of trading. Stock markets around the world have been battered, but Japan’s has been one of the worst. It plunged 2,600 points to close down a whopping 8 per cent today, the third largest fall on record. Amongst the worst casualties were the Mizuho Financial Group, whose shares fell 10.6 per cent, and Mitsubishi, whose stock plunged by 10.2 per cent.