Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Brendan O’Neill

Is Israel wrong to see Labour MPs as hostile actors?

Israel’s denial of entry to two Labour MPs is a truly shaming moment. Not for Israel, which, like all sovereign states, is perfectly at liberty to permit or deny entry to anyone it chooses. No, for Labour. That our ally, the Jewish nation, is so wary of Britain’s ruling party that it felt compelled to banish two of its representatives should generate some serious soul-searching in Labour. The flap over Israel’s ejection of the MPs Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang has been mad. It’s the hissy fit heard around the world. Leafy London is up in arms. ‘I am outraged’, thundered Emily Thornberry on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Israel will

Matthew Lynn

Rachel Reeves could be Trump’s first tariff crash victim

There will be plenty of victims of the crash currently playing out across the global financial markets. A few hedge funds may well fail. The trading desks of the main investment banks will be watching their annual bonuses disappear. And ordinary investors will be nursing some big losses on their investment portfolios. But the most prominent victim might well be the British Chancellor Rachel Reeves. She staked everything on meeting her ‘fiscal rules’ – and it now looks certain her gamble has been lost.  Only a few weeks ago, in the Spring Statement, Reeves reassured everyone that she had made all the adjustments necessary to make sure she stayed within

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Why did Israel block two British MPs at its border?

In 2008, under the UK’s Labour government, Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin – a Likud central committee member – was denied entry into Britain. Then home secretary Jacqui Smith cited public safety concerns, quoting Feiglin’s provocative articles and speeches as justification. There was no court appeal available to him, no diplomatic immunity by virtue of his office; he was simply barred, his presence deemed not ‘conducive to the public good’. Few, if any, in the British political establishment rushed to his defence. Fast forward to today, and the diplomatic chaos caused over the weekend by two Labour MPs, Yuan Yang and Abtisam Mohamed, being denied entry into Israel. The reason: Israeli

Steerpike

Has Musk broken ranks with Trump over tariffs?

Uh oh. There’s trouble in Trumpland. Leader of the President’s Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk has taken to his social media site today to post a video by Milton Friedman lauding the virtues of free markets and multi-stage supply chains – showing the US economist praising the ‘magic’ of the ‘essential’ free market and international trade. Less than a week after Trump imposed controversial new tariffs on around 90 countries across the world, the post has been viewed by some as a dig at the new President’s policy. Talk about trouble in paradise… It’s not the first intervention Musk has made about Trump’s Liberation Day decision-making. On Saturday, the

Stephen Pollard

David Lammy’s Israel hypocrisy

I suppose we should name it the ‘Lammy Doctrine’, after the Titan of global diplomacy we are so privileged to have as our Foreign Secretary. So many and varied are David Lammy’s achievements that it is difficult to keep up, but this weekend he added yet another to the list. Responding to the decision of the Israeli immigration authorities to bar two Labour MPs from entry, he appeared to announce a new doctrine: that British MPs are allowed to go where they want, say what they like and behave as they wish, and no country on earth has the right to bar them from entering. And yet Britain can nonetheless

Ross Clark

Why are sports cars being exempted from net zero rules?

You can carry on burning petrol and diesel in your car so long as it is a pricey, niche sports car. If you are a pleb who can only afford a family hatchback, on the other hand, you will have to convert to electric – and the government will pretend that it is saving you money. That just about sum up the government’s new policy on electric vehicles. The Zero Emission Vehicle mandate will be relaxed, but mostly for car manufacturers who produce fewer than 2,500 cars a year, who will be given a free pass. Given that these manufacturers – like Aston Martin – tend to be at the

Gavin Mortimer

Marine le Pen is far from finished

The right rarely take to the streets in France, but thousands gathered in Paris on Sunday to hear Marine Le Pen pledge to continue the fight. The leader of the National Rally was convicted of embezzlement last week, and among her punishments was a five-year political disqualification. She told her supporters she was a victim of a ‘witch-hunt’ and they roared their agreement. Le Pen had assembled her MPs and supporters in the Place Vauban, in the shadow of the Hôtel des Invalides, built by Louis XIV as a retirement home for old soldiers. In the days leading up to the rally, some of Le Pen’s political adversaries had warned

Steerpike

Lammy and Badenoch in row over Israel’s MP ban

Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch are not known to be especially chummy at the best of times – and relations have worsened after two Labour MPs were denied entry to Israel over the weekend. Lammy was quick to accuse the Tory leader of ‘cheerleading another country for detaining and deporting two British MPs’ after Badenoch defended Israel’s decision on Sunday, telling the Beeb’s Laura Kuenssberg that ‘it’s shocking that we have Labour MPs who other countries will not allow through’. Oo er. Outrage quickly spread through the Labour party after it emerged that Yuan Yang and Abtisam Mohamed were not allowed entry to Israel on

Rana Mitter

China is wary of American intentions

In 2024, China exported three times more to the US than the US did to China, and President Donald Trump’s aim is to get this trade balance down to zero. On ‘Liberation Day’, Wednesday 2 April, Trump announced that Chinese goods coming into the US would now have an additional tariff of 34 per cent imposed on them, added to an extra 20 per cent imposed earlier this year. This means that those goods are now subject to an overall rate of 54 per cent. China has now lodged a complaint at the World Trade Organisation, declaring: ‘This practice of the US is not in line with international trade rules,

James Tidmarsh

Should Marine Le Pen step down?

It was a rally for Marine Le Pen billed as a rendez-vous historique. In the end, barely a few thousand people showed up on Sunday afternoon in Paris. In a city where more than a million marched after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and where hundreds of thousands protested against racism and police violence in recent years, Sunday’s rally for Marine Le Pen barely registered. The Rassemblement National had promised a great mobilisation to denounce Le Pen’s recent conviction and her five–year ban from public office. What it delivered was a media production surrounded by journalists and padded out by militants bussed in from the provinces. The rally failed to convince

Sunday

Michael Simmons

Is Trump stoking a global recession?

This week, Donald Trump steered the global economy away from the free trade era that has underpinned growth for decades. Within hours of his announcement of tariffs on what looked like a bookmakers board from Aintree, China had responded with its own: a 34 per cent tax on all US imports starting next Thursday. The markets were horrified. US stocks suffered their worst week since 2020, with the S&P 500 shedding over $5 trillion in value. Over the course of the week, the index fell just over nine per cent. For context: at this point after their election wins, the S&P was up 9 per cent for Obama’s second term,

Harry Tyser

My Eton tormentor has been jailed

Seeing the mugshot of Old Etonian Douglas Clifton Brown following his conviction for attempted murder, transported me straight back to 1986. We were in the same house and the same year at school: Clifton Brown and his friend bullied me regularly, making my life hell. Triggered, I went into the attic and found an old image from my schooldays: Even in this supposedly formal house photo, the camera shows him elbowing me out of the way. He sports a smug smile and stares straight at the camera, whereas I didn’t dare to acknowledge the photographer. My house, particularly when I first arrived, suffered from endemic bullying. Young for my year,

Cristina Odone

Showing Adolescence in schools lets parents off the hook

Parents are up in arms. The Prime Minister’s decision to allow all state secondary schools to screen Adolescence, the scary Netflix series about a 13-year-old murdering a classmate for taunting him online as being undesirable, has parenting groups fuming. Keir Starmer believes that showing the drama will teach adolescents about the dangers lurking online which are driving toxic relationships. Parents argue instead that the move risks subjecting school children as young as 11 to violent and sexual content. The roll-out has the potential to harm those children who have experienced similarly abusive relationships, alienating and retraumatising them. The content, they say, is age-inappropriate and messages misconstrued. No matter how well-meaning, teachers cannot

Gareth Roberts

I’m woke right. Maybe you are too

Has the very online left, the bane of our times, been usurped by the very online right? It’s a poetically appealing idea, for sure – an amusing conceit. But I really don’t think so. Purity spirals and internecine denunciations have been a feature of the last decade or so in the era of woke. This seems to have been mainly fostered by women, for which Louise Perry persuasively makes the case here. Perry argues, convincingly, that a lot of the progressive censoriousness was female-led – or at least female-coded – and introduced using passive-aggressive HR ‘guidelines’, office politics, etc. There’s recently been some concern that a similar mode of operations

Saturday

Steerpike

Labour MP arrested on suspicion of rape

A former Labour minister was arrested on Friday on suspicion of rape and child sex offences. The Sun on Sunday tonight reports that Dan Norris, 65, MP for North East Somerset and Hanham, was arrested on Friday over claims of historic sexual offences against a girl and a rape allegation from the 2020s. Avon and Somerset Police confirmed he had also been held on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Labour has now confirmed that Norris has been suspended from the party and lost the whip in parliament. A party spokesman told the Sun that: ‘Dan Norris MP was immediately suspended by the Labour party upon being informed of his arrest. We cannot comment further while the police

Rob Burley

Why does Labour assume AI is good?

In close to 30 years in political broadcasting, I’ve never had the faintest idea of what was coming around the corner. I might have guessed whatever it was would probably be bad, but that’s about it. Apart from once, in Brighton, at the Labour party conference in 2005. Tony Blair, still then master of all he surveyed, was delivering his leader’s speech. His theme was familiar – Labour values of solidarity and social justice in a changing world – and about halfway through, he turned to globalisation. Blair could be very persuasive, but on this occasion, he was blunt. ‘I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation,’

Sam Meadows

Javier Milei has cut poverty

Javier Milei has reduced poverty in Argentina. This week brought the publication of a tranche of government poverty figures, covering the period from July to December last year. Much had been made of the immediate surge in poverty that occurred in Milei’s first six months in office. The fall – down to 38.1 per cent from 41.7 per cent in the same period last year, when the country was governed by the Peronists – would seem to be a vindication of the chainsaw-wielding libertarian and his policies. But is there more to it than that? Milei came into office promising to shatter the country’s economic approach and bring the country’s

James Heale

Marine Le Pen: justice or lawfare?

14 min listen

Marine Le Pen, president of Rassemblement National (National Rally) was found guilty this week of embezzling EU funds to boost her party’s finances. The guilty verdict was widely expected, however her sentence was far harsher than even her strongest critics expected – part of which saw her banned from standing for office for five years, with immediate effect. Le Pen had been the favourite to win the next French presidential election in 2027. Pursuing Donald Trump through the courts was widely seen as backfiring as he went on to win the presidential election, and many have argued that there is a double standard with many more figures and parties facing investigation from

Debbie Hayton

What happened to the Birmingham I love?

My beloved Birmingham, the city I called home for 26 years and where my children grew up, is drowning in a sea of black bin bags. It’s a shocking sight to see this once proud city, that was arguably the centre of the industrial revolution, in such a state. Thousands of tonnes of rubbish is piling up, rats are everywhere – and the stench is dreadful. As the weather warms up, life in Britain’s second city might become unbearable. It wasn’t always like this in Birmingham. Two hundred years ago, great thinkers met here: Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt and Matthew Boulton among them. Towards the end of

James Vitali

Israeli students aren’t troubled by ‘microaggressions’

Jerusalem’s Shalem College should have been brimming with life when we visited last month. But this leafy campus was oddly empty. The reason, of course, is that a large contingent of its students are currently serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as part of the war effort against Hamas. Away from campus, the young Israelis that we met on our trip were of similar age and appearance to the undergraduates I taught in Cambridge as a doctoral student. But the similarities stopped there. For these young people were about as different to their contemporaries in the West as it is possible to be. We met a girl in her