Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Saturday

Steerpike

Reeves reignites freebies row over Sabrina Carpenter show

It’s shaping up to be a difficult year for Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is struggling to get many within her own party – and Cabinet – onside with proposed spending cuts. But fear not, Reeves has managed to find some downtime amid the drama. It transpires that she nabbed free tickets to US singer Sabrina Carpenter’s recent London show, with the Busy Woman letting her hair down at the weekend. Alright for some! As revealed by the i paper, the Chancellor rocked up at the sold-out show last weekend with free tickets – after other attendees had paid up to £900 to attend the Espresso singer’s gig. Reeves is not thought to have broken any

Nigel Jones

Reform are setting Labour’s agenda

No two politicians could be less alike than Sir Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage. But it looks as though the Prime Minister is transitioning into the Reform party’s rumbustuous leader –  or at least stealing his velvet collared clothes. Consider the evidence. Over the past few days and weeks, Labour has adopted a raft of the policies advocated by the right-wing insurgents. These include: Labour’s dramatic rightward swerve in direction – doubtless prompted by Starmer’s policy guru Morgan McSweeney – is so radical that around half the cabinet’s ministers are reported to have expressed dismay and fears at their last meeting that the coming spending cuts will hit their departments. 

Khadija Khan

Ramadan can be a time of suffering for those who dare break the rules

Ramadan, which this year runs until the end of March, is viewed by Muslims as a time of compassion and generosity. But for others – especially those who flout fasting rules in Muslim-majority countries – it can be a period of suffering and persecution. Liberal Muslims and those from religious minorities can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ‘holy month’. They face harsh punishments, exclusion, and seclusion for offending religious sensibilities. Liberal Muslims can be punished severely for stepping out of line during the ”holy month’ Several young men were arrested in Kano, northern Nigeria, earlier this month for failing to observe the Ramadan fast. Those selling

Jake Wallis Simons

‘Trump’s America has made a suicidal choice’: An interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy is running on fumes. Plus ça change. “I slept as always last night, a few hours, with chemistry compelling me to sleep,” the Parisian public intellectual tells me when we speak on the phone. “I miss the process of sleep, the process of getting awake, all parts of the ceremony I miss. But insomnia has given me more than it has taken. More time, certainly more work, more vigilance; I’m awake.” “Maybe I would sleep better if I was British,” Lévy says His latest book, Nuit Blanche, which has yet to be translated into English, is a runaway bestseller in France, where it was released in January. It

Katja Hoyer

Is Friedrich Merz floundering already?

Friedrich Merz promised to do things differently. Ahead of the country’s federal election last month, the likely next chancellor of Germany said he had a ‘clear plan for Germany’s economic future’. From day one in office, he wanted to be seen to enact the change so many Germans had voted for. But, held to ransom by the election’s losers, his centre-right Union is already being forced into so many compromises that Merz may turn out to be just as ineffective and unpopular as his predecessor, Olaf Scholz. Merz wasn’t off to a bad start. Okay, most Germans tell pollsters that they are sceptical that he’ll be a good chancellor, but

Ross Clark

How Europe’s electric battery dream ran out of power

Setting ourselves stringent net zero targets will help us get ahead of other countries in the race to develop green technologies of the future. We know this must be true because Ed Miliband, and many others, keep telling us so. It is just that things don’t seem to be working out quite this way in the real world. The collapse this week of the Swedish electric vehicle (EV) battery-maker Northvolt has once again shown how the countries most committed to net zero seem to be the ones which keep missing out on the spoils – while their industries drain away abroad, quite often to China. Was there any company which

Patrick O’Flynn

How Reform can survive its civil war

After a spectacular week of feuding, opinion polls appear to show support for Reform UK remains unscathed. Reform somehow still sits at level-pegging with Labour – perhaps even a point ahead – with the Tories several points further adrift. Yet anyone who thinks that the fall-out between Rupert Lowe and Nigel Farage can be dismissed as a little local difficulty which is now safely consigned to the past is liable to be disappointed. Reports reaching the party hierarchy of recent branch meetings say that many grassroots members are ‘raging’ at the treatment of Lowe and seething at the treatment of him by Farage and party chairman Zia Yusuf. Lowe does

Michael Gove

Is Keir Starmer a Tory?

19 min listen

Slashing the winter fuel allowance, maintaining the two child benefit cap, cutting international aid, cutting the civil service, axing NHS bureaucracy, possibly slashing welfare expenditure… you’d be forgiven for thinking the Conservatives were in power. But no, these are all policies pursued by the current Labour government. So on today’s Saturday Shots Cindy Yu asks Michael Gove and James Heale, is Keir Starmer a Tory? While Michael admits to giving Starmer a ‘painful’ two cheers, he does say there is historic precedent for Labour governments enacting right-leaning measures: from Jim Callaghan’s migration policies to the economic ones of Ramsay MacDonald. How has Starmer got away with it? And what does

Colin Freeman

Colin Freeman, Harry Ritchie, Max Jeffery, Michael Gove and Catriona Olding

35 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Colin Freeman explains how Islamic State tightened its grip on the Congo (1:23); Harry Ritchie draws attention to the thousands of languages facing extinction this century, as he reviews Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages by Lorna Gibb (8:00); Max Jeffery highlights the boxing academy changing young lives (13:20); Michael Gove reflects on lessons learned during his time as education secretary (20:30); and, Catriona Olding introduces the characters from her new Provence-based memoir club (29:27).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Friday

Stephen Pollard

Has the UN hit rock bottom?

The word ‘surreal’ barely does justice to what’s been happening in recent weeks. Quite apart from the possible collapse of Nato and the US treating Canada as more of an enemy than Russia, there was the previously unthinkable sight last month of the US voting alongside North Korea, Belarus and, yes, Russia at the United Nations against most of its (former?) allies. But while it was unprecedented for the US to cast such a vote, perhaps the best way to view it was as the US at last entering into the true spirit of the UN. Because for the UN, the surreal is the norm. Last week, for example, Saudi Arabia

Rupert Darwall

Starmer must fight Miliband’s fracking Luddism

On Monday, concrete will be poured into Britain’s last two shale gas wells in Lancashire. Cuadrilla Resources, which owns the license at the Preston New Road site, is being forced to destroy the wells by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), which has ordered that the wells be ‘plugged with cement and decommissioned’ by 30 June. This is not for safety or environmental reasons. Cuadrilla has offered to keep the wells secure at its own expense. It is to ensure that the wells can never be used to extract natural gas at any point in the future. In other words, the NSTA requirement is an act of economic vandalism, reflecting the

Jim Lawley

How Spain is trying to dodge spending more on defence

Spain’s defence spending, at a mere 1.28 per cent of its GDP, lags behind all other Nato members. While most European Union countries have already reached the target of 2 per cent that was agreed back in 2014, at the present rate of progress Spain won’t get there until 2029. Such a leisurely approach is no longer tenable. President Trump has proposed 5 per cent as the appropriate benchmark for defence expenditure, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the EU Commission, is demanding urgent rearmament in Europe and Nato is expected to raise the target to well above 3 per cent at its summit in June. Suddenly it looks as

Svitlana Morenets

Putin has set a trap for the Ukraine ceasefire plan

Vladimir Putin has set his conditions for Donald Trump’s ‘unconditional’ ceasefire: Kyiv must not mobilise or train troops, nor receive military aid, then Ukraine must ultimately accept a final peace deal that eliminates the ‘root causes’ of the conflict – i.e., which erases Ukraine’s sovereignty. The Kremlin’s terms remain the same as they were three years ago: Ukrainians must cede four partially occupied regions to Russia. He also wants Kyiv to dismantle its independent government and surrender the right to choose its alliances. Surprisingly for Ukraine, Trump decided to get harsher on Russia too Putin has no reason to end the bloodshed until his imperialistic terms are met. His troops

Steerpike

Treasury: employer tax hikes could reduce employment

It has not been Rachel Reeves’s year. From accusations of CV embellishment to noisy backlash over the farmer’s tax, the Chancellor has been fighting on all fronts as she battles her way towards the Spring spending review. And now, in yet another blow for Reeves, it transpires that her plans to increase the amount of tax paid by employers are predicted to lead to, er, a decrease in Britain’s active workforce. Talk about lose-lose… The Treasury’s James Murray admitted today, in response to a parliamentary question from Tory MP Wendy Morton, that the impact assessment of the effects of Labour’s proposed employer national insurance contribution (NIC) hike hasn’t yielded wholly

Ian Acheson

Are our jails unfixable?

The Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report, published today, addresses the prison cell crisis in the UK, highlighting huge government and organisational failures in managing prison capacity. We may be wary of the term, but it is yet another description of a system in crisis, with many prisoners stuffed into ‘inhumane conditions’, looked after by a battered and overwhelmed front line of officers, many of whom leave before they have finished their probation. This latest devastating critique focuses on a four-way car crash of broken promises, wild miscalculations, reactive mismanagement and the absence of solid planning. The PAC is the group of cross-party MPs who scrutinise government spending. They predict

James Kirkup

Why Keir Starmer must cut disability benefits

Keir Starmer’s imminent attempt to curb Britain’s spending on welfare is a more serious and important bid to curb the growth of government than Elon Musk’s theatrical Doge performance. That is because the UK’s Labour government is at least engaging with the fundamental driver of higher public spending – the demographic shift towards an older and, perhaps, sicker population that absorbs an ever-larger share of national wealth.  Musk, meanwhile, is nibbling at the second-order costs of the US federal government. Public sector employees are, in the context of government spending, cheap. Fiscal transfers are expensive: follow the money, not the people. About three-quarters of that spending goes on health and

Steerpike

Lammy’s soft power council splurge

Is Keir Starmer a Tory? That’s the question much of Westminster is asking after his recent talk of welfare cuts, planning reform and raiding the aid budget to pay for defence. But while the Labour leader seems happy to talk the talk, some of his ministers are less keen to walk the walk. For while the PM was trumpeting his plans yesterday to abolish NHS England, it should be noted that his government has created at least 27 new quangos since July 2024. Hardly a bonfire eh? Among those new vehicles created is the ironically-named Office of Value for Money: a body whose first act ought to have been recommending

James Heale

The UK economy is shrinking – how much pressure is Rachel Reeves under?

14 min listen

New figures from the Office for National Statistics show the UK economy unexpectedly shrunk by 0.1% in January. This comes only a few weeks after the Chancellor’s pro-growth speech, and a fortnight ahead of her Spring Statement. Just how much pressure is Rachel Reeves under? And how likely is it that Labour will change their approach? Economics editor Michael Simmons and deputy political editor James Heale join Patrick Gibbons to discuss, as well as a look ahead to next week’s expected announcement on reducing the welfare bill. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Kristina Murkett

Fixing free childcare would be an easy win for Labour

Parents of young children should be happy: since September 2024, those with an income of less than £100,000 a year have been eligible for 15 hours of free childcare a week once their child is nine months old. From September this year, that will increase to 30 hours a week.  However, once again, it seems that the government has promised the moon but in realiy only paid for a small asteroid. Nurseries claim that the scheme is financially unsustainable because the funding was set before significant rises in their costs as a result of Rachel Reeves’ budget. Increases to national insurance payments and the minimum wage mean that the sector

Charlie Gammell

Is Putin preparing to abandon Iran?

As the world reels from the chaos of a geopolitical order turned upside down, and as we wait to see if America really will invade Canada, spare a thought for Tehran. Losing one ally in the space of 12 months (Hezbollah) is bad enough. But losing two (Syria) is downright terrible. And then add to the mix the prosect of losing a third (Russia) as Moscow contemplates sacrificing the Islamic Republic on the altar of Putin’s pivot towards Donald Trump, and you have a really, really bad few months. Tehran can’t work out which way is up. Recently, the regime fired two senior politicians, who would have been likely to