Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Michael Gove

Could spending cuts herald a ‘winter of discontent for Labour’s left’?

15 min listen

With reports of ‘billions’ of spending cuts earmarked for the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, taking place later this month, Michael Gove and Kate Andrews join Katy Balls to discuss what exactly Rachel Reeves could cut. With little fiscal headroom and sluggish forecasts of growth, Reeves doesn’t appear to have many options. It’s likely that welfare will be targeted, and there are reports that Labour’s opposition to new North Sea oil & gas licences may be relaxed to stimulate growth. One area that appears off the table is defence – following the Prime Minister’s pledge to cut international aid in order to fund new defence spending.  But if all these reports are

Stephen Daisley

Trump can’t override everything

‘There are judges in Jerusalem,’ Menachem Begin is reputed to have proclaimed, following a court ruling which he believed vindicated one of his policy positions.  The phrase has been appropriated by critics of judicial reform and others keen to see Bagatz, the Israeli supreme court, remain a bulwark against illiberal overreach by the government. ‘There are judges in Jerusalem’ is a reassuring reminder that, whatever the designs of politicians, the law remains the supreme rule of the land.  There are judges in Washington DC, too. The Supreme Court of the United States has denied the Trump administration’s application for vacatur of a temporary restraining order preventing the State Department from implementing the USAID cuts announced by Donald

Lucy Dunn

What does the SNP exodus mean for the party’s 2026 line-up?

There is little over a year to go until the 2026 Holyrood election and Scottish party selection processes are underway. This morning, two of the biggest names yet have said they will stand down at next year’s election: Finance Secretary Shona Robison and Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop have announced they’re off. ‘The decision to retire is entirely personal and I do it for positive reasons,’ Hyslop insisted to reporters today. It is unlikely that will convince cynics who suggest the pair have jumped before they were pushed. The Holyrood selection process is a chance for the SNP to sort the wheat from the chaff The duo joins a long list

Jonathan Spyer

What is Israel’s plan for Syria?

Israeli leaders recently made clear that the IDF’s current military deployment into south-west Syria is not intended as a stop-gap measure until its northern neighbour stabilises. Rather, in a speech last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told IDF officer cadets that the force’s troops would stay on the formerly Syrian side of Mount Hermon, and in the buffer zone carved out to the east of the Golan Heights for ‘an unlimited period of time’. Israel’s incursion into Syria to disrupt a perceived threat resembles other foreign entries into Syria, In a statement appearing to hint at a yet more ambitious Israeli strategy, the Prime Minister added that Israel demanded the

Ross Clark

Why is the UK economy stalling?

Giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee this afternoon, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey doubled down on a point he has previously made to the committee: the economy is being pulled down by an extraordinary fall in productivity in the public sector. Relative to 2019, he said, productivity across the public sector is now 8 to 9 per cent lower. In the health sector, it is 17 to 18 per cent lower. In what he described as a ‘back of the envelope calculation’ the overall effect has been to reduce GDP by between 1 and 3 per cent. Last year, Bailey added, something extremely unusual happened: UK productivity fell

John O’Neill

As US border crossings fall, UK small boats hit record highs

Small boat crossings since the start of the year are at a record level. Yesterday 326 migrants arrived, bringing this year’s total to 3,224. Last year 2,983 migrants crossed the Channel over the same period. The number who have made the journey since Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, having promised to ‘stop the small boat crossings’, is 24,666. The figures are in stark contrast to the US, where Donald Trump recently announced that ‘the invasion of our country is over’ with attempts to illegally cross the US-Mexico border at a record low. Border agents had 8,326 encounters with migrants in February, Trump said; there were 190,000 in the same month last year.  One of

James Heale

The Special Forces scandal is not going away

What was the most important moment at Prime Minister’s Questions today? It was not the somewhat pedestrian back-and-forth between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch on support for Ukraine. It was instead a subsequent point raised by David Davis on the subject of Britain’s Special Forces. Davis – a textbook example of a free-thinking backbencher – asked the Prime Minister about a ruling last month by Northern Ireland’s presiding coroner. The government has given no signal that it intends to pursue a judicial review The ruling concerned a 1992 SAS ambush at St Patrick’s Church in Clonoe, County Tyrone. It found that the use of lethal force by British soldiers against

William Schneider

The Chagos deal is a threat to national security

It has been widely reported that, during his meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week, President Trump gave his consent to the UK’s proposed deal to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. However, this is not quite what happened. What he actually said was that he thinks the US ‘will be inclined’ to go along with the deal – but that ‘it is a little bit early, we have to be given the details’. As the saying goes, the devil is indeed in the detail. Once the President and his team are fully briefed on the situation surrounding the Chagos Islands – and the joint UK-US military

Lloyd Evans

PMQs was a façade

A bit of a stitch-up at PMQs, or so it seemed. The ‘opposition’ leader, Kemi Badenoch, ignored her duty to voters and spent ten minutes feeding softball questions to Sir Keir Starmer about President Zelensky. At issue was Donald Trump’s decision on Monday to withdraw military aid from Ukraine. Kemi meekly asked Sir Keir if he might help. ‘What is he doing to rebuild their relationship after a challenging week?’ Sir Keir can do nothing, obviously. Trump has lost patience with the leader of an impoverished, war-sick country whose eastern fringes are occupied by a hostile superpower. Britain has no influence either way. But Sir Keir wants to pose as

Stephen Pollard

Are we forgetting the lessons of VE Day?

There is a grim irony in today’s announcement of the commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May – at the very time that the Western alliance is collapsing. The plans include dressing the Cenotaph in Union flags, a military procession and flypast in London and a service of remembrance and thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey, followed by a concert. All good, and all appropriate.  But, according to the government press release, ‘street parties will also be held across the country’. Really? The symmetry is obvious, of course. VE Day was one big street party as the country celebrated the defeat of the Nazis and the triumph of

Isabel Hardman

Starmer avoids criticising Trump at PMQs

Keir Starmer has clearly decided that the only way to disagree with Donald Trump and his administration without angering the US President is to make statements that contradict him without ever mentioning him or J.D. Vance by name. Today he opened Prime Minister’s Questions by paying tribute to six young British soldiers who were killed 13 years ago tomorrow in Afghanistan, and a soldier who was killed 18 years ago today in Helmand. He added: These men fought and died for their country, our country, and across the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 643 individuals died fighting for Britain alongside our allies. Many more were wounded. We will never forget

Steerpike

Nandy blasts Beeb over Gaza documentary

It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – which means there’s more bad news for the BBC. Now the government has taken aim at the broadcaster, with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy slamming the Beeb today in a parliamentary statement. In the scathing text, Nandy wrote of how she is ‘deeply shocked and disappointed’ about the Hamas documentary revelations and noted pointedly that she is not yet convinced similar slip-ups won’t happen again. Last week the corporation apologised for the release of a Gaza documentary in which the child narrator was later found to be the son of a Hamas minister. AND the Culture Secretary is far from impressed by how the BBC

Steerpike

Speaker splurges £180k on luxury trips

Is Lindsay Hoyle turning into John Bercow? Mr S first asked the question in January after revealing that the Speakers’ Office had doubled in size on Hoyle’s watch. And now other outlets are running with the same theme, by looking at the Speaker’s trips abroad. It seems the man of the people rather enjoys the high life, spending £180,000 of taxpayers’ money on top-end flights, luxury hotels and chauffeur-driven cars. Talk about putting that ‘order order’ in, eh? ‘Long-Haul Hoyle’ splashed the cash on £900-a-night hotels, first-class flights and even a private plane trip to the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat, according to Freedom of Information responses by the Daily Mail.

Ross Clark

Trade unions are calling the shots under Labour

Is Angela Rayner really being sidelined in this government, having been steamrollered by the rush for growth championed by Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves? That is a hypothesis which has been put forward many times in recent months, but it is not true to judge by the reaction of businesses to the Employment Rights Bill. The CBI – which gave the impression that it couldn’t get rid of the Tories fast enough after Boris Johnson’s Peppa Pig fiasco – is not the least bit impressed, with chief executive Rain Newton-Smith complaining: ‘The government has been commendably open to seeking feedback from industry about these plans,’ but that it ‘has not

Matthew Lynn

Europe could pay the price for Germany’s debt shake-up

Germany has finally decided to join the party – but Europe may come to regret it. After two decades of limited borrowing and fiscal restraint, Europe’s biggest economy is finally joining the high-debt club. Incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz will borrow €800 billion (£670 million), and perhaps much more, to pay for extra spending on defence and infrastructure. Sure, Germany needs to spend more on its armed forces and on restructuring its economy. But it will also likely mean the euro-zone no longer has a single solvent member to anchor it. It is hard to see how this situation will end well for Europe. Merz is a centre-right, pro-business leader, but

Lisa Haseldine

Europe’s rearmament is off to a feeble start

If there is one silver lining to Donald Trump’s Oval Office bust-up with Volodymyr Zelensky last Friday, it is that Europe is finally getting serious on rearmament and defence. Or is it? On Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission (EC), announced a package of measures designed to encourage EU member states to up their defence spending. If they make full use of the new proposals, von der Leyen said, it would amount to an increase of up to €800 billion (£661 billion) spent on defence across the bloc. Announcing the package, she declared: ‘We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively

David Abulafia

Cambridge’s Palestine vandals must be expelled

Frustrated by a High Court injunction that prohibits protestors from occupying University buildings in Cambridge so as to block a degree ceremony on 1 March, ‘Palestine Action’ has resorted to violence (for that is what it is) to make its point. The fifteenth-century gateway to the Old Schools, the administrative headquarters of the University, has been sprayed with red paint, and the slogan ‘Divest’ has been written in red on the adjoining walls. The very fact that these activists campaign to ‘divest’ illustrates their hypocrisy One might have thought that they would want to stand back, even celebrate, the fact that the judge only granted an injunction for a single

Steerpike

Is Jonathan Powell scared of scrutiny?

It’s a turbulent time for the Western world, but Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government doesn’t seem to be taking things all that seriously. At least, not where its National Security Adviser is concerned. Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s lineman on the Chagos deal, is apparently banned from speaking to the national security committee on the grounds he is a special adviser – yet it was the government who appointed him to the role in full understanding of the rules. So much for all that talk of transparency. Labour has rejected a request for Powell to attend a forthcoming evidence session – titled ‘The Role of the National Security Adviser’ – despite it

Charles Lipson

It’s morning in Trump’s America

Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was the most powerful, rousing, and pointed of any presidential address in decades. The first line captured the theme of the night. “America is back…and we are just getting started.” It ended with a peroration that his administration would “take up the righteous cause of American liberty,” and “fight, fight, fight for a country our citizens’ believe in and deserve.” Our country’s “Golden Age,” he said, ”has just begun.” Dozens and dozens of applause lines were planted throughout the speech as Trump laid out his ambitious agenda and his accomplishments so far. It was not the dull laundry

Kate Andrews

Trump’s whirlwind Congress speech infuriated Democrats

Donald Trump’s address to Congress last night was made up of his greatest hits since returning to the Oval Office. Just over six weeks’ worth of public policy filled a 100-minute speech in what is being reported this morning as one of the longest Congressional addresses in history. The President touched on practically every topic, from the Ukraine war to buying Greenland.  ‘America is back,’ he told the joint-session, to cheers of ‘USA’. Based on the tone of his speech, the Trump we saw on the campaign trail is also making a comeback. The President loves a rally, and this address felt as though it was crafted not for the