Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Owen Matthews

Zelensky knew who he was dealing with. And he misstepped

Seldom in modern times has the fate of a whole nation been so dependent on a single meeting and on a single relationship. When Volodymyr Zelensky entered the Oval Office on Friday he had one job: to repair a deep and catastrophic rift between him and Donald Trump, who the previous week had called the Ukrainian president a ‘dictator’. Zelensky held the future of US support for his country’s defence against Russia in his hands.  But instead of a reconciliation, the meeting turned into an epochal diplomatic train wreck. So disastrous was the exchange that by the end Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington Oksana Markarova was holding her head in her

Jawad Iqbal

Zelensky made a fatal mistake in going toe-to-toe with Trump

What possessed the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump in a verbal wresting match in the White House? It makes almost no sense as a diplomatic strategy. It is well documented that the US president, notoriously thin-skinned and egotistical, likes to be showered with compliments and treated as an all-knowing, all-seeing master of the political universe. All that Zelensky was required to do was behave in a simpering manner while the cameras were rolling, before moving on to the substantive negotiations behind the scenes. Indeed, only 24 hours earlier, Sir Keir Starmer provided a useful primer on how to go about pandering to Trump in order

Katy Balls

Zelensky’s White House visit turns sour

Keir Starmer will have been pleased on Thursday after his meetings with Donald Trump managed to avoid any major gaffe or diplomatic incident. There was some relief when Trump chose not to repeat his past comment that Volodymyr Zelensky was a dictator. However, the same cannot be said of Friday’s meeting between Zelensky and the US president. Trump met the Ukrainian president at the door of the White House where he gave reporters a thumbs up ahead of his arrival. However, the mood quickly turned sour when they sat down for initial remarks ahead of talks and a press conference where the pair were expected to sign a US-proposed minerals

Ben Domenech

The Donald Trump interview

56 min listen

In a wide-ranging conversation at the White House yesterday evening, Donald Trump was in the mood to talk about everything under the sun – from the speedy success his second administration has had putting fear into the hearts of bureaucrats and Eurocrats, to why he believes there is a path to a balanced budget. He spoke to The Spectator’s Ben Domenech for the first magazine interview of his second term, following a major day of international politics with his meeting with prime minister Keir Starmer.

Jawad Iqbal

Dodds’s departure is embarrassing for David Lammy

The resignation of Anneliese Dodds, the International Development Minister, over cuts to the aid budget is a shock on many levels. After all, it is almost unheard of for a senior politician in office to quit because of some political belief or principle. Dodds deserves praise for sticking up for her values, even – and most importantly – at the cost of her political career Dodds decided she had to go in the wake of Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the international aid budget by almost half to pay for an increase in defence funding. Dodds revealed she was only told about the move on Monday but held off resigning

Katy Balls

Will Dodds’s departure trouble No.10?

Keir Starmer has lost another minister. Anneliese Dodds is stepping down as International Development Minister following No. 10’s decision to slash the foreign aid budget by almost half to pay for an increase in defence spending. That policy decision was announced earlier this week ahead of Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump at the White House. In her resignation letter to the Prime Minister, Dodds warns that ‘these cuts will remove food and healthcare from desperate people’ and ‘deeply’ harm the UK’s reputation. Dodds’s departure speaks to an unhappiness in parts of the Labour party Dodds says that she chose to wait until after Starmer’s Washington trip was completed to

Lisa Haseldine

Trump: To help Ukraine, Europe must help itself first

Fresh off the back of a summit with Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington, the President of the United States granted The Spectator’s US Editor-at-Large Ben Domenech an exclusive interview in the White House. One of the most pressing topics discussed by Starmer and Trump was support for Ukraine in its efforts to resist Russia’s invasion – and America’s threat to throw in the towel as Europe’s peacekeeper. It was time for Europe, Trump told The Spectator, to step into the breach. Trump’s inability to resist promoting the superiority of American support for Kyiv aside, he is correct ‘They have to step up, but they also have to get equipment,’ the President said. ‘They

John Connolly

Trump: UK encryption laws are like what you get in China

Keir Starmer may have survived his meeting with Donald Trump yesterday – with the President saying he was ‘inclined’ to support the Chagos deal and might not impose tariffs on the UK – but it appears the US President still has plenty of concerns about the state of this country. Speaking to The Spectator’s Ben Domenech yesterday, the President was asked what he thought about our new Prime Minister. While Trump conceded that ‘He’s different. Different type’ to Boris Johnson (which may well go down as understatement of the year) he was generally positive about Sir Keir, saying ‘I have to say, he was very nice. We had a very good meeting.’ But

Steerpike

SNP face fresh exodus as thousands desert party

Dear oh dear. Just as positive polling had lifted the spirits of the Scottish Nats, news of their membership exodus will bring them crashing down. As revealed by the august paper that is the Scotsman, the SNP has lost more than 5,500 members in six months alone. It’s hardly what you want to hear when you’ve an election to fight in a year, eh? The Scottish journal revealed that, as of 31 December 2024, the party had just 58,940 members – down from some 64,525 in the summer months. Not that SNP figures are strangers to an exodus, however. In 2019, the party had a staggering membership base totalling 125,000.

Matthew Lynn

Will Labour MPs scupper a US-UK trade deal?

A UK-US trade deal is on the table. On a surprisingly successful trip to Washington, US President Donald Trump made it clear to the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer that a trade agreement with the United States was close. “We could very well end up with a real trade deal where the tariffs won’t be necessary,” Trump said after his meeting with the British delegation. “We’ll see.” Britain’s dire economic performance means that the UK is hardly in a position to turn down a deal With our economy in dire trouble, Britain needs this agreement more than ever. There is just one problem: Sir Keir will have to take on

Steerpike

Trump: Joe or Hunter Biden left cocaine in the White House

Back in 2023, when Joe Biden was President of the United States, there was something of a drugs scandal in the White House, when the Secret Service found a gram of cocaine in the West Wing. An investigation was launched, but while Secret Service officials trawled through their security systems and indexed ‘several hundred’ people who entered the White House, they were unable to identify a suspect. There was ‘insufficient DNA’ on the bag in question and an FBI lab was unable to retrieve any fingerprints. A mystery indeed. Who could have left the cocaine there? It’s clearly something that has been on Donald Trump’s mind since he’s returned to

Freddy Gray

How successful was Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington?

25 min listen

Freddy is joined by The Spectator World’s deputy US editor, Kate Andrews, and The Telegraph columnist, Tim Stanley, to talk about Keir Starmer’s much-anticipated meeting with Donald Trump in Washington. Across the board, it has been read as a success – at least domestically, that is. The victories include movement on the Ukraine backstop, some positive discussions around the UK avoiding tariffs, and a second state visit is on the horizon as well. The biggest win, though, was the number of compliments that the president gave Starmer, including – puzzlingly – about his accent. The Spectator World’s Ben Domenech secured an interview with Donald Trump after the Starmer meeting, in which he was

Freddy Gray

How Starmer won over the Donald

14 min listen

Unbelievably, Keir Starmer arrives back from Washington today after a successful meeting with Donald Trump. In fact, it’s hard to see how it could have gone much better. Top of the list of victories: it looks like some headway was made in avoiding tariffs on the UK and, on Ukraine, the pair discussed the prime minister’s call for a security backstop for any deal. Starmer described that part of the talks as ‘productive’ and said that a ‘deal has to come first’. There will also be a second state visit for the President.  The greatest victory however is winning personal and effusive praise from the President. The Spectator’s sister magazine

Daniel Thorpe

Is the Kurdish PKK about to lay down its arms?

On Thursday, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) called on his organisation to lay down their arms and dissolve themselves. If they comply, this would put an end to a decades-long conflict with the Turkish state that has claimed the lives of over 40,000 people. The statement was delivered in a crowded press conference in Istanbul by members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy party (DEM). The call appeared to be more or less unconditional. One of the speakers at the end of the conference added that ‘in practice, of course, the laying down of arms and the PKK’s self-dissolution require the recognition of democratic politics

Steerpike

Trump: I was surprised to get on well with Starmer

By most accounts, Keir Starmer seems to have done a good job keeping Donald Trump on side when the two men met at the White House yesterday. Starmer offered his counterpart a second state visit to the UK, with a handwritten invitation from the King, while the Donald suggested that Britain may well escape the tariffs about to be imposed on the EU. In perhaps the most surprising turn of events, Trump even complimented Starmer’s voice, saying he had a ‘beautiful accent’ (who said the special relationship was dead?). The President shed more light on their relationship when speaking to The Spectator US’s Ben Domenech in his exclusive interview yesterday.

Robin Ashenden

Is Trump Putin’s useful idiot?

Those whose mouths have been left hanging open by Donald Trump’s pivot towards Russia in the past fortnight, and the ruthlessness with which the Ukrainians (and Europe) have been thrust off the stage, haven’t been paying attention. The love-in between the two leaders has been going on now for a decade. It started properly in 2015, when the foreplay between the two ‘strongmen’ was conducted, like so many great flirtations, at a coy distance. Trump told CBS network he and Putin would ‘probably get along… very well,’ while Putin, to show willing, responded that Trump was ‘a very outstanding person, talented, without any doubt.’ Trump, eyelids-a- flutter, schmoozed back that

Lucy Dunn

Can Reform land a knockout blow in Hull?

It was to a packed-out auditorium that Nigel Farage announced his party’s mayoral candidate for Hull and East Yorkshire on Thursday night. Reform pulled out all the stops for its reveal of former Olympic boxer and gold medallist Luke Campbell, from sparkler firework lights to a mocked-up boxing ring. ‘The set up is immense,’ one aide boasted. And judging by the crowd’s roars at the big unveiling, they thought so too.  Campbell is, in many ways, a perfect candidate for Reform. The 37-year-old Hull-born international boxer is an inspiration for other young men who have grown up without much, and is standing for office in an area he knows well.

Paul Wood

Paul Wood, Matthew Parris, Ian Buruma, Hermione Eyre and Francis Young

34 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Paul Wood reads his letter from the Vatican (1:17); Matthew Parris warns Conservatives from embracing causes that could lose them as much support as they would gain (7:31); reviewing Richard Overy’s Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima and the Surrender of Japan, Ian Buruma argues that the atomic bombs were not only immoral, but ineffective (15:35); Hermione Eyre examines the life and work of the surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun (23:03); and, Francis Young provides his notes on Shrove Tuesday (29:12).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Irwin Stelzer

The big mistake Keir Starmer made with Donald Trump

Keir Starmer did almost everything right. He headed for lunch with the President, leaving the British Embassy’s Jaguars and Land Rovers in the garage. Instead, he relied on a made-in-America (probably) Chevy Suburban, presumably part of the Secret Service’s fleet of bullet-proof gas guzzlers. That might take Trump’s mind off the fact that the UK exports £8 billion worth of cars to the US every year, making America the main destination of UK car exports. But it won’t change Trump’s mind that reciprocity is the cornerstone of his tariff policy. America taxes imported cars at a 2.5 per cent rate; the UK imposes a 10 per cent import duty and

Lisa Haseldine

Merz is caught in a defence spending trap of his own making

It’s not just in Britain that defence spending is top of the agenda. In Germany, too, the debate has turned to how the government can resurrect the country’s hollowed-out armed forces. Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU and the man pipped to become the next chancellor, is driving the discussion. But unlike the grudgingly positive response Prime Minister Keir Starmer has received for pledging to increase UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP over the next two years, Merz is blundering his way into an almighty row – and possibly a constitutional crisis.  The final vote in Sunday’s federal election had not been fully counted before Merz, whose