Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Steerpike

Poll: Reform voters least likely to return to Tories

It’s more than three months now since Kemi Badenoch took over as Tory leader. She has set out her vision in various speeches, with yesterday’s Arc address being the most recent example. So, how is she doing? Well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, according to a poll of 2,000 voters for The Spectator by More in Common. Her approval rating sits at -19, some 22 points above Keir Starmer, but below Nigel Farage. Asked to describe the Tory leader in a single word, the nation’s favourite adjective is ‘unknown’, followed by ‘useless’ – although ‘strong’ and ‘leader’ are also high on the list. If Andrew Bonar Law was

Mark Galeotti

Is Trump’s hostile takeover of Ukraine a trap?

That Donald Trump’s vision of the presidency is less statesman and more CEO of USA Inc. is evident in the terms of the deal he tried to foist on Ukraine last week. As talks begin between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia, a leak reveals that Trump wanted Kyiv to sign away much of its mineral resources to Washington. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected this piece of blatant economic colonialism, but the Ukrainians expect further such demands to come. This is the essence of Trump’s brave new world The draft frames this as the establishment of a joint investment fund such that ‘hostile parties to the conflict do

Michael Simmons

Strong pay growth will alarm the Bank of England

Britain’s workers have experienced strong pay increases for the third month in a row. Figures on the jobs market, just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), reveal that pay rose 6 per cent in the final three months of 2024 – the fastest pace of pay growth in over a year. Strip out inflation, and the average worker saw a 2.5 per cent pay increase – the highest real terms pay rise for three years. While more money in pockets is obviously good news for the workforce, these figures will be ringing alarm bells at the Bank of England. The Bank’s interest rate setters see pay increases as

David Shipley

The truth about Britain’s overcrowded prisons

Former justice secretary David Gauke’s Independent Sentencing Review (ISR), running since October, was not due to report until the spring. However, following the latest published prison population statistics, which showed there are only just over 1,000 spaces left in men’s prisons and soaring numbers for serious further offences, an interim report has been published. It makes for revolutionary reading. As Gauke says, he is confronting ‘the consequences of decades of haphazard policy making and underinvestment in the criminal justice system – bringing it to the brink of collapse.’ Our justice system catches and jails fewer people, yet the prison population continues to soar. Why? The report is brutal, tearing into

Gareth Roberts

Why the Germans don’t do it better

Germany, not so very long ago, was the example of how to do it. Shiningly spotless and effortlessly efficient – the country where they’d got it right. Today, with its economy doom-spiralling and levels of internal unquiet that look likely to see the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) do very well in this Sunday’s federal election, alles is not looking quite so klar. We must resist the temptation to take any pleasure in German misfortunes. I’m sure they don’t ever smirk at our very similar troubles, and surely don’t even have a word for such a thing.  Germany is being bossed about – and frankly ignored – by the US and

Irwin Stelzer

Europe and the death of Pax Americana

If you are still reeling from the shock and awe created by Donald Trump’s foreign policy since taking office, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ as Ronald Reagan once put it. Trump doesn’t just want to reset trading relations with every country in the world. He wants the world to change its foreign policies to suit the end of Pax Americana – and its replacement with a muscular foreign policy that relies very little, if at all, on the kindness of strangers. It is not Trump who is surrendering to Putin, but Europe Start with the war in Ukraine. Trump’s negotiations with Vladimir Putin tell us less about the two men than

Monday

Steerpike

Thousands splurged on government diversity training in 2024

President Trump has been hard at work scrapping diversity courses stateside and international companies have followed suit – with Goldman Sachs and Deloitte some of the latest corporations to bin off their inclusion schemes. Whether the UK government will take a leaf out of Trump’s book is quite another matter, however. The Tories have called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ‘unshackle’ Britain from equality initiatives while Reform’s Rupert Lowe has been busy quizzing the government on their DEI spend in 2024 – which, Mr S can reveal, has taken a not insignificant sum from the public purse… In 2024, more than £1,000 of taxpayer’s cash was splurged on average

Owen Matthews

British troops won’t help Ukraine

Sir Keir Starmer’s proposal to put British troops on the ground as part of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine is a principled and politically bold move. But the sad reality is that Britain is in no position to act as Ukraine’s peacekeeper. Starmer is playing with an empty deck and singing from obsolete songbook.  Starmer has few options left other than gesture politics Starmer’s offer to put British troops on the ground is, in practical military terms, a very small promise. As former British Army chief Lord Dannatt pointed out last night, the UK’s armed forces are ‘so run down’ that we could not lead any future peacekeeping mission in

Steerpike

Psychiatrist shortage could derail assisted dying bill

Uh oh. Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill appears to have hit another bump in the road as it now transpires there may not be enough psychiatric doctors in the profession to make it work. Last week, an amendment put forward by the bill’s sponsor proposed that, instead of having a high court judge investigate each case, a panel of social workers and psychiatrists among others should oversee applications. But experts have warned that there may not actually be enough psychiatrists for this to work. Nice to see the pro-euthanasia crowd has done its research… Professor Allan House, professor of liaison psychiatry at Leeds University, and Professor Gareth Owen, honorary consultant

Andrew Tettenborn

Should burning the Quran be against the law?

There are worrying signs in Britain that a blasphemy law – abolished in 2008 – might be sneaking in through the back door. Last week, a Turkish man allegedly set fire to the Quran as part of a protest against the Turkish government outside its consulate in Rutland Gate, London. He was then attacked by an outraged zealot with a knife, arrested and charged with a similar offence. He has pleaded not guilty and remains to be tried. Earlier this month, a Manchester man filmed publicly burning pages from the Quran in protest at Islamist excesses was also very swiftly arrested and locked up. Two days later, the man pleaded

Oscar Edmondson

Can Starmer be the bridge between Europe and the US?

14 min listen

There is lots to make sense of today in a huge week for European and world politics, with the fallout of the Munich Conference and today’s emergency summit in Paris. European powers are trying to navigate peace in Ukraine in the face of a belligerently isolationist Trump administration. The UK is caught between preserving its privileged position with the US and the desire for a European reset, as well as the need for an end to the war in Ukraine without giving in to Russia. Can Starmer bridge the transatlantic chasm that has opened up? Do the Europeans want us, and do the Americans need us?  Events in Europe will

Stephen Daisley

Parliament is embarrassing itself

Sidney Low said that ‘government in England is government by amateurs’, and parliament seems to be doing its level best to vindicate that view. The Assisted Dying Bill being rushed through the Commons with sinister alacrity has exposed structural flaws in our legislative procedures, not least the vulnerability of private members’ bills to exploitation by those determined that proper parliamentary process not hinder their legislation’s path to the statute books. Whether through truncated debate, a stacked committee, a lopsided witness list, unreliable undertakings, or the resolute incuriosity of scrutineers unwilling to scrutinise, the bill reminds us that institutions are only as reliable as the fidelity of those who populate them

Patrick O’Flynn

Kemi Badenoch is more interested in liberalism than conservatism

Kemi Badenoch made a speech today which mentioned the terms ‘liberal’ or ‘liberalism’ seven times before the word ‘conservative’ got a look in. The liberalism she was extolling in her address at the ARC conference in London was not of the leftist kind, but the ‘classic liberalism of free markets, free speech, free enterprise, freedom of religion, the presumption of innocence, the rule of law, and equality under it’. And there is not much to cavil over in that little list. Although when one person’s desired ‘freedom of religion’ impinges on other people’s basic freedom of expression then clearly there are priorities to be ranked. Since the Brexit vote, the

Coffee House

Read: Kemi Badenoch’s full speech at the Arc Conference

Western civilisation is in crisis. Our ideas and our culture have dominated the world for well over two centuries. This is not a crisis of values. It’s a crisis of confidence that has set in at exactly the same time that we face existential threats on the left. This self-doubt manifests as an embarrassment of the West’s legacy and in extremists, a hatred of western history and even its culture. But what about the right? We know that the West has given the world amazing ideas and values, from democracy and free markets to our banking systems. Yet around us we see so much cultural and economic decline. We doubt

Gavin Mortimer

Can Europe stand on its own two feet against Russia?

The United States is no longer an ‘ally’ of Europe, according to a former high-ranking figure in Nato. In an interview with Times Radio, Stefanie Babst, erstwhile deputy assistant secretary general of the alliance, said President Trump has ‘switched sides’ and aligned the US with Russia, led by the ‘war criminal’ Vladimir Putin. ‘I don’t think that the Trump administration is prepared to really commit any longer to Nato, to the trans-Atlantic alliance as such,’ said Babst, ‘and he couldn’t care really less for European security.’ Babst’s remarks appear to contradict what she said in an interview exactly twelve months ago with a Washington think-tank. ‘With a few exceptions,’ said

James Heale

What does Kemi Badenoch believe in?

Kemi Badenoch likes a good Thatcher comparison. The current Tory leader is presently reading Patrick Cosgrave’s account of the Iron Lady’s rise to the top. It was another book – John Ranelagh’s Thatcher’s People – that recorded how in one 1970s Conservative policy meeting, a speaker started to argue that the party should adopt a pragmatic middle way. Thatcher removed her copy of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slammed it down on the table and declared, ‘This is what we believe.’ This morning was Badenoch’s attempt to do something similar. Appearing at the Arc conference in London, the Tory leader used a 1,700 word speech to set out

Danny Shaw

Why people kill

Why did he do it? Over the last few weeks, many of us have asked that question following a series of horrifying acts of violence that have been difficult to comprehend. Why was 15-year-old Harvey Willgoose fatally stabbed at a school in Sheffield? Why did Axel Rudakubana slaughter three girls at a children’s dance class in Southport last summer? And why did the father and stepmother of ten-year-old Sara Sharif abuse, torture and murder her?  Violent deaths are so shocking and alarming it’s natural that we search for explanations. But in the early stages, as details are pieced together and information about suspects isn’t known or publicly available, those answers often

Steerpike

Watch: Trump critic cries at Munich

The Munich Security Conference has come to a close, but not before generating global headlines after US Vice President JD Vance’s speech on Friday. Reform MP Rupert Lowe lauded the American as a ‘hero’ after Vance warned that free speech was ‘in retreat’ in the UK and Europe – but not everyone feels the same. In fact, chairman of the Munich Security Conference Christoph Heusgen was positively distraught at Vance’s intervention as he closed the 61st conference on Sunday. Taking to the podium, Heusgen began solemnly: After the speech of Vice President Vance on Friday, we have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore. I’m

Steerpike

Ethics tsar must probe Hermer, say Labour MPs

Well, well, well. After a rather rocky ride in the Sunday papers, Lord Hermer is back in the spotlight this week – for all the wrong reasons. It has emerged that Labour MPs are now calling on the Prime Minister’s ethics tsar to probe the Attorney General over potential conflicts of interest. Talk about a bad start to the job, eh? Richard Hermer has only been in post for seven months and yet he’s managed to ruffle a rather lot of feathers. The Attorney General has refused to reveal details of payments he has received since becoming a minister, including any earnings from his list of former clients, in a

John Keiger

Starmer must protect Britain’s defence industry

When David Frost led UK negotiations with the EU on a free trade agreement five years ago, he was supported by a 100-strong Cabinet Office team. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘EU reset unit’, also based in the Cabinet Office, is 100-strong too, including two permanent secretaries. Given Labour’s insistence that it is not seeking to renegotiate Brexit, but merely to improve relations with the EU, why appoint such a large, high-powered unit? Setting aside the harsher criticism that the ‘EU surrender unit’ is a machine to reverse Brexit, government ministers and the PM remain tight-lipped about the officially titled ‘European Union relations secretariat’. It does not appear on the Cabinet