Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Andrew Tettenborn

Farage’s defection deadline could make a Tory-Reform pact more likely

Did you read the big news about Reform? No, not its scooping-up of Tory MPs Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell; but rather Nigel Farage’s announcement of a new regime for future defections. Reform may once have jauntily set up what must be a first for any political party, an online defection application form: but the whole exercise is now to be strictly time-limited. As from 7 May, the date of such local elections as the government have not seen fit to cancel, Reform will entertain no further applications from any existing politician. Even for those who do apply in time, there are going to be no shoo-ins. I have already turned

Michael Gove

The death of the special relationship – and was Jenrick right to leave the Tories?

45 min listen

This week: Michael and Maddie ask whether the so-called special relationship between Britain and the United States has finally reached breaking point. As Donald Trump’s threats over Greenland and his reversal on the Chagos Islands unsettle allies, has the British right begun to turn decisively against him? Was the special relationship ever more than a comforting myth – and what does a more erratic, transactional America mean for Britain’s security, sovereignty and strategic future? Then: Robert Jenrick’s dramatic defection to Reform UK. Was his exit from the Conservatives a naked career move, or a genuine ideological break forged by failure on migration and borders? And does his defection strengthen Reform’s

Tuesday

Madeline Grant

Starmer’s supine ministers can’t defend approving China’s embassy

This government has many faults, but one really cannot fault them on their comic timing. On the very day when the Americans withdrew support for the Chagos ‘deal’, partly on the grounds that it showed weakness in the face of China, the government also gave approval to a massive new Chinese embassy complete with access to sensitive underground cable systems and an unspecified subterranean complex that definitely won’t be used to torture dissidents.  Inevitably, this provoked questions in the House of Commons. Answering for the government was Security Minister Dan Jarvis. Clearly aware that he was about to get a barrage of difficult questions from unimpressed opposition MPs, Mr Jarvis

Iram Ramzan

Who cares if Robert Jenrick can’t pronounce Kemi Badenoch’s name?

Kemi Badenoch, I can feel your pain. Nope, not the feeling of being knifed by a former colleague –but having your name mangled beyond recognition. The Tory leader has pointed out, with admirable restraint, that ‘there’s no ‘bad’ in my name’ There is a particular kind of silence that arrives just before someone mispronounces your name – the flicker of hesitation, the calculation, the internal conflict over the decision to even attempt it. My name is Iram. It means garden in paradise (I know, right?), yet it’s hellish for some people to pronounce. It is short, phonetic, yet routinely transformed into Imran, Eye-ram, or some other curious innovation. In emails, I’m

Eliot Wilson

Even Europe knows Britain isn't spending enough on defence

The United Kingdom’s allies in Europe are concerned that the British government is not allocating enough resources to defence and that our armed forces’ capabilities are already suffering as a result. No one likes to be openly chided by their friends – and it stings all the more because it is true. Last week, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, appeared before the House of Commons defence committee. He had admitted that ‘we are not as ready as we need to be for the kind of full-scale conflict that we might face’. He would not confirm reports that £28 billion extra funding would be

Matthew Lynn

Elon Musk would be a great new owner for Ryanair

A Tesla would whisk you to the airport. The planes would be self-flying. And robots would serve the over-priced sandwiches, while, inevitably, every seat is hooked up to a live X feed. A full-scale takeover of Ryanair by Elon Musk may still be some way off, but with the billionaire polling his followers on X on whether he should make a bid for the budget airline, it is no longer impossible. Ryanair’s long-suffering passengers should welcome the prospect of a Musk takeover – because, while the airline revolutionised low-cost travel, Ryanair is stuck in a rut. The spat between Elon Musk, and Ryanair’s pugnacious CEO Michael O’Leary is certainly entertaining

James Heale

The scandal of China’s ‘super embassy’

13 min listen

China’s controversial ‘super embassy’ has been approved, after years of debate over the security risks. Campaigners had called on ministers not to give the site the green light, given its proximity to important internet cables that support the City of London. MI5 have admitted they can’t ‘wholly eliminate’ the national security risks around the site. Megan McElroy is joined by James Heale and Sophia Gaston, research fellow at King’s College London, to discuss. There’s more international chaos for Keir Starmer too – overnight, Donald Trump described plans to hand over the sovereignty of the Chagos islands as ‘an act of great stupidity.’ Where on earth does this leave the special

The scandal of China’s ‘super embassy’
Tom Switzer

This is Nato’s Suez moment

In 1969, Charles de Gaulle told his friend André Malraux that America’s “desire – and one day it will satisfy it – is to desert Europe. You will see.” It has taken nearly six decades, but de Gaulle’s prophecy now looks uncomfortably close to fulfilment. Among EU officials, a harsher conclusion is taking hold After years of diplomatic effort to manage, placate and charm successive American presidents – and Donald Trump in particular – European leaders are coming to a grim realisation: the United States is, at best, indifferent to their interests and sensibilities and, at worst, openly hostile to them. Some, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, still believe Trump

James Tidmarsh

Could the Chinese embassy be an opportunity for Britain?

Keir Starmer has formally approved the largest Chinese embassy ever built in Europe. The chosen site, Royal Mint Court, opposite the City of London, is close to sensitive financial and communications infrastructure. Ministers insist the risks can be managed, but there are plenty of sceptics. The assumption underpinning much of the criticism of the embassy is that it represents a unique security risk – that Britain has sleepwalked into granting Beijing a listening post in the heart of the capital. Yet could a colder calculation have been at work? For the British state, perhaps the embassy is not a vulnerability but a controlled environment it can exploit. Britain may be able

Steerpike

Welsh Tory expelled for Reform talks

Another one bites the dust. After Kemi Badenoch expelled Robert Jenrick from the Conservative party in Westminster, it seems that her Welsh counterpart Darren Millar this week wants to get in on the act too. This morning he released a statement on X, declaring that he expelled James Evans MS from both the Welsh shadow cabinet and the party grouping in the Senedd. Millar wrote: This morning, I took the decision to remove James Evans from the Welsh Conservative Shadow Cabinet and withdraw the Conservative whip. I did so after being informed by James that he was continuing to engage with Reform representatives about the possibility of defecting to the

Freddy Gray

Nigel Farage: Trump can still ‘sink’ the Chagos deal

‘Better late than never.’ That’s how Reform party leader Nigel Farage has described Donald Trump’s sudden and dramatic repudiation of the United Kingdom’s Chagos handover. ‘This should be enough to sink just about the worst deal in history.’ Early this morning, Trump used his Truth Social account to lay into ‘our “brilliant” Nato ally, the United Kingdom’, over Keir Starmer’s decision to ‘give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital military base, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.’ But what’s striking about Trump’s sudden focus on the future of Diego Garcia is that he’s decided to do it now –  amid the high-level row over

Ross Clark

Trump is right: Starmer’s Chagos deal is an act of ‘great stupidity’

The excruciating thing about Donald Trump is that the madder and more unreasonable he seems to become, the more he catches everyone out when he says something that is utterly true. The US president’s manoeuvres on Greenland are the act of a bully and autocrat; for him to suggest that he wants Greenland as compensation for failing to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is babyish. Why does he care about the Nobel Peace Prize when it is awarded by the kind of non-governmental busybodies he has scorned during his five years in office? It wouldn’t surprise me if Starmer ends up giving Gibraltar to Spain or even the Isle of Wight

Catherine Ellis

Venezuela’s chavista elite is clinging on – but only just

Hugo Chávez’s eyes are everywhere across parts of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. In stark black and white, his gaze is stamped onto government buildings, public housing blocks and murals. But if the late socialist president could truly see what has become of the movement he founded, he would likely be dismayed. Most Venezuelans have abandoned chavismo. His protégé Nicolás Maduro – who had led the government since 2013 – has been captured by the US, while many Venezuelans cheered his exit. What remains is a thin but loyal chavista base – and a leadership operating firmly in survival mode. Trump needs some continuity within the chavista elite to avoid a chaotic

Michael Simmons

Rachel Reeves: destroyer of jobs

Rachel Reeve’s jobs collapse is trundling on. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that 155,000 payroll jobs were wiped out in the year up to November. Some 33,000 were lost in a single month. In total, over 200,000 jobs have disappeared since the Chancellor’s first Budget when she announced a £25 billion raid on employer National Insurance.  In response to that tax hike, and throughout the uncertainty in the run-up to Labour’s second Budget last year, business paused their hiring plans and stopped replacing staff as they left. They don’t appear to have begun rehiring. Flash estimates for December (which are very likely to be

Richard Ekins

Leaving the ECHR won’t turn us into Russia or Belarus

In the debate about withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) enthusiasts for European human rights law often seem to think they have a trump card. Leaving the ECHR, they say, would put the UK in the company of Belarus and Russia, two other European states that are not member states of the ECHR. Strictly speaking, they are not the only two. Kosovo is not (yet) a member; neither is Kazakhstan, which, incredibly, is eligible to join because 4 per cent of its territory is west of the Ural River. Still, it is the spectre of association with Belarus and Russia that looms large in parliamentary and public deliberation about

Steerpike

Trump slams Starmer’s Chagos deal

Oh dear. Less than 24 hours after Keir Starmer did his big Hugh Grant act over Greenland, Donald Trump has decided to make the Prime Minister’s life eve worse. The US President has overnight turned his guns on the Chagos deal, which is currently in the final stages of parliamentary scrutiny. Trump wrote on Truth Social that: Shockingly, our “brilliant” NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. There is no doubt that China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness. These

Andrew Tettenborn

What does Bridget Phillipson have against free speech?

It is easy to forget that, under a quirk of the UK legal system, if you want to get the law changed it is often not enough simply to get legislation passed. Most Acts of Parliament state that their provisions come into force not immediately, or even on a given date, but when a ministerial order is issued. Supposedly aimed at flexibility and the ability to squish boring bureaucratic bugs before they bite, it also gives governments an effort-free way to annul legislation they don’t like. No need to repeal it: just don’t activate it. It will remain in limbo: law, yes, but still legal dead wood. It’s now clear

Ian Williams

Keir Starmer will regret approving China’s mega-embassy

Keir Starmer is poised to give the go-ahead for China’s new mega-embassy near the Tower of London – the biggest diplomatic mission in Europe and a ‘nest of spies’ in the eyes of its opponents. But this will not be the end of the story. A legal challenge seems certain to follow, and the decision will be seen by critics as further evidence of Starmer trying to cosy up to Beijing at the expense of national security. In addition, the timing could not be worse, given the turbulence in geopolitics and strained relations with Trump’s America. The decision is expected as early as today, with Starmer claiming Britain’s intelligence agencies

David Loyn

There's trouble at the top in the Taliban

Taliban rule of Afghanistan becomes madder by the day. The only thing they reliably do is find new ways of making life impossible for women. They recently jailed the senior government advisor, Dr Farouq Azam, for more than a month after he made the subversive suggestion that women medical professionals should be sent to assist with earthquake relief. But while the Taliban attempt to portray a united front against the outside world, there is mounting evidence of division at the top of the movement. Taliban rule of Afghanistan becomes madder by the day. The only thing they reliably do is find new ways of making life impossible for women Interior

Gareth Roberts

We’re trapped in 2016

With all the talk of Brexit, do you ever get the sense that social media is stuck in 2016? Well, now it really is. A trend has taken off online involving people posting throwback pictures from a decade ago. A Tumblr video captioned ‘Welcome back #2016’ kicked off the nostalgia. It has resulted in a 450 per cent surge in ‘2016’ searches across platforms, as those born between 1997-2002 share photos, songs like Drake’s ‘Views’ and Pokemon Go memories. A Tumblr video captioned ‘Welcome back #2016’ kicked off the nostalgia The year 2016 is being described as one in which pop culture peaked. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about