Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Katy Balls

The Sarah Storey Edition

28 min listen

Dame Sarah Storey is Britain’s most successful Paralympian of all time. She is a 45-time World champion, a 23-time European champion, and a 77-time world recorder breaker – including times she broke her own records. Earlier this year she won her 18th and 19th Olympic golds at the Paris 2024 games. On the podcast, Sarah talks to Katy Balls about switching from swimming to cycling, the influence of bullying at school and the funding disparity that Paralympians face. She also talks about working with Dan Jarvis and Andy Burnham on improving cycling infrastructure, as well as her preparations for the next Olympics – Los Angeles 2028. Plus, where does she

Richard Dawkins

The myth of the God-shaped hole

In a recent interview, I imprudently said I was a “cultural Christian”, and I haven’t heard the end of it. I find myself unwillingly counted in the Great Christian Revival (translation, “We don’t actually believe that stuff ourselves, but we like it when other people do”) which is the subject of so much wishful thinking these days. The trans-sexual bandwagon is a form of quasi-religious cult Of course I’m a cultural Christian. Always have been. Packed off to Anglican schools, I was confirmed when too young to know better. Large chunks of the English Hymnal were imprinted in my long-term memory, and duly pop out when I’m fooling around with

Iain Mansfield

Bridget Phillipson wants no alternatives to expose her education mistakes

Wales has long been an embarrassment for any aspiring Labour education secretary. While the Conservative government’s school reforms shot England up the international league tables – in the PISA rankings it rose from 25th to 13th in reading and 27th to 11th in maths between 2009 and 2022 – performance in Labour-run Wales and in SNP-run Scotland has declined. Labour has always been the enemy of excellence – which it wrongly confuses with elitism These three UK nations provided a perfect real-time experiment with which to assess the merits of different education philosophies. The tried-and-tested methods of phonics, a knowledge-rich curriculum and firm behavioural policies won decisively. Simultaneously, the pioneering Free Schools and

Gavin Mortimer

Could Emmanuel Macron be Elon Musk’s next target?

Days before Christmas, the BBC published an article on its website headlined ‘Elon Musk’s curious fixation with Britain’. The broadcaster was anxious to discuss why Donald Trump’s right-hand man was taking such an interest in British affairs from across the pond. It turns out that Musk – who will be Trump’s efficiency tsar when he becomes president this month – is also keen to cast a critical eye over Germany’s domestic travails. Last weekend, he endorsed the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in an op-ed published in Welt, a conservative daily. Ahead of February’s general election, Musk described the right-wing AfD as the ‘last spark of hope’ for Germany. This, he

Thursday

Steerpike

Nick Clegg gets unfriended by Facebook

Happy new year Nick Clegg. The onetime Deputy Prime Minister has spent much of the past decade collecting oodles of cash from the social media giant formerly known as Facebook. Clegg has served as one of Mark Zuckerberg’s senior executives at Meta since October 2018, living out of a £7 million mansion in Silicon Valley. Talk about a good European eh? But all good things must come to an end. And today, just months after trumpeting the UK’s Brexit freedoms on AI policy, he has now announced his departure from Meta. Writing, ironically, on rival platform X, Sir Nick wrote a four tweet statement that had all the spontaneity and

Lara Prendergast

The West’s right turn, Michael Gove interviews Jordan Peterson & the ADHD trap

45 min listen

This week: the fight for the future of the right From Milei in Argentina to Trump in the US, Meloni in Italy to the rise of the AfD in Germany, the world appears to be turning to the right, say James Kanagasooriam and Patrick Flynn. One country, however, seems to be the exception to this rule: our own. Britain under Keir Starmer appears to be putting on a revival of the old classic Socialism in One Country. However, beyond Westminster, the data show that Britain is not moving to the left in line with its government. While the Conservatives and Reform are locked in a near-constant struggle for supremacy, polling

Steerpike

Speaker’s Office doubles under Hoyle

When John Bercow finally left the Speakership at the end of 2019, MPs breathed a sigh of relief. At last, they thought, no more endless partisan showboating from the Speaker’s chair. Yet, over time, his replacement has faced a mounting chorus of criticism. Lindsay Hoyle’s interruptions at PMQs seemed to become more frequent, prompting sketch writers to accuse him of ‘headline-hoggery’. He then became embroiled in a row over ‘Speaker-led diplomacy’ after a leaked email suggested he would fly the Palestinian flag at parliament. Next there was the debacle of last February, when Hoyle was accused of bending the rules to let Labour off the hook on a Gaza motion

Steerpike

Labour loses 20 councillors in Starmer protest

All is not well in Labourland. Now it transpires that 20 councillors have quit Sir Keir Starmer’s party in a rather extraordinary protest at the direction of the party under the new Prime Minister. Those involved will now sit as independent councillors in Broxtowe Borough Council in Nottinghamshire. Dear oh dear… The disillusioned lot have even discussed the establishment of a new independent party after losing faith in Starmer’s army, with some claiming Sir Keir’s crowd had ‘abandoned traditional Labour values’ and blasting winter fuel payment cuts. The BBC notes that council leader Milan Radulovic was driven to leave the party, despite being a Labour member for 42 years, over

Ross Clark

Ed Miliband doesn’t understand how energy pricing works

Are we about to find out the full foolishness of Ed Miliband’s policy of blocking licences for new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea? While it may come as a surprise to some, until New Year’s Eve Europe was still receiving gas supplies from Russia – not through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline which was sabotaged in 2022, but via an unlikely route through Ukraine. These taps have now been turned off, after an agreement for Russia to supply gas to Europe came to an end. That leaves the continent facing a similar situation, if less acute, to that which it faced in 2022. It must look elsewhere

Steerpike

Small boat crossings up by a quarter on previous year

Labour’s crackdown on people smugglers comes as New Year’s Day Home Office figures show the number of small boats crossing the English Channel increased by a quarter on 2023. A staggering 36,816 people were recorded as having made the journey on small boats in 2024, with the last group of just under 300 people arriving on 29 December. Good heavens… The figures reveal a 25 per cent increase on the previous year, in which 29,437 people took on the Channel to get to the UK – although 2022 remains the busiest year on record, with a whopping 45,774 arrivals onto British shores. In fact, the latest figures take the total

Ross Clark

Starmer’s queue-cutting blunder shows he isn’t very good at politics

Who would want to be Prime Minister, when even an innocent holiday can lead to a PR disaster? Keir Starmer had to cancel his summer holiday last year because he couldn’t be seen to be swanning off to the sun while towns in the Midlands and North were erupting into rioting. Surely, then, a few days in out-of-season Madeira in the dead period between Christmas and New Year would provide a well-earned rest? It would be tempting to feel sorry for Starmer if he hadn’t taken every opportunity to make political capital out when his predecessors were accused of exceptionalism Unfortunately not. Starmer is back in the headlines for turning up

Steerpike

Treasury under fire over private school VAT ads

New year, same problems. Already Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government is in the firing line again – this time facing criticism for private school VAT adverts. Now the Treasury has been accused of breaching impartiality for saying that Starmer’s move to apply 20 per cent VAT to private school fees ends a ‘tax break’. Dear oh dear… In social media ads, the Treasury has insisted that the scrapping of the VAT exemption on private school fees means that ‘tax breaks for private schools will end from 2025’, adding that the move will ‘enable better investment in state education’ and help recruit 6,500 more teachers – one of its first ‘steps

Freddy Gray

Will terrorists target Donald Trump’s inauguration day?

Donald Trump is an unconventional politician and he responds to terror attacks unconventionally. When bad things happen, he often goes on the offensive.  ‘Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!’ he posted on his Truth Social media account last night, after 15 people were killed in the New Year’s Day terrorist truck attack in New Orleans. ‘This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership.’ Trump was the target of not one but two near-miss assassination attempts in 2024 There is no evidence yet linking the New Orleans incident with a car explosion on the same day in

James Heale

Labour rejects calls for Oldham grooming gang inquiry

State failure was a consistent theme of British politics in 2024. So as the new year begins, attention has turned to perhaps the most egregious instance of that malaise in modern times: the horrific scandal of grooming gangs in dozens of UK cities. Jess Phillips, the Safeguarding Minister, has rejected calls for a government inquiry into historic child abuse in Oldham, prompting a Tory backlash. Robert Jenrick, the Shadow Justice Secretary, called it ‘shameful’; Liz Truss, the ex PM, labelled Phillips’ title ‘a perversion of the English language.’ Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter/X, argues that the Home Office minister ‘deserves to be in prison.’ Phillips’ letter to Oldham Council,

James Heale

Is 2025 Farage’s year?

19 min listen

Happy New Year! And it could prove to be a very happy new year for Nigel Farage and the Reform Party. They provided some of the stand-out political drama of 2024, with Lee Anderson’s defection and Farage’s return, before winning five seats at the general election (as well as a hefty chunk of the popular vote). They finished the year strong with a meeting with Elon Musk, where we understand that a possible donation was discussed. Farage also gave a memorable speech at The Spectator awards, warning that a ‘political revolution’ is coming. With the local elections coming up in 2025, could this be the year that Reform and Farage crystallise into

Tom Goodenough

Biden confirms New Orleans attacker ‘inspired by Isis’

US president Joe Biden has confirmed that a terrorist who killed 15 people during the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans was ‘inspired by Isis’. Biden said that Shamsud-Din Jabbar – who also injured at least 35 people after driving his pick-up truck through crowds of revellers – had expressed a ‘desire to kill’ in videos posted online. An Isis flag was found in Jabbar’s Ford F-150 Lightning vehicle, Biden confirmed. ‘The situation is very fluid,’ the president said. ‘The law enforcement [and the] intelligence community continue to look for any connections, associations or co-conspirators…the investigation is continuing to be active, and no one should jump to conclusions.’ The FBI

Alexander Larman

Brace yourselves for Meghan Markle’s comeback

As many of us lurched blearily into 2025, desperately trying to remember how, exactly, we’d managed to cause offence to our nearest and dearest in the hinterland between the old year and the new, there was another unwelcome surprise waiting in the wings. In the late afternoon of 1 January, just as the nausea and regret of the previous night was beginning to dispel, the Duchess of Sussex decided that the perfect moment had come to relaunch herself into public consciousness. Out of nowhere, a 28-second video appeared on her hitherto dormant Instagram account, which is now branded simply as “@meghan”.  What many hoped for – an announcement that she

Steerpike

Elon Musk calls for Jess Phillips to be jailed

Once Jess Phillips was the queen of Twitter, harrying and hounding the Tories at every chance. But these days it’s a very different story. Having been handed government responsibility for safeguarding back in July, the Home Office minister swiftly parked a social media back lash after suggesting she got better NHS treatment for her Gaza vote. She then was accused of ‘making excuses’ for a masked mob in Birmingham. And today she has found herself the face of another Twitter/X storm after GB News reported that she has formally rejected repeated requests for a Home Office-led inquiry into historic child abuse in Oldham. Phillips wrote that ‘it is for Oldham

Patrick West

Forgive Stephen Fry for supporting Stonewall

There has been much indignation at the roll-call of those ennobled in the New Year Honours. There’s been bewilderment that Gareth Southgate, England’s failed football coach, has been given a knighthood. There’s been anger that Sadiq Khan, who has presided over an escalation of knife crime in the capital, has been similarly honoured. There’s been puzzlement that Emily Thornberry, whose foremost distinction has been sneering at working-class displays of patriotism, has been made a dame. And there’s been gnashing of teeth that Stephen Fry, that ubiquitous and often grating luvvie, has been given the title ‘Sir’. Much of the vehemence directed towards Fry has focused on his longstanding support for

Wednesday

Mark Galeotti

Where have Russia’s Zs gone?

A social media post on 30 December: photographs of admittedly-splendid new year decorations in Moscow, archly captioned ‘back to 2021.’ The poster is alluding to the fact that obscene and extravagant references to Putin’s war in Ukraine – notably the letter Z, which has come to symbolise it – were notably absent from city decorations this new year. Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has never seemed especially enthused about the war. He has done what the Kremlin required – diverted resources to help raise ‘volunteer regiments’; wallpapered the city with recruitment adverts; renamed Europe Square Eurasia Square – but he has avoiding too close an identification with the war, unlike so