Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Steerpike

Labour splits over WASPI compensation

Christmas may be just around the corner, but not everyone is in festive spirits quite yet. The mood has certainly soured among the WASPI women campaigning for government compensation over changes to the state pension age. On Tuesday, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall announced that no payouts would be forthcoming, with costs of up to £10.5 billion not deemed ‘fair or appropriate’ by the Labour lot. Now, Kendall is not only facing backlash from pension activists but from within her own party too. The now-Secretary of State has been on quite the journey over the issue, as Mr S revealed yesterday, blogging on her own website as recently as

Katy Balls

Rising inflation will make Rachel Reeves’s job harder

12 min listen

New figures have shown that, for the year to November, inflation rose by 2.6%. While unsurprising, how much will this impact the Chancellor’s plans going into the new year? Katy Balls speaks to Kate Andrews and Isabel Hardman about the impact on Labour, especially given their October budget. Also on the podcast: do the WASPI women deserve compensation? The team discuss Liz Kendall’s announcement that Labour will not recompense women who faced pension changes; they also discuss the last PMQs of 2024. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.

Isabel Hardman

Kemi Badenoch failed to pin down Starmer at PMQs – again

Kemi Badenoch has become fixated on accusing Keir Starmer of not telling the truth at Prime Minister’s Questions, to the extent that she is neglecting to push him on individual issues. The Tory leader merely used the winter fuel payment, the impact of national insurance hikes on charities and hospices, and Brexit as devices for her grand theme of the Prime Minister not answering the question and not telling the truth. It would have been better to hammer away at one topic to make Starmer uncomfortable, rather than allowing him to do the thing that Badenoch was complaining about: dodging the issue. The Leader of the Opposition started off by

Steerpike

Starmer makes the most of No. 10’s gift shop

Jetting off on one of his (many) trips abroad last month, Keir Starmer was snapped on his plane sipping from an intriguing choice of mug. The Labour leader seems to favour a specially produced cup emblazoned with the number ’10’ – just in case he, er, forgets that he is actually the Prime Minister, again. The item in question was specially produced by the No. 10 gift shop, though sadly purchases are only available to Downing Street staff. Spoilsports! Limited-edition £17 mugs are just one of the 19 items currently being sold at the power centre of British politics. The costliest items are the top-of-the-line hooded sweatshirts on offer for

Steerpike

Top Tory tries to woo Elon Musk

The talk in Westminster is how much Elon Musk is going to give to Reform. But might the Tories might be a better bet for the Tesla billionaire? On this morning’s media round, Andrew Griffith – the Shadow Business Secretary – made his pitch to the X owner, praising him as an ‘accomplished’ businessman and insisting that his party is best placed to take the fight to Labour. Griffith told Kay Burley on Sky that the Tories were the ‘only’ force able to take on ‘the woke mind virus’, saying: What I would say to Elon is: he’s been campaigning a lot about freedom of speech. He talks a lot

Steerpike

Reform sack Scots organiser over terror links

Nigel Farage’s party has been having a rather good time of it lately, after winning its first five seats in the July election and continuing to gather support across the country. But north of the border, Reform has found itself in a spot of bother after its party organiser in Scotland was found to have links to terrorists. Good heavens… A probe by the Daily Record has revealed that Craig Campbell’s late father was an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) commander who was jailed after the bombing of Catholic pubs in Glasgow. Campbell’s cousin Jason was also handed a lengthy jail sentence after he was found guilty of murdering 16-year-old Celtic

Michael Taube

Why hasn’t Justin Trudeau resigned yet?

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been walking on a political tightrope for years. His balance is unsteady. The threads of the rope are fraying. Yet, somehow, Trudeau keeps managing to stay upright.  Trudeau should have prorogued parliament or resigned years ago It’s not due to skill or political savvy. That Trudeau has survived so far is mainly down to sheer dumb luck. His minority Liberal governments have survived solely because of mathematical logistics of seat tallies rather than any popular legislation he has passed. He’s faced Conservative opposition leaders who have imploded. He’s been propped up by the New Democratic party, Canada’s socialist alternative, which has supported Trudeau’s party

Matthew Lynn

Labour is staring down the barrel of an inflation crisis

With job vacancies falling, and with GDP contracting, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves might have assumed that her final week before Christmas could not get any worse. Unfortunately, she will have been disappointed. We learned today that inflation is now rising sharply again, with the Office For National Statistics reporting that the rate has risen to 2.6 per cent – the highest level for eight months. The real problem, however, is this. It is going to get a lot worse over the next few months – and the Chancellor will only have herself to blame. In response to today’s inflation data, Reeves tried to maintain that the figures were ‘broadly in

Katy Balls

Is the Chagos deal dead in the water?

Is the Chagos Islands deal dead? Ever since Keir Starmer and his foreign secretary David Lammy announced plans to hand the remote archipelago to Mauritius, the UK government has been accused of risking national security. The proposed agreement would end 200 years of British rule and impact the US air base on the island of Diego Garcia. While the deal would allow the base to continue for ‘99 years’, there are worries this is a long term strategic error and that Mauritius, a trade ally of China, could allow Beijing to spy on the airfield. It is looking very difficult for Starmer to push through the deal before Donald Trump

Kate Andrews

Rising inflation will make Rachel Reeves’s job harder

It was already unlikely the Bank of England (BoE) was going to cut interest rates this week. Having pledged a slow and steady approach to rate cuts, the decision to cut the base rate by 0.25 per cent last month made it much more likely that the Bank would hold rates at their meeting in December. But any small hope that the BoE would push forward with another small cut has been reduced even further this morning, as the Office for National Statistics reveals that inflation rose by 2.6 per cent in the year to November. While markets were expecting this outcome, the rise is higher than what Threadneedle Street

Ross Clark

Waspi women don’t deserve compensation

Labour is right not to pay compensation to the Waspi women – those who feel aggrieved that the state pension age for women was raised from 60 to 66 without, so they claim, them being given adequate information about the change. We are being invited to believe that tens of thousands of women drew up detailed plans for their retirement – all now undermined – without actually bothering to find out at what age they would retire. You can’t claim poverty one moment while writing open-ended cheques for favoured groups the next To swan off into state-funded retirement at 60 when life expectancy for women is now well into the

Andrew Tettenborn

What Nigel Farage gets wrong about ‘two-tier justice’

Stories of two-tier justice are back. On Monday, Victoria Thomas Bowen, the model who doused Nigel Farage with milkshake on the Clacton campaign trail earlier this year, received a three-month suspended sentence for assault at Westminster magistrates’ court (plus 120 hours of unpaid work and a compensation order.) Farage was very unhappy: ‘We now live in a country where you can assault a Member of Parliament and not go to prison,’ he said, calling this ‘the latest example of two-tier justice’. One might think the occasional attack like this showed the political process in rude health Is he right? The judge who sentenced the assailant, Tan Ikram, is already known for

Gavin Mortimer

Macron has become a liability for the EU

It’s been a year to forget for Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz. The German Chancellor’s coalition collapsed last month and on Monday he lost a confidence vote in parliament. Elections are now likely in February. The President of France has had a few election issues himself, as a result of which Macron is on his third prime minister in six months and his personal approval rating has sunk to a new low. Politically, economically and socially, Germany and France are in crisis and no one is benefiting more than Ursula von der Leyen. The president of the EU Commission, who was elected for a second five-year term in the summer,

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Are migrants ‘self-deporting’ in fear of Trump?

26 min listen

Springfield Ohio became a talking point in this year’s Presidential election after Donald Trump referred to Haitian migrants ‘eating the cats and dogs’. Steven Edginton, GB News US Correspondent has been to Springfield Ohio to speak to some of the migrants there, investigate some reports that migrants are fleeing America in fear of a Trump presidency, and find our from locals about how Springfield has changed since the arrival of around 15,000 Haitian migrants. 

Katy Balls

Chinese spy named, plus Farage meets Musk

11 min listen

After days of speculation online, the alleged Chinese spy has been named as Yang Tegbo. This latest example of Chinese espionage has opened up a number of debates in Westminster, firstly around Labour’s push to ‘reset’ its relationship with China, as well as the conversation around the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme – a number of China hawks such as IDS and Tom Tugendhat are pushing for it to be implemented sooner than summer 2025. Can Labour’s China policy survive this latest wave of Sino-scepticism? Also on the podcast, it’s happened: Nigel Farage has met with Elon Musk to discuss his party’s electoral prospects. What’s the readout from their meeting? Katy

Steerpike

Mauritius rejects Sir Keir’s Chagos deal

As if Starmer’s Labour government hasn’t had enough bad news lately, it now transpires that Mauritius has rejected the Sir Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands deal. Mauritian PM Navinchandra Ramgoolam has told his parliamentarians that the agreement was just not good enough and is now calling for improvements. Back to the drawing board… Speaking to his MPs, Ramgoolan revealed he had already spoken to UK National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell about the change in plan, remarking: Mauritius made clear that while it is still [our] belief to conclude an agreement with the UK, the draft agreement that was shown to us after the general election is one which, in our view, would

Steerpike

Humza Yousaf’s top five worst Covid WhatsApps

Well, well, well. It has now emerged that the SNP government will ban WhatsApp on official devices in the wake of the Covid Inquiry. The announcement from the SNP’s deputy first minister Kate Forbes came today after the publication of an external review into the use of mobile messaging apps on government devices. ‘The use of mobile messaging apps increased during the pandemic as staff worked remotely in unprecedented and difficult circumstances,’ Forbes remarked, adding: ‘Having reflected on our working practices, we are now implementing changes to the use of mobile messaging apps.’ How curious. A number of Scottish government figures endured rather embarrassing sessions at the Covid Inquiry after

Katy Balls

Farage’s Musk meeting is uncomfortable for the Tories and Labour

It’s happened. To the likely dismay of both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage has met with Elon Musk to discuss his party’s electoral prospects. The Reform party leader along with the party’s new treasurer Nick Candy spoke to the tech billionaire and close Donald Trump ally at Mar-A-Lago, in Florida, on Monday. Announcing news of their encounter as part of the pair’s stateside trip, Farage and Candy said they had enjoyed ‘a great meeting with Elon Musk’ that had gone on for an hour: ‘We had a great meeting with Elon Musk for an hour yesterday. We learned a great deal about the Trump ground game and will

Steerpike

Liz Kendall’s WASPI women U-turn

Another day, another drama. Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has finally confirmed that the WASPI women will not receive pension compensation. The decision comes after women born in the 1950s began campaigning to be reimbursed for a previous rise in the state pension age, with activists claiming millions had not been adequately informed of the changes. Kendall has today said that the ‘great majority of women knew the state pension was increasing’, adding that a pay out costing up to £10.5 billion would not be ‘fair or proportionate’ – although she did accept that there had been a delay in sending letters communicating the changes. But Kendall’s firm

Ian Williams

How to avoid another Chinese spy scandal

As the fallout continues from the latest China spy scandal, it is hard not to conclude that Labour’s policy on Beijing – as far as one can be identified – adds up to appeasement in the vain hope of some economic crumbs from the Emperor’s table. It will certainly be seen by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a green light for stepping up what Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, has described as ‘a sustained campaign on a pretty epic scale’. ‘National security is the most important issue of our times,’ said Keir Starmer at the time of 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a few weeks before the general