Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Katy Balls and Michael Gove

‘I will die protecting this country’: Kemi Badenoch on where she plans to take the Tories

‘It’s like a start-up,’ Kemi Badenoch explains of her new job, as she plumps down on a sofa in the Spectator offices. A month into her tenure as Conservative party leader and she is discovering the upsides to being out of power. ‘Everyone around me in the leader of the opposition office is there because of me – not because they happened to be there when I got there. That changes the dynamic quite a bit.’ ‘What’s a lunch break? Lunch is for wimps. I don’t think sandwiches are a real food’ She says the ‘biggest difference’ so far between being a secretary of state and leader of the opposition

Wednesday

Steerpike

Full list: the MPs scrutinising the Assisted Dying Bill

At the end of November, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults Bill passed its second reading with a majority of 55 in favour. Now, the MPs who have been selected to sit on the bill committee have been revealed. Find the full list – including each parliamentarian’s party and how they voted on the issue – below. Kim Leadbeater, Labour: Aye Stephen Kinnock, Labour: Aye Sarah Sackman, Labour: Aye Bambos Charalambos, Labour: Aye Dr Marie Tidball, Labour: Aye Dr Simon Opher, Labour: Aye Jake Richards, Labour: Aye Rachel Hopkins, Labour: Aye Lewis Atkinson, Labour: Aye Kit Malthouse, Conservative: Aye Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst, Conservative: Aye Tom Gordon, Liberal Democrat: Aye

Steerpike

Could Reform and the Tories form an electoral pact?

As if 2024 hadn’t been packed full of elections, eyes are already moving to next year’s local polls – and it seems some quite interesting conversations are taking place. According to Bloomberg, it transpires that Tory and Reform party branches in parts of the country have held discussions about working together in next year’s council elections to push out Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot. And so the plotting recommences… According to reports, talks have included the idea that Conservative associations could stand down candidates in certain areas where Reform might be better placed to defeat Labour – while Nigel Farage’s lot would return the favour where the Tories stand a

Lloyd Evans

Kemi Badenoch is bad at PMQs

Flunked it again, unfortunately. Kemi Badenoch chose poor tactics at PMQs. She made flabby speeches instead of hitting the PM with short, sharp questions.  She led on immigration – one of the Tories’ weakest topics. Sir Keir Starmer immediately mentioned the ‘open border’ policies that allowed nearly a million migrants to arrive in a single year. Kemi got specific. She said Sir Keir had opposed deportations for foreign-born criminals. One of these convicts went on to commit homicide. ‘He was able to stay here and murder because people like this man campaigned against deporting criminals. Will he apologise for signing these letters?’ A tough question but Sir Keir pulled off

Charles Hecker

Why Carlsberg left Russia

Carlsberg, the brewing giant whose presence in Russia transformed that country’s beverage market, has left. What remains is the lingering residue of a boozy party that peaked too soon, ended in a brawl and left many questions dangling. As it heads for the exit of Russia’s brutal, wartime asset reallocation process, Carlsberg – a flagship Danish company – takes with it something close to $322 million. This is the price reportedly struck for the sale of Carlsberg’s presence in Russia to a company called VG Invest that, according to the Financial Times, looks like a management buy-out.  It is not certain precisely how much cash Carlsberg will take home as it surrenders

Steerpike

Watch: Farming chief weeps at Labour’s tax raid

The public outrage at Labour’s family farm tax isn’t going away any time soon. Today farmers from across the country have driven their tractors to Westminster in yet another protest at Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tax on agricultural assets, as countrymen fear for the future of family-owned farms. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot insist the majority of farms will be unaffected but their pleas for calm have landed on deaf ears as the Starmtroopers continue to lose rural supporters over the matter. As frustrated farmers gathered outside of parliament today, the issue was also being discussed inside the walls of Westminster. The President of the National Farmers’ Union Tom Bradshaw cut

James Heale

Have Labour got a grip of the prisons crisis?

12 min listen

Labour are planning to publish a 10-year plan to get on the front foot when it comes to the prisons crisis. Shifting from the previous government’s preference to run the system hot to a policy of early release and carving out more places, the headline figure is that there will be 14,000 more prison places by 2031. But the fear today is that these won’t be enough to tackle the critical lack of space in UK jails. So, will Labour’s ongoing sentencing review advocate for greater leniency for certain offenders? And will the public see that as justice being served? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Danny Shaw, former

Isabel Hardman

Starmer and Badenoch clash over immigration at PMQs

Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch had quite an angry clash at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. The Tory leader attacked on immigration, something Starmer had previously mocked her for avoiding. The questions and answers quickly descended into a bit of a grudge match about who actually cared about it. Badenoch’s first question was why immigration had not been named as a priority when Starmer ‘relaunched yet again’ last week. Starmer immediately crowed that ‘now she wants to talk about immigration’, accusing the Conservatives of a ‘one nation experiment in open borders’. He had a good line – though didn’t deliver it particularly well – that Badenoch was ‘furious about what she

Matthew Lynn

Javier Milei’s medicine is working

The economy would crash, the markets would be in open revolt, and he would swiftly be evicted from office by the IMF, and replaced by some ‘grown-ups’. When Argentina elected its chainsaw-wielding, libertarian President Javier Milei a year ago, the economic and political establishment confidently predicted he would only last a few weeks. And yet, not only has Milei managed to stay in power, all the evidence suggests that he is turning Argentina around. The real question now is this? Will a stagnant and moribund Europe pay attention? With inflation running at 25 per cent a month, with the largest IMF loan in history to pay back, and with the

Steerpike

Is Humza Yousaf picking a fight with GB News?

Back to Scotland, where it appears hapless Humza Yousaf is still trying to stay relevant by going after, er, GB News. The failed former first minister of Scotland is said to be considering his options against the channel after a new report into GB News suggested Yousaf would have a ‘very strong case’ if he reported the broadcaster to media watchdog Ofcom over its treatment of the ex-FM. Good heavens… The document, released by the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), has slammed the channel over an ‘excessive’ focus on Muslims bordering on an ‘obsession [that] regularly demonises their beliefs’ – noting that almost 50 per cent

Ross Clark

Labour’s planning reforms look like a way of punishing Tory voters

Is the government’s housing policy aimed principally at increasing the stock of homes and making them more affordable or at punishing Tory voters? I ask because of its obsession with Nimbys and the green belt. According to Keir Starmer last week the planning system exerts a ‘chokehold’ over the housing supply. Writing at the weekend Angela Rayner declared: “I won’t cave into the blockers as the last government did”. You have to be blinkered to think that the reason young people find it so hard to get on the housing ladder is mainly down to Nimbys True, Nimbys exist. Green belts help to strangle cities – green wedges would be better,

Mark Galeotti

How Putin will make Assad pay for his exile

‘Brave Assad fled to Putin. Where will Putin flee?’ asked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky after the Syrian dictator escaped embattled Damascus for Moscow at the weekend. Assad was granted asylum in the Russia capital on the ‘humanitarian grounds’ he had denied his own subjects for so long. But what kind of life is Putin offering him? On the face of it, the answer is a rather opulent one, even if in practice it means becoming part of one of the most rarified zoos of all: Putin’s collection of ex-dictators. West of Moscow, a little way beyond the city’s MKAD orbital motorway along the A-106 Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Shosse, lies the village of

Debbie Hayton

In defence of Connie Shaw

Here is a philosophical question for our universities to ponder. Should the ‘D’ in ‘EDI’ extend to diversity of opinion? If it doesn’t, this acronym so beloved of HR departments and external ‘training providers’ shouldn’t be worth the candle. But heaven help anyone who speaks the truth about sex and gender within some places of education. Say the wrong things and the thought police might check your thinking and ensure that you are cancelled. Connie Shaw, a third-year philosophy, religion and ethics student at Leeds University is one of the latest victims. Back in October, Shaw wrote a blog in which she called out some of the more egregious examples of

Michael Evans

Jolani has learnt from history

The victorious Syrian rebel leader now in control of Damascus has already learned a key lesson in history. After his forces swept into the capital, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, head of the Islamic militant group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), might have been expected to lay waste to all the institutions which had helped to keep the repressive Assad dynasty in power for 53 years, but instead he chose pragmatism. He announced he would do business with the Syrian government and wanted civil service staff to stay in their jobs to keep the country functioning. This doesn’t make al-Jolani or Ahmed al-Sharaa as he now wants to be called (his real name

Tuesday

James Heale

Gaza independents to register new party

There has been much focus in recent weeks on Reform’s potential impact on British politics. But a rival quintet of insurgents has been quietly making their own plans too. In July, four independents were elected to parliament on a staunchly pro-Palestine ticket: Shockat Adam in Leicester South, Ayoub Khan who took Birmingham Perry Barr, Adnan Hussain won Blackburn and Iqbal Mohamed, victorious in Dewsbury and Batley. They have since formed an ‘Independent Alliance’ with Jeremy Corbyn, who stormed back in Islington North, and are referred to as ‘the Gaza five.’ Supporters are now understood to be stepping up their efforts to strengthen ties between members of the group. In the

James Heale

Spending review: a return to austerity?

13 min listen

Preparations are stepping up for the government’s spending review, due in June. The Chancellor has taken a more personable approach to communicating with ministers, writing to them to outline how they plan to implement the Budget – with a crackdown on government waste and prioritising key public services. So, expect money for clean energy, the NHS, and more ‘difficult decisions’. Will Rachel Reeves’s war on waste work? How will this all go down within the Labour Party and the Cabinet? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Brendan O’Neill

Stop idolising Luigi Mangione

So according to the modern left, killing the fascists of Hamas is ‘genocide’, but killing a CEO and father of two is ‘justice’? How else are we to make sense of the creepy idolisation of Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting dead of Brian Thompson, chief executive of the American health-insurance firm UnitedHealthcare? Seriously, the swooning over Mangione is a new low for the ‘very online’ left. This was just desserts for America’s unfair system of health insurance, they insisted Thompson was slain on the streets of Manhattan last Wednesday. He was 50 years old, a dad and he’d been boss of UnitedHealthcare for three years. Almost instantly, even

Steerpike

Watch: Independent MP opposes first cousin marriage ban

To the Commons, where this afternoon a rather odd intervention took place. The Westminster rumour mill was in overdrive today as word spread that a Member of Parliament was planning to speak against a bill calling for a ban on marriages between first cousins. Not long after speculation began, it was confirmed that a new parliamentarian did indeed want to make his opposition known: one Iqbal Mohamed, Independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley and a member of Jeremy Corbyn’s pro-Gaza group. Good heavens… Speaking to fellow parliamentarians today, Mohamed first accepted: ‘There are documented health risks with first cousin marriage and I agree this is an issue.’ He remarked that

Nicholas Hopton

Syria’s future is uncertain

A momentous fortnight in the Levant. Following a negotiated ceasefire agreed in between Israel and Hezbollah bringing a fragile possibility of peace to Lebanon, opposition forces in Syria drove the dictator Bashar al Assad into exile. They ended 54 years of autocratic rule by the Assad family and 14 years of acute suffering for the Syrian people since the uprising of the so–called ‘Arab spring’. Syrian Army soldiers not only abandoned their posts but also dumped their uniforms – though apparently not their guns – and thousands fled across the border to Iraq to avoid retribution. Around the world in countries that have given refuge to Syrian refugees in recent

Steerpike

Liz Truss tells Starmer how to beat ‘the blob’

Poor old Keir Starmer. He has scarcely been in power for four months and yet is already wailing about ‘many people in Whitehall’ being ‘comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline’. So as he, Morgan McSweeney and various other Keirleaders all prepare to take on Sir Humphrey, who better to get advice from then a predecessor who tried to fight that battle once before? For the Wall Street Journal has today released a theatrical offering that will either be an early Christmas thriller – or a belated Halloween horror story, depending on your taste. The 35-minute documentary is called ‘The Prime Minister vs The Blob’ and is intended to be