Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

William Moore

SAS betrayal, the battle for Odesa & in defence of film flops

48 min listen

This week: SAS SOS The enemy that most concerns Britain’s elite military unit isn’t the IRA, the Taliban or Isis, but a phalanx of lawyers armed with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), writes Paul Wood in The Spectator. Many SAS soldiers now believe that if they kill a terrorist during an operation, they’ll spend decades being hounded through the courts. Paul speaks to former SAS soldiers who say that stories of men being ‘dragged back to be screamed at in interview rooms’ are ‘flying around the canteens now’. Soldiers feel like ‘the good guys have become the bad guys – and the bad guys are now the good guys’.

James Heale

Reform hits 100,000 members

There was a business-like manner in Nigel Farage’s response to the news that net migration was more than 900,000 in 2023. Speaking this morning at a Mayfair press conference, Farage was almost flat in his reply on the ‘horrendous’ figures. He insisted that the Tories would ‘never be forgiven’ for presiding over a nine-fold increase in the ‘tens of thousands’ target promised by David Cameron in 2010. As for Labour, he was similarly withering about the government’s decision to hike the asylum budget by 36 per cent to £5.8 billion. But after the business, came the pleasure. Farage took great delight in revealing that – after months of growing grassroots

Michael Simmons

Labour should be cautious about celebrating the fall in net migration

How can you miss over 300,000 migrants? This morning the Office for National Statistics revised up its previous record high net migration figure to 906,000 meaning that since 2021, 307,000 more migrants are in the country than the ONS previously knew about. So, has Britain turned the corner on migration? There has been a 20 per cent fall in net migration in the year to June compared to the 12 months before, according to figures published this morning by the ONS. Some 1.2 million people migrated to the UK compared with 1.3 million the year before. Meanwhile, 479,000 left the UK, up from 414,000 the previous year.  Net migration is

Matthew Lynn

Is France heading for a Greek-style crisis?

For the first time ever, France’s borrowing costs have risen above those of Greece. As of today, the bond markets have decided that French debt is a riskier bet than Greece, the country that 15 years ago almost crashed the entire euro-zone with its fiscal extravagance and irresponsibility. True, to some degree that reflects an improvement in Greece’s position, as well as the decline of France’s. Yet the harsh reality is this: France is in a sorry state and president Emmanuel Macron will struggle to patch things up. The bond markets have decided that French debt is a riskier bet than Greece This moment of crisis was bound to happen

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson on Covid failures, the Nanny State & his advice for ‘Snoozefest’ Starmer

36 min listen

Former prime minister Boris Johnson joins The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls to divulge the contents of his new book, Unleashed. He reflects on his premiership as PM during the pandemic, describing the time as a ‘nightmare’ for him. He also details how he managed to suppress the force of Nigel Farage, and gives advice to Keir Starmer on how to build a relationship with Donald Trump. Watch the full interview on SpectatorTV: https://youtu.be/wg-Oxh0X-zM

James Heale

David Cameron u-turns on assisted dying

David Cameron has today become the first former prime minister to come out in support of assisted dying, having previously signalled his opposition to it in 2015. In a piece for the Times, he says that: ‘My main concern and reason for not supporting proposals before now has always been the worry that vulnerable people could be pressured into hastening their own deaths.’ However, Cameron says he has now been reassured by those arguing in favour of Kim Leadbeater’s Bill. Cameron argues: When we know that there’s no cure, when we know death is imminent, when patients enter a final and acute period of agony, then surely, if they can

Stephen Daisley

Britain has a blasphemy law in all but name

Anyone outraged by Labour MP Tahir Ali calling on the government to introduce blasphemy laws has clearly not been paying attention, for there are already blasphemy laws in this country. All Ali wants to do is make them official. When he urges Sir Keir Starmer to prohibit the desecration of the Qur’an and other Abrahamic religious texts, as he did at Prime Minister’s Questions, he will be aware that people are already punished for desecrating the Muslim holy book, including children. The Prime Minister is too progressive to allow himself to disagree with a religious reactionary In March 2023, a 14-year-old boy was suspended from school in Wakefield after a

Melanie McDonagh

The Taoiseach will get more than he bargained for in Ireland’s snap election

The Irish general election happens on Friday. In times past, observers would be marking the rise of Sinn Fein; now the interest has shifted to the parties that are challenging the political consensus. Irish politics can seem weirdly homogenous – with the main parties, in terms of culture, roughly equivalent to the Lib Dems and the wetter end of the Tory party, though in some respects (when it comes to wokery) similarities with the SNP spring to mind. Sinn Fein is on the progressive end of the spectrum on social issues The two big legacy parties from the Civil War, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’, manifestly have more in common

Arieh Kovler

The leak that’s haunting Netanyahu’s government

Early September, days after the gruesome discovery of six murdered Israeli hostages in a tunnel in Gaza, a dramatic scoop appeared in Bild. The German newspaper had obtained a secret internal Hamas document, supposedly obtained from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s personal computer, that revealed Hamas’s hostage negotiation strategy. The document claimed that Hamas was deliberately exploiting the divisions in Israeli society, manipulating the families of the hostages to help blame Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for not making a deal. A day earlier, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle had posted another story based on sensational Israeli intelligence: a claim that Sinwar was planning to smuggle himself and some hostages out of Gaza into Egypt via tunnels

James Heale

Why Reform has Wales in its sights

A spectre is haunting Wales. Fresh from Reform’s election victories in Westminster, Nigel Farage is turning his attention westwards, to Cardiff Bay. He wants Reform to replace the Tories there as the main challenge to Labour in May 2026, creating a major platform for his party ahead of the 2029 general election. The man plotting the Tories’ downfall in Wales is someone who knows their leader well. Oliver Lewis, Reform’s chief spokesman, worked with Kemi Badenoch at Coutts. ‘She was very aware of the importance of fulfilling duties she felt were important to her,’ he says, carefully, when we speak. To beat his ‘reasonably competent’ old colleague, Lewis stresses an

Kate Andrews

What Scott Bessent’s appointment means for Trump 2.0

How rare it is to be given a second chance. That’s what the American people have handed Donald Trump. His second shot at the presidency means avoiding past mistakes, which in TrumpWorld means finally harnessing the full power of the state. Even in the last year of his first term, Trump was struggling to fill all the political appointment vacancies he had at his disposal. This was the consequence of never developing a real plan for governing that went beyond chanting ‘Drain the swamp’. Elon Musk talked down Bessent as the ‘business-as-usual choice’, but that’s what markets are looking for This time round, things are going to be different. Trump

Katy Balls

‘I was much more disposable than I believed’: an interview with Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson is enjoying himself back at The Spectator. ‘My place of former employment,’ the former editor booms as he sits down, stands up, and starts re-ordering items around the wood-panelled office. ‘I like this book-lined air that you’ve given me – very, very grand.’ ‘I found the pandemic a nightmare because I was genuinely uncertain as to the efficacy of what we were doing’ He’s spent the past month flogging his memoir, Unleashed. He hopes to hit 100,000 UK sales well before Christmas. Such is his enthusiasm for his cause that he was kicked off the Channel 4 US election night show for ‘banging on about his book’. ‘I’ve

Rod Liddle

I hope you didn’t sign that petition

Did you sign it, then? And if so, what were your expectations? That Sir Keir Starmer would look at the figures and say – perhaps with a tinge of remorse – ‘Yup, that’s it, I’m bang to rights, we’ll have an election?’. Or were you simply hoping to annoy him? If so, I assume you are disappointed, because Sir Keir doesn’t look very annoyed to me. It turns out we are no better than those liberal lefties who can’t believe that other people have different views The petition to demand a general election on the grounds that the people who didn’t vote Labour on 4 July are upset at the result

Fraser Nelson

The sickness benefit trap

Now that I’m no longer editor of this magazine, I can admit that I spent the election night of 1997 cheering on Tony Blair. Reader, it gets worse. I didn’t particularly want a Labour government but I badly wanted the devolution they had promised. A parliament in Edinburgh would, I thought, consider why the East End of Glasgow – home to many of my extended family – had some of the worst deprivation in Europe. Drugs deaths, unemployment, crime, all ignored by Westminster, would surely be remedied by the new politicians in Holyrood. There are lots of organisations to help people sign on, but those who want to get back to

Wednesday

Svitlana Morenets

Can Ukraine’s army survive its deserter crisis?

Not since the summer of the 2022 invasion have Russian troops been making more progress in Ukraine. Last month alone, they took almost 200 square miles in the Donetsk region. Just 15 miles now separate the Russian forces from entering the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. If Russia succeeds, a sixth region will be swallowed by hostilities.  What’s changed? Russia’s ranks are swelling with highly paid contractors and fresh North Korean reinforcements, while Ukraine’s forces are thinning fast. Desertions are adding to crippling manpower shortages. Officially, some 90,000 Ukrainian soldiers have deserted (almost half of them this year), but the unofficial number is much higher. Desertion is becoming a crisis. Unless it’s addressed, no ‘victory

Michael Gove

Kemi’s first policy proclamation

12 min listen

Kemi Badenoch has signalled that she could change her position on the ECHR. At a conference today, she said “we will review every policy, treaty and part of our legal framework – including the ECHR and the Human Rights Act.” What could this mean for the Conservatives going forward? Katy Balls discusses with Michael Gove and James Heale. 

James Price

Why is a Labour MP calling for a blasphemy law?

Today at Prime Minister’s Questions, the Labour MP Tahir Ali asked: ‘Will the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?’ Does Mr Ali think this is the most important issue currently facing the UK? Or, even more disturbingly, is this something that his constituents are calling for? The fact that we have an MP from the governing party calling for blasphemy laws to be reinstated is part of a terrifying development in politics. It comes alongside a rise in sectarian voting, which has seen minority groups pitted against each other and a splintering of modern society.

James Heale

Badenoch admits Tory migration failures

Of all the issues which did it for the Conservatives in July 2024, no issue deterred life-long Tories more than the failure to control migration. So it was appropriate then that this subject formed the basis of Kemi Badenoch’s first major policy speech since her election as leader. Ahead of tomorrow’s release of migration statistics, she chose to deliver a mea culpa on behalf of her party, admitting at a hastily-assembled press conference that the Conservatives had previously got this issue wrong. The last administration ‘promised to bring numbers down,’ she said. ‘We did not deliver that promise’: As the new party leader I want to acknowledge that we made

Damian Thompson

Should assisted dying be legalised?

50 min listen

MPs are set to vote on the legalisation of assisted dying this week, the first such vote in almost a decade. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was tabled by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater and follows a campaign by broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen and others.  The biggest change since the last vote in 2015 is the make-up of parliament, with many more Labour MPs, as well as newer MPs whose stances are unknown. Consequently, it is far from certain that the bill – which would mark one of the biggest changes to social legislation for a generation – will pass. What are the arguments for and against? And

Lloyd Evans

Kemi Badenoch must get better at PMQs

Third time lucky for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader’s first two attempts to crush Keir Starmer at PMQs failed. Today she began by attacking the chancellor whose career is in quicksand and who admitted to the CBI that her smash-and-grab budget was so destructive that it mustn’t be repeated. ‘I’m not coming back for more borrowing or more taxes,’ said Rachel Reeves on Monday. Kemi asked Starmer to repeat that pledge in the house. Not a bad question. Starmer said he couldn’t write ‘five years of future budgets’ at the despatch box. Not a bad answer. Kemi’s team should have seen it coming. She boasted that Starmer had made an