Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

Michael Simmons

Introducing: Reality Check

I’m delighted to announce the launch of my new podcast and newsletter Reality Check. In each episode I’ll cut through the spin and explain the numbers behind the noise. For the first installment I sat down with the American economist Arthur Laffer. ‘Course you would,’ is not the answer I expect when I ask tax-cutting American economist Arthur Laffer if he’d break manifesto promises and raise the big three taxes – income tax, national insurance and VAT – if he were in Rachel Reeves’s shoes. It’s an astonishing remark from the man who built his reputation preaching the gospel of low taxes. Britain’s finances, it seems, are now so dire that

David Shipley

It’s time for Jess Phillips to resign

Should Jess Phillips resign? That’s the demand made by four survivors of the ‘grooming gangs’ in a public letter to the Home Secretary. The letter came after days of chaos which have left the inquiry in disarray. The collapse began on Monday morning when Fiona Goddard, a survivor from Bradford, quit the inquiry. Fiona was groomed and repeatedly raped by more than 50 men during the late 2000s. In 2019, nine men were found guilty of offences including her rape and child prostitution. In her resignation letter she described a ‘toxic, fearful environment’, ‘condescending and controlling language used towards survivors’ and her ‘serious concerns’ about members of the inquiry’s links

Oscar Edmondson

What’s inside Farage’s brain?

16 min listen

With every new poll predicting a Reform win at the next general election, the party continues its preparation for government. James Heale joins Oscar Edmondson and Tim Shipman to talk about his article in the magazine looking at what – or who – is shaping Reform’s intellectual revolution. Cambridge intellectual James Orr, close friend to J.D. Vance, has recently joined as an adviser, following in the footsteps of recent defector Danny Kruger, who was widely seen as an intellectual heavyweight on Conservative benches.  Tim also discusses his piece looking at the narrative Rachel Reeves is trying to set ahead of next month’s budget. Tim says she has four audiences and

Patrick Gibbons

How Catherine Connolly could change Ireland

‘How could you possibly say the EU is good as it stands?’ the woman says. Brexit, she continues, is a ‘first step [in] exposing the EU’. The speaker is Catherine Connolly. She is the frontrunner to win Ireland’s presidential election tomorrow. The footage stands out for two reasons. One, it’s rare for an Irish politician so close to high office to be seen as critical of the EU. Two, the video has only just resurfaced, despite being nine years old. While support for EU membership in Ireland typically polls between 70 and 90 per cent, opinion is becoming less homogenous, an interest in alternative views about the bloc is growing. The

Steerpike

Will Jess Phillips resign?

The grooming gang inquiry is becoming more chaotic by the day as people continue to step away from the process. Now pressure is mounting on safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who has faced calls to resign over the whole palaver. Four child sex abuse survivors have dropped out of the victims’ advisory panel while the two people publicly touted to chair to the inquiry have also stepped away. Oh dear… The situation is heating up for Phillips – after the four survivors unanimously called for her to resign over the issue. Their position was reiterated by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, who fumed that Phillips ‘should

Owen Matthews

Trump is getting serious about punishing Putin

Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again threats to sanction Russia for its intransigence over peace talks in Ukraine solidified today into concrete action. The US has announced sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, two of Russia’s largest oil companies, and their dozens of subsidiaries. Between them, the two giants are responsible for nearly half of Russia’s oil exports – and a serious crackdown on their ability to export crude could deal a serious blow to Russia’s war economy. How serious that blow is depends entirely on how far the White House is prepared to pursue the sanctions. And whether it will cause Putin to cease and desist from his offensive against Ukraine is

Gavin Mortimer

‘One in, one out’ is dead

France is not a safe country. That was the excuse given by an Iranian man who returned to Britain last weekend a month after his deportation. The man was one of the first illegal immigrants to have been sent back to France as part of the ‘one in, one out’ deal agreed between the two countries this summer. The Iranian was detained on 6 August and deported on a scheduled flight on 19 September. He crossed the Channel last Saturday along with 368 other migrants, a handful of the 36,816 who have made the voyage this year, which is more than the figure for the whole of 2024. Border officials

Lara Prendergast

Left-wing Ultras, Reform intellectuals & capitalist sex robots

38 min listen

‘The Ultras’ are the subject of The Spectator’s cover story this week – this is the new Islamo-socialist alliance that has appeared on the left of British politics. Several independent MPs, elected amidst outrage over the war in Gaza, have gone on to back the new party created by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. The grouping has got off to a rocky start but – as Angus Colwell and Max Jeffery write – there are expectations that they could pick up dozens of seats across the country. Can the hard-left coalition hold? Host Lara Prendergast is joined by the Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale, commissioning editor

Douglas Murray

Imagine what Enoch Powell might have said

The great John O’Sullivan has a story about Enoch Powell which he keeps promising to put into print. Since he still hasn’t done so, I will risk repeating it here. It occurred during a conversation some years after the Rivers of Blood speech. A group of conservatives were talking, and Powell was among them. At some point one of those present referred to the 1968 speech and asked Powell: ‘Why did you do it?’ Powell’s reply started something like this: ‘When the lark sings in the morning they do not say – “Oh lark why dost thou sing?” When the nightingale gives forth her song…’ and so on. After Powell

James Heale

The battle for Farage’s mind

If New Labour was Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievement, then Reform UK is perhaps Tony Blair’s. Distaste for the three-time election winner is a thread which connects much of the party’s leadership. Nigel Farage clashed with him at the European parliament in 2005. His deputy, Richard Tice, did the same as a Question Time audience member four years before. Their colleague Danny Kruger was once set to stand for the Tories against Blair in Sedgefield – but was forced out after promising a ‘creative destruction’ in public services. Such ‘creative destruction’ is precisely the approach Reform wants to take to the post-Blair political world. Cambridge academic James Orr, the party’s latest

Angus Colwell and Max Jeffery

The Ultras: meet Britain’s new Islamo-socialist alliance

Ayoub Khan seemed delighted. Last Thursday, it was announced that fans of the Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv would be banned from attending their match against Aston Villa next month, an outcome that Khan, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, had been lobbying for since September. That night, Khan took himself on a broadcast round to celebrate. Keir Starmer had said the ban was the ‘wrong decision’, but on Newsnight Khan told him to back off. ‘The Prime Minister should stay out of operational matters,’ he said. ‘That’s not a matter for him, sitting in No. 10.’ It has been a satisfying 15 months for Khan since his election.

The Spectator

Sir Keir, Emperor of Inertia

In Silicon Valley there is a simple mantra that drives innovation: You Can Just Do Things. Wait for permission from the system, the bureaucrats or, worst of all, your lawyers, and nothing ever happens. Incumbents want inertia not challenge. Progress depends on movement. Nowhere does the PM seem so adrift than in the area he claimed to have made his own: law and order It is a lesson that seems lost on this government and this Prime Minister. They are a model of inactivity, none of it masterly. They proclaimed they would be a ‘mission-led’ government. In December last year, Keir Starmer promised that these missions ‘must be felt tangibly

Tim Shipman

Reeves’s fiscal play-off

In a week where political attention was on espionage and anti-Semitism, the cri de coeur from one Treasury official was notable. Recalling how Budgets were made during the years of Gordon Brown, before the 2010 coalition created the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the number-cruncher complained: ‘All they had to do was fiddle their own figures. That was a dream compared with this.’ Earlier this month, Rachel Reeves received the OBR’s first estimate of the state of the public finances, showing the depth of the ‘black hole’. She will shortly get another OBR report on how falling productivity is damaging growth. For every 0.1 per cent productivity growth is downgraded,

Wednesday

Madeline Grant

Big Ange just can’t say sorry

When John Profumo had to resign due to scandalous behaviour, he famously went to clean lavatories. Angela Rayner, by contrast, has been up to goodness knows what. Perhaps she’s been clothes shopping, appearing as she did today in the house, for the first time in ages, wearing an identical suit to Rachel Reeves.  As the disgraced former deputy prime minister rose to speak, Labour MPs let out an almighty yell of approval. The last person to give Angela Rayner a cheer like that was probably her mortgage lender. A vast number of MPs had turned up to give their support – including what looked like half the cabinet’s big guns,

Steerpike

Tories launch new crime attack ads

There is a spring in the step of some Tories these days. After the recent downfall of Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson, the Conservative attack team seemingly has the bit between their teeth. So, it is perhaps no surprise then that Robert Jenrick – the XL Bully of Tory attack dogs – is playing his part in harrying poor David Lammy at the Ministry of Justice. Lammy’s flagship Sentencing Bill was debated yesterday in the Commons. Among its provisions was a scheme to allow the early release of prisoners in England and Wales who have demonstrated good behaviour. Given their massive majority, the government won by Pyongyang-level majorities when the

Oscar Edmondson

Grooming gangs: Kemi accuses Labour of a 'cover up'

14 min listen

We’ve just had PMQs, which have become much more interesting now that Kemi Badenoch has got her act together. She led on the Grooming Gangs Inquiry after a fourth survivor quit the inquiry over fears that it’s being watered down. She went as far as to say that the government is in a ‘briefing war against survivors’, and accused Labour of a ‘cover-up’. Nigel Farage attempted to upstage proceedings with his own stunt – he watched from the public gallery to make the point that he isn’t given the chance to defend himself or his party. However, Badenoch’s display meant that his tantrum has gone pretty much unnoticed. Is Kemi

Geoff Hill

Will Ivory Coast’s old guard ever let go?

Next time you bite into a bar of chocolate, spare a thought for Ivory Coast. As the world’s largest supplier of cocoa, chances are the beans in your slab came from there. Elections, alas, have not been so sweet and with one due on Saturday 25 October, there are worries the protests, killings and all-out civil war that came in the wake of past votes could happen again. President Alassane Ouattara, the incumbent, is 83 and seeking a fourth term under a constitution that, like the United States, allows just two. The Constitutional Council which vets all candidates for high office has barred most of the contenders, so Ouattara should cruise to

Ross Clark

It won’t be long before pensioners are out-earning workers

Oh, the horrid injustice of it all! By the skin of their teeth, pensioners on the state pension and with no other income, are going to avoid paying income tax next year. With September’s inflation figures now in, it can be confirmed that, thanks to the Triple Lock, the state pension will be rising to £12,547 next April, bringing it perilously close to the personal tax allowance of £12,570. You can write down in your diary now the day next year when the state pension certainly will tip over into taxable territory. There will be howls of outrage from opposition parties and pressure groups representing pensioners during this week. Prepare

Steerpike

Watch: Starmer backs Prince Andrew probe

To the Commons, where Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) has just wrapped up. The focus on Prince Andrew continues – and today Sir Keir Starmer agreed with Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey that the royal should be probed by MPs over the revelations about his Royal Lodge rent. Uh oh… Davey addressed the fact that Prince Andrew has not paid rent on his Windsor mansion for two decades, asking Starmer: Does the Prime Minister agree that this House needs to properly scrutinise the Crown Estate to ensure taxpayers interests are protected? The Chancellor has said that the current arrangements are wrong. So will the Prime Minister support a select committee

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Robert Jenrick is right about a burqa ban

Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has expressed his support for Britain banning the burqa. ‘I probably would ban the burqa… There are basic values in this country and we should stand up and defend them, and… whether it’s sharia courts or wearing of the burqa, these are issues we’re going to have to confront,’ Jenrick said on Talk TV, while discussing the growing number of European countries outlawing the burqa, with Italy introducing a bill this month. If Britain were to pass a law banning face coverings, it is Muslim women who would be the first to benefit The laws in place in European countries such as France, Switzerland,