Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Eliot Wilson

Keir Starmer can’t blame the cabinet secretary for his own failures

There have been 14 cabinet secretaries since the post was established in 1916. The first, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Maurice Hankey, served for nearly 22 years; in stark contrast, there are now reports that the 14th and current incumbent, Sir Chris Wormald, will be gone by the New Year, having served just 12 or 13 months. The problem is leadership, or rather a glaring lack of it Wormald was appointed in December 2024 after eight-and-a-half years as permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, to replace the controversial Simon Case. Boris Johnson had plucked Case from the lower ranks of the senior civil service – he was at that point

Joseph Dinnage

Starmer won’t stop Putin exploiting Europe’s migrant crisis

Another week, another migration scandal. On Monday, the Times reported that Russian spies have been working with international human rights groups to ‘flood Europe with illegal migrants’. The revelations come from Daniel Mitov, Bulgaria’s interior minister, who claims to have evidence that the Russians are assisting people smugglers in finding weak spots along the Bulgaria-Turkey border and instructing migrants on how to avoid detection.  Mitov – as I’m sure you’ll understand – isn’t thrilled by this. Rather than regarding waves of new arrivals pouring through his country’s borders as just the injection of diversity that Bulgaria needs, the interior minister sees it as a naked attempt by Vladimir Putin to

Andrew Tettenborn

Non-crime hate incidents aren’t dead yet

The Met has announced that it will stop investigating non-crime hate incidents, or NCHIs. The pressure on other forces to fall into line may well now be hard to resist (we will have to see). But don’t cheer too loudly yet. The devil is in the detail, and there may be less to rejoice over than you think. An NCHI, to remind you, is any incident ‘perceived’ to be motivated – wholly or partly – by hostility or prejudice towards someone with a particular characteristic. It is noted by police, often secretly, against a person’s name; and while not a criminal record it has effects. This has all the marks

Michael Simmons

Steady inflation gives Reeves some reprieve

Prices are still rising fast. The Consumer Prices Index rose by 3.8 per cent in September – the same pace as in August but nearly double the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Markets, and the Bank itself, had expected inflation to reach 4 per cent, so the fact it has remained flat will come as a small relief to the Chancellor as she prepares for her November Budget. ‘Significantly,’ the ONS noted, food and drink inflation fell for the first time since March – down to 4.5 per cent from 5.1 per cent. Core inflation, which strips out volatile items, and services inflation both eased too. The Bank

Gareth Roberts

Britain is frozen by fear

What do the following things have in common? The ‘Safety Advisory Group’ of Birmingham City Council banning the sale of away tickets to fans of an Israeli football team. The refusal of police to arrest ‘pro-Palestinian’ marchers calling to ‘globalise the intifada’ right in front of them. The reluctance of politicians to implement the law on separation of the sexes, made clear months ago by the Supreme Court ruling. The government’s unwillingness to protect parliament from Chinese spying. I think the answer is simple: plain, old-fashioned fear. Yes, we often hear accusations that the institutions are squeamish about difficult topics, that individuals are guilty of moral cowardice. We toss this

Gavin Mortimer

France has failed its daughters

It is just over three years since a 12-year-old Parisian girl called Lola was raped and murdered in a crime that shocked France. The woman accused of the murder, 27-year-old Dahbia Benkired, is now on trial and on Monday the court heard chilling evidence from a man who encountered the defendant shortly after the death of Lola. Karim Bellazoug told the court that Benkired was carrying a large trunk and told him she had items to sell. When he glanced inside he saw what looked like a body. ‘I thought she was crazy, that she was a psychopath,’ Bellazoug declared. The motivation as well as the mental state of Benkired

Jimmy Nicholls

Say goodbye to betting shops

Of all the industries you’d think would know how to avoid a shakedown, the gambling sector is if anything overqualified. Centuries of experience working with crooks, debt collectors and hapless punters should surely have provided all the training needed to make an offer nobody can refuse. Alas, Rachel Reeves appears to have ensnared even the bookies in her tax grab. With the Chancellor seeking unsympathetic victims for her impending Budget, the best line the gambling industry could find was that further taxes on its activities would force it to shutter some of its tastefully-decorated high street outlets. ‘We’re going to lose the whole retail business,’ Betfred’s chief executive Joanne Whittaker

Michael Gove

Should Prince Andrew be exiled? And how multiculturalism failed in Birmingham

45 min listen

This week on Quite right!: the slow-motion disgrace of Prince Andrew. As Virginia Giuffre’s new book reignites the Epstein scandal, Michael and Maddie ask: how much longer can the monarchy carry its most toxic member? Or should the Duke of York be stripped of his titles and sent into exile? Then to Birmingham, where sectarian politics, bin strikes and football collide. After Israeli fans were barred from attending a Europa League match, Michael and Maddie debate how Britain’s second city became a byword for failed multiculturalism. Has the country finally started telling the truth about integration – or just found new ways to divide itself? Finally, the British Museum’s attempt

Tuesday

Steerpike

Tories raise £500k post Kemi speech

Tomorrow marks a fortnight since Kemi Badenoch’s conference speech. After a difficult first year when the Conservatives have sometimes struggled to make much of an impact, party spinners were left delighted by the press reaction to her surprise stamp duty announcement. Tory MPs have been publicly boasting about a membership surge – though no figures have yet been provided. Now, those in the Treasurer’s team have added reason to celebrate. Since Badenoch’s speech on 8 October, the party raised just shy of half a million in donations – north of £460k – as of the end of last week. Kerching! A senior Tory source proudly told Steerpike: ‘Kemi Badenoch demonstrated

Steerpike

Backlash after Lords restrict assisted suicide evidence

Well, well, well. Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill has made it to the House of Lords, where the legislation will be scrutinised by peers before receiving Royal Assent. The bill wracked up intense criticism as it made its way through the Commons – and it seems things will be no different in the Lords. Steerpike can reveal there has been a backlash from across the political spectrum over the ‘deeply troubling’ revelation that the Lords committee has placed restrictions on the written evidence that can be submitted.  The House of Lords committee that was set up to provide further scrutiny of Leadbeater’s legislation has announced that ‘owing to the short

Joanna Williams

Jess Phillips is letting down grooming gang victims again

Remember when feminists rallied behind the mantra ‘Believe All Women’? It was back in 2017, at the peak of the #MeToo movement that rightly brought down serial sex offenders such as film producer Harvey Weinstein. But then the net was cast more widely, tripping up men like comedian Aziz Ansari for boorish behaviour on a date and allowing women who had been touched on the leg to label themselves victims. Critics, like me, who urged against such blurred lines, were told that women do not lie about being victims of sexual assault. I had to shut up and believe. But the years since have shown that feminists themselves have double standards when

Steerpike

Full list: MPs attacking Prince Andrew

The government is facing a rather strange dilemma: what to do about Prince Andrew. Last week the royal voluntarily gave up his titles after speaking with King Charles, following increasing scrutiny on his links to US paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir – published today – has brought her accusations of sexual assault against him back to the fore and piled yet more pressure on the prince, who has strongly denied the allegations. While he has stopped using the Duke of York title, Andrew will remain a prince in accordance with the law set down by George V in 1917. Only an act of parliament can legally strip him

Patrick Gibbons

Britain's doom loop continues

11 min listen

Rachel Reeves is hosting an investment summit in Birmingham, trying to turn the narrative away from Britain’s economic ‘doom loop’ ahead of next month’s budget. But the harbinger of bad economic news Michael Simmons – who joins James Heale and Patrick Gibbons on the podcast – points to the news today of soaring government borrowing costs, and expected higher inflation figures tomorrow. Plus, what have some politicians made of further developments in the Prince Andrew scandal? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

David Shipley

It’s about time abusive fathers were stripped of their parental rights

It’s not often the Ministry of Justice gets it absolutely right. But they have today. It has been announced that the Victims and Courts Bill will be amended to stop coercive and controlling fathers from using their parental rights to control their children and former partners even from inside a prison cell. This long-overdue change in the law means that fathers convicted of rape, and parents of either sex convicted of serious sexual offences, will have their legal right to parental responsibility restricted. The current system has allowed this legal right to be abused. This long-overdue change in the law means that fathers convicted of rape, and parents of either

Steerpike

YouGov: Green support surges to record high

Whisper it, but it appears Zack Polanski’s eco-populism strategy is working. After his election as the new leader of the Green party, support for the environmentalists has surged. The party’s membership has seen an 80 per cent increase since Polanski took the reins last month, according to the group, which claims it now has over 126,000 paid-up members. The eco-zealots have more than double the reported members of the Lib Dems and have overtaken the Tories to become the third largest party in the UK. Good heavens! There’s more good news for Polanski and his unique brand of eco-socialism: the latest YouGov polling from 19-20 October shows the Greens have

Sam Olsen

The American empire is consuming itself

Over the weekend, millions of Americans took to the streets in more than 2,000 ‘No Kings’ marches nationwide, protesting what they regard as the creeping authoritarianism of President Trump. The marches – which Trump’s allies called ‘the hate America rally’ – were notable for their scale, but more importantly they are a symbol of something deeper: the erosion of political legitimacy in the world’s pre-eminent democracy. For China and Russia, the spectacle of Americans turning on their own institutions confirms a long-held belief, namely that the United States is entering a phase of irreversible decline and may soon hesitate abroad. The data bear them out. In April 2024, 19 per

Steerpike

Louis Theroux's bizarre Bob Vylan interview

To veteran BBC documentary-maker, Louis Theroux. On The Louis Theroux Podcast, the longtime interviewer spoke to Bobby Vylan – one half of the punk-rap band Bob Vylan which led a chant of ‘death to the IDF’ at Glastonbury – in his first interview since the summer music festival. But it seems listeners have not been left all that impressed by the discussion… First, Vylan described how BBC staff at the music festival didn’t flag any concerns about his IDF chant after the band had finished their set. ‘We came off stage, it’s normal. Nobody thought anything,’ the musician insisted. ‘Even staff at the BBC were like “that was fantastic, that

Steerpike

Sunak bags new gig as Sunday Times columnist

Rishi Sunak was expected to set sail for the US after leaving No. 10, but it turns out his post-prime ministerial life is less Silicon Valley and more Sunday Times. The former Conservative party leader – who remains an MP for Richmond and Northallerton – will become a regular fixture in the august weekend paper, contributing a weekly business column from this Sunday onwards. Alright for some! Sunak’s new column, which will appear both in print and online, will focus on a range of subjects including business, tech, politics and the economy. The onetime PM is raring to go, saying in a statement: ‘In an era of profound change, I’m

Michael Evans

Zelensky faces a dilemma

Keeping abreast of President Trump’s changing moods has never been so challenging, especially for Volodymyr Zelensky, his Ukrainian counterpart. Judging by reports emerging of their meeting last Friday in the Oval Office, Trump made it clear in somewhat candid language that Zelensky should give up the eastern Donbas region of his country or face destruction by Russia. Gone was the sunny prediction made by Trump only three weeks or so earlier that if Zelensky pursued the war with Russia, backed by Europe and Nato, he could win a famous victory and drive the Russians out of all the occupied territories. The sudden about-turn followed Trump’s two-hour phone call with President

Monday

Steerpike

The Economist: legalise cocaine

Well, well, well. While the issue of drug decriminalisation has reared its head in recent months thanks to an intervention by London mayor Sadiq Khan, there aren’t all that many politicians who have advocated for the legalisation of illicit substances. That hasn’t put off the Economist which, in a leader titled ‘Brute force is no match for today’s high-tech drug-runners’, called for the, er, legalisation of cocaine. Talk about radical, eh? The column, published last week, described how Donald Trump was using ‘military force and unprecedented violence’ in his war on drugs – before explaining how success was likely to elude the US President thanks to the new narcotics industry