Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Steerpike

PM must keep Tory switchers on side, warns report

Reform’s party conference is in full swing in Birmingham, as the leadership continue to hammer home their pivotal role in the Tory party’s disastrous result in July. But as Nigel Farage and friends celebrate their own success in the general election – with five MPs entering parliament – the group is looking to the future too. As Katy Balls wrote in this week’s Spectator, the right-wing party is keen to see more Labour upsets between now and the next national poll with Farage promising his party will cause trouble for Sir Keir’s lefty lot. How worried, then, should Starmer’s army be? A new review published today by Labour Together –

Steerpike

Lee Anderson takes a pop at Sadiq Khan – again

Ding ding ding! The gloves are coming off today in Birmingham, where Reform UK is hosting its day-long party conference. The Nigel Farage-led party is celebrating the election of its five MPs and its takedown of the Tories with speeches from a variety of MPs and party bigwigs crammed in between 12pm and 4pm. The current government is getting a fair share of walloping too, of course, with one Reform-Labour feud receiving particular attention. Chief Whip Lee Anderson took to the stage this afternoon to recount his journey from Tory party deputy chairman to Reform’s red wall Rottweiler. Mr S would remind readers that Anderson lost the Conservative whip in

Steerpike

MPs slam Starmer over freebie fiasco

Sir Keir’s frockgate scandal is only gathering pace, it appears, after a rather calamitous week for the Prime Minister. Donations received by both Starmer and his wife have been heavily scrutinised after it emerged at the weekend that Lady Starmer’s gifts were not declared in line with parliamentary protocol. Rules for thee, but not for me! The PM received some rather, er, ineffectual backing from a variety of government ministers on the airwaves this week – including David Lammy, Yvette Cooper and Angela Eagle – but with the way the tide is turning, Starmer may soon long to be surrounded by his sympathetic, if gaffe-prone, supporters. For the outrage about

Lisa Haseldine

Vladimir Kara-Murza: Putin must not be allowed to win in Ukraine

‘Whatever happens, Vladimir Putin must not be allowed to win the war in Ukraine’. For the first time since being released from a Russian prison in August, the politician Vladimir Kara-Murza arrived in London this week for a series of high-profile meetings to discuss Russia’s future.  Kara-Murza, who holds both Russian and British citizenship, was sentenced for 25 years in Russia’s penal system last year for speaking out against the war in Ukraine. He was set free alongside the journalist Evan Gershkovich and US marine Paul Whelan last month in the largest prisoner swap held between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. ‘We have no

Ian Proud

Britain is losing the spy game to Russia

Russia’s decision to kick out six alleged British spies in August prompted a strange sense of deja vu. After the Salisbury nerve agent attack in March 2018, I sweated for a week in the British Embassy in Moscow, waiting to hear if I’d be kicked out in the diplomatic tit-for-tat. We need a better plan for Russia expertise if we really want to outsmart Putin Russia’s announcement was timed to embarrass Keir Starmer as he travelled to Washington last week for talks with Joe Biden. It was also a blow to the critically small pool of Russia experts in the British government. In the hostile goldfish bowl of UK-Russia relations,

Andrew Lilico

Should Huw Edwards be stripped of his BBC pension?

With the Huw Edwards court case complete – and the disgraced BBC News presenter given a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after he admitted charges of making indecent images of children – attention has returned to the fact that he could still receive a £300,000-a-year BBC pension. Many are horrified by this. There have been demands that some way should be found to withhold payment from Edwards. I disagree. Imagine if we did decide that those convicted of crimes such as Edwards’ have no property rights A pension is part of the remuneration we receive for work done. It isn’t some extra perk or discretionary bonus handed to

Kate Andrews

Britain is spending beyond its means

This morning marks a milestone – but it’s nothing to celebrate. Public sector net debt as a percentage of the economy has exceeded 100 per cent: a level not seen since the early 1960s. And there are no signs of course correction.  The latest update from the Office for National Statistics shows, once again, that the government is spending plenty more than it takes in, with borrowing figures for August coming in at £13.7 billion – £3.3 billion higher than last year and £2.5 billion higher than had been forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility in March.  Meanwhile debt servicing payments continue to take their toll, coming at £5.9 billion

Steerpike

Watch: Starmer’s top team ‘over-controlling’, says Jess Phillips

Sir Keir Starmer will be hoping his first Labour conference as Prime Minister this weekend goes better than the last week has done. The PM’s top team is getting rather worried about a host of negative briefings about the government, with leaks including Starmer’s freebie problem and Sue Gray salary reports generating rather suboptimal press for the new Labour Prime Minister. It’s hardly the best start to the job… The PM has struggled to shut down the stories, with Downing Street parroting a rather weak line about voters being more concerned with delivery over donations and Sir Keir maintaining that, despite outrage among Labour advisers over Sue Gray’s £170,000 wage,

Alexander Larman

The wickedness of Mohamed Al Fayed

The allegations against Mohamed Al Fayed are dreadful: the former Harrods owner has been accused of raping five women and sexually abusing at least 15 others when they worked at his department store. A BBC investigation, which detailed the allegations, claimed that this abuse took place from the late 1980s to the 2000s. The name of the ‘phoney pharoah’, as Private Eye so aptly christened him, should live in infamy forever The consistent thread of the allegations against Al Fayed – who died last year aged 94 – was that he used his power and wealth to target women who worked for him at Harrods. Al Fayed, it seems, had a well-established

Ross Clark

Does the evidence support working from home?

I am sure that the business secretary Jonathan Reynolds picked up many useful skills in his previous job in local government, but does he really know more about how to run a business than the people who run one of the world’s most successful companies?    Apparently, yes. Asked on LBC where his comments about encouraging remote working fitted in with Amazon’s decision to order its staff back to work five days a week in the office he said:  If I was talking to a business like that I would say that every piece of evidence that has ever been collated suggests that flexibility, when agreed between employer and employee, is

Ross Clark

Is Rachel Reeves damaging the High Street’s recovery?

The former boss of Sainsbury’s, Justin King, warned on the Today programme this morning that Rachel Reeves has damaged the economy through her constant warnings of tax rises to come in October’s budget, causing anxious shoppers to draw in their horns until the big day. But if shoppers really are holding off purchases for fear that the Chancellor will raid their savings or hit them with tax rises there is scant sign of it in the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) retail sales figures for August. They show that sales volumes increased by 1.0 per cent over the course of the month. July’s figures were also revised upwards from a 0.5 per cent

Gavin Mortimer

France – and even Michel Barnier – is tiring of Emmanuel Macron

France can’t go on like this. The country, and its overseas territories, are in chaos. On Wednesday night two men in New Caledonia were shot dead by security forces after a confrontation on the Pacific Island. The insurgency began in May and shows no sign of abating with the rebels determined to gain their independence from France. In total, 13 people have been killed and the damaged caused in the uprising is estimated to be 2.2 billion euros (£1.85 billion) and rising. French media report that Barnier is reaching the end of his tether with Macron Meanwhile, the Caribbean island of Martinique was placed under curfew on Wednesday after rioting erupted over rising

Alexander Horne

Owen Paterson must regret his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights has thrown out a challenge by former cabinet minister Owen Paterson. The ex-Tory MP, accused of breaking lobby rules, took the government to court in a bid to have a 2021 parliamentary investigation into his conduct declared unfair. That Paterson went to the Strasbourg Court in the first place might be considered a remarkable show of chutzpah (or perhaps simply rank hypocrisy) given that he had previously campaigned for the UK to leave the ECHR, prior to his own personal travails. Paterson’s claim to the European Court of Human Rights was always rather quixotic. During Boris Johnson’s premiership, an investigation by the Parliamentary Standards

Luke Tryl

The freebie scandal could cost Keir Starmer

If you want a surefire indication that a politician has ended up on the wrong side of public opinion, it’s when they start saying: ‘The public don’t really care about this stuff. They want us to focus on the issues that matter to them instead’.  So far, this has been the response from the government to the freebie scandal. Keir Starmer has had Taylor Swift tickets and £2,000-worth of glasses gifted to him. His wife has had clothes given to her. And the PM’s reaction? ‘It was because I insist on the rules that my team reached out to make sure we were declaring in the right way under the rules

Thursday

Limor Simhony Philpott

Are Israel and Lebanon already at war?

This hasn’t been the easiest week for Hezbollah. It started with the terror organisation’s pagers mysteriously exploding, killing 37 people people (according to official reports) and injuring some 3,000 people, mostly members of the group. This has stunned Hezbollah – and the world. A day later, their walkie-talkies starting blowing up too.  The attacks, which have been attributed to Israel, are a serious security breech and have humiliated Hezbollah. In response, the organisation’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah conceded today that Hezbollah has suffered a considerable blow and accused Israel of ‘crossing the red line,’ adding that they actions could be viewed as a ‘declaration of war.’   Israeli officials declared yesterday that a new phase in the conflict against Hezbollah has started.

Andrew Tettenborn

Why the cost of replacing Britain’s border fleet has soared to £300 million

The fleet of border control cutters responsible for patrolling our waters (and at times for dealing with irregular migrants on them) is showing its age and needs renewing. Unfortunately we now know that the exercise will cost £300 million rather than the original estimate of roughly £50 million, and will be delayed until at least 2030. Why has this happened? The reason is a big post-Brexit legal snafu which cuts across the government’s wish to ensure that the vessels are built here. To keep it as simple as possible, an international treaty called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, prevents governments indulging in protectionism, but it has two exceptions.

Steerpike

‘Ignorant’ Lammy urged to retract Azerbaijan remarks

It’s a gaffe a day with David Lammy. Now the Foreign Secretary has come under fire after he hailed Azerbaijan for being able to ‘liberate’ territory – in an ongoing conflict widely viewed as an ethnic cleansing operation – in a recent Substack post. Lammy took to his blog to express his unsolicited musings about the Nagorno-Karabakh region, writing: The states of Central Asia look increasingly east and south. Azerbaijan has been able to liberate territory it lost in the early 1990s. Georgia and Moldova are engaging with Nato and [the] EU. Crikey. Talk about bad wording, eh? Mr S would remind readers that Azerbaijan has been locked in an

Steerpike

Abbott: I’ve never had a nice chat with Starmer

Diane Abbott is on the warpath, and her target is Sir Keir Starmer. Earlier this week, the Labour MP hit out at the Prime Minister during an interview with BBC Newsnight, in which she slammed the Labour leader for his behaviour towards her during the Frank Hester racism row, describing how he treated her as, er, a ‘non-person’. Now, the Hackney North parliamentarian has extended her attack, airing her woes on a podcast that might reach those less news-inclined. Interviewed by author Elizabeth Day on her hit podcast ‘How to Fail’, the veteran MP divulged her chosen three failures (not getting a first at university, losing her 2010 leadership bid

Steerpike

Watch: James O’Brien attacks Nigel Farage in scathing rant

Good heavens. Does no one teach journalistic etiquette these days? This afternoon James O’Brien caused a stir on social media after he delivered a rather bizarre handover on air about, er, one of his station’s own guests. Not long before O’Brien jumped behind the mic, Nigel Farage had joined LBC’s Nick Ferrari for a phone-in – in which he was quizzed on why he had not hosted constituency surgeries in Clacton, whether he had helped to trigger the recent riots and his own personal security. But while the station’s loyal listeners might have been interested in listening to what the Reform leader had to say, it seems that one of

Katy Balls

Farage’s plan, the ethics of euthanasia & Xi’s football failure

45 min listen

This week: Nigel’s next target. What’s Reform UK’s plan to take on Labour? Reform UK surpassed expectations at the general election to win 5 MPs. This includes James McMurdock, who Katy interviews for the magazine this week, who only decided to stand at the last moment. How much threat could Reform pose and why has Farage done so well? Katy joins the podcast to discuss, alongside Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, who fought Nigel Farage as the Labour candidate for Clacton (1:02). Next: who determines the morality of euthanasia? Matthew Hall recounts the experience of his aunt opting for the procedure in Canada, saying it ‘horrified’ him but ‘was also chillingly seductive’. Does