Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Monday

Steerpike

Starmer faces more backlash over winter fuel payment cuts

It’s the first day back in parliament after recess and already Labour splits are starting to emerge. Now it transpires that the party’s MP for Poole, Neil Duncan-Jordan, has tabled an early day motion to delay the changes to the winter fuel allowance – which his government controversially plans to means test. In order to plug the £22bn blackhole in the UK’s finances, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said that ‘incredibly tough choices’ will have to be made – yet the prospect of 10 million pensioners missing out on the winter payment has ruffled feathers, given Sir Keir’s lefty lot curiously managed to find enough cash to fund public sector pay

Philip Patrick

Why are Britain’s diplomats virtue-signalling to South Korea?

An important international conference will take place this week in South Korea, focused on the peninsula’s security concerns. The UK will not be participating. The reason? A lack of female ‘representation’, apparently. It seems that all the 18 of the initially invited speakers to the Global Korea Forum were men, though since the UK pullout three more speakers have been included, one of whom is female.  A spokesperson from the British Embassy told the Korea Times that ‘the ambassador (Colin Crooks) is unable to take part in the Global Korea Forum next week. The British Embassy is committed to gender equality. We believe that events are enriched by the diversity

Oscar Edmondson

Is Keir right to scrap one-word Ofsted verdicts?

13 min listen

It’s back to school day for kids up and down the country, and also back to school for our politicians who have returned from summer recess. To celebrate, Keir Starmer has announced that one-word Ofsted classifications will be scrapped with immediate effect. Is this the right move?  Also on the podcast, we have had the official launches of several Tory leadership campaigns in the last few days. What’s the latest?  Oscar Edmondson speaks to Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Steerpike

What does Starmer hang on his wall?

Political artwork has rather dominated the headlines of late. After Sir Keir’s peculiar opposition to the ‘unsettling’ painting of his predecessor Margaret Thatcher, Mr S has been interested in learning more about what artwork is deemed acceptable to the Labour lot. Via a Freedom of Information request, Steerpike can now reveal which Parliamentary Art Collection works adorn the walls of Britain’s top politicians. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Starmer is surrounded by the portraits of his prime ministerial predecessors – including Winston Churchill, Pitt the Younger, Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli. Curiously, no former female PMs make the cut – with the Iron Lady already having been moved from the No. 10 study to Downing Street’s first-floor

Katy Balls

Kemi Badenoch’s leadership pitch? Tough love

It’s a busy day for the Tory leadership race in Westminster as the six candidates attempt to build momentum and MP support ahead of the first knockout round on Wednesday. Both Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly have this morning hosted their official launches, with contrasting pitches. While Cleverly set out policies he would support as leader, such as on taxation, Badenoch made a point of saying she would not get into policy details but instead focus on her vision. She said: ‘We can’t just keep having the same policy arguments from the last parliament. We lost. We are not in power’. Badenoch was asked about reports that some of her

Lisa Haseldine

The AfD is winning over Germany’s youth

‘We are the party of the youth!’ When the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party launched its state election campaign over the summer in the former east Germany, its lead candidate for Brandenburg Christoph Berndt confidently declared that the party would do well thanks to the legions of young voters it had seduced. Today, as the dust settles on the results of Thuringia and Saxony’s state elections, it appears that Berndt’s predictions have come to pass. According to data published by the pollsters Infratest Dimap, 38 per cent of those aged between 18 and 24 voted for the AfD in Thuringia on Sunday. In neighbouring Saxony, 31 per cent did the

Andrew Tettenborn

Scrapping one-word Ofsted verdicts is a mistake

The decision to scrap one or two-word Ofsted inspection grades for England’s schools is good news for teachers – but bad news for just about everyone else, not least parents and pupils. Many school staff have never liked the labelling of schools as ‘Outstanding’, ‘Good’, ‘Requires Improvement’ and ‘Inadequate’. They say that it doesn’t give the full story and heaps pressure on staff during inspections. In one case last year, a head teacher took her own life after her school received an unflattering report. What happened to Ruth Perry was a terrible tragedy. But while some reform was no doubt necessary, getting rid of straightforward Ofsted summaries is not the

Ross Clark

Labour want to Frenchify the economy

It is not that long ago that the new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced that his would be the government of ‘growth, growth, growth’. What has he done in that time to try to realise that ambition? It is hard to think of a single measure that will genuinely do anything to improve the fortunes of wealth-creating businesses – other than promised planning reforms which seem destined to fail as they are based on the faulty premise that it is only Nimbys who hold up house-building and other development, and not reams of environmental regulations which Labour has shown no interest in reforming. We have a government which poses

Steerpike

Will the SNP team up with ‘awful’ Alba?

The SNP’s 90th party conference has finally wrapped up in Scotland, after the Nats spent a long weekend discussing their flailing party’s fortunes. Support for the party has been on the decline since the pandemic, with its latest leader John Swinney presiding over a rather disastrous general election result that saw his party left with just nine seats. And now, in a bid to stop the ‘fragmentation’ of the nationalist movement, some in his group have even suggested breaking bread with their rivals… Pete Wishart, the SNP’s longest-serving MP and former Runrig band member, made the rather curious suggestion at the weekend that his group should work with former first

Matthew Lynn

Labour must beware crying wolf about a run on the pound

As winter approaches, and fuel prices go up, Keir Starmer’s honeymoon period is well and truly over. The Labour government is clearly getting a little nervous about Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s decision to scrap the £300 given to millions of pensioners to help keep warm over the winter. It is now claiming that it had no choice but to save some money somewhere. ‘If we hadn’t taken some of these tough decisions we could have seen a run on the pound, interest rates going up and crashing the economy,’ argued Commons Leader Lucy Powell over the weekend. ‘It’s something we were left with no alternative but to do.’ ‘If we hadn’t

Gavin Mortimer

Angela Merkel played a key role in the rise of the AfD

To no one’s great surprise, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) romped to victory in Sunday’s election in the eastern state of Thuringia. The party, classified as right-wing extremist by Germany’s security authorities, also came a close second to the centre-right CDU in Saxony’s election. The result is being described as the first for a far-right party in a German state parliament election since the Second World War. Angela Merkel must share the blame In response to the AfD’s triumph, German chancellor Olaf Scholz urged other German parties to exclude ‘right-wing extremists’ from power, saying: ‘The AfD is damaging Germany.’ If so, Angela Merkel must share the blame. It is the former

Nigel Jones

How long will Germany’s anti-AfD ‘firewall’ last?

Berlin awoke this morning in a state of shock. Although opinion polls had predicted that the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) would do well in yesterday’s eastern state elections in Thuringia and Saxony, the cold reality that the anti-immigration, anti-Islamist party has topped the polls in Thuringia and come a close second in Saxony, takes some getting used to, even for cynical Berliners. Mainstream centre and leftist parties in Germany have vowed to form a ‘brandmauer’ (firewall) against the AfD The German capital is a left-wing island surrounded by the sea of states of former East Germany, which are rapidly moving to the far right. The AfD scored more than 30

Steerpike

Starmer rehomes ‘unsettling’ Thatcher painting

To Downing Street, where a painting of a former prime minister has been causing quite a stir lately. Sir Keir Starmer found himself at loggerheads with a number of Conservative politicians last week when it transpired the Labour PM had removed a portrait of Margaret Thatcher from the former No. 10 study – after he’d agreed the Gordon Brown-commissioned painting was ‘a bit unsettling’. While Starmer was slammed for his ‘petty approach’ by Tory politicians, it now turns out that the portrait has found a new home – in a first floor visitor meeting room. Talk about a downgrade… The revelation – which emerged during an interview with Starmer’s biographer

Katy Balls

How long will Starmer’s new MPs stay loyal?

It’s show time for Keir Starmer as MPs return to parliament today following the summer recess. The Prime Minister and his team have faced a slew of negative headlines in recent weeks over the planned cut to the winter fuel allowance, an ongoing cronyism row and whether the new government is spooking business with its pessimism and speculation over the ‘painful’ budget in October. Recent polls suggest Labour is losing support. Starmer’s net approval ratings, according to Opinium, are now -13 per cent. It was +19 per cent when he entered 10 Downing Street in July. The PM is already facing disquiet from his MPs Ministers hope to show momentum

Sam Leith

The war on smokers has gone too far

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that after winning a giant mandate from the electorate and having not yet done anything to wick off the people who don’t already hate him, our new Prime Minister might like to bask in a few weeks of good vibes. Things, after all, can only get worse from here. Wouldn’t it be nice to feel like Mister Popular for a bit?  The original ban on smoking indoors was illiberal, but it was illiberal to a very legible purpose Sir Keir Starmer, it seems, has a stronger character than would to succumb to that temptation. Already, even his own cabinet ministers are briefing that they think he’s

Constantin Eckner

What the AfD’s ‘historic victory’ means for Germany

Alternative für Deutschland’s success in east German state elections marks a major blow to the government in Berlin. The AfD is set to win almost a third of the vote in Thuringia – putting it nine points ahead of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU). The AfD’s top candidate in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, hailed a ‘historic victory’. Despite the best efforts of the centrist parties, the AfD is not going away. Scholz’s remarks ignore a simple reality: that the AfD has transcended its status as a mere party of protest. This result, if confirmed once all votes are counted, would mark the first victory for a far-right party in a state

Philip Patrick

Scottish Nats still haven’t worked out why they lost

Unlike a slightly more high-profile reunion event, the ticketing website for the Scottish referendum tenth anniversary show is not expected to crash. But there will no doubt be much looking back in anger at the IMAX theatre at the Science Centre in Glasgow on 14 February as ‘the stars’ (it says) of the 2014 referendum gather to ‘reflect’ on the defining moment in their lives and ‘outline their hopes for the future’.   In a fine Scottish tradition, they clearly still see themselves as the moral, if not actual, victors of 2014 The headliner (surprise, surprise) is Alex Salmond, who will be in discussion with STV political journalist Bernard Ponsonby. From the flyer,

Sunday

Stephen Daisley

This could be the first right-wing Scottish Tory leader in years

The Scottish Conservative leadership election is now Russell Findlay’s to lose. The West Scotland MSP has secured three big endorsements: former Scottish Secretaries Lord Forsyth and David Mundell, and shadow Scottish Secretary John Lamont. It means all five Scottish Tory MPs support his campaign, alongside 12 MSPs, two council leaders and leading party donors Alasdair Locke, Alan Massie and Robert Kilgour. Right-winger Forsyth has an op-ed in today’s Scottish Mail on Sunday hailing Findlay’s ‘courage, competence, conviction and compassion’ and predicting that his leadership would see the Tories shift focus to ‘the real day-to-day concerns of every voter’. Left-winger Mundell believes Findlay has ‘the life experience’ and skills to win back ex-Tories

Patrick West

Labour’s puritanical attack on vaping

On Times Radio this morning Lucy Powell, Leader of the House of Commons, said that she wanted the government to ‘tackle the scourge of vaping’. Of course she does. This is the next natural step for a government intent on stopping people enjoying themselves, or exercising individual freedom. Never mind that vaping, according to Public Health England, is 95 per cent safer than smoking and that it is recommended by the NHS for smokers looking to quit. Government ministers just can’t help themselves.  There’s nothing more morally intoxicating than stopping others deriving pleasure from something you regard as sinful Labour are drunk on power. They’re in a ban-happy state of

Neve Gordon

The ICC is right to pursue Benjamin Netanyahu

On 20 May, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan tried to push the borders of the ‘permissible’. In an extraordinary rebuke of existing practice, he not only sought arrest warrants for Hamas leaders who allegedly planned the 7 October, 2023, attack on Israeli military bases, kibbutzim, towns and the Nova music festival where 815 civilians, among them 36 children, and close to 400 members of the security forces were killed, and 251 others (mostly civilians) were abducted and taken to Gaza. In addition, Khan had the courage to ask the Pre-Trial Chamber to approve the arrest warrants of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its Defence Minister Yoav Gallant – two leaders