Politics Archives

Sunday

4 January 2026

Labour MPs squabble over Venezuela

Oh dear. It seems that all is not well in the party of good comrades. The Americans’ stunning snatch-and-grab operation in Venezuela has divided opinion among Labour MPs. Jeremy Corbyn may no longer be running the show – but it seems some still mourn the ending of Maduro’s regime. Among them was Richard Burgon, Jezza’s onetime business spokesman. The hard-of-thinking socialist reacted with fury to Keir Starmer’s mealy-mouthed statement, tweeting that: The Prime Minister should respond to an illegal bombing and kidnapping by Trump in exactly the way he would if Putin had carried it out. Either Keir Starmer believes in international law – or he doesn’t. You can’t pick

Patrick West

Reform and the real populist threat

We’re scarcely into the new year and already luminaries on the liberal left have resumed one of their favourite pastimes: issuing alarmist forebodings about the threat posed by populism, and imploring everyone that Reform UK must be stopped. That is why Starmer and those on the left will always invoke the bogeyman of Reform and forever diabolise its brand of ‘populism’ Just as the final days of 2025 saw Gillian Tett of the Financial Times warn on Newsnight about ‘the rise of “The Three Ps”: populism, protectionism and extreme patriotism’, this year had barely got started before Sir Chris Powell, the New Labour former advertising strategist, chimed in to remind

Rory Hanrahan

Social media visa vetting would protect Britain’s Jews

You don’t need to be a fervent admirer of Donald Trump to recognise that, on matters of national security and cultural cohesion, he hits the bullseye our establishment prefers to evade. His administration’s recent proposal – requiring travellers from visa-waiver countries, including Britain, to disclose five years of social media history as part of the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) – has drawn the usual transatlantic sneers: an assault on privacy, a chilling of free expression, another Maga excess. Yet recent events show social media vetting can expose troubling views. If Britain wants to protect its Jewish citizens – especially young scholars besieged on university campuses – it should follow

Edward Howell

Kim and Putin’s growing bromance should make us nervous

As Kim Jong-un himself announced at a New Year’s Eve event in Pyongyang, 2025 was an ‘unforgettable year’ for North Korea. During the final weekend of the year, the Supreme Leader supervised a ‘nuclear-capable’ long-range strategic cruise missile test, which he termed an ‘exercise of war deterrence’ against the ‘security threats’ facing Pyongyang. The test followed a week of oily letters between Kim and his new best friend, none other than Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader lauded the ‘heroic dispatch’ of North Korean troops to assist Russia’s war against Ukraine as an example of the ‘militant fraternity’ between Pyongyang and Moscow. Even if dynamics in the Ukraine war change this

Saturday

3 January 2026

Charlie Gammell

Maduro's fall could galvanise Iran's opposition

On the afternoon of the 28 December in a Tehran electronics bazaar, shopkeepers (known as bazaaris) shuttered their shops and walked out, outraged at a planned gas price rise and crippled at the continuing slide in the value of the Iranian currency and the government’s powerlessness to shepherd Iran’s economy towards something better than corruption, unemployment and inflationary cycles. Tehran’s Grand Bazaar was quick to follow suit. A day or so later, several of Tehran’s most prestigious universities staged demonstrations. Smaller cities and towns have since taken up the baton of resistance, with government offices attacked and people openly calling for Khamenei’s death and the return of the Pahlavi dynasty,

Freddy Gray

Why Trump captured Maduro

Donald Trump likes to start the new year with a bang – or better yet a series of loud bangs. On January 3, 2020, his first administration ordered the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Exactly six years later, his second administration has carried out a large-scale regime-change operation in Venezuela, blowing several sites to smithereens and capturing the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and flying them out of the country. This after a series of military strikes against Venezuelan and cartel targets in recent weeks and months. There had been strong rumours in Washington that Trump would order

James Tidmarsh

The New Year's Eve fire shattered the myth of Swiss invulnerability

This was not supposed to happen in Switzerland. In a country where disasters are meant to be engineered out, risk neutralised and failure anticipated, the idea of a crowded bar turning into a death trap feels almost unthinkable. Around 40 people died inside the Constellation bar in Crans Montana on New Year’s Eve, and up to 119 were injured, many suffering serious burns. Switzerland has become more open and more exposed. It’s also become more complacent Witnesses describe flames racing across the ceiling within seconds. Systems that were assumed to hold clearly did not and panic set in. The inquiry will take time, but the outline is already visible. The

Joanna Marchong

Will 2026 be Rachel Reeves’s year?

Rachel Reeves enters 2026 more unpopular than she has ever been before. YouGov polling from December has 71 per cent of Britons saying they have an unfavourable opinion of Britain’s first female chancellor. Reeves was meant to be a competent economist who could restore credibility to the Treasury and, in her words, ‘revive economic growth’. How’s that going? Reeve’s tenure in No. 11 has so far been more slapstick than good governance. Her CV unravelled under scrutiny; she broke manifesto commitments; she unveiled an appalling Budget, vowed never to repeat it, and then promptly did. Am I judging her too harshly? Am I being a misogynist? Reeves would probably say

Nigel Jones

Trump says the US has 'captured' Venezuela’s Maduro

Donald Trump’s undeclared war in Venezuela against the Marxist regime of President Nicolas Maduro has erupted into the open. Trump says the US has captured Venezuela’s leader and his wife. In a statement on Truth Social, Trump wrote: ‘The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.’ Trump’s statement

Brendan O’Neill

The keffiyeh crew’s curious silence on Iran

And just like that, the left loses interest in the Middle East. In 2025, they spoke of little else. They culturally appropriated Arab headwear, poncing about in China-made keffiyehs. They wrapped themselves in the Palestine colours. They frothed day and night about a ‘murderous regime’ – you know who. And yet now, as a Middle Eastern people revolt against their genuinely repressive rulers, they’ve gone schtum. It is especially electrifying to see Iran’s young women once again raise a collective middle finger to their Islamist oppressors What is it about revolts in Iran that rankle the activist class? These people love to yap about ‘resistance’ and ‘oppression’. Yet the minute

Chas Newkey-Burden

The National Trust should appreciate its eccentric volunteers

The National Trust has blacklisted a 71-year-old volunteer after he pointed out thousands of spelling mistakes and factual errors on the charity’s website, and then expressed irritation when his painstaking efforts were brushed aside. Sensible charity managers overlook minor human imperfections, concentrating instead on volunteers’ generosity Andy Jones had volunteered for the Trust for more than a decade, turning his hand to everything from gardening to membership queries and guiding visitors on walks. Acting entirely on his own initiative, he devoted more than 400 hours to compiling a detailed dossier of errors on the organisation’s website. He sent it, politely enough, to Hilary McGrady, the Trust’s director-general, asking whether she would ‘be

Friday

2 January 2026

Richard Ekins

Can Britain strip Alaa Abd El-Fattah of his citizenship?

Does the government have the power to strip Alaa Abd El-Fattah of his recently acquired British citizenship? Sources within government reportedly say no. But the relevant legislation is in fact highly permissive. The government cannot avoid taking responsibility for deciding to exercise or not exercise the power to deprive him of his citizenship. The government may decide not to exercise its power here. But it cannot maintain that there is simply no power to act El-Fattah was registered as a British citizen in December 2021, in the course of the campaign against his imprisonment in Egypt. Successive UK governments made efforts to secure his release from prison in Egypt. He was released in September and was

Andrew Tettenborn

The Fuad Awale case shows what's wrong with the ECHR

Another new year, and another controversial human rights victory for a criminal. Fuad Awale was a violent thug and Islamist serving a life sentence for drug-related murder. In 2013, he took a prison officer hostage in an attempt to force the release of Islamic hate preacher Abu Qatada. After this episode he was moved to a close supervision centre, a unit meant to contain fanatical prisoners like him. There, his rights of association with other prisoners were understandably severely restricted, particularly as regards other Islamists (he had asked, for example, to chum up with the Islamic fanatics who had murdered Private Lee Rigby, a request that did not go down well).

Andrew Gilligan

The real Alaa Abd el-Fattah scandal

The real scandal of Alaa Abd el-Fattah is that it is nothing new, and that not enough has changed. For decades, in dozens and dozens of cases, the British state has legitimised, worked with, empowered or funded extremists and bigots; people with values deeply opposed to Western democracy; people who sometimes literally seek our destruction. Periodically, some new bad guy – in this case Abd el-Fattah – is exposed by the media or thinktanks. There’s a row. The person or body concerned is sometimes jettisoned, sometimes not. But the basic operational failure keeps happening. As a No. 10 adviser, I was several times lobbied by MPs who plainly knew nothing about the things

Clarissa Hard

The trouble with Khan’s New Year’s fireworks

Despite the pyrotechnic glories of London’s New Year fireworks, 2026 started off with a whimper rather than a bang. The display, organised by Sadiq Khan and the Greater London Authority, was painfully predictable, trotting out the usual tired clichés about England as a global melting pot and diversity as the jewel in the nation’s crown. The fireworks engaged head-on with the Year of the Flag, responding to ongoing debates about national identity The fireworks engaged head-on with the Year of the Flag, responding to ongoing debates about national identity. A chummy voiceover explored ‘what England means’, while the display showed national flags from around the globe coming together to form

Gavin Mortimer

Britain has lost faith in Labour's ability to 'smash the gangs'

More than 41,000 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats in 2025, a number surpassed only by the 45,000 who made the voyage in 2022. In total, 41,472 people reached England from France, a 13 per cent increase on 2024. The weather was a factor: according to the Met Office, last year provided Britain with the most hours of sunshine – 1,622 – since records began in 1910. But of greater significance is the ineptitude of the British government in stopping the small boats. A spokesperson for the Home Office described the 2025 figures as ‘shameful’, adding that ‘the British people deserve better’. They would say that, wouldn’t they? It

Ross Clark

The RMT has doomed the Oxford-Cambridge railway

Thank God for HS2. The scandal of the ever-more expensive and ever-delayed rail line from London to Birmingham (and now no further) has taken the heat off another of Britain’s tortured rail projects: East West Rail, linking Oxford and Cambridge. East-West rail has the distinction of being even older than HS2, having first been proposed in 2006. It shouldn’t have been that big a project, given that Oxford and Cambridge did once have a rail connection, which was closed in 1967. Much of the trackbed remained in place and parts of it have remained in use throughout. Yet still it is proving a little too much for Britain’s miserable infrastructure

Mani Basharzad

Iran wants its monarchy back

There are protests in Iran again. But this time, something is different. In the uprisings of 2019, 2022 and 2023, the dominant slogan was negative: what Iranians did not want. ‘Death to the dictator’ echoed through the streets. Today, the country has moved beyond rejection. Now there is affirmation. A name is being chanted: Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. More than ten Iranian cities have risen up in recent days, from the most conservative quarters of society to elite universities. Across Iranian cities one hears slogans: ‘Pahlavi will return’, ‘Javid Shah’ – the Persian equivalent of ‘Long live the King’ – and simply, ‘King Reza Pahlavi’. For the first time since

John Curtice

John Curtice: what to expect in 2026

21 min listen

James Heale sits down with Sir John Curtice, the doyen of British polling, to take stock of an extraordinary year in UK politics and to look ahead to what 2026 might hold. Curtice explains why the rise of Reform UK during the spring local elections marked a historic turning point – establishing the longest period in polling history where a party outside the traditional Conservative–Labour duopoly has led nationwide and assesses Labour’s continued slide, the unprecedented collapse in support for both major parties, and the growing influence of the Greens under new leadership. John also explores why Britain has entered a new era of multiparty politics, how cultural divides now

Lara Prendergast

The 'boring twenties', population decline & happy new year

35 min listen

A far cry from the ‘roaring twenties’ of the early 20th Century, the 2020s can be characterised as the ‘boring twenties’, argue Gus Carter and Rupert Hawksley in our new year edition of the Spectator. Record numbers of young people are out of work but even those with jobs face such a dire cost-of-living situation that they have no money left over to spend on fun. Traditional cultural outings – like going to the theatre – are increasingly confined to older, richer generations. This is long-standing issue, but compounded by Labour’s economic policies. A slightly downbeat start to the new year here at the Spectator, but at least the episode provides a free dose