Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Jake Wallis Simons

Why should Israel tolerate Hezbollah’s deadly rocket attacks?

The slaughter of a dozen child footballers on Sunday came as a startling sign that the situation in northern Israel cannot continue. Since October 7, thousands of Hezbollah rockets have rained down on the Jewish state, claiming many lives and causing 70,000 people to flee their homes. There comes a point where the only option is war. According to UN Resolution 1701, issued in 2006, Hezbollah forces must not stray south of the Litani river, about 18 miles from the Israeli border. They have violated that ruling for years, with no real punishment from the UN or anybody else. On a trip to the region before October 7, I saw

Gavin Mortimer

The filthy Seine is a fitting symbol of Macron’s chaotic Olympics

The good news for France is that their athletes have been winning some medals in the Paris Olympics. The bad news, well, that just keeps coming for the organisers and for Emmanuel Macron, who had wanted to use the Games to showcase his country. The latest debacle is the postponement of the men’s triathlon event this morning because the water in the River Seine is too filthy. Organisers can hardly say they weren’t warned. Things clearly aren’t quite working out as Macron hoped. First there was the attack on the country’s rail network last Friday; the president had hoped the day would be all about the splendour of the Opening

Steerpike

How Labour U-turned on scrapping winter fuel payments

Keir Starmer’s party has only been in government for three weeks – and already they’re spinning like a top. Rachel Reeves’ statement to the Commons yesterday was notable for making the kind of decisions which Labour would have castigated a Tory Chancellor for taking. Chief among them was the decision to scrap winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners to save £1.5 billion. In the future only 1.5m households will receive the payments going forward. The decision may well be the right one but it is the complete opposite to what Labour was saying mere weeks ago. Just last month, a Labour spokesman insisted the party had ‘no plans’ to change

Jawad Iqbal

The horror of the Southport knife attack

Two children have died and nine have been injured, six critically, after a series of stabbings in Southport, Merseyside. Two adults are also in a critical condition – they were apparently injured trying to protect the children from their attacker. A 17-year old boy, from the nearby village of Banks in Lancashire, remains in custody after being arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. A witness described it as ‘the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life’ The stabbings took place at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on Monday lunchtime. A man, wearing a mask and armed with a knife, entered the venue and started to repeatedly stab child

Joseph Dinnage

How to solve Europe’s anti-tourist backlash

In the town of Sintra, a suburb of Lisbon, some strongly-worded graffiti greets travellers like me. It reads: ‘F**k you tourist scum’. Locals have mounted a campaign fighting against the scourge of ‘mass tourism’. According to residents’ group QSintra, ‘Enough is enough!’ The time has apparently come for the state to intervene and bring about: ‘A revitalisation of the community and quality of life for residents; greater care and discretion in urban planning and management; quality tourism, not quantity’. Alienating millions of travellers who boost your prosperity each year seems like economic seppuku This kind of sentiment isn’t only amusing fodder for a photo-op, or limited to Portugal; it’s part

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Why Labour’s social care surprise matters

A much bigger story than Rachel Reeves cancelling the winter fuel payment is her announcement today that she is finally killing off the beleaguered cap on social care costs. Reeves told the Commons that the Conservative government had not funded its reforms to social care, so they weren’t going to happen. She said: Adult social care was also neglected by the previous government. The sector needs reform to improve care and to support staff. In the previous parliament, the government made costly commitments to introduce adult social care charging reforms, but they delayed them two years ago because they knew that local authorities were not ready and that their promises

Oscar Edmondson

How will Labour fill the surprise £20bn ‘black hole’?

15 min listen

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has today been providing covering fire for a raft of unpopular policies, including changes to the winter fuel allowance and cancellations to various building projects. She gave a damning statement in the Commons earlier this afternoon about the economic situation that Labour have inherited from the Tories. We now know that the first budget will come at the end of October. Is she laying the foundations for more unpopular decisions? Is the Starmer honeymoon over?  Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson. 

Ross Clark

Is Rachel Reeves really worried about a fiscal black hole?

There is one over-arching question hanging over Rachel Reeves’s speech today, in which she claimed that a £21.9 billion hole has opened up in the current political spending for this financial year: why, if there is such a large ‘black hole’ in the public finances, is there suddenly money available for £9.4 billion worth of above-inflation pay rises for public sector workers? Preposterously, those pay rises – which Reeves has chosen to make and which were not committed to by the previous government – are included as one of the unfunded spending items (indeed the single biggest spending item) which has contributed to the ‘black hole’. Reeves justifies this leap of

Kate Andrews

Rachel Reeves paves the way for spending cuts and tax hikes

Rachel Reeves has just announced a series of spending cuts in the House of Commons. These were ‘incredibly tough choices’, she said, to account for the £20 billion surprise ‘black hole’ left behind by the Tory government.  Her announcement means £5.5 billion of immediate, in-year cuts. These include some projects that were tipped to be axed, including the Rwanda scheme, and a review of rail projects (which will include discarding the ‘Restoring Our Railways’ programme). But the big surprise was the decision to withdraw the winter fuel allowance for pensioners who are ‘not in receipt of pension credit or certain other means tested benefits’ from this winter onwards. It’s an

Steerpike

Huw Edwards charged with making indecent images of children

Back to the case of ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards, who has this afternoon been charged with making indecent images of children. Edwards was suspended by the Beeb in July 2023 after the Sun reported allegations that he had solicited explicit images from a young man. He subsequently resigned from the Corporation in April this year, citing medical reasons. Now Edwards faces three charges over alleged indecent activity, linked to shared WhatsApp images according to the police, dating between December 2020 and April 2022. It transpires that after being arrested by the Metropolitan police last November, Edwards was formally charged last month. And on Wednesday this week, the former presenter will appear at

Fraser Nelson

Rachel Reeves is right to cut the ‘winter fuel’ bung

A millionaire I know has a tradition every year: he buys a bottle of vintage wine with his Winter Fuel Payment and invites friends to drink it. His point is that it’s ludicrous that people like him are given handouts by the government – and today, finally, Rachel Reeves is doing something about it by cutting it for those not on benefits, saving the taxpayer some £1.5 billion a year. Gordon Brown brought in this payment when it was taken for granted that pensioners were significantly poorer than people of working age. Pensions were linked to inflation – there was no triple lock.  Over the past 25 years pensioners have

Stephen Daisley

The UN would have Israel accept attacks on its citizens

The slaughter of 12 children on an Israeli soccer pitch was awful, of course, but it’s important not to overreact to these things. That is the takeaway from the Majdal Shams attack for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. Via his spokesperson, Guterres condemned the killings but called for ‘maximum restraint’ to avoid ‘any further escalation’ and urged all parties to ‘recommit to the full implementation of Security Council resolution 1701’ and ‘a cessation of hostilities’. Wise words indeed, and I’m sure we all hope that Hezbollah will heed them. It was the Lebanon-based Islamist organisation that carried out the attack using an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket. It’s fair to say dropping 110lbs of

James Heale

What the Labour Growth Group is really about

In a month full of parliamentary firsts, we now have another: the formation of the first new Labour caucus. More than 60 MPs have co-signed a letter, as part of the ‘Labour Growth Group,’ enthusiastically declaring their support for planning reform. ‘With such a strong mandate from the country,’ they write ‘it’s imperative that the new government grasps the nettle and goes for growth.’ It urges the government to start building the 1.5 million new homes which Labour pledged in its manifesto, including ‘prioritising grey belt development.’ Very often, MPs claim to back new homes yet object to anything in their own patch. But these co-signatories say that they are

Steerpike

‘Yellow card’ system to stop Tory leadership turmoil

Nominations for the Tory leadership race have this afternoon closed – and the competition now has six official candidates. Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Priti Patel, Robert Jenrick, Mel Stride and Tom Tugendhat all managed to secure the backing of at least 10 MPs and have made it through to the next round of the process. But while we are one step closer to knowing who the next leader of the Conservatives will be, there remains some rather pressing concerns about, er, party discipline… The new chairman of the 1922 Committee has announced today that the party will introduce a ‘yellow card’ sanction for leadership contenders – in the hope that

Steerpike

Braverman ‘welcome to join’ Reform, says Anderson

All is not well in the Tory party these days. After a tumultuous election campaign which saw infighting frequently dominate the headlines, it seems that division and instability have followed the party into opposition too. On Sunday night, Suella Braverman announced that she would not be contesting the leadership, adamant that there would be ‘no point’ in running ‘when most of the MPs disagree with my diagnosis and prescription’. But not everyone is opposed to Braverman – and it seems that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party are rather interested in her next move… Reform MP Lee Anderson has today insisted that Braverman would be accepted into the Farage-founded party if

Catherine Ellis

Maduro’s ‘win’ spells despair for Venezuela

It was meant to be a crushing defeat ending 25 years of socialist rule, and the presidency of a man many see as largely responsible for Venezuela’s economic woes, a humanitarian crisis and rampant corruption. But for many Venezuelans, the only thing crushed following Sunday’s presidential election was hope. Many of those who are desperate for change say they’ll take to the streets A few hours after polls closed – and amid complaints of some observers monitoring the process being thrown out of polling stations or prevented from entering – the country’s National Electoral Council announced Nicolás Maduro as the winner with 51 per cent of the vote; in second

Steerpike

Ex-Olympian enters Scottish Tory leadership race

To Scotland, where another Tory leadership race is starting to take shape. Now a second candidate has thrown their hat into the ring as Brian Whittle MSP has today announced his bid to join the Scottish Conservative leadership race – confirming there will indeed be a contest. Game on… The former athlete told the Scotsman that he will help the party ‘prepare for the next race’, promising his campaign will emphasise education, enterprise, and empowerment whilst stressing the importance of ‘telling hard truths’. Pointing to his party’s recent election result, the South Scotland MSP insisted: Losing hurts, every single time. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in politics, in business, in

Isabel Hardman

The junior doctor pay deal won’t end the government’s NHS headache

The government has offered junior doctors a pay rise worth up to 20 per cent over two years in a bid to end the strikes that have seriously hampered the NHS. Rachel Reeves is expected to confirm later today that the doctors have struck a deal with their ministers that will include a backdated rise of 4.05 per cent – on top of the existing 8-10 per cent raise – for 2023/24. Then pay will rise again by 6 per cent in 2024/25, as well as doctors receiving an additional £1,000. The cost of the deal is £1 billion. GPs are now threatening to bring the NHS to a ‘standstill’

Gavin Mortimer

Was the far left to blame for France’s Olympic railway chaos?

Trains are again running normally in France today after engineers worked over the weekend to repair the damage caused by Friday’s coordinated attack on the network. Also working overtime are fifty specialists from the national crime unit, who have pored over the three sites where saboteurs struck. ‘Even though the fires melted hundreds of cables, at the risk of destroying precious clues, samples are currently being examined in the Gendarmerie laboratories,’ a police source said. A bullish Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, declared over the weekend that the investigation to identify the culprits was progressing well and ‘we will know fairly quickly who is responsible’. The French far

Katy Balls

What’s next for Suella Braverman?

13 min listen

It’s a busy day in Westminster as we await the new Chancellor’s ‘spending audit’ of the financial challenges Labour has ‘discovered’ on entering government. But in the meantime there has been some movement in the Tory leadership race, with the deadline for applicants later this afternoon. Kemi Badenoch is the latest to declare, whilst Suella Braverman – the onetime standard-bearer of the Brexiteer right – has penned a piece for Monday’s Telegraph, declaring that she will not throw her hat in the ring. What’s next for her?  Patrick Gibbons speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.  Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Patrick Gibbons.