Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Tuesday

Andrew Tettenborn

How Hungary’s presidency could shake up the EU

Life in the Berlaymont building, the Brussels headquarters of the European Union, just got a bit more surreal. A striking feature of the EU is its rotating presidency, under which the 27 member states take it in turns to do a six-month stint running its technically supreme political body, the European Council. This week, Hungary, the bad boy of Europe, took over the hot seat. It keeps it until the end of this year. The difficulty is that the government of Viktor Orbán in Budapest, albeit still popular at home, is at loggerheads with the EU. Politically, its scepticism over Ukraine’s war effort and its open dislike for liberal social

Katy Balls

Will there be an election upset on Thursday?

In just two days, voters will head to the polling booth to cast their vote in the 2024 general election. Will there be any surprises in store? So far, there has been little movement when it comes to the gap in vote share between Labour and the Tories. While Labour’s has fallen during the campaign, the Tories have failed to benefit too much from it thanks to the Reform party – which is eating into their vote share. A poll by Savanta for today’s Telegraph finds that the Tory campaign has steadied things since their mid-campaign D-Day gaffe: the party is now at its highest level since the debacle with

Iain Macwhirter

Scottish independence could be the biggest loser on election day

As the hours tick down to polling day, Scottish nationalists are beginning to assess the damage this election campaign has inflicted on the cause of Scottish independence. Far from being a springboard to a second independence referendum, as Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf had forecast, it looks set to draw a line under the wave of Scottish nationalism that has dominated Scottish politics for most of the last two decades as the SNP’s new leader, John Swinney fails to stop the party’s relentless slide in voter support. If the SNP leader is living the dream his party looks set to inherit the nightmare It’s a hard lesson in the vicissitudes

Gavin Mortimer

Giorgia Meloni will enjoy taking revenge on Macron

The German government has expressed its ‘concern’ at the prospect of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally forming the next government of France. Poland’s PM Donald Tusk – the man who said Brexiteers deserved ‘a special place in hell’ – responded to the result by saying ‘this is all really starting to smell very dangerous’. Not in Italy, where the odour wafting down from France after the first round of the parliamentary election was rather to the liking of Giorgia Meloni. ‘I congratulate the Rassemblement National and its allies for the clear success,’  she said. No EU leader will have enjoyed Macron’s humiliation at the hands of Le Pen more than Meloni As in

Steerpike

Reform candidate called for Sturgeon to be shot

Oh dear. Just two days to go until polling day and Reform is once again in the limelight after yet more controversial comments by a candidate have come to light. It transpires that the party’s Orkney and Shetland choice, Robert Smith, is responsible for a series of damning social media posts – in which he takes aim at JK Rowling, Nicola Sturgeon and Ursula von Der Leyen amongst others. Between 2016 and 2023, Smith took to social media to post about a number of political and public figures using rather derogatory language. The Times reports that Smith targeted journalist and broadcaster Andrew Marr, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and London

Roger Kimball

What the Supreme Court immunity ruling means for Donald Trump

Yesterday, reviewing last week’s Supreme Court decisions, I noted that the court would probably issue its final opinion of the season, on the question of presidential immunity. So it turned out to be. Yesterday, ‘Trump v. United States’ dropped. For the first time, the Court pondered the question, ‘Does a president have immunity from prosecution?’ or, to use the language of the opinion, ‘Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.’ The answer was more or less what I predicted. I wrote that, while no one outside the hallowed halls of the Court really knew how the

Monday

Jawad Iqbal

Why does Starmer think he can finish early on Fridays if he becomes PM?

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has disclosed that he won’t work ’24/7′ if he wins the election this week and becomes Prime Minister. Starmer believes that spending time with his children – he has a son and a daughter – makes him a better politician. Starmer says he plans to continue his habit of having ‘protected time for the kids’ every Friday, arguing it would make him better at his job. What else did we glean about the Labour leader’s idea of a standard office day in Downing Street? Apparently, he will not do a work related thing after 6pm in pretty much any circumstances. It is a fascinating and revealing insight

Freddy Gray

Can Joe Biden go on?

20 min listen

The dust has settled from the TV debate that was catastrophic for Joe Biden. What are the possible options going forward? Are things changing behind the scenes? Freddy Gray assesses the situation with Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest. 

Cindy Yu

Starmer’s Europe dilemma

13 min listen

As Europe comes to terms with the fallout from Marine Le Pen’s victory in the first round of their parliamentary elections, Cindy Yu talks to Freddy Gray and Katy Balls about what it all means for Keir Starmer. If he does win the UK’s own election on Thursday, he faces a European landscape that could be harder to navigate. What do the results mean for the UK and what reaction has there been? Produced by Cindy Yu and Patrick Gibbons.

Steerpike

Will Starmer be a part-time PM?

‘Sir Sleepy’, it seems, is back. On the eve of taking up the most important job in the country, Keir Starmer has revealed that he will refuse to work around the clock should his party win Thursday’s election. Speaking to Virgin Radio this afternoon, the Labour leader contrasted himself with the current premier, well known for keeping long work hours. Starmer, who has two teenage children, said that he ‘will not do a work-related thing after 6pm [on a Friday] pretty well come what may.’ He claimed that spending time with his kids ‘takes me away from the pressure [and] relaxes me’, adding that the time away from work made

Ross Clark

Proportional representation won’t save the Tories

Members and supporters of the Conservative party do not generally speak in favour of proportional representation (PR) – which is hardly surprising given that the current system has given them 49 out of the past 79 years in power. There are exceptions: Ferdinand Mount, head of the No. 10 Policy Unit under Mrs Thatcher, briefly advocated it during the Conservatives’ long period out of office in the 2010s before changing his mind after the Conservatives returned to power. In a debate in 2019, Conservative MPs Dan Poulter (who defected to Labour earlier this year) and Derek Thomas spoke in favour. Whatever the iniquities of this week’s result, Conservatives should plot

Steerpike

JK Rowling slams Swinney over gender stance

Another day, another drama. This time Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney is in the spotlight, after he conducted a rather odd radio interview with BBC Five Live on the trans debate. With three days to go until the general election and some polls predicting Swinney’s nationalists could lose more than half of their Westminster seats, the FM is under pressure to persuade more voters to back the SNP on the big day. The Nats are no strangers to being out of touch with the general public and one issue that exemplifies this rather well is the party’s stance on self-identification. Swinney’s former boss Nicola Sturgeon was determined to pass the

Steerpike

Rory Stewart’s centrist squirm

With three days to go until 4 July, who else would you want to hear from but Rory Stewart? Cometh the hour, cometh the king of the centrist dads as the ex-cabinet minister today temporarily swapped his podcast for Times Radio. Appearing on Andrew Neil’s show this afternoon, Stewart was asked to give his thoughts on how to fix the world’s woes. With apathy and cynicism on the rise, the former Tory leadership contender suggested that one way of tackling the issue would be that age-old favourite, constitutional reform. Asked by Neil to name a single ‘distinctive policy or position’ espoused by the One Nation Tory tribe to which Stewart

Isabel Hardman

Fear and loathing (and door-knocking) with the SNP

The SNP is having a very normal election: its first really normal one in a long time. It’s just short of a decade since the party nearly swept away all traces of other political parties in the 2015 election, leaving just three non-nationalist MPs in place. Many of the candidates who won back then are now in the fight of their lives to hold on.  In Scotland’s Central Belt, most seats are on what the candidates themselves describe as a ‘knife edge’. The various MRP polls are predicting Labour wins in many SNP constituencies, including my local ones of Livingston, currently held by Hannah Bardell, and Linlithgow and Bathgate, where

Steerpike

Jill Biden revealed as Vogue magazine cover star

Oh dear. Vogue magazine’s August cover dropped this morning and it transpires that its editorial team has decided on a rather curious cover star in the form of, er, Jill Biden. The First Lady has been revealed as the central focus of the summer cover a mere four days after her husband gave a pitiful performance at the presidential candidate debate on Thursday. Talk about bad timing… President Biden stumbled and mumbled his way through his disastrous debate with Donald Trump last week – so much so that media outlets across the world questioned just how the President could remain the Democratic party’s choice for the 2024 US election. Yet

Andrew Lilico

Should voters punish Labour for its lockdown stance?

One perfectly valid reason for voting is to reward past success and punish past failures. We have no guarantees about what politicians will do in future, whatever they promise. We know what they did in the past. For millions of right-wingers, this punish-reward perspective is central to their decision about how to vote in 2024. They may differ a bit on what it is that they want to punish the Tory party for – whether it’s for partygate; ousting Liz Truss; net zero; inflation; Brexit; not making enough of Brexit; high public spending and taxes; too much wokery; too much immigration; or too many lockdowns. Whatever the precise reason for

Matthew Lynn

What the markets have wrong about the French election results 

The Paris stock market is soaring. French bonds are rising once again, and the banks are suddenly looking a lot healthier. As the results of the French elections came through overnight, and it looked less likely that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally would have enough votes to form a government by itself, investors started to buy into France. Sure, the result might be messy, but chaos is a lot better than the shambolic mix of protectionism and welfare spending that passes for an economic plan for the NR. But hold on. In reality, the crisis has just been postponed – and the crash when it comes will be far worse.

Steerpike

Are the Scottish Tories facing a civil war?

Uh oh. All is not well within the Scottish Conservative party and just days before polling day, senior figures have dubbed the election campaign ‘the most inept [and] shambolic’ in the party’s history – called for a clear-out of the party hierarchy. Good heavens. Senior party figures have told the Times that Scottish Tory candidates have been ‘badly let down’ by ‘disastrous errors from the top’. One MSP blasting campaigning efforts said that ‘no one involved in the leadership of the campaign should ever be allowed near one again’. Another party insider echoed the sentiment, saying: The main focus for now is getting as many candidates over the line as

Monica Porter

How Viktor Orbán plans to ‘Make Europe Great Again’

Hungary has just begun its presidency of the Council of the EU, as part of the member states’ six-monthly rotation process. Unsurprisingly, prime minister Viktor Orbán is all keyed up for the challenge. For years the bureaucrats of Brussels have tried to force the stubbornly contrary PM to change his ways, withholding billions of euros as punishment for his administration’s ‘democratic backsliding’. But sticking to his guns, Orbán has declared that, on the contrary, it is he who will ‘take over Brussels’ and change the EU. Hubris indeed. After all, David Cameron with his emollient charms was unable to get the EU to alter its entrenched culture, which ultimately led to

Steerpike

Nigel Farage turns on Marine Le Pen

Ooh la la! After a tricky few weeks for Reform UK, leader Nigel Farage has aimed his sights towards the old enemy. Reform’s polling figures first dipped following that Nick Robinson interview and in recent days Farage has faced serious questions over the behaviour of both candidates and activists. The party’s former candidate in Erewash, Liam Booth-Isherwood, yesterday disowned the outfit and backed his Tory rival instead. Now, as he battles to keep momentum up ahead of 4 July, Farage has distanced himself from fellow Eurosceptic Marine Le Pen. Following yesterday’s Reform rally – with 4,500 attendees in tow – the leader used an interview with Unherd to distance himself