Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Friday

Tim Shipman

The 12 things that mattered in politics in 2025

We are in the pre-Christmas dog days and politics has, finally, slowed down a bit. Reflecting on 2025, here are my top 12 key moments which tell us the most about where we are in politics and how things might pan out in 2026. Keir Starmer had a decent start to the year, while Nigel Farage ‘won’ from May to September. The final quarter saw the emergence of Kemi Badenoch and Zack Polanski: Starmer produces letter from the King inviting Donald Trump on his second state visit, 27 February This might have been the high point of the Prime Minister’s year. He and then foreign secretary David Lammy worked out

Tim Shipman

‘Growth is not Labour’s priority, it’s hilarious’

13 min listen

The British economy is shrinking. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that GDP fell by 0.1 per cent in the three months to October. The contraction came after growth of 0.1 per cent in the three months to September. On a monthly basis, the economy shrank by 0.1 per cent in both September and October after remaining flat in August. Is growth really Labour’s priority? And what impact is all this doom and gloom having inside the party? Lucy Dunn speaks to James Heale and Tim Shipman. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Ross Clark

Europe's EV market is rolling backwards

Imagine you are a keen Brexiteer and opponent of net zero plans, especially of the idea of being forced to buy an electric vehicle (EV). There are plenty of people like you; there is much evidence to suggest that the two things go together. But you must now be feeling a little confused. It must be dawning on you that, in terms of your freedom to buy the vehicle that you want, you would have been better off had Britain remained in the EU. Europe has just made the decision to relax the ban on petrol vehicles from 2035 to 2040 – while in Britain it is still planned to

Michael Simmons

How Rachel Reeves shrank the economy

The British economy is shrinking. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that GDP fell by 0.1 per cent in the three months to October. The contraction came after growth of 0.1 per cent in the three months to September. On a monthly basis the economy shrank by 0.1 per cent in both September and October after remaining flat in August. Most economists had expected Britain’s economy to grow. The slow-down was driven by production, which shrank 0.5 per cent, as well as construction, which shrank by 0.3 per cent. Meanwhile, services remained flat. Liz McKeown, Director of Economic Statistics at the ONS, said the production

Owen Matthews

The war in Ukraine is reaching its endgame

Painfully and chaotically, the outline of the peace deal that will eventually end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is emerging as the US leans on Kyiv to abandon key red lines. It may still be months before the guns finally fall silent. But one by one various roadblocks to an eventual agreement are falling away. Crucially, this week Volodymyr Zelensky conceded that his country needed new presidential and parliamentary elections. Moreover, for the first time, he floated the possibility that a Ukrainian military withdrawal from Donbas could be put to a national referendum.  ‘The Ukrainian people must answer the territorial question,’ Zelensky told reporters on Thursday. ‘I say clearly: yes, I

Gavin Mortimer

Stopping the boats will be harder than Jordan Bardella thinks

France’s Jordan Bardella has promised to stop the boats. Now where have we heard that before? The president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally made his boast on a day trip to London on Tuesday. After lunching with Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, the 30-year-old outlined his strategy for curtailing the passage of illegal immigrants between France and England. ‘My ambition is to make France the least attractive country for mass immigration in Europe,’ explained Bardella. ‘From there, if it is no longer possible to cross, then there will be no one left in Calais.’ Bardella said he will make France unattractive for migrants by abolishing the right of asylum, expelling

Henry Donovan

When will Europe's leaders wake up to the Russian threat?

Europe’s leaders flocked to London this week, determined to show the world a united front. Like school boys at a bus stop, Ukraine’s president Zelensky stood beside Keir Starmer, German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French leader Emmanuel Macron in a carefully staged tableau of Western resolve. It was designed to send a message to Moscow: Europe is ready. Yet the spectacle only highlighted the uncomfortable truth: Europe talks like a military power, but behaves like a political debating society. The continent insists it has woken up to the new reality, yet it still refuses to build the armies required to confront it. Europe talks like a military power, but behaves

Lara Prendergast

From The Queen to Bonnie Blue: The Spectator’s Christmas Edition 2025 

40 min listen

The Spectator’s bumper Christmas issue is a feast for all, with offerings from Nigel Farage, Matthew McConaughey and Andrew Strauss to Dominic Sandbrook, David Deutsch and Bonnie Blue – and even from Her Majesty The Queen. To take us through the Christmas Edition, host Lara Prendergast is joined by deputy political editor James Heale, associate editor Damian Thompson and writer of the Spectator’s new morning newsletter, Morning Press, Angus Colwell.  They discuss: the state of British politics as we leave 2025 behind, and who will have a worse year ahead between Kemi and Keir; what physicist David Deutsch’s enthusiasm for humanity can teach us all in the age of AI; why the Sherlock Holmes

Michael Gove

Q&A: Should Ukraine join the Commonwealth?

31 min listen

Submit your urgent questions to Michael and Maddie at spectator.co.uk/quiteright. This week on Quite right! Q&A: should Britain reinvent the Commonwealth – and should Ukraine be invited to join? Is the Commonwealth an embarrassing relic… or an untapped strategic asset? Then: what if Jeremy Corbyn had actually won in 2019? Maddie and Michael sketch the counterfactual Britain – from a Jezza-led lockdown to vaccine chaos, union-driven school closures and a very different Brexit. Plus: the greatest artwork of the 21st century. Michael champions a modern choral masterpiece, Maddie defends The Lord of the Rings as the true Gesamtkunstwerk, and both confess their musical shortcomings (including Michael’s rogue childhood instrument). Produced

Thursday

Michael Simmons

Is the superflu really ‘unprecedented’?

The NHS is facing a ‘worst-case scenario’ for flu this winter. That was the verdict of Professor Meghana Pandit, national medical director for the NHS, this morning as she warned the tsunami of ‘super-flu’ cases sweeping the UK is ‘unprecedented’. Worse still, the peak of this wave is ‘not in sight’. Her warning came as NHS figures revealed the number of patients in hospital with flu in England is up 55 per cent compared with last week – meaning an average of 2,660 patients are in hospital every day. Internal NHS forecasts predict that, by the end of the week, that number could have risen as high as 8,000 –

Tim Shipman

Does Farage really want to be Prime Minister?

25 min listen

How does Reform go from political insurgents to a government in waiting? Political editor Tim Shipman gives an insight into his interview with Nigel Farage, which you can read in The Spectator’s Christmas edition. In the background at party headquarters, discussions are under way to work out how Reform would bring sweeping changes to the British state, looking at the model of the American system of executive power. But once handed the reins of power, would Farage actually enjoy the day-to-day business of being prime minister? In the meantime, how are Reform MPs finding Westminster? Tim reveals the unlikely relationship between Reform and the SNP, and how respect shown to

Lara Brown

Sandie Peggie and a chilling step backwards for women’s rights

A woman confronts a biological man in a female changing room. She is later found to have harassed him because he identified as a woman. Many thought this sort of madness was over, but the findings of Sandie Peggie’s tribunal against the NHS confirm that the battle is not won. This year will be remembered as one in which women’s rights took a step forward. The Supreme Court judgment confirmed what we’ve always known to be true: ‘sex’ means sex. It cannot be altered by a piece of paper. It seemed that sanity had been restored. But sometimes we forget just how fast defeat can be snapped from the jaws

Caleb Quinley

Myanmar's junta has stooped to a new low

Myanmar’s junta has once again shown its true self: calculated, despicable, and violently unrestrained. Last night, warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs onto a crowded hospital in Rakhine State. The blast tore through the building with surgical cruelty, sending glass and metal through wards where patients slept. Dozens were killed instantly; others bled out in the darkness as the hospital collapsed around them. Many of the victims were children and infants. This wasn’t a tragic misfire Many of the victims were children and infants. This wasn’t a tragic misfire, nor a reaction to combat nearby. It was a targeted strike: planned, ordered, and executed in the dead of night. The generals

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Trump's tariffs, the definition of biological sex and the fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

January Downing Street said Rachel Reeves would remain in her role as Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘for the whole of this parliament’. She made a speech standing behind a placard saying: ‘Kickstart economic growth.’ Axel Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to at least 52 years in prison for the murder of three girls in a knife attack at Southport. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced a ‘rapid audit’ of grooming gangs by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Wildfires raged around Los Angeles. Luke Littler, 17, became world darts champion. The aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires in California (Mario Tama/Getty Images) February President Donald Trump of the United States and the

Tim Shipman

‘We must not be the Tory party 2.0’: Nigel Farage on his plans for power

Nigel Farage is signing football shirts when I arrive at Reform’s campaign headquarters in Millbank Tower, the building where New Labour prepared for power before 1997. The black shirts are emblazoned with ‘Farage 10’ in gold. ‘Someone called them Nazi colours,’ the leader complains. ‘This always happens when we do well.’ As favourite to be the next prime minister, Farage is sanguine. ‘They’re a special edition, £350 each.’ How many is he signing? ‘—king hundreds,’ he says, pulling his punches on the profanity. Seven hundred to be precise, a cool £245,000 for party coffers. This is the same week the party registers a £9 million donation from the crypto millionaire

James Heale

Will Keir still be Prime Minister in a year?

Keir Starmer will start the new year as he means to go on: by attempting to convince his troops that he is still the best man to lead them. The Prime Minister will begin 2026 by hosting Labour MPs at Chequers. The motive behind the outreach is simple. ‘The only question that matters this year,’ says a non-invitee, ‘is whether Keir can cling on.’ It was not so long ago that a peacetime prime minister with a healthy working majority was thought to be unassailable. No longer. The defining moment in parliament these past 12 months was the summer welfare rebellion. After 120 Labour MPs threatened revolt, the £5 billion

Quentin Letts

In a crowded field, who is the most insufferable MP?

The Palace of Westminster, already beset by crumbling finials, has developed a damp problem. Nothing to do with bricks and mortar. We are talking about moral wetness. Has the elected House ever contained a soggier crew? Hand-wringers abound. They demand ‘apostrophe laws’ named after victims of misfortune and then announce that ‘Mavis’s mum’ – or whoever that week’s unfortunate might be – ‘is with us today’. Everyone scans the galleries to coo. And sometimes even clap. The campaigns they espouse may, per se, be virtuous. What sticks in the gullet is the expropriation of goodness, the pushing of parliamentary debate away from flinty reality toward an emotive gloop better suited

Wednesday

Madeline Grant

Keir Starmer is not waving but drowning at PMQs

Benjamin Disraeli once observed that the difference between a misfortune and a calamity was that if Mr Gladstone fell in the Thames it would be a misfortune, but if someone pulled him out it would be a calamity. As the government moves indisputably from being victims of misfortune to being agents of calamity, so we might recycle the quip about Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister today entered his ‘not waving but drowning’ era. And he is, to use the sort of girlboss gibbering signalling which his MPs routinely resort to, slaying it. Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was, deliciously, one of his worst yet. Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was, deliciously,

Isabel Hardman

Badenoch still has a Herculean task ahead of her

Kemi Badenoch’s good form at Prime Minister’s Questions continues. The Tory leader visibly enjoyed herself again today as she feasted on Labour’s misfortune, and she did a good job in covering the breadth of problems in the government. She used her six questions to ask about different departments and how they were faring: an approach that can often risk diluting the overall attack. But today, Badenoch had an overarching theme to those questions, which was that the Prime Minister and his colleagues are failing to meet their own promises. The way she illustrated that argument was very effective. Badenoch opened by quoting Labour MPs criticising Starmer, something that is becoming