Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Thursday

27 November 2025

What is a ‘fair’ trial, Mr Lammy?

Why are jury trials so precious? According to one prominent alumnus of Harvard Law School, who was writing in protest at proposals to drop them during the Covid pandemic, they are ‘a fundamental part of our democratic settlement’. In a separate report, the author noted that, by deliberating ‘through open discussion’, juries deter and expose ‘prejudice or unintended bias’ since ‘judgements must be justified to others’. They added: ‘Successive studies have shown that juries deliver equitable results, regardless of the ethnic make-up of the jury or defendant.’ Trials without juries, they concluded in 2020, are thus ‘a bad idea’. That astute legal mastermind? One David Lammy, recently elevated to become

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: a shambolic Budget, Ukrainian plan and justice overhaul

Home Before Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility accidentally released its contents. She will increase the tax take to an all-time high of 38 per cent of GDP in 2030-31. She froze tax thresholds until the end of 2030-31 and introduced a council tax surcharge on properties worth over £2 million from 2028. She scrapped the two-child benefit cap. She froze fuel duty for only another five months but brought in a tax of 3p per mile on electric vehicles. The amount that can be added annually tax-free to a cash Isa was reduced from £20,000 to £12,000 (except for over-65s)

Wednesday

26 November 2025

Michael Simmons

Rachel Reeves’s Budget is a shambles

As Budget days go, today was unprecedented. The complete list of measures announced by Rachel Reeves – along with their costings and economic impacts – was leaked by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) an hour before the Chancellor took to her feet. The OBR apologised and called it a ‘technical error’. The headline is tax hikes to the tune of £26 billion, income tax thresholds will be frozen again and the tax burden will hit a record high at 38 per cent of GDP. Was this the most farcical Budget in history?

James Heale

Inside Reform's £1 million Budget blitz

It can be difficult for challenger parties to make much of an impact on the Budget, with parliament designed to emphasise the role of government and opposition. But Reform UK is determined to make a splash this week and reflect the dominant polling position that the party has enjoyed since April. Senior figures have earmarked a total of £1 million to be spent in the run-up and aftermath of Rachel Reeves’ Budget, to drive home the party’s position on tax and the wider economy. Tomorrow, the bulk of the outlay will be evident in the nation’s press. Double page spread adverts will run in the Telegraph, Times, Sun, Mail, Metro

James Heale

Rachel Reeves's Klarna Budget: spend now, pay later

After the frenzy of the Commons, comes the poring over the fine print. Rachel Reeves’s Budget is being studied across Westminster, following a chaotic lunchtime in which the OBR’s response was uploaded online an hour before her speech. That speech was heavily pre-briefed, with few real surprises. Taxes were hiked by £26 billion – though not as much as last year’s £32 billion. The level of fiscal headroom has been doubled to more than £22 billion. Growth will be up this year from 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent – but down from earlier projections by 2029. ‘The Chancellor is relying heavily on tax rises towards the back end

Lucy Dunn

Labour's Budget sparks North Sea fears

True to form, Rachel Reeves’s autumn Budget didn’t land smoothly. The publication of the OBR report she was supposed to unveil during her announcement meant that broadcasters, politicians and the public were more focused on scanning the leaked document than the speech she had been preparing for months. The headlines have focused on a huge uptick in welfare spending, stealth taxes which may or may not constitute a Labour manifesto pledge and the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap (Labour backbenchers can breathe a sigh of relief). What has received relatively less coverage is the North Sea – and just how energy-friendly Labour’s Budget is. Reeves’s fiscal statement will have

Tim Shipman

Rachel Reeves’s farcical Budget

15 min listen

Madeline Grant

Rachel Reeves is a true disaster artist

It is genuinely astonishing that Rachel Reeves isn’t accompanied by the Benny Hill theme at all times. Her ability to harvest the fruit of incompetence is without compare. She is the Nellie Melba of cock-ups, an anti-Midas in a pantsuit and a Lego hairpiece. Really, those of us who take joy from seeing a disaster artist hone their craft ought to have thrown bouquets at her from the gallery. Today was a real tour de force. Having trailed for weeks that this would be the Budget that restored her reputation, Reeves managed only to enhance her reputation… for screwing things up. Of course there were some excellent supporting performances; a

Ross Clark

The EV charging tax is the coward's way out for Rachel Reeves

One moral of the Budget is to beware of governments offering you incentives to buy a particular kind of car. On the advice of the then EU Transport Commissioner Lord Kinnock 25 years ago, the Blair government encouraged us all to buy diesel vehicles on the grounds they did more miles to the gallon and were therefore better for the environment. A few years later those who fell for the bait – including me – suddenly found ourselves treated like antisocial thugs, destroying kids’ lungs, and had our cars driven off the road by ULEZ zones. But at least we got the chance to drive around for a few years

Steerpike

Watch: Kemi Badenoch eviscerates Rachel Reeves

Kemi Badenoch had a head-start in preparing her response to Rachel Reeves’s Budget after this morning’s OBR leak. It was an opportunity she made the most of. The Tory leader’s blistering response in the Commons tore what was left of the Budget apart. But it wasn’t just Reeves’ policies that Badenoch went after: the attacks got pretty personal… Badenoch blasted Reeves’s statement as an ‘exercise in self-delusion’, before mocking the Chancellor over a recent series of interviews in which she claimed she was fed up of being ‘mansplained’ too. In a quite stunning evisceration, Badenoch tore into a rather uncomfortable looking Reeves: Madam Deputy Speaker, let me explain to the

Matthew Lynn

The Budget has created a £2 million house-price limit

It has lots of original features. It is close to good schools, and with a few cans of Farrow & Ball it will make the perfect family home. The estate agents already have lots of familiar lines they use to sell a property. From next year, they will have one that will be more crucial than any other: it is priced at £1.95 million, just escaping the new ‘mansion tax’ introduced by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her Budget. In effect, we have just introduced a price limit on houses – and it will distort the market even further. The UK has had some spectacular badly designed taxes over the decades.

Isabel Hardman

Badenoch's PMQs attack ran out of steam

Kemi Badenoch had two chances to attack the government today: first at Prime Minister’s Questions, and then again in response to the Budget. The Tory leader used her first bite of the cherry to try to frame the Budget speech as being part of wider government chaos. The attack started out well, but lost steam towards the end. Badenoch went off on a tangent about Angela Rayner Badenoch started by paying tribute to ‘the many farmers who have come to Westminster today to protest the shameful attack on them in last year’s Budget’, before claiming that ‘this has been the most chaotic lead up to a Budget in living memory,

Tim Shipman

Exclusive: Military chiefs go to war with Labour

While Westminster is consumed by the fallout from the Budget, I can reveal there is another major headache on the horizon for Keir Starmer – a new confrontation with the armed forces over defence spending. I’m told there was an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in which the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, and the three heads of the services sat down to discuss the defence investment plan, which governs day-to-day budgets after the recent Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). At one point the chiefs threw out all the civil servants and their military aides. Together they agreed to

Michael Simmons

Rachel Reeves’s Budget is a shambles

What we have seen today is unprecedented. The entire list of Budget measures announced by Rachel Reeves – along with their costings and economic impacts – were leaked by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) an hour before the Chancellor took to her feet. The OBR apologised and called it a ‘technical error’, but make no mistake: this is perhaps the biggest scandal in Britain’s Budget history. Make no mistake: this is perhaps the biggest scandal in Britain’s Budget history The headlines from the Budget are: Reeves will hike taxes by a total of £26 billion. Income tax thresholds will be frozen again, raising £8 billion and dragging nearly 800,000

The Spectator

Kemi blasts Reeves's Budget after OBR leak

Kemi Badenoch has labelled the Budget a ‘total humiliation’ after Rachel Reeves’s big announcement was derailed by an Office for Budget Responsibility leak. ‘There is no growth and no plan,’ the Tory leader told the Chancellor after Labour hiked tax, froze income tax thresholds and scrapped the two-child benefit cap. Reeves used her Budget to announce that: A new levy will be imposed on properties worth more than £2 million Income tax thresholds will be frozen for another three years from 2028 The two-child benefit cap will be lifted The OBR has updated growth for this year to 1.5 per cent of GDP Follow every twist and turn of the

The Spectator

The Spectator’s post-Budget briefing

Watch The Spectator panel discuss the autumn Budget tonight via livestream. Stephanie Flanders, head of economics and politics at Bloomberg will be joining The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove, political editor Tim Shipman, economics editor Michael Simmons and John Porteous, Charles Stanley’s managing director of central financial services and chief client officer, to give you an insider’s take on the autumn Budget, just hours after it is announced. As the cost of Britain’s debt soars, Rachel Reeves faces tough choices about the nation’s finances. With backbenchers allergic to spending cuts and the tax burden already at a post-war high, her options are shrinking fast. Will she take bold action to tackle Britain’s structural problems and ignite growth – or

Andrew Lilico

Rachel Reeves’s days are numbered

In her Budget speech today, Chancellor Rachel Reeves will have four goals. Two political – keeping her own job and keeping Keir Starmer in his as PM – and two economic – avoiding a financial crisis and getting the economy going. Her chances look poor on all of them. In the latest polling by Lord Ashcroft Polls, 76 per cent of voters expect the Budget to make them personally worse off, versus only 2 per cent who expected it to make them personally better off. Even amongst Labour voters, only 8 per cent expect the Budget to make them better off. As to making the country as a whole better

Michael Simmons

How bad will Rachel Reeves’s Budget be?

After a needlessly long run-up, Budget day is finally here. Investors, bond traders and house builders are breathing a collective sigh of relief – not because of what the Chancellor will say at around 12.40 p.m., but because the speculating, pitch-rolling and U-turning is finally over. Under the rules of engagement between the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the fiscal watchdog must be given ten weeks to produce forecasts. After dithering over when to trigger the process, Reeves decided to give them 12. I’d argue that decision has proved close to catastrophic. Her hope that good news might materialise in the meantime has, in fairness, partly paid

James Kirkup

Will Rachel Reeves's two Budget gambles pay off?

It’s traditional to describe Budgets as a political gamble. Rachel Reeves is actually making two bets. First, that voters can be persuaded to see the big picture of the economy – and second, that Labour MPs can be persuaded to take the long view of this parliament. Both are long-odds flutters. On the macro numbers, Britain is… fine. Not flourishing, but not failing. GDP is still inching forward – up 1.3 per cent on the year to the third quarter of this year – better than France (0.9 per cent) or Germany (0.3 per cent). Services output is growing modestly; productivity is edging upward; and household debt is at its

Ed West

Starmerism was always doomed to fail

Numerous civil servants have recalled their first encounter with Labour ministers following their election victory last year. After the new rulers of Britain first walked into their departments, and following pleasantries with their officials, ministers asked them for their ideas about how to run the country, to which the confused officials responded: ‘That’s your job, minister’. The new government was woefully underprepared, and in opposition did little in the way of thrashing out policy It’s a tale repeated by various people in SW1, and might help to explain the surprising implosion of the Labour government so soon after their landslide victory. Eighteen months on, Labour are now polling in the