Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Dominic Green

The Middle East’s new grandmasters

On Monday, while IDF troops were clearing the last Hamas terrorists from Israeli communities near the Gaza border, Benjamin Netanyahu promised that ‘we are going to change the Middle East’. Only two Israeli prime ministers have spoken like that before. One was Menachem Begin when he waged war on the PLO in Lebanon in 1982. The other was Yitzhak Rabin when he made peace with the PLO in 1993. Neither fully succeeded, but both reshaped the regional balance.  What Netanyahu understands is that the regional balance is shifting once again. It has moved away from the West vs East bipolar order of the Cold War and on from the brief

Katy Balls

‘Weaponising Jewish people is wrong’: Sadiq Khan on anti-Semitism, Ulez and the upcoming electoral battle

For most of this year it was widely accepted that the Tories had given up on London. Sadiq Khan seemed unbeatable and the party’s hunt for a mayoral candidate to run against him became a farce as various ‘big names’ refused to run. Then Daniel Korski, the frontrunner for the candidacy, had to drop out over a #MeToo row and it fell to Susan Hall to lead the charge. And yet, despite the political drama, the Tories are within touching distance of victory at City Hall – just a couple of points behind Labour in the polls. London looks winnable. ‘Nobody likes to be unpopular, but you’ve got to have

Isabel Hardman

Labour is in a weirdly disciplined state

The phrase you overhear the most at Labour conference is: ‘this is a good one to come to’. Most delegates assume this is the last conference before a general election, and both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have made comments to that effect in their speeches. The latter said she hoped to be standing before the next conference as the first ever female Chancellor of the Exchequer. When Labour MPs want to be loyal, they really, really go for it It has been a very long time since the party has realistically had these expectations: the pre-election conference in 2014, for instance, was so markedly muted and depressed that it

Limor Simhony Philpott

What happened to ‘Never Again’?

For Jews everywhere, there was an eery familiarity about the terrible violence unleashed on Israel during Saturday’s attack by Hamas. This was no simple act of terrorism. It was a pogrom. Pogroms were violent attacks against Jews living in the Russian empire in the 19th and early 20th century. They, much like the atrocity this weekend, included homes being torched, the abuse and execution of civilians and the rape of women. In the kibbutz of Kfar Aza, close to the Gaza border and scene of the most depraved Hamas violence, no-one was spared, whether they were female, young or old. All suffered the same fate. All were targeted for being

Philip Patrick

Football’s shameful silence on Israel’s tragedy

Few top-flight football matches these days kick off without an expression of solidarity with a cause or condolence. Along with the customary tributes to footballing legends or club stalwarts, just last week Premier League players took the knee, yet again, to show their opposition to racism. In recent weeks, we have had silences for the victims of the Moroccan earthquake and the Libyan floods. Support has been shown for Ukraine, and for the victims of terror attacks in Paris in recent years. And yet, strangely, no decision has apparently been made about honouring the now more than 1,000 victims of Hamas terrorism in Israel. Sunday’s Premier League games – including

Gerry Hassan

Labour is already tearing itself apart. How would it cope in government?

Keir Starmer’s chances of becoming the UK’s next prime minister seem to be improving by the day. From a huge win in the Rutherglen by-election to a ‘buoyant’ atmosphere at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool, the party of the opposition is on the up. The Tories and the SNP, meanwhile, continue to be distracted by chaotic messaging and party infighting. But could a Labour government pull together the fractured state that is Great Britain in a way the Tories haven’t been able to? Possibly – but it would mean repairing relationships within their own party first. In the politics of the Union, Welsh and Scottish Labour have been at loggerheads for quite

Dalibor Rohac

America’s support for Israel must not come at the price of backing Ukraine

Hamas’s heinous attack and the robust Israeli response serve as a useful reminder of well-known double standards on the activist left. In an echo of those US Republicans who are unable to see Ukraine’s defence against Russian aggression with any moral clarity – framing it instead as a ‘territorial dispute’ – some commentators have been reluctant to condemn Hamas’s terrorism, at least not without first appropriately ‘contextualising’ it. The attack, however, also uncovered a more recent and worrying trope taking root on both sides of the political spectrum: the idea, implicit or explicit, that the United States can only focus on just one issue at a time. The Biden administration,

Tuesday

Lloyd Evans

Dreary Keir Starmer makes Iain Duncan Smith sound exciting

It might have been an inside job. The saboteur who threw a handful of glitter over Sir Keir Starmer at the start of his speech turned the Labour leader into a hero for a few seconds. The assailant was frogmarched away while protesting in a very expensive accent. ‘True democracy is citizen-led’ he brayed, using the cultivated tones of a duke giving orders to his grouse-beaters. On the podium Sir Keir shrugged his jacket to the floor and revealed a manly torso. His white shirt was bulging in all the right places (and a few of the wrong ones). He stood before the conference like a veteran wrestler, an undefeated

Katy Balls

If not the Tories, why Labour?

14 min listen

Keir Starmer’s leadership speech today in Liverpool didn’t get off to the best start after a protestor ran onto the stage and dumped glitter all over him. But after dusting himself down and rolling up his sleeves, the leader of the opposition set about addressing the question that many prospective voters have wanted answering: If not them, why us? He made big promises on the NHS and pledged to ‘bulldoze through’ the obstacles to growth caused by the planning system, including with a new generation of new towns. It was one of his best speeches yet, but can they deliver?  Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman discuss. 

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer looks ready for an election

The stage invasion at the start of Keir Starmer’s speech was a total failure for the protestor who carried it out, and a huge success for the Labour leader. It wasn’t clear what he was shouting about as he dumped a load of glitter over Starmer and was then carried out of the hall. Starmer, though, had the chance to react calmly, make the point about his party being about power not protest, and roll up his sleeves as though he was ready to get going with rebuilding Britain. He joked to the conference that if the protestor thought that would bother him, ‘he doesn’t know me’. Aside from a

Jake Wallis Simons

For too long, the UN has been gripped by Israelophobia

It is something of an understatement to say that there has been no shortage of shocking posts on social media in recent days. Up there has been the footage of the mobs chanting ‘gas the Jews’ outside Sydney Opera House and those flying the Hamas flag in London. But one above all stood out. Step forward the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Yesterday, as scenes of medieval anti-Semitic savagery were playing out across southern Israel, it put out this message: ‘On Monday afternoon, [we] observed a moment of silence for the loss of innocent lives in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere.’ The only thing more conspicuously absent from

Steerpike

Watch: protestor throws glitter on Starmer during speech

Oh dear, Keir Starmer’s speech didn’t get off to the best start at Labour conference. As he began to open his speech, a heckler, in a massive lapse of security, was able to get on stage and throw glitter over the Labour leader. The protestor – who was shouting platitudes like ‘true democracy is citizen led’ and ‘we demand a people’s house’ – was then dragged off stage by his suit jacket. Mr S isn’t really convinced it was the most effective protest… Still, Starmer managed to recover from the incident well. After removing his glitter-covered jacket and rolling his shirt sleeves up, he remarked that: ‘If he thinks that bothers me,

Brendan O’Neill

Why aren’t ‘anti-fascists’ condemning the tide of anti-Semitism?

I have a question about the events of the past few days: where is Antifa? Where are those self-styled anti-fascists who love to rage against anything that is even vaguely reminiscent of the 1930s? Jews in Israel have been rounded up and murdered. Disgusting anti-Semites are on the streets of Sydney screaming, ‘Gas the Jews! Fuck the Jews!’ Mobs in London have taunted Israel, essentially laughing over its dead Jews. Britain’s Jewish schoolkids are taking off their blazers lest anyone recognise them as Jews and attack them. Across Europe security is being beefed up at Jewish establishments — schools, synagogues, museums — out of fear that Hamas-supporting mobs will invade

Gavin Mortimer

Qatar, Hamas and the West’s shameful silence

The political class in France have rounded on Jean-Luc Mélenchon for his failure to condemn Hamas’s attack against Israel. The far-left firebrand, a Gallic Jeremy Corbyn, reacted to Saturday’s massacre of Israeli civilians by Islamist terrorists with a tweet: ‘All the violence unleashed against Israel and Gaza proves only one thing: violence only produces and reproduces itself. We are horrified and our thoughts and compassion go out to all the distraught victims of all this. There must be a ceasefire.’ Mélenchon and the majority of his party, La France Insoumise (LFI), have since doubled down on their remarks, drawing condemnation from political opponents, Jewish groups and media commentators. Prime minister

Ross Clark

Starmer’s house-building plan could prove a hit with young voters

The biggest hinderance for the Conservatives is that they have nothing to offer young voters. The Labour party, however, just might. It seems that Keir Starmer will announce in his conference speech a plan to return to the idea of post-war new town corporations, which were able to compulsory-purchase land at agricultural value. It could – just possibly – mean a sharp fall in the price of new housing, massively expanding the number of first time buyers.  The great shame is that the Conservatives couldn’t bring themselves to introduce a similar policy You don’t have to be a socialist to feel aggrieved at your inability to afford a home, something that you

Stephen Daisley

What Britain should do about Hamas

London is, at last, beaming Israeli flags onto its most recognisable buildings. This is an improvement on how some of the city’s residents have been marking the mass murder of Jews but beyond that it’s empty symbolism, as these flag projections always are. They’ve become the most visible – and often the most substantive – western response to terrorism in the past decade or so. Perhaps it’s comforting, as you bleed out in a bullet-riddled Paris theatre or under the wheels of a truck in a Berlin Christmas market, to know that your country’s national standard will soon adorn the White House and the Palace of Westminster, but I doubt

Kate Andrews

Is the IMF right to be this pessimistic about the UK economy?

The International Monetary fund has published its biannual World Economic Outlook report – and it’s more bad news for the UK. While the IMF’s predictions for 2023 fall broadly in line with other forecasts – which show Germany having the most economic trouble this year – the IMF predicts that the UK will be an outlier come 2024. It expects the UK to grow by 0.6 per cent next year: the weakest growth among G7 nations and a downgrade of 0.4 per cent from its previous predictions. But there are reasons to be optimistic. Revisions to UK GDP of late has been more positive. Just last month the Office for National Statistics

Lloyd Evans

London’s ‘Free Palestine’ protest descended into farce

Central London succumbed last night to a mob of protestors celebrating the outrages perpetrated by Hamas on Saturday. That was the verdict of many news outlets. ‘Night of Fury’ ran the Daily Mail’s headline. ‘Police separate warring groups’ said the Daily Express.  The protest outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington lasted more than two hours and although it was boisterous it never, as far as I could see, turned ugly. About three thousand people blocked High Street Kensington and blew whistles, waved flags and handed out ‘Boycott Israeli Apartheid’ stickers. Pranksters attached them to the backs of policemen, for fun. The embassy itself, tucked away in a private avenue, was

Julie Burchill

The many, many faces of Keir Starmer

Is nomenclature destiny? If Keir Starmer had not been named for Keir Hardie, the founding father of the Labour party, but rather had his middle name ‘Rodney’ as his first, would he have still gone for the job as Labour leader? Might he have continued rather in the highly remunerative law career which made him Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013? Instead he became an MP in 2015, leader of the Labour party in 2020 and – if he doesn’t start killing kittens while tittering on TikTok in the interim – next prime minister of the United Kingdom in 2024. But there’s just something which doesn’t yell ‘Venceremos!’

Adi Koby

‘I just want to live’: A survivor’s account of the desert rave massacre

When I arrived at the all-night rave near the border with Gaza the party was in full swing. It was 5am and thousands of revellers had gathered in the desert. A few hours later, hundreds would be dead or injured, women raped, dozens of people missing – some snatched across the border. The first sign of trouble came at 6am. We heard the gunshots before we saw the terrorists. We ran to our car to escape. Bullets flew past our heads. Already there were many wounded and dead. But our road out of hell was blocked: hundreds of cars were all trying to leave, and off-road desert paths were impossible