Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Madeline Grant

Have you heard Keir Starmer’s grating new catchphrase?

‘That’s the difference a Labour government makes!’ The Prime Minister has taken to ending the self-congratulatory rants he deploys in lieu of answers in the House of Commons with this irritating catchphrase. As if the colony of gremlins currently running the country are to be advertised to us like 1950s household goods. One can imagine Sir Keir, strapped into a pinny, removing a burned cake from the oven, turning to the camera and saying, ‘that’s the difference a Labour government makes!’ He wheeled out this supremely annoying verbal tic a number of times at Prime Minister’s Questions. The problem with it, of course, is that most of the differences a

Isabel Hardman

Why Starmer is back to attacking the Tories at PMQs

Once again, the key takeaway from today’s Prime Minister’s Questions is what Keir Starmer didn’t say, rather than what he did. Kemi Badenoch wanted to use the session to tee up the Budget, or more specifically to tee up the tax rises that Labour is going to have to announce in that fiscal event. And Starmer wanted to use his answers to avoid the questions, while also trumpeting what he saw as Labour’s achievements on the economy. For once in a good long while, the Tories were getting their share of attacks from the Prime Minister too Badenoch was ready for Starmer dodging the question of whether he still stands

Steerpike

Watch: Starmer blasts Reform as 'Putin-friendly'

It was a punchy Prime Minister’s Questions session today, with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch landing some punches on the PM over the economy. Sir Keir Starmer refused to say whether Chancellor Rachel Reeves would break Labour’s manifesto commitment to not raise income tax, national insurance contributions or VAT, and would not be drawn on whether she would freeze thresholds in next month’s Budget. How interesting… Sir Ed Davey took a different tack, with the Lib Dem leader probing Starmer on Russia. Davey brought up the ex-Reform Welsh leader Nathan Gill who was found guilty of accepting bribes from Russia during his time in the European parliament. The Lib Dem man

Tim Shipman

Who will 'take back control' of the economy?

14 min listen

Kemi Badenoch continues to look more confident at PMQs – although there are always going to be some easy goals when you lead on the economy. Today she pressed the Prime Minister on Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance – which he dodged – as well as repeating her offer to work with Labour towards a cross-party solution to the welfare problem. What do we know about the Budget at the end of next month? And are we any closer to understanding what a ‘working person’ actually is?  Lucy Dunn speaks to Tim Shipman and Michael Simmons. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Euan McColm

Police Scotland have treated Susan Smith terribly

Susan Smith is a contemporary feminist heroine, a staunch defender of women’s rights against the increasingly unhinged demands of trans activists. As a founding member of the campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS), Smith was at the forefront of the fight against SNP plans to introduce self-ID. And, boy, was she effective. Along with her FWS colleagues Marion Calder and Trina Budge, Smith brought a case against the Scottish government which saw the supreme court rule in April that, when it comes to the law, sex is a matter of biology rather than feelings. That ruling, applicable across the UK, killed off the fantastical notion that trans-identifying men are women.

Brendan O’Neill

The Uxbridge killing is the final straw

His name was Wayne Broadhurst. He was 49 years old. He reportedly worked as a refuse collector. He was by all accounts well liked in his local town. And yesterday his life was ended in the most savage manner imaginable. He was stabbed to death as he walked his dog on a brisk, bright Tuesday afternoon. The suspect is a 22-year-old Afghan national, who came to Britain on the back of a lorry in 2020 and was subsequently granted asylum. Which politicians will say Wayne Broadhurst’s name today? Which of them will say his life mattered? The attack took place in chill, suburban Uxbridge, a part of outer London I

Ross Clark

Why was Hadush Kebatu paid £500 to leave Britain?

We don’t yet know what Rachel Reeves is planning to do with the welfare bill in her Budget. Will she propose more cuts to personal independence payments, or remove the two-child benefits limit? And what will she do about the new benefit which the Home Office has just invented? It is called – or at least I am calling it – Foreign Sex Offender Benefit, and it consists of a one-off payment of £500 in return for not complaining about being deported. That sum has just been made to Hadush Kebatu, the Epping sex offender who was jailed, accidentally released, captured and finally put on a plane back to Ethiopia

Nigel Jones

Major and Heseltine's attacks on Reform are hard to take seriously

That strange sound coming from their primeval swamp is the noise of two Tory dinosaurs trumpeting their disdain and disapproval of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. As if in coordinated stereo, former prime minister John Major, 82, and his erstwhile rival for the party leadership, Michael Heseltine, 92, have both sounded off with dire warnings to their old party against any idea forming a pact with Reform. ‘I want to expose Reform for what they are,’ Michael Heseltine said Major, whose lacklustre premiership ended in 1997 with his landslide defeat by Tony Blair’s New Labour, said that a pact with the rising populist party which is leading both Labour and the Tories in the

Amanda Spielman

Education officials are clueless about education

To understand why education reform – and school improvement – is so hard it helps to get inside the mind of the officials who are supposed to be driving higher standards. This week Jonathan Slater, a former Department for Education permanent secretary, published a report for UCL Policy Lab that perfectly illustrates many senior officials’ poor understanding of schools and of accountability in particular.  Slater is, admirably, determined to improve educational outcomes for poorer children. But in my view he is also appallingly ignorant about how to actually achieve improvement. He repeats the call – from those anxious to cover up under-performance – to replace Ofsted inspections (other than for

Steerpike

Hermer takes aim at Kemi over China spy case

Back to the collapsed China spy case. Attorney General Lord Hermer is this morning giving evidence to the joint committee on the national security strategy about the matter. He has been quizzed on the context of the case, how it could have been handled differently and the legislation involved. But while Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has come under scrutiny about its involvement, now Lord Hermer has pointed the finger at the Tories and, er, Kemi Badenoch. Hermer told the committee that the former Conservative government was not ambivalent about whether China was an enemy or not. The problem, he said, was that ‘the government’s position was that it was

Jake Wallis Simons

What is Hamas doing at a five-star hotel in Cairo?

Imagine the horror of discovering that you have been rubbing shoulders with terrorists. No, I’m not talking about those gullible souls who join the Gaza marches in London, but about the British airline crew who had an unfortunate brush with Hamas at a five-star Marriott hotel in Cairo. Full marks to the Daily Mail, whose veteran photographer Mark Large snapped several of the 154 jihadis freed by Israel as they lived it up at the inexplicably named Renaissance Cairo Mirage City. What’s a terrorist to do? You recruit suicide bombers, oversee a bus bombing or murder a police officer, get banged up, luck out with early release as part of an

Ross Clark

No wonder Labour has failed to build more houses

Should anyone really be surprised at the House Builders’ Federation’s (HBF) warning that the government has little chance of hitting its target of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of this Parliament? The target of 300,000 new homes a year has become something of a holy grail for previous governments, too. If Boris Johnson and, before him, Gordon Brown failed in their housebuilding ambitions, why did the present government think it would do any better? The mistake of former housing minister Angela Rayner and others in the government was to imagine that the main problem with low rates of house-building was Tory-voting nimbys in the shires who were

Philip Patrick

Is Japan's new PM the Thatcher to Trump's Reagan?

‘My wonderful ally and friend’ is how Japan’s brand new, and first female, prime minister Sanae Takaichi described President Trump in her recent tweet. As has been commented in Japan, this is a bit strong given that the two have spent a total of one day together (Trump is visiting as part of a tour of South Asian). The accompanying photo shows the two in couple-y proximity inside a US army helicopter at Yokosuka naval base. Trump looks relaxed and happy. Takaichi? Positively smitten. Could we be witnessing the emergence of a new geopolitical power couple in the mould of Thatcher and Reagan? Takaichi is known to have been inspired

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Hamas is testing Israel's patience

In the wake of yet another rupture in the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the region finds itself suspended in an unstable equilibrium – tense, volatile, but for now, deliberately held back from tipping into open war. On Tuesday, Hamas terrorists launched a coordinated double attack against Israeli troops operating inside the designated ‘yellow zone’ in Rafah – territory under clear IDF operational control. First came sniper fire, killing Master Sergeant (Res.) Yona Efraim Feldbaum. Minutes later, anti-tank missiles struck an engineering vehicle. The attack, both fatal and brazen, represented a clear violation of the ceasefire, exposing not only the presence of armed Hamas cells within IDF-controlled space but

Jonathan Spyer

Will the Gaza ceasefire hold?

In the latest blow to the beleaguered Gaza ceasefire, Israeli aircraft this week struck targets in Gaza City after Hamas carried out an attack using rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire on IDF soldiers in the Rafah area. One Israeli reserve soldier was killed in the Hamas attack. The exchanges of fire took place amid continued Hamas stalling on the issue of the return of the bodies of slain Israeli hostages.  There was widespread Israeli outrage this week after filmed evidence emerged showing Hamas fighters re-burying body parts of a murdered hostage whose corpse they claimed to have already returned. After burying the body parts of Ofer Tzarfati, 27, of Kibbutz Nir

Michael Gove

‘I was reported for bullying!’: inside the Home Office dysfunction & collapsed grooming gangs inquiry

55 min listen

To submit your urgent questions to Michael & Maddie, go to: spectator.co.uk/quiteright This week on Quite right!: the great Home Office meltdown. After a week of fiascos – from the accidental release of a convicted migrant to the collapse of the grooming gangs inquiry – Michael and Maddie ask: is the Home Office now beyond repair? Why is Britain’s most important department also its most dysfunctional? And what does it say about a civil service more obsessed with ‘listening circles’ and ‘wellbeing surveys’ than actually running the country? Then to Westminster, where Jess Phillips faces fury over the grooming gangs inquiry. Are ministers diluting the investigation to avoid awkward truths

Tuesday

Luke Lyman

How Javier Milei won

In this episode, US arts editor Luke Lyman is joined by Kate Andrews, formerly of The Spectator, to discuss President Javier Milei’s landslide victory in the Argentinian elections this week. The polls were wrong – how did the self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist survive? Plus, Luke and Kate discuss Kamala Harris’s suggestion that she could run again in 2028.

Steerpike

Tories throw kitchen sink at two-way Reform race

To Barnet, where a council by-election will take place on Thursday. Former councillor Joshua Conway lost his Hendon ward seat after a change of jobs made him ineligible to serve on the council. Six candidates are in the running for the council seat – but the contest is shaping up to be a two-horse race between the Conservatives and Reform. But Mr S has noticed some rather curious goings-on in the former Tory safe seat… It would appear that the Conservatives are funnelling resource after resource into the council by-election campaign in the form of, er, very senior politicians. Not only has the party bussed in swathes of activists, Tory

Steerpike

Kruger: Pirate ship Reform has an ill-disciplined crew

Another day, another Reform press conference. Today the central London meet-up saw former Conservative MP-turned-defector Danny Kruger take to the podium to set out his plans to prepare the party for government. As James Heale wrote for Coffee House, Kruger wants to reduce civil servant numbers, end leases on a selection of Whitehall premises and better empower parliament. But he also turned his attention to his own (new) party too – setting out something of a vision of Reform’s evolution. ‘I’m going to start by risking a metaphor,’ Kruger warned his crowd. He went on: People keep asking me how I feel having left the sinking ship of the Tory

James Heale

Migration, the customs union & a £40bn black hole?

14 min listen

There are reports that the OBR will downgrade Britain’s productivity growth forecasts, increasing the size of the black hole facing the Chancellor at the end of the month. This continues the spate of bad news for the Chancellor on the economy – but can we trust the figures? James Heale and Michael Simmons join Patrick Gibbons to talk about what this means ahead of the budget, whether anger over the money wasted on asylum hotels can be linked to the cost-of-living crisis and what Rachel Reeves is doing in Saudi Arabia this week. Plus: is a debate over the customs union really what Britain wants right now? Produced by Patrick