Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Wednesday

Alexander Horne

Keir Starmer's call for ECHR reform is a risky gamble

Ahead of a Council of Europe summit in Strasbourg today to discuss the future scope of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), Keir Starmer has called for ‘practical action’ to fix the asylum system and deal with irregular migration. In a joint letter with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, Starmer argued that ‘modernisation’ of the ECHR is essential and that the Convention system needs to ‘evolve to reflect the challenges of the 21st century’. The two leaders acknowledged that responsible progressive governments need to ‘control our borders’ in order to ‘protect our democracies’. This is a tacit admission that Labour is concerned that Conservative and Reform UK proposals

Terry Barnes

Will Australia's social media ban work?

It’s all too easy to get hooked by the online world, to fall headlong into it, to spend hour upon hour immersed in it. Cyberspace has its good, but also much bad. Staying in control of their social media lives is difficult enough for many adults, but for children it can be an especially dangerous world in which to dwell. Too often children are glued to their phones and devices, staring, scrolling, disengaged from the world around them. Too many children are exposed to online harm, including bullying, grooming and shaming. Appallingly, too many children are emotionally and psychologically damaged from social media exposure. Terribly, and tragically, some have taken

Owen Matthews

Europe’s kind words and bear hugs can't save Zelensky

If bear hugs were army divisions and brave words cash euros, Volodymyr Zelensky would have ended his tour of European capitals this week the best-armed and best-funded leader in the world. Zelensky faces the danger that giving too much to Putin would make Ukraine ungovernable ‘We stand with Ukraine,’ vowed Sir Keir Starmer after hosting a summit for President Zelensky and top European allies at Downing Street on Monday. ‘We support you in the conflict and support you in the negotiations to make sure that this is a just and lasting settlement.’ Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that ‘nobody should doubt our support for Ukraine’ and that ‘the destiny of

Joanna Williams

Harry Potter doesn't need a trigger warning

Take my advice and steer clear of your local university. It is not just the flu that’s spreading on campus. Last month, an outbreak of trigger warnings occurred at the University of Essex. Up they popped, warning literature students about ‘violence, slavery, racism, and suicide’ in Hamlet, A Clockwork Orange and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Those infected showed signs of ignorance and hysteria. Now the plague has spread to Glasgow. Students at this ancient university are being warned that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first in J. K. Rowling’s series about the boy wizard, contains ‘outdated attitudes, abuse and language’. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Treasure Seekers

Michael Simmons

Post-Budget briefing: what will it mean for your finances?

40 min listen

In the wake of an extraordinary Budget – leaked an hour before the Chancellor addressed Parliament – The Spectator brings clarity to a turbulent political and take stock of how the announcements will impact you. Michael Simmons speaks with John Porteous of Charles Stanley and James Nation, formerly of the Treasury and No. 10, to discuss how the events unfolded and the deeper implications for long-term financial planning, taxation and market confidence. The conversation explores whether the government’s approach represents a credible fiscal strategy, what savers and investors should infer from changes to ISAs and pensions, and whether concerns about a growing UK ‘brain drain’ are justified. This podcast was

Michael Gove

Has Reform peaked? – racism allegations & Farage's toughest week yet

45 min listen

After a summer in which Nigel Farage seemed to bend the news cycle to his will, Michael and Maddie ask whether the party’s momentum is slipping. Do the allegations dredged up from Farage’s schooldays mark a decisive turning point – or, perversely, strengthen his outsider appeal? And with questions over Reform’s election spending, defections from the Conservatives, and the small matter of finding 500 people to staff a government, is the insurgent right entering its moment of vulnerability? Then: two stories that lay bare a crisis in women’s healthcare. Baroness Amos’s damning interim review of maternity services and the astonishing employment tribunal ruling in the Sandy Peggie case raise the

Tuesday

James Heale

Farage and Bardella's small boats pact

What will European politics look like in 2029? Nigel Farage is hoping that it resembles something like the pictures he posed for in London today, shaking hands and flashing smiles with Jordan Bardella, the president of France’s National Rally (RN). Both men are part of a pan-continental trend of radical parties challenging their established rivals to gain power in the years ahead. For Bardella, the crunch year is 2027, when President Macron’s term in the Élysée is up. Polls show Bardella is the RN frontrunner, with Reform keen to learn the lessons of best practice. The two men had never met before but they shared a convivial lunch at 5

Steerpike

Stella Creasy’s bizarre job advert

Labour MP Stella Creasy is hiring for a senior campaigns manger, and the job specifications are quite something. The Walthamstow parliamentarian is looking for someone who can help her ‘make change happen’ (where have we heard that before?), is opposed to ‘rage bait TikToks’ and understands why politicians have their ‘flaws and frustrations’. Handy knowledge if you’re planning to work for a Labour MP, eh? The rather bizarre advert is offering a salary of between £45,000-£50,000 a year for a ‘creative and campaigning’ worker who enjoys using Canva. The description lists the following attributes as desirable: An understanding of why ragebait tik tok videos are no substitute for evidence and

Isabel Hardman

From grooming gangs to maternity safety: how the British state is failing

Is anyone happy with the latest maternity safety report, published by Baroness Amos today? The former UN diplomat says the standard of care that she has found so far in the NHS has been ‘much worse’ than she’d anticipated. This is quite striking, given the appalling findings of the many reviews that have already taken place into failings in maternity units across England. You might expect this review to merely have confirmed what has already been uncovered. From grooming gangs to maternity safety to unsafe housing, the intrays of Whitehall are groaning under ‘recommendations’ But many campaigners have responded to Amos’s interim report with a weariness and frustration. Victims of

Druin Burch

Is racism to blame for the NHS maternity crisis?

‘Nothing prepared me,’ said Baroness Amos as she released her ‘reflections and initial impressions’ about England’s maternity and neonatal services, ‘for the scale of unacceptable care that women and families have received, and continue to receive, the tragic consequences for their babies, and the impact on their mental, physical and emotional wellbeing.’ Amos’s words today paint a bleak picture of English maternity services, staffed by people who often don’t care, don’t listen, and deliver worse outcomes for the working class and people who aren’t white. It’s a picture that many parents – including myself – recognise. But is it right to suggest that black mums are being discriminated by the

Steerpike

Plaid and Welsh Labour strike Senedd deal

December is a time for spirits aplenty. But has the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come visited early this year? Over in Cardiff Bay, it seems that a deal has been struck to pass a budget in the Welsh parliament. After a humiliating thumping in the Caerphilly by-election, the incumbent Labour government currently lacks a majority to push through its legislation. But now Plaid Cymru has ridden to the rescue. The two sides are believed to have sketched out an agreement, which should mean Labour avoids a defeat when their spending plans are put to a vote in January. This is a likely precursor to what we can expect next

Steerpike

Badenoch takes aim at Britain’s youth

Christmas is nearly upon us – but there is no sign that Kemi Badenoch is ready to enjoy a rest. The Leader of the Opposition this morning held her second London press conference in as many days. The reason? A big pitch on welfare – just, er, a fortnight after her last such speech. But party spinners insisted that Badenoch had Some News to commit. And it turns out, excitingly, the Tory leader has, at last, found the dead weight dragging down Britain: young people. Well, it’s one way to get the 18 to 24-year-olds on side… Badenoch delivered some tough love for the nation’s youth whom, she suggested, were responsible for Britain’s stagnation. She told hacks that Gen Z

Brendan O’Neill

Why were these Afghan rapists even in Britain?

Everything about that rape of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa is horrifying. First and foremost, the barbaric act itself. It took place on 10 May. Just after 9pm the girl was separated from her friends and abducted by Jan Jahanzeb, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker. He frogmarched her to a darkened park with the intention of sexually assaulting her. If officialdom had done what voters have begged it to, and properly policed our borders, these young men might not have made it here Then there was Jahanzeb’s sickening phone call to his friend, Israr Niazal. ‘Come quick’, he said. Come and help me rape this girl – that’s what

Max Jeffery

Who was ‘Stakeknife’?

Freddie Scappaticci was a thickset man with dark features and a walrus moustache. He was born in Belfast in 1946, joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army when the Troubles began and by the 1980s was a senior member of the organisation, whose job was to hunt for British spies. It has been widely believed for years that Scappaticci was himself a spy for the British government, operating under the codename ‘Stakeknife’. The government has always said it could ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (NCND) this suggestion. Today, Operation Kenova, which has spent nine years investigating Stakeknife’s crimes, urged the government to officially reveal the identity of this ruthless undercover operative. He

Mark Galeotti

Is a Ukraine peace deal inching closer?

13 min listen

This week Keir Starmer hosted the French President and the German Chancellor in Downing Street as the E3 moved closer to a landmark agreement: seizing around €100 billion in frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort. It’s a dramatic shift that has soothed some fears in Kyiv – but it has also reopened long-running arguments in Europe about property rights, sanctions and how far the West is willing to go. What does this bold move mean for the conflict, for Ukraine’s future and for Europe’s relationship with Washington? Meanwhile, as US–Russia shuttle diplomacy intensifies, Donald Trump’s oscillating positions continue to unsettle allies. Are we inching closer to a peace

Jonathan Sacerdoti

Piers Morgan fell into Nick Fuentes’s trap

When Michael Gove introduced me to Piers Morgan last week at the Spectator Christmas reception, Morgan seized my hand and beamed, ‘I know Jonathan. We’re old friends.’ This was generous of him, not least because it isn’t true. We’d met once before, briefly. But some months earlier I had written a critique of his YouTube show for The Spectator which, to judge by his response, he did not enjoy. He called me a ‘disingenuous twerp’ on X and blocked me there. He then wrote a piece in the magazine entitled, ‘In defence of Piers Morgan, by Piers Morgan’. I mention this not to litigate any grievance, but in the interest of full

Steerpike

Is Huw Edwards plotting a comeback?

To Huw Edwards, who has resurfaced on social media to post a professionally shot black-and-white portrait in what some assume is a bid to rehabilitate himself. But it will take the former BBC star more than a new headshot to convince people he has changed: the family of a teenager groomed by Edwards has blasted the ex-presenter as ‘shameless’ over the photo. Edwards was handed a six-month prison sentence last year – suspended for two years – after admitting three counts of making indecent images of children. He posted the picture to just under 500 followers, some of whom left nice comments underneath, with one reading: ‘Hope you are enjoying

Gareth Roberts

Why Labour’s plotters are doomed to fail

Rewatching the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express the other night, I was struck by the incredible organisational skills of Mrs Harriet Hubbard, played by Lauren Bacall. (Spoilers on the line ahead). Mrs Hubbard assembles an extremely disparate team of 12 potential killers with a grudge against the victim, books them all on a transcontinental train crossing where they all pretend not to know each other, and orchestrates a stabbing party, a dodeca-murder – improvising wildly as she goes because of the sheer last-minute bad luck of Hercule Poirot being berthed right next door to the scene of the crime. How did she go about coordinating this scenario, I

Freddy Gray

Does Trump’s National Security Strategy make sense?

30 min listen

Former senior adviser to US defence secretary Pete Hegseth Dan Caldwell joins Americano to dissect the Trump administration’s sweeping new National Security Strategy — from pulling back in Europe and refocusing on the Western Hemisphere, to managing tensions with China and the fallout from recent strikes on Iran. What’s behind the new reforms?

David Spencer

Mark Rowley may have blown his chance to reform the Met

When the history books reflect on the commissionership of the Metropolitan Police Chief Sir Mark Rowley, there is a risk – with less than two years of his five-year term to go – that the headline will be ‘an opportunity wasted’.  Appointed in the midst of too many crises to recount, late 2022 was the chance for the force’s new leadership team to turn the Met into a genuinely effective crime-fighting machine. But this isn’t what happened. Despite falls in knife crime offences this year compared to last, in the last full financial year the Met recorded far higher rates (per 100,000 of the population) of knife crime compared to other areas: 17.8 per