Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Labour has bottled it – what happens next?

Where are we then, after the most consequential week in British politics since the last one? Keir Starmer no longer commands a majority in the House of Commons on key issues he cares about, the basic requirement which gives prime ministers their constitutional legitimacy. That much became clear on Thursday when Angela Rayner and other Labour MPs sided with the Tories to insist that the Intelligence and Security Committee should decide – not the cabinet secretary – which documents on the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States should be released. So Labour has a working majority of 156 but Starmer no longer commands it. He

Piers Morgan

Piers Morgan, Melanie McDonagh, Matt Ridley & Rachel Johnson

24 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Piers Morgan reveals what Donald Trump told him from his hospital bed; Melanie McDonagh ponders the impermanence of email, amidst the Peter Mandelson scandal; Matt Ridley argues that polar bears – which are currently thriving – pose problems for climate enthusiasts; and finally, Rachel Johnson attends the memorial service for Dame Jilly Cooper – and says she made a fool out of herself. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Piers Morgan, Melanie McDonagh, Matt Ridley & Rachel Johnson

Oscar Edmondson

Keir's worst week – but Kemi's best?

10 min listen

The sun is setting on Keir Starmer’s worst week in No. 10 – but potentially Kemi’s best. We go into the weekend with MPs publicly calling for his most senior aide, Morgan McSweeney, to step down because of his role in the botched vetting of Peter Mandelson, and with huge questions remaining about how much the Prime Minister knew about Mandelson’s association with Epstein. All of this means that the upcoming by-election on the Labour party’s patch in Gorton and Denton is poised very precariously. Meanwhile, Kemi has seized the opportunity to capitalise on Labour’s woes – but are she cutting through enough? And with her position looking more assured,

Mark Nayler

What Spain’s social media ban gets wrong

Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez is proposing a ban on under-16s using social media, following the example set by Australia last year. Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai earlier this week, Sánchez said: ‘Today our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone… We will protect [them] from the digital Wild West.’ The Spanish premier’s announcement comes at a time when several other European nations are also attempting to combat the harmful effects of social media on children. France’s ban on under-15s using social media is expected to become law later this year, while Greece, Portugal and Denmark have signalled their intention

Yesterday

6 February 2026

Lisa Haseldine

Who shot Russia’s intelligence chief in Moscow?

One of Russia’s top military generals, Vladimir Alekseev, is in a critical condition after being shot while leaving his Moscow apartment earlier this morning. Lieutenant General Alekseev, a deputy director in Russia’s military intelligence agency – still best-known by its former acronym, the GRU – has been taken to hospital following reports he was shot multiple times in the back in the lobby of his apartment block in the north of the city. The assailant fled the scene immediately after the shooting, which took place shortly after 7 a.m. local time, and reportedly has yet to be caught. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack yet. Nevertheless, this hasn’t

Freddy Gray

How deep does Epstein's network go?

23 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by historian Andrew Lownie, to react to the latest release of Epstein emails – and how they are bringing down a global network of elites. They discuss whether Epstein was a Soviet spy, the renewed pressure on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and if politicians will hide behind ‘national security’ to prevent the release of more files.

Steerpike

Mandy’s PR firm plunged into crisis

Oh Mandy. You came and you took and kept taking. For it is not just the Labour party wrestling with the fallout from the Peter Mandelson scandal. Global Counsel – the lobbying firm which he co-founded in 2010 with his former aide Benjamin Wegg-Prosser – is battling to cope with the wave of bad PR which has followed Mandelson’s humiliation. And now, amid reports of firms looking at cutting ties over Mandelson’s stake in GC, its leadership has decided to act. Wegg-Prosser is out as CEO, according to an email by chairman Archie Norman, first seen by Guido Fawkes. It says that: I am writing to inform you that we

Edward Howell

The Chagos deal has cemented Britain’s global decline

For a moment, it looked as if this tragic inevitability would not happen. But yesterday evening, Donald Trump gave the green light for Sir Keir Starmer’s disastrous Chagos Islands deal following ‘productive discussions’ between the two leaders. As a result, the UK has moved one step closer to realising its greatest strategic blunder in history. The ceding of a vital British sovereign strategic asset to Mauritius, which so many had tirelessly campaigned to avoid, looks set to become a reality. For the US president, his decision to back the deal was a volte face from a fortnight ago when he rightly derided the deal as an ‘act of GREAT STUPIDITY’.

Steerpike

Labour MPs demand McSweeney’s head

It’s all gone a little bit Pete Tong for Sir Keir and the gang in No. 10. No acts of seppuku have yet been committed – but it is surely only a matter of time before heads are offered up on chargers. Currently, it is Morgan McSweeney, the Downing Street chief of staff, who is primed to be in the firing line. The Labour backbenches are screaming for his blood, given both the chaotic state of No. 10 and McSweeney’s extensive links to Peter Mandelson. Most are couching their demands using couched terms about a ‘reset’… In the last 48 hours, various MPs have taken to social and traditional media

Owen Matthews

Why is America determined to pick a fight with Poland?

Until very recently it was hard to find more stalwart allies of America in Europe than the Poles. Poland was an early supporter of Washington’s policy to expand Nato and actively pushed for a stronger US role in central and eastern Europe. The Poles also stood up as an enthusiastic member of every US-led military coalition, taking leading roles in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was to Warsaw that US President Joe Biden travelled – twice – in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to give barnstorming speeches affirming that America would stand by Kyiv. All the more surprising, then, that the recently appointed US ambassador to Warsaw chose to

Brendan O’Neill

The Epstein scandal has morphed into a moral panic

That’s it, I’m out. I’m finished with the Epstein scandal. This morning I read about a man who is on the cusp of cancellation because he once sent a flirtatious email to Ghislaine Maxwell, years before her crimes were known about. This is getting ridiculous. It feels like MeToo on steroids. There’s a medieval vibe of finger-pointing and rumour-mongering The man is Casey Wasserman. He’s chair of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. And there are hollers for him to stand down. All because he once got digitally horny with Ms Maxwell. ‘I think of you all the time’, he wrote in one email. ‘What do I have to do to

Mark Galeotti

Can Russia trust its old ‘little brother’ China?

The lovefest between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin continued this week. A video call on Wednesday saw the Russian president cooing that, “for Russian-Chinese relations, it’s safe to say that any time of year is spring” and his Chinese counterpart telling his “old, dear friend” that their two countries needed a “grand plan” further to deepen ties between them. Of course, the realities are a little less harmonious. Beijing is supplanting Moscow in regions where it once held sway Russia’s need for energy sales, industrial machinery and dual-use equipment (in other words, things that are not weapons, but still of value in war, such as trucks and bandages) has made

Jonathan Spyer

Trump must help Iranians bring down the Islamic regime

With diplomatic talks between the US and Iran set to take place in Muscat, Oman, today, the prospects for de-escalation between the two countries appear slim to non-existent. Teheran is clear that it is prepared to discuss only its nuclear programme and has so far refused the White House’s demands to put its ballistic missile programme, support for regional proxies, and internal repression on the agenda. With diplomacy on the verge of faltering, preparations for an American military strike are proceeding apace. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group has now reached Middle Eastern waters and the area for which United States central command is responsible. Additional military assets – F15E

Michael Gove

Q&A: Is Rishi Sunak English – or British?

25 min listen

To submit your urgent questions to Michael and Maddie, visit spectator.com/quiteright. In this week’s Q&A, Michael and Maddie unpack the controversy over whether Rishi Sunak is English or British – and why a debate about national identity has become so politically charged. Is Englishness a civic identity, an ethnic one, or something more elusive? And why has the Labour party increasingly reached for accusations of racism when the question is raised at all? Also this week: are claims that Britain is drifting towards civil unrest alarmist scaremongering – or a warning we should take seriously? And finally, they reflect on the earliest political moments that shaped them – from Margaret

William Moore

AI will bring down Keir Starmer – if Peter Mandelson doesn’t first

43 min listen

Is Britain ready for Artificial Intelligence? Well, bluntly, ‘no’; that’s the verdict if you read several pieces in this week’s Spectator – from Tim Shipman, Ross Clark and Palantir UK boss Louis Mosley – focused on how Britain is uniquely ill-placed to take advantage of the next industrial revolution. Tim Shipman’s cover piece focuses on how the Labour government is approaching AI – there are some positives but, overall, Britain’s creaky bureaucracy is blocking progress. To discuss this week’s Edition, features editor William Moore is joined by political editor Tim Shipman, commissioning editor Lara Brown and the Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine. Are you a tech-optimist or part of the

Thursday

5 February 2026

Isabel Hardman

Do MPs really want to save the Houses of Parliament?

Is there a building in Britain more important than the Palace of Westminster? Depending on who you listen to today, parliament is so important that MPs and peers really must agree to an expensive restoration that would see the Palace being emptied and rebuilt either in stages or all at once – or is it so important that MPs and peers should resist this dangerous plan with all their might? The building is crumbling, at risk of a catastrophic and preventable fire, and has neither proper sanitation nor adequate access. Everyone accepts those facts, but what MPs cannot agree on is what to do about them. Today the restoration and

Stephen Daisley

Why Labour should stand by Starmer

Labour MPs want shot of Keir Starmer over the Peter Mandelson scandal. There is nothing new in that sentence until the mention of the former ambassador. Mandelson’s reported disclosure of government information to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is the latest pretext, but before that it was because he rebuffed the Waspi women, and before that because Andy Burnham wanted the job, and before that because he’s sunk Labour’s chances ahead of May’s Scottish elections, and if you keep going back there was Gaza and gender and the winter fuel payment debacle. The experience of government is not what Labour MPs expected. The Labour party is a mass-membership moral superiority

Christopher Snowdon

Netflix’s documentary poses some hard questions for Lucy Letby’s supporters

I often tell friends they should read up on the Lucy Letby case because it is not going away. People will be talking about it for decades, possibly centuries. Even if she confesses, some people won’t believe her. A working understanding of the events at the Countess of Chester hospital in the mid-2010s will soon be as essential to social discourse as a rudimentary knowledge of the Premier League table, so you might as well do the prep now. The lies. The disturbing comments. The gaslighting. The falsification of medical records. The bizarre scribbling The case is so vast that it can swallow you up. The first trial took ten months

Michael Simmons

The Bank cuts growth prospects by a quarter

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has just voted to hold interest rates at 3.75 per cent. While market expectations and pundit’s predictions overwhelmingly foresaw a hold, the vote came in slightly tighter than expected at five against four. The decision came alongside new forecasts from the Bank that predict inflation falling back to the 2 per cent target from April, in what will be a relief to the government and indeed the rest of us. In even better news for Rachel Reeves, in the Bank’s ‘Monetary Policy Report’, also released today, it gave the government some credit for ‘developments in energy prices including from Budget 2025’. Better

Stephen Pollard

Watch out for Kemi Badenoch

The political focus is, quite rightly, now on Sir Keir Starmer. You hardly need me to point out how tenuous his hold on office now is, or why. But there is one key aspect to that ‘why’ which has been relatively unremarked on. Yesterday Kemi Badenoch scored a direct hit on the Prime Minister when she asked him at PMQs, repeatedly, if he knew when he appointed Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the US about his ongoing friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after the paedophile’s initial conviction. Starmer twice evaded the question; it was only when Badenoch came back with it for a third time that he made the admission that

James Heale

Could the herd move on Starmer?

11 min listen

James Heale, Tim Shipman and Oscar Edmondson discuss the continuing fallout over the Mandelson scandal. The mood amongst Labour MPs is pretty dire – following a bruising PMQs and a government climbdown over the release of Mandelson’s vetting files – but is it bad enough for Labour MPs to challenge Starmer? And could his chief of staff – and close Mandelson ally – Morgan McSweeney be in the firing line? How long ago the decision to block Andy Burnham seems now…

Vincent MacMaster

How Starmer will still keep us in the dark on the Epstein scandal

In a display of candour that was as refreshing as it was deeply alarming, the Prime Minister stood at the despatch box yesterday and confirmed what many had whispered but few expected him to breathe: he knew. He knew that Peter Mandelson had maintained his personal friendship with the late Jeffrey Epstein well after the financier’s conviction for soliciting prostitution from a child. And yet, with the nonchalance of counsel advancing an implausible brief in court, the Prime Minister sent the Dark Lord to Washington anyway. If the legislative shackles weren’t enough, the administrative ones are even tighter The Prime Minister’s admission was met with hushed awe in the Commons.

Steerpike

Reform unveil their Welsh leader

With 91 days to go until the Senedd elections, Reform are polling second – so it’s probably about time that they actually unveiled their leader. At a press conference in Newport this morning, Nigel Farage produced not just one rabbit but two. First, there was the long-awaited defection of James Evans after his expulsion from the Tories last month. Then, there was the announcement of Dan Thomas as the actual leader. ‘Who?’ asked most of the accompanying hacks… Thomas might lack a national profile but he boasts both roots in the Valleys and experience of local government. A former Barnet Council leader from 2019 to 2022, he switched to Reform

Eliot Wilson

Parliament’s modernisers have been foiled

Parliament is pointless without debate. It is there in the definition of the word itself: the Old French parlement derives from parler, to talk or discuss. Parliament is a forum in which our elected representatives debate how we live as a society and a nation. It has not been as effective or interested in that central purpose as it should for some years. This week, however, a House of Commons select committee drew a line in the sand and prevented debate being further marginalised. Being in the Chamber and participating in the main business of the House should never be seen by MPs as ‘wasting’ their time In December 2024,