Politics Archives

Monday

23 Jun 2025

Oleg Dunda

It’s not foolish to believe Putin will attack Nato

Many in Europe may still believe that a Russian invasion of one or more Nato countries is unlikely, if not absurd. This view seems convenient, but it is increasingly divergent from reality. Confidence in the alliance’s principle of so-called collective security is, sadly, becoming not a deterrent but an incentive to aggression by Moscow. The idea floating in the air in Europe seems to be the following: ‘Russia is bogged down in Ukraine. How can it threaten Britain or the Baltic states?’. This is rhetoric from another era. War is no longer what it used to be. And neither is Russia. The future invasion of the Baltic states will not

Steerpike

Defence minister refuses to answer Iran question three times

It seems the Labour lot has got themselves in quite a tizzy over events in the Middle East – and this morning saw an excruciating interview in which the defence minister couldn’t answer the most straightforward question about Iran. Luke Pollard gave a car crash interview earlier today on Sky News, where the Labour minister appeared stumped over a simple question about Britain’s stance on Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran. If he can’t answer on this, what does he know? Pollard squirmed as Sky’s Wilfred Frost quizzed him three times about whether the Uk government is ‘disappointed’ in President Trump’s move to strike Iran. Asked whether No. 10 is

Mark Galeotti

Putin spies an opportunity in Trump’s attack on Iran

Is Donald Trump’s decision to join attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities an embarrassment, a provocation or an opportunity for Russia? The honest answer is that it is all three, but likely more of an opportunity than anything else, if Moscow is willing to play it cool. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is in Moscow today to meet with Vladimir Putin, and before he set out, he was trying to sound bullish, asserting that ‘Russia is a friend of Iran’, and that he expected concrete measures in support. Yet one can question how far the two countries were ever truly allies, so much as frenemies who shared a series of common

Daniel Thorpe

The Isis threat to Syria hasn’t gone away

Just as things were starting to get better in Syria, an attack against the Christian community has shaken the country. In the suburbs of Damascus, a suspected Isis member entered the Mar Elias Church during Sunday mass, opened fire on the Greek Orthodox worshipers and then detonated a suicide vest. So far, the Syrian Health Ministry has confirmed at least 20 dead and 52 injured. As I arrived at the scene, armed members of the security forces were closing off the premises, trying to herd away the anxious locals who had gathered. Rubble and shattered glass on the streets, inside pools of blood. The Syrian White Helmets were picking through

Eliot Wilson

Is Britain ready to defend itself against Iranian reprisals?

Operation Midnight Hammer, America’s air and missile strikes against Iran at the weekend, did not involve the United Kingdom. Although the Prime Minister was informed of the military action in advance, there was not, so far as we know, any request from the United States for British approval, participation or support, and Sir Keir Starmer continues to call for a de-escalation of the conflict. There had been a great deal of suggestion that the UK might be drawn into action against Iran. The most likely scenario was thought to be a request from Washington to use Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, the maritime and air base America leases from Britain

Sunday

22 Jun 2025

James Heale

Farage’s latest hero? Benjamin Disraeli

At 9 a.m on Monday morning, Nigel Farage will march into a central London venue to make one of his most audacious speeches yet. Since returning as leader of Reform UK last May, he has trodden carefully when it comes to policy. Farage quickly canned the party’s manifesto after the election, preferring to focus on a few key areas: lifting the two-child benefit cap, hiking the annual income tax personal allowance to £20,000, cutting council waste, abolishing Net Zero and renationalising steel. But his next move is more original in its thinking. Farage will announce a new policy for ‘non-doms’: British residents whose permanent home for tax purposes is outside

James Heale

Keir Starmer is not having a good war

This is not been Keir Starmer’s finest week on the world stage. At the G7 on Tuesday, the Prime Minister breezily dismissed talk that the Americans would shortly join Israeli’s attack on Iran. ‘There’s nothing the President said that suggests he’s about to get involved in this conflict,’ he insisted. ‘On the contrary, throughout the dinner yesterday, I was sitting right next to President Trump, so I’ve no doubt in my mind the level of agreement there was.’ Within hours, Trump left Alberta to return to the White House Situation Room and approve the final attack plan for Iran. Then there was the row over whether US bombers would launch

Nigel Jones

Nigel Farage is looking unstoppable

Opinion polls are notoriously a snapshot rather than a prediction, but the latest Ipsos survey of more than 1,100 voters should put a huge spring in Nigel Farage’s step, and terrify both the Tories and Labour, who are placed nine points behind the surging populists. The poll gives the highest ever level of support for Reform The poll states that if a general election were held tomorrow, a Reform government would be elected on 34 per cent of the vote, putting Reform leader Nigel Farage in 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister with a massive majority. Labour would be reduced to 25 per cent, and the Tories to just 15 per

Andrew Tettenborn

How the ‘experts’ got the grooming gang scandal so wrong

At this stage we can’t predict what the government’s new grooming gangs inquiry will say. But one thing is overwhelmingly likely: many will feel the heat. This includes police who stood back in the face of clear patterns of child sexual exploitation by young Pakistani men to avoid racial tension; social workers desperate not to offend their largely unassimilated Muslim clients; and councillors and politicians who said ‘move on, nothing to see here’ because of fears that Muslim voters might disown anyone who rocked the multicultural boat. With few exceptions, academics were some of the keenest to suppress discussion about groooming gang abusers’ origins or ethnicity Even more interesting, however,

Tilly MacDonald

Please don’t give my husband longer paternity leave

Dads could soon get more time off to look after their babies if a group of MPs have their way. Britain has among the ‘worst statutory leave offers for fathers and other parents in the developed world’, the chairwoman of the Women and Equalities Committee, Sarah Owen, has said. The committee called on the government to consider raising paternity pay to the level of maternity pay in the first six weeks after a baby is born. Deloitte has gone further, offering male staff six months off. As a mother on maternity leave, I can get on board with six weeks; but six months? Let me be the first to say:

Bartek Staniszewski

Why conservatives should embrace their Christian heritage

The heydays of Christian influence over European politics may seem long gone. In the UK, after the most recent general election, four-tenths of all MPs took secular affirmations – up from less than a quarter in 2019 – while in Europe, parties with explicitly Christian foundations often seem embarrassed about their religious heritage as they tumble down the polls. Yet Christians have not stopped turning up for those parties. To play to its strengths and resolve its identity crisis, the centre-right should embrace its Christian inheritance. By returning to this Christian inheritance, the centre-right can offer a vision that is compelling to all and re-establish its dominance Even as the

Mark Taubert

The truth about palliative care

Watching MPs debate the Terminally Ill Adults Bill in recent weeks has left me and fellow clinicians wondering how many of them have been to a specialist palliative care unit. It has raised a concern about whether people understand what palliative care actually provides, and what we clinicians actually do. How many people have an idea about what hospices and palliative care teams can help with, and would knowing more about such services strengthen calls to make them core parts of NHS provision? Palliative care and assisted dying have seemed in opposition in recent weeks, with people picking sides as though they were rival football teams. I work in a

James Heale

America hits Iran’s nuclear sites

Just before 1 a.m GMT on Sunday morning, Donald Trump announced that the United States had bombed three nuclear sites in Iran: Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan sites. It followed a tense 72 hours in which senior White House advisers became increasingly convinced that diplomatic channels had been exhausted, with military action the only available recourse to eliminate Iran’s nuclear programme. Following the attack, Trump declared: We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on

Saturday

21 Jun 2025

Stephen Daisley

Stephen Fry could do with a lesson in ‘radicalisation’

Stephen Fry has accused J.K. Rowling of being ‘inflammatory and contemptuous’, ‘mocking’ and adding to ‘a terribly distressing time for trans people’. Fry, who narrated the Harry Potter audiobooks, has damned their author for saying ‘cruel’ and ‘wrong’ things and for failing to ‘disavow some of the more revolting and truly horrible, destructive – violently destructive – things that people say’. He suspects that she’s been ‘radicalised by Terfs’, charged her with kicking up ‘a hornet’s nest of transphobia which has been entirely destructive’, and dismissed her as ‘a lost cause’. Might I interrupt this lengthy damnatio memoriae to point out that Fry is supposed to be Rowling’s friend and

Steerpike

RAF Brize Norton chief’s views on patriotism revealed

On Thursday night, a group of Palestine Action protestors managed to enter RAF Brize Norton, spraying paint into a pair of Voyager jet engines and leaving the military base without being caught. The Prime Minister has since called it ‘vandalism’ and there has been talk of proscribing Palestine Action. But Mr S wants to know how they managed to get onto the base in the first place. The protesters videoed themselves on scooters, zooming about the runway, seemingly without a single soldier noticing them. It’s a major embarrassment, not just for the military but for the country – especially at a time of heightened global tensions. If some keffiyeh-wearing hippies can

James Heale

Tories will remember this assisted dying vote

‘I judge a man by one thing, which side would he have liked his ancestors to fight on at Marston Moor?’ So said Isaac Foot, the Liberal MP and father of Michael. For some Tories, both in and out of parliament, Friday’s assisted dying debate will carry a similar weight in judgements of character. Some 80 per cent of Tory MPs voted against Kim Leadbeater’s Bill at Third Reading, with 92 against, 20 in favour and five registered abstentions. Of the 25-strong new intake, elected last year, just four backed Leadbeater’s Bill: Aphra Brandreth, Peter Bedford, Ashley Fox and Neil Shastri-Hurst. Social conservatives note that the Tories were much more

Dan Hitchens

Could the House of Lords block the assisted suicide bill?

Could the House of Lords block the assisted suicide bill, which was approved by the Commons yesterday? It would be pretty unusual for the Lords to do so. But then nothing about the bill has been usual. Proponents like to compare Kim Leadbeater’s bill to the big private member’s bills of the 60s on abortion, homosexuality and the death penalty. One difference is that those bills cleared the Commons with huge, commanding majorities. This bill was dragged over the finish line by a very small margin – just 23 votes – and amid a stream of defections from yes to no. In the seven months since the Commons first debated

Edward Stringer

Let’s call Palestine Action’s RAF attack what it is: sabotage

It might be a little unfair to pick on Lisa Nandy – who was bounced on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday morning and who, to be fair, did condemn unequivocally the actions of the Palestine Action cadres who attacked two of the 14 Voyager aircraft that form the Royal Air Force’s strategic tanker force. But her extemporised response betrayed annoyance at ‘choices’ over a protest before, correctly, reminding the audience that this was about national security. And it certainly is. These aircraft are vital to our national defence. They refuel the air-defence fighters that patrol the thousands of square miles of the airspace over the North Atlantic that is our

Ian Williams

Why is China rushing to grow its nuclear arsenal?

China is growing its nuclear arsenal at a faster pace than any other country on the planet, according to new figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). It estimates that Beijing now has more than 600 nuclear warheads and is adding about 100 per year to its stockpile. That means that by 2035, it will have more than 1,500 warheads, still only a third of the arsenal of each of Russia and the US, but nevertheless an enormous increase and a marked shift away from its proclaimed policy of ‘minimum deterrence’. To facilitate this expanding arsenal, China is building fields of new missile silos in its western desert

Senay Boztas

Is Dutch tolerance dying?

Campaigners across southern Europe are protesting against ‘touristification’. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, wealthy expats are in the firing line. Businesses in Amsterdam could be asked to foot the bill for local housing if they employ highly-skilled internationals. Alongside paranoia about asylum seekers, there is a rising feeling that expats and even holidaymakers are unwelcome in parts of the continent. The Netherlands was once an outward-looking, tolerant, trader nation. Is that still the case? It’s not much fun to live in a place – or even visit somewhere – that resents your presence, especially if you have bothered to learn the local language and swallowed the high tax rates that fund