Category Archives: UK Politics

Nigel Farage: Ukraine can’t win

LONDON — Nigel Farage suggested Ukraine cannot defeat Russia — and questioned the U.S. decision to authorize Kyiv to use long-range missiles against Russian targets. The intervention from the Reform UK leader and British ally of U.S. President Elect Donald Trump is a departure from other mainstream political parties in the U.K., who are willing […]

PMQs: Booming Alex Burghart wins with attack on Labour’s farm tax

Prime minister’s questions: a shouty, jeery, very occasionally useful advert for British politics. Here’s what you need to know from the latest session in POLITICO’s weekly run-through. What they sparred about: With Keir Starmer flying back from the G20 summit in Rio, Deputy PM Angela Rayner went out to bat for the government. Up against […]

UK tells Trump: Don’t worry about our Chagos Islands deal

LONDON — Donald Trump will get behind the U.K.’s controversial decision to hand over the Chagos Islands — home of a secretive U.S. military base — to Mauritius, Britain’s top diplomat predicted. Despite fierce backlash to the plan from U.S. Republicans, including Trump’s Secretary of State pick Marco Rubio, David Lammy insisted the agreement will […]

Ban the polls: UK election strategists slam ‘inaccurate’ voter surveys

LONDON — Opinion polls are inaccurate, distort political debate and should be banned during the final weeks of an election campaign. That’s the view of the strategist who led the British Conservative Party’s operations in 2024 and 2019.   In an interview for a new book on this year’s U.K. general election, Tory campaign director Isaac […]

Don’t snub Farage’s offer to talk to Trump, UK Labour urged

LONDON — The British government shouldn’t snub Brexiteer Nigel Farage’s offer to act as a Donald Trump whisperer, according to the man hotly-tipped to be the new U.K. ambassador to Washington. Peter Mandelson said the centre-left Labour government should utilize the Reform UK leader as a bridge to the president-elect, after ministers rebuffed the offer […]

PMQs: Keir Starmer wins by clobbering Tories on investment

Prime minister’s questions: a shouty, jeery, very occasionally useful advert for British politics. Here’s what you need to know from the latest session in POLITICO’s weekly run-through. What they sparred about: Taxes and public spending. It was vintage domestic knockabout this week as Tory leader Kemi Badenoch sought to wrongfoot Prime Minister Keir Starmer on […]

UK minister grilled over tweet branding Donald Trump a ‘self-confessed groper’

LONDON — British government minister Ed Miliband was confronted Tuesday with his old tweets describing Donald Trump as “a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper.” U.K. Energy Secretary Miliband — keen to talk up climate cooperation with the U.S. president-elect — became the latest member of the British government to have his social media posts dredged up […]