LONDON — The joy of Keir Starmer’s landslide victory in the U.K. general election wasn’t meant to sour this quickly. But rows over Taylor Swift tickets, welfare cuts and an internal power struggle — on top of Starmer’s gloomy prescription for fixing the nation’s finances — mean the U.K. prime minister will spend his 100th day […]
Category Archives: UK Politics
LONDON — Boris Johnson insisted Donald Trump wasn’t trying to “overthrow the constitution” despite riots by his supporters against the 2020 U.S. presidential election result on Jan. 6, 2021. The former British prime minister, out plugging his new memoir, said the former U.S. president managed the successful transfer of power to President Joe Biden — […]
LONDON — Whoever said life was too short to bear a grudge didn’t tell Boris Johnson. The former prime minister’s book “Unleashed” is out Thursday after weeks of teasing revelations. Johnson, a former journalist, hasn’t forgotten how to grab a headline, and is promising the real lowdown on his tumultuous three years in No. 10 […]
LONDON — Never say politics is predictable. Right-wingers Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick will do battle for the Conservative Party leadership after centrist contender James Cleverly fell at the final hurdle despite a late surge. Tory MPs — who had to whittle down the list of contenders to just two before a vote of the […]
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: Workers’ rights and the economy. The Employment Rights Bill — unveiled Thursday — is a major part of Labour’s first-100-days agenda. Rishi Sunak (a former […]
LONDON — British government ministers stepped in to ensure Taylor Swift got extra police protection for her spate of sell-out Wembley gigs over the summer. According to a report in the Sun, Swift’s manager, her mother Andrea, pressed London’s Metropolitan Police to give the singer a blue-light escort to her Eras Tour shows after a […]
LONDON — And then there were three. Fresh from a thumping election defeat, Britain’s diminished band of Conservative MPs on Tuesday whittled down the list of people hoping to take them back to power to a final trio: James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, and Kemi Badenoch. Shadow Security Minister Tom Tugendhat bit the dust after winning […]
LONDON — Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer is now more unpopular than the controversial Brexiteer Nigel Farage, according to fresh polling released Tuesday afternoon. A YouGov survey of 2,121 adults in Great Britain found that only 27 percent of those asked had a positive view of the Labour PM. That’s his lowest rating with […]
LONDON — ISIS has resumed its efforts to export terrorism to Britain, the head of the U.K.’s domestic spy agency has said, as he warned it is the threat that “concerns me most.” Ken McCallum, the director general of security service MI5, on Tuesday gave the U.K.’s first threat update since 2022, offering a wide-ranging […]
LONDON — Boris Johnson insisted refurbishing his Downing Street flat was necessary because the heart of the British state “looked like a crack den.” The former prime minister was questioned about the expensive — and controversial — refurbishment of his living accommodation in office while promoting his new book “Unleashed.” “The whole thing looked like […]