All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Last December the European Commission published its ‘priorities’ for the next five years. All the bases were covered, from defence to sustainable prosperity to social fairness. And of course, the most important priority of all, democracy. ‘Europe’s future in a fractured world will depend on having a strong democracy and on defending the values that give
The day after the bodies of Ariel and Kfir Bibas were returned to Israel, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) holds a protest outside Westminster Magistrates Court on the Marylebone Road. I am here for the hearing of Ben Jamal, director of the PSC. He is charged with failing to comply with a police request that
Old soldiers never die, in the words of the barrack ballad, but increasingly they do not fade away either. With an unusually intense public focus on defence issues thanks to the insistence of Donald Trump that Europe up its military spending pronto, platoons of former senior officers are now popping out of the woodwork to
The SNP may be outperforming Scottish Labour in the polls, but the party of government still faces tough questions on its record as it approaches the 2026 Holyrood election. Today’s education attainment figures won’t help the nationalists’ argument that they deserve another chance in power – as the stats show the attainment gap between Scotland’s
Emmanuel Macron’s lightning visit to the White House was a tour de force of French diplomatic energy, skill and bravado. Whether Macron has managed to convince Donald Trump of the need to involve Kyiv and Europe in US-Russian negotiations on the war in Ukraine will become clear in the next fortnight. But what it demonstrated forcefully was
The prime minister has told the House of Commons that defence spending will rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027. The UK already spends 2.3 per cent, so this works out as an increase of £13.4 billion a year. It will largely be funded by substantial cuts to the international aid budget. It is
Politics is a matter of timing – and Keir Starmer perfected today. Barely two hours after Kemi Badenoch’s big foreign affairs speech, the Prime Minister has stolen the headlines off her in a textbook example of the difference between fruitless opposition and the possibilities of government. While the Tory leader could only muse on the
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Kemi Badenoch has today given a major speech outlining the Conservatives’ commitment to ‘realism’ in their foreign policy. She said, ‘You cannot help others if you cannot help yourself’, and that the sovereignty and strength of Britain matters ‘above all’. She also pressed Keir Starmer to push defence spending north of the 2.5 per cent
It will be an unacceptable intrusion on our sovereignty. And it will pave the way for American domination of the internet. Ministers will no doubt be appalled by the suggestion by President Trump that he will impose tariffs on the UK if we don’t rip all the tech legislation that he doesn’t like, especially if
Uh oh. Sir Keir Starmer made a big statement in the Commons today on raising defence spending – but before the Prime Minister could get started, his party faced a rather big telling off from the Speaker about following the ministerial code. As Lindsay Hoyle explained to parliamentarians, texts of ministerial statements should be provided
To the Commons, where Sir Keir Starmer has just made a rather big announcement on the issue of defence. The Prime Minister took to the Chamber today to announce to parliamentarians that Labour will raise Britain’s defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 – with a commitment to hit 3 per cent
If you’ve recently been to the cinema or turned on your streaming platform of choice, no doubt you’ll have been offered ‘new’ stories that are fundamentally familiar. From Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, to Dune: Part Two, and now Bridget Jones 4 – the film industry is being driven by franchises and sequels. Of the top 10 highest-grossing films released
Average gas and electricity bills will rise by £111 a year in April after the regulator Ofgem announced an increase to the energy price cap. The 6.4 per cent hike means the average dual-fuel household bill will hit £1,849 annually. The rise is more than anticipated, with analysts at Cornwall Insight predicting that bills would
Kemi Badenoch set out her world view in a speech this morning at Policy Exchange. As protesting tractors blared their horns outside, inside the room the Tory leader was sounding the alarm for the post-Cold War order. The UK, she warned, faces a ‘bitter reckoning’ unless it wakes up to the fact that ‘it is
Among the big, bad oil companies in borstal for environmental offenses, BP has long been the relatively benign one, the class pet. Remember how former chief executive Lord Browne two decades ago promised to take the company ‘Beyond Petroleum’ to a golden future of clean energy? In 2004, in a forerunner of the ESG indices
Back to Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill, which continues to undergo scrutiny as it makes its passage through parliament. This morning, the bill committee gathered to further discuss the legislation – and, in yet another baffling move, MPs voted by almost two to one against an amendment that would have required a patient to be
I have known Volodymyr Zelensky very well for years. As a senior official personally appointed by Zelensky, I spoke to him many times a day and observed him closely both in public and privately. We parted on good terms and without rancour. I have no personal axe to grind. But today I cannot remain silent about
The Anti-corruption Action Centre, the NGO I chair, is probably one of the loudest watchdogs in Ukraine that is monitoring President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration. We expose corruption, advocate for comprehensive rule-of-law reforms, and demand better governance – even during war. For over a decade we have built anti-corruption infrastructure in Ukraine, and endured
Amanda Pritchard is resigning as chief executive of NHS England, after three years in the job. Pritchard’s announcement, in the last few minutes, is not a huge surprise given there had not been a great deal of confidence among ministers and aides in the leadership of the NHS – though it is worth pointing out
It would be a stretch to describe Emmanuel Macron’s meeting with Donald Trump as a ‘bromance’, but there were plenty of warm handshakes and even warmer words, with the French president at one moment addressing his host as ‘Dear Donald’. Macron had flown to Washington on Monday to press the case for Europe in the
In this godforsaken era of feigned victimhood, is there any group less worthy of our sympathy than the Waspi women? Having been, rightly, denied compensation by the government in December, they are now threatening legal action unless they are given a payout. Will their entitlement never end? It’s hard to know where to start with
Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron have some odd history. The US president and his French counterpart don’t particularly see eye to eye and their strained relations have, over the years, been reflected in a series of rather intense handshakes – with one lasting for a full 29 seconds during a 2017 encounter. Crikey. Their meeting on
In the Oscar-nominated movie The Holdovers, one of the characters says in a moment of frustration: ‘I thought all the Nazis ran away to Argentina.’ This line got a big laugh in cinemas in Buenos Aires. But while the events this joke alludes to now lie far enough in the past for today’s Argentines to
The orca killer whale is known for playing with its prey before killing it, always with a smile. An image that came to mind on Monday when French President Emmanuel Macron arrived at the White House to plead the cause of Ukraine to a grinning President Donald Trump. The French media is dutifully repeating the
Ask anyone if they think that cruelty to animals is OK and they’ll say no – but are they being truthful? If they eat meat, they’ll insist that the meat they eat is ‘high-welfare’, but 85 per cent of the UK’s farmed animals endured their shortened lives on brutal factory farms, so nearly everyone who
So much for the Special Relationship. Since Donald Trump took office in January, Brits have been taking quite a tongue-lashing from the US president’s team. Keir Starmer, who touches down in Washington on Thursday to meet Trump, has been nicknamed “two-tier Keir” by the president’s consigliere Elon Musk over his handling of grooming gangs. JD
Happy freedom day! Yes, that’s right – after more than a month closed, the Strangers’ bar in the Palace of Westminster has today finally re-opened. Peers and MPs piled in to celebrate the return of their beloved watering hole. But, alas, already there are reports that Strangers’ will no longer be the fleshpot, following allegations
Jordan Bardella flew to America last week on a trip he had long boasted about. The president of the National Rally – and all his party – had been a little put out that the only French politicians invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration were Eric Zemmour and Sarah Knafo of the right-wing Reconquest. It was
Three years ago today, Russian tanks rolled over the Ukrainian border in a massive surprise attack. Russian unit commanders and soldiers were told to prepare for a three-day campaign – and indeed by the end of the day parachute units were fighting for control of the vital Hostomel military airport just a few miles from
One of the perils of working in or even travelling to the Middle East and Central Asia is that there is a high risk of being taken hostage by autocratic states or terrorist groups. Peter Reynolds, 79, and Barbie, his 75-year-old wife, are the latest Brits to find this out the hard way. The couple, who have been running projects in
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Today marks three years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. From early fears of a swift Russian victory to the Kharkiv offensive and the slow war of attrition that has played out since, each stage of this war has been hard to predict. None more so than this stage, with the USA
Mike Amesbury, the former Labour MP who has been sent to prison for ten weeks for punching a constituent in the street, is rather unlucky: the truth is that very few first-time offenders get locked up. It’s probable that those convicted of similar offences in the future may still be imprisoned. But the use of
If you live opposite the vacant site in Northumberland that was supposed to become the Britishvolt ‘gigafactory’ pumping out batteries for the electric car industry, or near the Vestas wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight where half the 600 workers have been told they face redundancy, you might just struggle to believe that
Uh oh. The ex-leader of Reform UK in Wales has appeared in court after being accused of accepting Russian bribes. Nathan Gill, 51, is facing eight counts of bribery alongside one count of conspiracy to commit bribery – to make statements, it is alleged, that would benefit Russia in the European parliament. Good heavens… Initially