All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Has Vladimir Putin been forced to eat humble pie? Earlier today, the Russian president felt compelled to issue an apology – of sorts – after an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed in Kazakhstan on 25 December, killing 38 of the 67 passengers on board. The plane had been travelling from the Azeri capital Baku to Grozny,
Dear oh dear. The Labour lot have not fared well in opinion polling this year and More in Common’s New Year poll has certainly not bucked that trend. The new survey, which quizzed more than 2,400 people, reveals that half of Brits believe 2025 will be worse than 2024 – while less than a quarter
When Sir Keir Starmer announced in October that he had reached an agreement with Mauritius to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago, he was met with fierce and sustained criticism. The deal essentially surrendered the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), one of the 14 remaining overseas territories, to the government of Mauritius, while salvaging a
Look at any list of the ‘greatest ever romcoms’ and you’ll find When Harry Met Sally near the top of the list, if not heading it. This 1989 movie, directed by Rob Reiner and written by the late Nora Ephron – with terrific performances from Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan as the title characters –
Since Tory MP Richard Holden called for first-cousin marriage to be banned in the UK earlier this month, few people have been prepared to speak in favour of the practice. While not unheard of among white British families, cousin marriage is rare and viewed as rather odd. So, when writer Charles Amos agreed to speak to
As the media alarms us about an approaching ‘quad-demic’ of diseases this winter (Covid-19, Flu, RSV, Norovirus) it is a timely moment to think about the travails of our mediaeval forebears. Their common scourges were typhus, smallpox, tuberculosis, anthrax, scabies and syphilis – all untreatable at the time. And then there was the plague. The
For ten years, gender identity ideology ploughed through western societies. It started quietly, a decade earlier, when a group of human rights experts gathered in Yogyakarta, in Indonesia, and established gender identity as an innate human quality. They demanded that it must be protected in law and policy. If Wes Streeting signs off a clinical
We’re closing 2024 by republishing our five most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 4: Douglas Murray’s article from August about the UK riots. As the days slip by, the likelihood that anything will be learned from the recent rioting looks ever more remote. And with that suspicion comes the inevitable sense of déjà-vu. Because
Nigel Farage has called on Kemi Badenoch to say sorry after the Conservative party leader accused him of inflating Reform membership numbers. ‘I am asking Kemi Badenoch to apologise immediately for this intemperate outburst,’ the Reform leader said. Badenoch has accused Farage of ‘fakery’ over the claim that Reform’s total membership overtook the Conservatives this
When the British government spent £400 million on the satellite internet start-up OneWeb back in 2020, it was seen as precisely the kind of active, tech-led industrial strategy that could re-boot the British economy. There were hopes the deal would help secure a place for the UK at the heart of the emerging space economy.
Britain should move thousands of inmates into low-security open prisons, according to David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary, who is chairing the government’s Sentencing Review. Gauke’s comments have sparked a predictably furious backlash, but he’s absolutely correct – and I should know. Locking someone up costs the public about £52,000 per prison place each
The Russian Orthodox Church or state calendar doesn’t recognise 25 December as a special day: their Christmas is 7 January by their old calendar and, in any case, it is New Year’s Eve that is the real blow out. As households prepare the usual staples of Salad Olivier, Herring under a Fur Coat (smothered in
Pulp, the legendary band fronted by Jarvis Cocker, have revealed that they’ve signed a new recording deal with equally legendary independent label Rough Trade. Although they formed in Sheffield in 1978, when Cocker was 15, Pulp’s biggest success – and it was very big – came in the second half of the 1990s, with smash
Kemi Badenoch believes she has caught out Nigel Farage with a bit of digital sleuthing. No sooner had Farage announced that the official membership of Reform has surpassed the 132,000 declared membership of the Conservative Party than Badenoch declared it is all a con. All Badenoch has really achieved is to emphasise how shrunken the
Britain is increasingly seen as a bit-part player. That’s down both to our post-Brexit identity crisis and being gradually overtaken by emerging economies such as India and Brazil. But it’s also because British diplomats don’t have the skills they need to advance Britain’s interests with purpose and credibility. Take foreign languages. Almost three quarters of Britain’s
Rugby union has always attracted a certain type, the ‘play hard, party hard’ sort. I remember a former teammate – a prop, perhaps not surprisingly – who could drink a pint of his urine in under ten seconds. An England prop, Colin Smart, once downed a bottle of after shave after a Five Nations match
‘The first team at Wormwood Scrubs is said to be better than QPR’s’. That line from Toby Young’s article from November has stuck with me. Could it be true? Are our jails full of talented footballers who didn’t quite make it? Are players regularly ‘spat out’ without any qualifications? Is there an academy-to-prison pipeline? One
Two years ago, I was the victim of a peculiarly postmodern version of left-wing cancel culture. After joking on Twitter about the Tory government being a ‘coconut cabinet’, I was given the boot by the Herald, a newspaper where I had worked for 20 years. My downfall was swift. People I trusted turned on me
We’re closing 2024 by republishing our five most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 5: Julie Burchill’s article from December on Meghan and Harry. Looking back on the Queen’s 1992 ‘annus horribilis’, the events involved – though surprising at the time – seem almost staid now. The wife of her favourite son was photographed canoodling
Not even the Christmas season can keep attention off Labour’s controversial policies for long. The furore around this year’s early prison releases is still haunting Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot – and those criminals let out early are doing nothing to reassure the public. As Steerpike revealed in October, Isaac Donkoh – a gang member
It wouldn’t be Christmas without a family feud. Reform has spent this Boxing Day trumpeting its membership figures, which, it says, now outnumber the Conservatives. Nigel Farage’s party projected a ‘countdown clock’ onto CCHQ last night to mark the moment when Reform got its 131,670th member – thus beating the number who voted in the
At the beginning of King Charles’s Christmas speech this year, viewers may have been surprised when he did not immediately talk about his, or his family’s, struggles with illness this year, but instead about the 80th anniversary of D-Day. It was, in fact, several minutes until the speech made reference to how ‘all of us
Nigel Farage has received a late Christmas present. According to figures released by Reform, his party has overtaken the Conservatives on the number of party members. The Reform party say it now has over 132,000 members. While the Tories don’t provide regular updates on their membership numbers, the recent Conservative party leadership contest suggested they
Whether it’s food, music or movies, this time of the year is all about traditions. To my mind, there are few better than Boxing Day football. Across the country, fans like me partake in the ritual of watching our team play a match, the result of which can make or break our Christmas. Teams in
If you’re a regular, or even an occasional, customer at Lidl, you’ll know what to expect. Own-brand foodstuffs that shamelessly imitate better-known manufacturers and, by doing so, flirt with copyright infringement right up to the edge of legality; a selection of wines, spirits and beers that alternate between excellent value for the money and frankly
Later today, the King will address the nation, as he has annually since he acceded the throne in September 2022. This year’s is expected not only to be the most eagerly anticipated and arguably momentous speech that Charles has delivered, but also probably since his mother attempted to make some sense of the chaotic, grief-stricken
Most people shudder at the thought of working on Christmas Day. Not me. I’ve worked as a hospital doctor since 2000 and, most years, come 25 December, I’ll be doing the ward round. As a junior doctor, I didn’t have much choice about doing the Christmas Day shift. But since becoming a consultant, I have
Another Christmas, another BBC adaptation of a Julia Donaldson story. This time it’s an animated version of Tiddler, the story of a little fish who is always late for school and who makes up tall stories to explain why. The tall stories get around the ocean and when Tiddler gets caught by a fishing boat
For hundreds of years, the 12 days of Christmas have been a significant highlight of the English religious year. In the medieval period, churches in Britain and Ireland were vividly adorned with paintings, stained glass, and sculptures that depicted the Christmas story. Many of these images were destroyed in the Taliban-like wave of destruction that accompanied
