All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
In recent years, Labour has made great political hay out of allegations of rule-breaking. The party was never slow to criticise Boris Johnson’s government for breaches of lockdown, with Sir Keir keen to depict himself as ‘Mr Rules.’ So it is sub-optimal, to say the least, that a senior minister has tonight admitted pleading guilty
I mentioned a couple of days ago being underwhelmed by Orbital, Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize-winning novel. But I am a glutton for punishment, and continuing to ignore my long-held practice of never reading Booker winners, I bought last year’s victor – Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch. As I mentioned, this is about a nasty right-wing
Anyone else want to do a Westminster press conference? Keir Starmer made it a hat-trick this afternoon when he gave his reply to the new immigration figures, following Kemi Badenoch’s comments yesterday and Nigel Farage’s response this morning. The Prime Minister’s team gave it the full No. 10 treatment: the flags, the lectern, Starmer looking
President-elect Donald Trump confirmed this week that he’s going to fulfil his campaign pledges on tariffs. There will be a 10 per cent tariff on China for failing to stop the flow of the illegal drug Fentanyl into America. And, he’ll put in place 25 per cent tariffs on Mexico and Canada because of their inability to
There was a business-like manner in Nigel Farage’s response to the news that net migration was more than 900,000 in 2023. Speaking this morning at a Mayfair press conference, Farage was almost flat in his reply on the ‘horrendous’ figures. He insisted that the Tories would ‘never be forgiven’ for presiding over a nine-fold increase
How can you miss over 300,000 migrants? This morning the Office for National Statistics revised up its previous record high net migration figure to 906,000 meaning that since 2021, 307,000 more migrants are in the country than the ONS previously knew about. So, has Britain turned the corner on migration? There has been a 20
For the first time ever, France’s borrowing costs have risen above those of Greece. As of today, the bond markets have decided that French debt is a riskier bet than Greece, the country that 15 years ago almost crashed the entire euro-zone with its fiscal extravagance and irresponsibility. True, to some degree that reflects an
David Cameron has today become the first former prime minister to come out in support of assisted dying, having previously signalled his opposition to it in 2015. In a piece for the Times, he says that: ‘My main concern and reason for not supporting proposals before now has always been the worry that vulnerable people
Anyone outraged by Labour MP Tahir Ali calling on the government to introduce blasphemy laws has clearly not been paying attention, for there are already blasphemy laws in this country. All Ali wants to do is make them official. When he urges Sir Keir Starmer to prohibit the desecration of the Qur’an and other Abrahamic
The Irish general election happens on Friday. In times past, observers would be marking the rise of Sinn Fein; now the interest has shifted to the parties that are challenging the political consensus. Irish politics can seem weirdly homogenous – with the main parties, in terms of culture, roughly equivalent to the Lib Dems and
Early September, days after the gruesome discovery of six murdered Israeli hostages in a tunnel in Gaza, a dramatic scoop appeared in Bild. The German newspaper had obtained a secret internal Hamas document, supposedly obtained from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s personal computer, that revealed Hamas’s hostage negotiation strategy. The document claimed that Hamas was deliberately exploiting
Not since the summer of the 2022 invasion have Russian troops been making more progress in Ukraine. Last month alone, they took almost 200 square miles in the Donetsk region. Just 15 miles now separate the Russian forces from entering the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. If Russia succeeds, a sixth region will be swallowed by hostilities. What’s changed? Russia’s
Today at Prime Minister’s Questions, the Labour MP Tariq Ali asked: ‘Will the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?’ Does Mr Ali think this is the most important issue currently facing the UK? Or, even more disturbingly, is this something
Of all the issues which did it for the Conservatives in July 2024, no issue deterred life-long Tories more than the failure to control migration. So it was appropriate then that this subject formed the basis of Kemi Badenoch’s first major policy speech since her election as leader. Ahead of tomorrow’s release of migration statistics,
Third time lucky for Kemi Badenoch. The Tory leader’s first two attempts to crush Keir Starmer at PMQs failed. Today she began by attacking the chancellor whose career is in quicksand and who admitted to the CBI that her smash-and-grab budget was so destructive that it mustn’t be repeated. ‘I’m not coming back for more
It’s fuel poverty awareness day today. So what better time to reflect on Labour decision to pull payments for pensioners, just weeks after taking office? Ahead of the release of pension credit statistics tomorrow, Mr S has been doing some digging into the Chancellor’s past. And it seems that ‘Rachel Thieves’ – as her critics
Congratulations to William Hague, who has today triumphed in the race to succeed Chris Patten and become the 168th Chancellor of Oxford. Hague, who topped the ballot at every stage, won the final run-off against Elish Angiolini by a margin of 1,600 votes. Former cabinet ministers Peter Mandelson and Dominic Grieve were both eliminated in the
What is the purpose of Private Eye? I know it’s supposed to be some kind of anti-establishment satirical magazine, boldly holding power to account and standing up for the little guy. But I must say I’m finding its response to the extraordinary police doorstepping of Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson rather puzzling. You would think that this supposed thorn in
Unconventional as ever, Kemi Badenoch used her third ever Prime Minister’s Questions as Conservative leader to call on Keir Starmer to resign. The Tory leader was half speaking in jest, telling the Prime Minister that ‘if he wants to know what Conservatives would do, he should resign and find out’. It was her latest riposte
Oh dear. Tahir Ali is at it again. It was only ten months ago that he had to apologise after claiming at PMQs that Rishi Sunak had ‘the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands’. But the controversies of the past don’t seem to have blunted the Honourable Member for Birmingham Hall Green
Labour talks of having the ‘bold ambition of an 80 per cent employment rate’. But who should they target to get there? The government published its white paper this week on ‘getting Britain working’ and tackling the growing health and disability benefits bill, which is forecast to hit £120 billion. Figures slipped out by the Office for
This is one of a series of posters that adorn the walls of Westminster Underground station, through which many MPs and aides travel to work. On Friday, MPs will be voting on whether or not to legalise assisted dying. The posters, funded by a campaign group called Dignity In Dying, present a series of individuals happily contemplating the
A new Anglo-Saxon barbarism has entered the French political language: ‘government shutdown.’ There is excited talk of civil servants not being paid. Tax uncollected. The collapse of medical reimbursements. Supposedly this will bring France to its senses and voters will quietly accept increased taxes and cuts to public services. The French government teeters on the
On a bus journey in Transylvania last summer, I got talking to a young Romanian man who works in Yorkshire and who had been back home visiting his relatives. He told me how hard it had become for Romanians, particularly elderly people like his grandmother, to make ends meet with inflation so high. He blamed the
Farewell, Kamala Harris. It’s been a brutal fortnight for the outgoing Vice President. Following her devastating loss on 5 November, the failed nominee has been subjected to days of vicious briefing and revelations about her dreadful campaign. Whether it was spending millions on celebrity endorsements or getting rejected by the ‘Hot Ones’ podcast, the Democrat
Virtually every aspect of London has changed beyond recognition in the past nine hundred years, but there has been one certainty: Smithfield Market, the city’s most famous and longest established meat market. Now even this great feature of London life looks set to be no more. The City of London Corporation has voted to withdraw
It is hard to see where all of Ed Miliband’s ‘green jobs’ are coming from, but we are certainly losing existing manufacturing jobs. Net zero has just claimed a very significant scalp. Stellantis, the parent company of Vauxhall, has said that it plans to close its plant at Luton, where it makes the Vivaro van,
Some time ago, I found myself sitting at a dinner opposite a Labour peer. We chatted over various things as the evening proceeded. Just before we were getting up to leave a new topic came up. “I am a convinced campaigner for assisted dying,” she said. “As a bishop, I suspect you’re not. Why don’t
The Scots have long been stereotyped as dour, miserable whingers, and we finally have proof that this is pure slander. Ailsa Henderson, a political scientist at Edinburgh University, has produced a presentation into political anger in the wake of the general election. She finds that the English are three times as angry about politics as
