All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
What is a working person? This question dominated the lead-up to Labour’s first Budget in over 14 years. After Rachel Reeves stood at the despatch box and announced tax rises for farmers, business owners and entrepreneurs, it’s at least become clearer who Keir Starmer doesn’t mean when he talks about working people. Since then, the
I can’t fault Keir Starmer for his piece in the Mail on Sunday today promising that Labour will crack down on idlers and benefit cheats. But does anyone really believe that Labour is really going to get on top of the explosion in out of work benefits? Whenever the Conservatives announced plans to trim the benefits bill,
The number of people not in work has increased significantly since the pandemic, and the government is preparing to cut costs through changes to the welfare system. On Sky News this morning, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall was keen to stress that it was the government’s ‘responsibility to provide… new opportunities’ for young people
For more than a decade, viral petitions demanding an immediate election were the preserve of Remainiacs and much of the Twitter left. So with Labour now in government, it is to no surprise then that it is now much of the right which is demanding another vote. A parliamentary petition to ‘call a general election’
I still remember the first time I saw Vang Vieng, in Laos. It was many years ago, before the Chinese began pouring money in (such is the scale of Chinese investment, Laos now has high-speed rail). I was driving one of the very few rentable 4x4s in the country, picked up in the sleepy capital
Tony Blair spent much of his time as prime minister projecting a persona that most people of a conservative mindset found quite reassuring. But Keir Starmer is no heir to Blair. The New Labour leader removed a commitment to nationalisation from the party’s constitution. He pledged to keep the tax burden under control. And he
Earlier this year, Sciences Po’s feminist association, Décollectif Féministe, organised a ‘non-mixed’ meeting, which explicitly excluded men and white attendees. Intended as a ‘safe space’ for women of colour, the event sparked an immediate backlash. An MP from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally called it ‘racist and discriminatory.’ Ultimately, the meeting was cancelled before it took place, but it
Critics of Labour’s Assisted Dying bill fear that its vagueness means we are heading for trouble. Germany, where assisted suicide is legal, shows what happens when the law fails to spell out exactly what is allowed. In 2020, Germany’s federal constitutional court decriminalised assisted suicide, deciding that a patient’s autonomy must be the overriding concern
When Rafael Nadal triumphed in the 2005 French Open, he was still just a teenager. The Spaniard won 21 more Grand Slam titles, and became the second most decorated man in tennis history. He retired this week after Spain were knocked out in the quarter-finals of the Davis Cup by the Netherlands. His final match, played
Gordon Brown, who is in the news this weekend having come out against assisted dying, occasionally has a tendency to hold back. He held back from standing against his close friend John Smith for the Labour party leadership in 1992, though that was always an unlikely prospect. More agonisingly, he held back from running against
The death of British lawyer Simone White, 28, and five other tourists as a result of a suspected mass poisoning in Laos has rightly cast a spotlight on the serious methanol problem with which poorer parts of Southeast Asia are grappling. But that shouldn’t be allowed to obscure what was almost certainly another critical factor
The mood music from Tehran regarding Donald Trump’s election victory was a mixture of ‘don’t care,’ and ‘very much do care.’ Regime insiders remember only too well the toll Trump’s last four years took on their state; Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Qassem Soleimani killed; economy shattered; regionally isolated due to Israeli-Arab normalisation. Trump
Few people embody the ideal of scientific excellence as much as Albert Einstein. Each year a Berlin-based foundation bearing his name hands out awards for the sort of research that might have made him proud. This week, the individual prize went to Elisabeth Bik, not a conventional boffin, but a sleuth – a dogged Dutch
Cop29 has drawn to a close with arguments over a $250 billion (£200 billion) a year ‘loss and damage’ fund, which developing countries complain is not nearly enough to match their demands. But away from the grand gestures at the summit it is worth looking at what countries are actually doing rather than what they say
I still remember the day when, as an adult in my twenties, I was informed by a well-wisher that Aslan from The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe was really Jesus. As this was before my religious awakening, and I was quite the militant atheist at the time, I became rather irate at this revelation.
It was when my newly-implanted bone marrow failed to produce the blood cells that keep all of us alive that I first thought seriously about my own death. It was my second bout of cancer. The first one had been a cakewalk by comparison: a few months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and, Bob’s your uncle,
Donald Trump’s historic re-election must be a particularly bitter pill for Keir Starmer to swallow. Leaders from Javier Milei to Giorgia Meloni are scrambling to curry favour, and Trump’s pal Reform MP Nigel Farage is a regular on the post-election Mar-a-Lago scene. But that’s not the style of Sir Keir and his merry band of net
The arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant should be the last the International Criminal Court (ICC) issues. The ICC accuses the men, whose nation is embroiled in a multi-front war against enemies sworn to its destruction, of using ‘starvation as a method of warfare’, ‘murder, persecution and
Some lesbian and gay campaigners might have you believe that life is hard for gay people. Of course, for many it is. But my experience of being a lesbian is that it is mostly a privilege rather than an oppression. Lesbians can avoid the multiple disadvantages of navigating relationships with men, some of whom have
What did businesses really think of Rachel Reeves’s Budget? Today we have one of the first economic indicators reflecting their responses to Labour’s tax and spend changes – as well as global events like the US presidential election. The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell below 50 in November, which suggests the private sector economy is
It’s been another bad week for the government, with rows over farmers, ships and businesses too. So what better time for Keir Starmer to manfully undertake his media duties, sitting out this morning for a grilling with local BBC news stations? This annual ordeal can prove somewhat merciless – as Liz Truss famously found to
‘Two countries separated by a common language’ is how transatlantic relations are often defined. But these days it really does seem like some in Washington are struggling to understand what is going on this side of the pond. Mr S has previously noted how British-based networks like the Center for Countering Digital Hate have enraged
Until a few weeks ago it seemed as if the government had inherited if not a golden economic legacy then an improving economic picture. But this morning’s figures for retail sales show just how faltering the economy is. During October the volume of retail sales fell by 0.7 per cent. Worst-affected was textile and clothing
Last week the BBC announced that the 2024 Children in Need appeal had raised more than £39 million for charity. With such large sums of money, comes great responsibility – which charities are worthy of funding, and which ones should be kept at the end of the proverbial bargepole? This week, Rosie Millard has resigned as chair
Benjamin Netanyahu faces arrest if he enters Britain. That is the welcome the Israeli leader will receive should he fancy another trip to the UK any time soon. It comes after the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, along with former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant and Mohammed
After reneging on its manifesto pledge to not raise National Insurance, Labour is starting to struggle with another promise: to cut energy bills by £300 a year. This morning Ofgem has announced that its Energy Price Cap will rise in January so the average household will be paying £21 a year more. Together with the
There is a week to go until MPs vote on Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying private members’ bill. Cabinet Secretary Simon Case wrote to ministers last month to say that, while they ‘need not resile from previously stated views when directly asked about them, they should exercise discretion and should not take part in the public
This week, Russia launched a missile attack on Dnipro, Ukraine, reportedly using a new medium-range ballistic missile named ‘Oreshnik’, as confirmed yesterday by President Putin. Putin stated that the missile attack was a response to Ukraine’s use of western-built missile systems inside Russia, including US-supplied ATACMS ballistic missiles and British Storm Shadow cruise missiles. Before this
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity (a third warrant was issued against a Hamas commander, believed to be dead). In so doing, the ICC has undermined – perhaps fatally – its own credibility,