Oh dear. The Labour party is one of the loudest cheerleaders when it comes to giving 16-year-olds the vote. At PMQs in January, Emily Thornberry was particularly keen to push the cause. The shadow foreign secretary accused the Conservatives – who oppose such a move – of being in a ‘coalition of cavemen’, before going
The wags of the right have been chuckling since the Irish electorate voted to legalise abortion. Ha, ha, ha, they cry, look at all those liberals. They deplore the Brexit referendum result and seek to have it overturned but are whooping with delight at the – wait for it – referendum result in Ireland. Here
It’s safe to say that the Tory think tank Bright Blue hasn’t always enjoyed the greatest respect among the Conservative party-at-large. Although it has a dedicated following from Liberal Conservatives, its focus on green issues has seen more traditional Tories snipe that it bears a closer resemblance to Lib Dem yellow than a Tory blue.
The film awards season is over and Cannes has been handed back to wealthy holiday-makers, yet the #MeToo movement shows no signs of slowing down. Morgan Freeman is the most recent addition to the ignominious list of film producers, directors and actors who have had accusations of sexual harassment made against them since #MeToo took
Is Italy descending into political chaos? Some may shrug their shoulders and say well, it is Italy. Yes, Italy has had messy politics before. But that doesn’t make the current row any less high stakes. We don’t yet know if the League backs the demands of the Five Star – and the small Brothers of
Oh dear. It’s six months since Philip Hammond stood up in the Autumn Budget and announced a new railcard for those aged 26-30 ‘giving 4.5m more young people a third off their rail fares’. Yet the millennial railcard remains a near mythical artefact – with a mere 10,000 released on the day of the official ‘national’ launch.
It’s safe to say the New York Times doesn’t take a particularly fond view of Britain these days. Whether it’s their ongoing Brexit coverage, writing up Sajid Javid’s appointment as Home Secretary with the headline ‘a new face won’t cover the British government’s racist heart’, mistaking a newspaper sketch writer’s joke about the French for Brexit
Barcelona’s Barri Gotic is ablaze with banners. Virtually every balcony in the gothic quarter seems to be adorned with some sort of flag. Some people fly La Senyera, the state-sanctioned flag of Catalonia, but far more fly L’Estelada, the rebel flag of independence. Eight months since Catalans voted for secession from Spain in an unofficial
Italy’s new populist government – the first in western Europe – collapsed last night before it even had the chance to govern for a single day. Italy, the Eurozone’s third largest economy and the beating pulse of European civilisation, now finds itself in a constitutional crisis as grave as any of the many it has
Andrew Marr returned to our screens this week after recovering from his kidney operation. His first interview was with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Chairman of the European Research Group and currently the bookies’ favourite to be the next Prime Minister. Marr inquired as to how Rees-Mogg felt the government’s negotiations with the EU were progressing, particularly
The first episode of A Very English Scandal (BBC1), the story of the Jeremy Thorpe affair, was brilliant. So often, dramas about the past suffer from the disbenefit of hindsight. They use the dead as mannequins to wear their contemporary thoughts and attitudes. History, in their hands, is a form of what is now called ‘cultural appropriation’,
‘Onward’ is the name of the latest movement — ‘think-tank’ is not quite the right phrase — to try to revitalise Conservatism. It is led by some of the most able of the new political generation, such as Neil O’Brien and Tom Tugendhat, and under the patronage of the only current cabinet minister who never
I must respond to Rod Liddle’s opinion on Gaza (‘Why this deluded affection for the Palestinians?’, which appeared in last week’s Spectator). I was in Shifa hospital for two quiet Fridays during the initial protests. Eighty-five per cent of bullet wounds were around the knee; the result of accurate sniper targeting. The first casualty I
So referendums are good now? The turnaround has been astonishing. The very people who have spent the best part of two years in moral meltdown at the fact that Britons were given a referendum on membership of the EU are now beside themselves with joy over the abortion referendum in Ireland. ‘You know who loved
This time round, competitors were asked to provide poems about a bromance. Pairings including Friedrich and Karl, Laurel and Hardy, Nigel and Donald lit up an entry that was witty, touching and generally pleasingly varied. I liked Chris O’Carroll’s ‘Boris and Donnie’, a twist on Jimmie Rodgers’s ‘Frankie and Johnny’. And Bill Greenwell had the
The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, had declared that there would not be celebrations if and when the Yes side won in yesterday’s referendum on liberalising the abortion laws. But there’s a decidedly celebratory aspect to his side, now it turns out that nearly 70 per cent of voters voted for change. ‘Democracy in action,’
Political Cabinet on Tuesday was treated to a polling presentation that highlighted the dilemma the Tories are facing. When voters are asked what the most important issue facing the country is, they reply Brexit and the NHS. But when they are asked what the most pressing issue for them personally is, they say the cost
The founder of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson, turned up in Leeds on Thursday to film people going into a grooming trial. He did not speak, chant, accost anyone or do anything other than point his mobile phone at attendees, from a distance. Nor was he with a crowd. Still, seven coppers turned up and
Mr S has always been a great admirer of creative accounting: the tricks our politicians use to dress up 50p as £1. It’s not lying, per se. All the techniques need to be valid. But their effect is to mislead. Ed Balls was the great master of this dark art, George Osborne his less-subtle apprentice.
Although Conservative MPs were recently given training to brush up their Instagram skills, there’s one Cabinet minister who requires no such help. Step forward Liz Truss. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has carved out a niche on social media thanks to her hashtags and puns. One of my favourite things from tonight's event is