All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There is not a lot of good news on the British economy at the moment: prices are rising rapidly, job vacancies are falling and taxes are almost certainly going to be hiked again in the autumn to fill the ‘black hole’ that has opened up in the nation’s finances. But there is this. Free money
Well, well, well. The Scottish Tories have lost a number of councillors to Nigel Farage’s ranks and now Labour appears to be facing the same fate. This morning, a former Labour councillor in Fife who left the party over claims she was blocked from becoming a general election candidate has jumped ship to Nige’s Scottish
After the jaw-dropping spectacle of the Putin-Trump summit in Alaska, there was another full day of theatre on Monday as Trump hosted European leaders and President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House. Yet the results of this three-day diplomatic pageant are embarrassingly modest. In the absence of a breakthrough on this important question, Trump’s diplomacy
Dear oh dear. As Steerpike wrote on Tuesday afternoon, asylum seekers will be removed from the Bell Hotel in Essex after Epping Forest district council was granted a temporary injunction by the High Court. The legal action comes after a series of protestors gathered outside the venue after a resident was charged with sexually assaulting
Rachel Reeves’s rather crude strategy is becoming painfully clear. Between now and the Budget she intends to float ideas for so many painful tax rises that, come the day, we will all feel pathetically grateful that only a few of them have come to pass. Her latest suggestion – reported from an anonymous briefing, needless
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The Green Party leadership election is underway, pitting new MPs Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns against London Assembly Member Zack Polanski. The Greens achieved their best ever result at the 2024 general election, but they’ve remained static in opinion polls ever since. Lucy Dunn and Luke Tryl of More in Common join Patrick Gibbons to
The events of the last few days – the Trump/Putin summit in Anchorage, the visit of European leaders to the White House and the virtual conference of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ – have felt strangely detached and surreal. It has been almost like the anxiety dream of a stressed European diplomat: full of famous
Inflation is up again. CPI climbed to 3.8 per cent last month – up from 3.6 per cent in July, now well above the 2 per cent target that the Bank of England no longer seems all that bothered about missing. It throws fresh doubt on the wisdom of the Bank’s decision to cut rates
Australia and Israel are – were – traditional allies. A former leader of Australia’s Labor party and then president of the United Nations General Assembly, Herbert Evatt, played a significant role in the establishment of Israel in 1948. In recent decades, Labor prime minister Bob Hawke was one of Israel’s staunchest international supporters, once observing
Friedrich Merz arrived in Washington this week alongside Europe’s most senior leaders, ostensibly to coordinate the continent’s response to Trump’s Ukraine designs. Here was Germany’s moment to demonstrate the leadership it perpetually claims to seek – a chance to shape the conversation that will determine Europe’s security architecture for years to come. Instead, before the
When dealing with rogue states, being pessimistic often means being realistic. The much-anticipated summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin last week allowed the Russian leader to relish the bright Alaskan lights of summitry with Trump, buy the precious commodity of time, all while maintaining his ambition to defeat Ukraine. Amidst this week’s numerous meetings
Protest works. That will be the take-home message to activists across the country, now that Epping Forest District Council has been granted a temporary High Court injunction blocking asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel in the leafy Essex market town. Thousands have demonstrated outside the Bell in recent weeks, sparked by the charging
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is threatening a round of tax rises. RMT is on strike over the bank holiday. And something or other is going on with Masterchef. As the summer unfolds, British domestic politics is worrying about all its familiar issues. In the background, however, something far more serious is happening. The country is
Asylum seekers will be removed from the Bell Hotel in Essex after Epping Forest district council was granted a temporary injunction by the High Court. The legal action comes after a series of protestors gathered outside the venue after a resident was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl. The council’s lawyers claimed that Somani
Well, well, well. According to research by the children’s commissioner for England, children’s exposure to pornography has increased since the Online Safety Act came into effect. Dame Rachel de Souza noted that a survey had found that more young people said they’d been exposed to porn before the age of 18 after the new rules
There are not, as far as I know, any Italian top-flight poker players. Italians are hardly renowned for their ability to suppress their facial expressions or conceal what they’re really thinking. In this regard they are unusually well-represented by their Premier, Giorgia Meloni. Her visible hatred of Emmanuel Macron is often conveyed through withering stares Upon
When William Beveridge designed the welfare state in the 1940s, the state pension age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Life expectancy for a man was around 66, and around 71 for a woman. The pension was not designed to fund decades of leisure: it was a modest provision for the last couple
When President Trump unveils a massive investment in the microchip manufacturer Intel on behalf of the American people it will no doubt be accompanied by all the usual hyperbole. No doubt we will hear all about how it will be the ‘deal of the century’, delivered personally by the ‘investor in chief’. But hold on.
It’s not a good time to be in Scottish Labour. With nine months to go until the 2026 Holyrood election, the party is still trailing behind the SNP and, at times, Reform UK. And things aren’t going well at a local level either: in recent months the party has suspended five councillors over inappropriate conduct
There you have it: in certain parts of England it’s easier to fly the Palestine flag than the English flag. Take Tower Hamlets in London. The Palestine colours fluttered from lampposts there for months in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October pogrom. Yet when patriots tried to hoist up the St George’s flag this week,
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What a difference six months makes. The last time Zelensky and Trump met in Washington we were mourning the end of America’s commitment to security in Europe and a new era of isolationism. But yesterday was a totally different story – and Zelensky deserves much of the credit for his change in tactics. Trump complimented
The news that the Polari Prize for LGBTQ+ writing is not to be awarded this year after outrage that the novelist John Boyne was included on the longlist represents one of the more head-scratching reversals that the world of books has seen in a considerable time. Boyne’s novel Earth was selected on merit, but the
Keir Starmer’s government continues to show off its remarkable ability to please absolutely no one. Reintroducing grants for electric cars (EVs) always was an outrage. Why is a government which rails against privilege when it comes to public schools, second homes, etc., splashing out taxpayers’ money to subsidise the second cars of relatively well-off motorists?
Two shirts were in the news at the weekend, both worn by politicians. In the light blue corner, we had Nigel Farage launching his personally branded football strip top – in Reform colours, with the name Farage and the number 10, a bargain at £39.99 (£99.99 if you want it signed by the man himself).
The fragile negotiations between Israel and Hamas have once again entered a decisive phase, marked by the unveiling of a new ceasefire-hostage release proposal brokered by Egypt and Qatar. This proposal, which Hamas has reportedly accepted, includes notable shifts in its previous demands. Yet the core dilemma confronting the Israeli leadership remains unchanged: whether to
A rare kernel of hopefully good news has been circulating the Treasury. No, we haven’t yet paid off the £2.7 trillion debt, and the state pension is still on path to imploding in a decade’s time. Instead, Britain’s most destructive and ambition-killing tax is for the chop and is to be replaced with a much more sensible
Today is the 110th anniversary of the birth of a former Spectator correspondent who took part in and survived more wars than any other English writer in modern history. Yet he is practically forgotten today because he fought all his life for unfashionable conservative causes. Peter Kemp, the son of a judge in the Indian Raj,
Few things in life are more French than a dispute animée about holidays. While the Spanish enjoy an easy relationship with mañana and the Italians savour il dolce far niente (sweet idleness), the French will incite a riot over any threat to their leisure time faster than you can say faire une pause. It’s therefore little
What a lovely meeting Volodymyr Zelensky and his European allies had with Donald Trump. The US President complimented Zelensky on his outfit, German Chancellor Merz on his ‘great tan’, and said that Finnish President Alexander Stubb was ‘looking better than I’ve ever seen you look!’ Everyone – especially Zelensky – laughed uproariously at all Trump’s
It was back to black for Volodymyr Zelensky. After the Trump White House asked whether he was going to wear a suit for his Oval Office meeting, the Ukrainian president showed up in a dark military-style jacket, pleasing his hosts to no end. Even Brian Glenn, boyfriend of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and reporter for
Not since Barack Obama held a press conference dressed as the Man from Del Monte has a suit played such a critical role in US politics. But there it was, after the spring press conference incident, President Zelensky arrived in Washington DC wearing a suit. The YMCA-loving Trump administration is hardly batting off the accusations
Tracy Bibby had already been banned from driving in 2006 and 2016. In 2019, while her second driving ban was still in effect, she got behind the wheel of a van and began driving dangerously. While, according to the judge, ‘behaving like a Formula 1 driver’ in order to ‘show off’, Bibby crashed the van
According to the National – a worrying phrase, I admit, given the Scottish newspaper’s obsessive adulation of anyone pro-Scottish independence and its obsessive hostility to anyone who opposes it – this weekend saw a Scottish Reform councillor share a platform with a member of a far-right group at a protest outside a Falkirk hotel housing asylum
