All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Last night, nearly three years to the day since she handed over the reins of power to Olaf Scholz, Angela Merkel appeared at London’s Royal Festival Hall to promote her newly published memoir, Freiheit, or ‘Freedom’. The compulsion to write her memoirs first arose in 2015, she said, out of a desire to explain her
For more than three years, democratic governments have been trying to pretend that Afghanistan does not exist. The embarrassed silence has given the Taliban drugs and terror cartel a free hand to transform Afghanistan into the world centre of jihad, while locking up women, and robbing western taxpayers of billions of dollars in aid and
France was plunged into another political crisis on Wednesday evening when the government of Michel Barnier lost a vote of no confidence. 332 MPs voted for the motion and 288 against, an inevitable result once Marine Le Pen’s National Rally let it be known that they would support the left-wing New Front Popular in their
The English taxpayer is not the primary audience for the Scottish government’s annual Budget, but one wonders what they might make of today’s announcements from SNP finance minister Shona Robison. An extra £2 billion for health and social care, bumping the overall cost of that portfolio to just under £22 billion. An additional £800 million
Hold your hats, but Britain is doing rather well in something – or at least England is. Our children are achieving more at maths than in any country outside South or East Asia. According to the latest Trends in International Maths and Science Study, conducted by the Dutch-based International Association for the Evaluation of Educational
Why do jokes about Rachel Reeves’s CV persist? One explanation is simple: it’s funny. The Chancellor’s public persona is strait-laced and orderly; the idea of her doing something slightly naughty and gilding her CV is good material for comedy. But is that all? Reeves’s tweaks to her LinkedIn profile are, bluntly, trivial. They’re also minor compared
You’re an ambitious backbench Labour MP with a weighty constituency caseload, legislation that you’re interested in improving, and a few personal campaigns to right various wrongs and make the world a better place. You get a spot on the order paper for this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions. What could you possibly ask your party leader
Had you have taken a direct flight from London to Seoul yesterday afternoon, by the time you would have landed you might have been none the wiser that anything had happened at all. At near midnight South Korean time, President Yoon Suk Yeol imposed martial law across the so-called ‘land of the morning calm’. Only
Labour thinks it can win on immigration. Their new strategy was road-tested today at PMQs as backbencher Olivia Bailey opened the session saluting Keir Starmer’s gang-busting policies. ‘Internationalist co-operation, shared intelligence and joint law enforcement,’ said Bailey, ‘are the best way to end the vile people-smuggling trade.’ Starmer rose to agree with his stooge.
Another day, another drama at the BBC. Now it transpires that one of the corporation’s top newsreaders Clive Myrie failed to declare up to a quarter of a million pounds worth of ‘external events’ that he was involved in outside of his BBC job. Dear oh dear… As well as undertaking his newsreader role, the
Is the Football Association’s Rainbow Laces campaign about inclusivity or not? The FA doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind. When Crystal Palace captain Marc Guehi wrote ‘I love Jesus’ on his rainbow-coloured armband during his side’s draw against Newcastle United on Saturday, he was ‘reminded’ by the FA that religious messaging on
The current series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! has been a big contrast to the previous two. The 2022 and 2023 camps contained politicians, and they were two particularly hot – in the potato sense – politicians. Matt Hancock and Nigel Farage carried baggage with them into the camp. In Hancock’s
Kemi Badenoch had an odd line of attack at Prime Minister’s Questions: she chose to pursue Keir Starmer over what he knew about Louise Haigh’s fraud conviction. It is not a story that has any impact on people outside Westminster, but it did still highlight how much Starmer has become like the politicians he used
Eating porridge with my daughter this morning (me brown sugar; her honey) I was telling her about Ready Brek, and the boy in the advert going to school surrounded by a warm glow. She shushed me: they were talking about porridge on the radio! In fact they were talking about a successor to Ready Brek
Georgia’s government recently decided to spend money on fresh black ‘Robocop’ uniforms for their riot police, with shiny new helmets to match. After parliamentary elections in October, they might have been forgiven for thinking the kit would go back on the precinct shelves with barely a scuff – a little shopsoiled at worst. Protests immediately
Sue Gray may no longer be Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff but that doesn’t mean she isn’t still making headlines. Now it transpires that the Prime Minister is planning to award a peerage to the former civil servant, despite the rather negative press attention Gray managed to garner while in the top job. How
Is the OECD doing Labour’s PR for it? I ask only because of its bullish prediction for UK economic growth in its latest economic outlook, published this morning, and the contrast with what it has been saying about Britain over the past few years. An economy that was supposed to be hammered by Brexit has
It could be backing the hottest start-ups in Artificial Intelligence. It could be nurturing space businesses, or flying taxis, or at least something with a functioning website. If the British government wants to put money into industry, there are lots of different options it could choose. But no. It turns out that it will back
Six hours. That was the duration of the profoundly disturbing and simultaneously farcical version of martial law invoked by South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday night – the country’s first experience of military rule for 40 years. It was so brief in duration that if you weren’t plugged in to social media or watching
In 2024, no incumbent has been safe. Whether it was the Democrats in America or the Tories in Britain, there has been plenty of drama in every corner of the globe. Here in Westminster, Keir Starmer swept to power – only to discover that governing well is quite a bit harder than some seemed to
Michel Barnier’s government is likely to be toast by teatime when a vote of no confidence is tabled in France’s National Assembly. Votes will be cast this afternoon in a motion brought by the left-wing New Popular Front coalition, but Marine Le Pen’s National Rally have vowed to endorse it and so put an end
Yesterday afternoon South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol made the shock TV announcement that he was putting his country under martial law. According to Article 77 of South Korea’s constitution, the People’ Power party President was within his rights. But why? Yoon wheeled out the standard coup trope that he needed ‘to restore order’. He
I took my daughter to Athens for a short holiday at half-term. She is studying Ancient Greek at GCSE, which makes me immensely proud as I didn’t even get that far with Latin. Delphi was wondrous but Mycenae was perhaps the most powerful: there is something about the place, as if one might close one’s
It takes a lot of effort for ‘Johnny’ to take off his coat every morning when he joins his reception class. That’s because his teacher or a teaching assistant have to help the five year old pull his arms out from the sleeves of his duffel coat. Johnny is not disabled in any way; he
The suits who run football in this country can always be relied upon to make a pig’s ear of things. The latest example of their capacity to cock up matters is the farce over this week’s return of the rainbow laces campaign in the Premier League. This campaign, now in its eleventh year, is an
When you’re in a hole, stop digging. These words of wisdom are yet to be heeded by the bright young things in Downing Street, who appear to be ploughing on manfully with plans to slap inheritance tax on family farms. Yet despite all the state-sponsored spinning, the public seems to be increasingly turning against Labour
As the first day of the Emir of Qatar’s state visit to Britain draws to a close, all those involved in this its organisation might allow themselves a larger-than-usual measure of Christmas cheer. From Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani’s arrival in the country earlier today, the lavish pageantry of his welcome by
The ravens really are leaving the Tower. Last week, it was Andrea Jenkyns quitting the Tories; this week it is the turn of an even bigger name. Tim Montgomerie – the founder of Conservative Home – has today been announced as the latest prominent Conservative to switch to Reform UK. The party posted a picture
Vegans are a people both widely admired and hated. That is the conclusion of a report earlier this week, one that found that shoppers who opt for meat alternatives elicit fear and contempt from others. According to researchers from the University of Vaasa in Finland, who interviewed 3,600 people from four European countries, including the