All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Steerpike’s revelation yesterday that Emma Watson has been named in the latest Panama Papers leak has been followed up across the world — even inspiring a new genre of Harry Potter fan-fiction. While the Telegraph, the Independent, the Sun and the Times all followed up Mr S’s story in the UK, across the pond USA Today, New York Post
The swallows have long returned and the summer party season is almost upon us – so I must get organising. Without wishing to be immodest, I think it is widely acknowledged among the UK’s beautiful people that my alfresco July event – it is so much more than a party – is always the highlight of the
David Cameron was today caught describing Nigeria to the Queen as ‘fantastically corrupt’. But after the Panama Papers leak, the Prime Minister may want to choose his words more carefully: after all, that accolade could easily belong closer to home. Your average dodgy Nigerian oil baron and big-time British fraudster have much in common; a shared love
Britain’s trade deficit – the gap between what the UK imports and exports – is now at its biggest since the financial crash in 2008. The latest figures out today show that the difference between the two is now £13.3bn for the first four months of 2016. That’s a jump from £12.2bn at the end
The dream of internet freedom has died. What a dream it was. Twenty years ago, nerdy libertarians hailed the web as the freest public sphere that mankind had ever created. The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, written in 1996 by John Perry Barlow, warned the ‘governments of the industrial world’, those ‘weary giants of
The Boleyn Ground, commonly known as Upton Park, has been home to West Ham United since 1904. It stands on Green Street, a road in London that bisects the parishes of East and West Ham. With its slightly tacky fortress-inspired design, it has become a symbol of East London’s resilience against the tide of gentrification and development. Until
Oh dear. David Cameron’s done it again. It seems the Prime Minister can’t quite master the art of checking whether there are any cameras recording before he makes an indiscreet comment. Reuters report that Cameron has been caught on camera telling the Queen that the leaders of some ‘fantastically corrupt’ like Nigeria and Afghanistan will attend his anti-corruption
Of late, Emma Watson has been taking a more active role in both UK and American politics. The Harry Potter actress recently attended the White House correspondents’ dinner, and just yesterday called on London’s new mayor Sadiq Khan to put a statue of a suffragette outside Parliament. However, should she wish to continue to move in political circles, Watson
Theresa May’s Investigatory Powers Bill is proving to be one of the most unpopular pieces of proposed legislation in this Parliament. While the Home Secretary has described the bill — which is currently in the committee stage — as ‘world leading’, a new campaign against it claims that all it will do is inspire dictators.
Hell, I wait so long to be right about something and then two bits of stuff come along at once. Nine months ago I said Sadiq Khan would become London’s mayor – partly because he was a very good candidate and a likeable bloke – but more because London is one of the world’s most
When I was first getting on the housing ladder in the late nineties, the idea of taking out a mortgage you never intended to pay back was pretty normal. Interest-only mortgages were widely available to first-time buyers like me. It was a good way to get us onto their books. Over time, as I did,
Owning houses and cars can sometimes seem like throwing money into a black hole. And there’s little respite – new research has found that car insurance premiums rose by an average of 12 per cent over the past year. MoneySuperMarket, the price comparison site, looked at year-on-year quarterly car insurance premiums to identify overall and regional
Yesterday, David Cameron was all talk of ensuring peace in our time and preventing world war three by staying in the EU. But today, as the EU debate rumbles on, he’ll have come crashing back to earth after reading the front page of The Sun. The paper quotes Iain Duncan Smith as saying that Germany
As the Treasury Committee looks into the economic costs of the UK’s EU membership, several leading Brexit figures have been summoned to speak before the panel. However, Vote Leave’s Matthew Elliott’s continual absence has cast a shadow on proceedings. The Vote Leave chief executive has turned down an invitation to speak before the committee not one,
Although Labour MPs have been encouraged not to brief what happens at meetings of the PLP to lurking journalists, Jeremy Corbyn’s team have no issue briefing out what the leader will say at the meeting before it even occurs. Today hacks were told that Corbyn would use the meeting to clampdown on party in-fighting as members
For people who profess to be utterly uninterested in the fortunes of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, SNP parliamentarians and the usual ragbag collection of independence supporters seem terribly keen to demonstrate that the so-called Tory revival witnessed on Thursday is no such thing. Hence this entertaining poster that’s been doing the rounds on
The Spectator’s weekly podcast, presented by Isabel Hardman, has been going for a couple of years now and is established as the best podcast produced by any magazine. But we’ve also been doing a Coffee House podcast, called Coffee House shots, which is shorter reactions to stories in the news (subscribe with iTunes here, or here’s
At last. We now know that the long-awaited Chilcot Inquiry report into the Iraq war will be published on July 6th. Writing to the Prime Minister, Sir John Chilcot said today: ‘National security checking of the Inquiry’s report has now been completed, without the need for any redactions to appear in the text. I am
There are strict rules governing the language that MPs can use in the House of Commons. Words like ‘guttersnipe’, ‘stoolpigeon’ and ‘hypocrite’ are considered unparliamentary, and MPs can be chucked out of the Chamber for the rest of the day if they do not withdraw their comments. Sadly, though, they can get away with behaviour
London is going through one of its periodic fits of smugness right now, for which the only real parallel is the US after the election of Barack Obama first time round. I refer, obviously, to the election of Sadiq Khan as the first Muslim mayor of a major European capital. ‘Doesn’t it do us proud?’
Sadiq Khan starts his first day as Mayor today, and has spent more of his weekend distancing himself from Jeremy Corbyn than he has been talking about London. He made a series of pointed references to the need for his party to win elections and that ‘we only do that by speaking to those people
With the May elections over, the EU referendum campaign is now in full swing. David Cameron started the day warning that Brexit could put peace in Europe at risk. In his speech at the British Museum this morning, the PM also asked whether leaving the EU was a risk worth taking. Here’s what he said:
More than four months on from Spain’s December general election, optimism has given way to fatigue and cynicism among the electorate. Coalition negotiations between leading parties have failed, and a repeat election will now be held in Spain on 26 June, a few days after Britain’s EU referendum. But there is little enthusiasm for this second-take. Many Spaniards
Of all of Labour’s dubious cheerleaders, none is more prolific on Twitter than Dr Éoin Clarke. The clip art-loving activist — who has a PhD in Irish feminism — managed to spend the majority of the general election campaign, and subsequent Labour leadership election, creating photoshops. While both Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham’s team were at first
According to David Cameron this morning, if Britain votes to ‘Leave’ the EU on 23 June, the Germans will invade Belgium, the Russians will invade Crimea (again), and we’ll all have to spend the coming years re-learning the finer details of the Schleswig-Holstein question. The Prime Minister’s latest attempt to warn of apocalypse in the
Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs is unlikely to be your favourite government department. But you have to pity the poor bean counters. It can’t be fun spending all day sending brown envelopes across the country in the hope of collecting enough tax to save the Chancellor’s blushes on Budget day. But now the tax office has gone too far in
Just days after Halifax and Scottish Widows said they would raise their age limit for mortgages from 75 to 80, Nationwide has announced it is increasing its threshold too. The UK’s biggest building society is raising its age limit for borrowers by ten years to 85. The change – which applies to when a mortgage term
David Cameron’s speech this morning about the EU referendum will succeed in doing one thing: infuriating the hell out of Eurosceptics. The Prime Minister is set to warn that peace and stability could be at risk if Britain walks away from Europe. He’ll also go on to say that the European Union has brought together
After Labour’s local election results proved to be less catastrophic than many pundits predicted, John McDonnell told party naysayers it was time to ‘put up or shut up’. The comments went on to anger disgruntled Blairites in Labour who argue the party ought to strive for greater success. Speaking on the Sunday Politics, Caroline Flint appeared to reinforce
Sir John Sawers, an ex-MI6 chief, insisted to Andrew Marr earlier that No10 did not put him up writing today’s article in the Sunday Times saying that Britain needs the EU to ensure its security. I can quite believe it. No10 abandoned this line of argument after the Belgian Airport atrocity, and the subsequent debate
It’s rare that an election result leaves you with a sense of giddy, disbelieving glee, but there it was in black and white. Galloway, George, Respect (George Galloway) Party, 37,007 votes. Walker, Sophie, Women’s Equality Party, 53,055 votes. Once you took second preferences into account, Walker and her newly formed feminist movement beat Galloway and
It’s a useful rule of thumb that any business which reduces its name to its initials is heading for trouble. Having gone that way under Goodwin, RBS almost doubled down last year by becoming the lower-case ‘rbs’, before apparently thinking better of it. British Petroleum became ‘BP’ after its 1998 merger with Amoco, tried to
The comparison between the referendum questions — that asked in 1975 and the one which we shall be asked on 23 June — is interesting. In 1975, the question was ‘Do you think that the United Kingdom should remain part of the European Community (Common Market)?’ (Answer: Yes/No). Today, the question will be ‘Should the United Kingdom
When I got an email from the Evening Standard’s education correspondent at 06.29am yesterday I had no idea that my life was about to turn to shit. She had just read an interview I’d done for a magazine called Schools Week in which, among other things, I said that I was standing down as chief
