All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s finally happened. Over 24 hours after news first broke of Naz Shah sharing anti-Semitic posts online, the Labour MP has been suspended. While Labour say this is by ‘mutual agreement’, the move comes after several apologies from Shah — and quite a long silence from Corbyn. However, the use of the term ‘mutual agreement’ is of
Last week Vote Leave’s Dom Cummings was hauled before the Treasury Select Committee to be grilled on the Brexit campaign by a po-faced Andrew Tyrie. What followed was a lively exchange between Cummings and the committee chair as Tyrie tried to pin Cummings down on figures used in Vote Leave’s campaign literature. Today Cummings’s comrade
At the 1997 general election the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party won 17.5 percent of the vote and lost its last remaining 11 seats in Scotland. Scotland was now a Tory-free zone, at least in terms of its parliamentary representatives. Nearly twenty years later, the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party might, if next week’s elections
After his best performance as leader at PMQs last week, Jeremy Corbyn was back to his lacklustre self today. He again went on academies. But after having got Cameron to say that there would be a bill to make all schools academies in the Queen’s Speech, he failed to press on. By the end of
With little love lost between the Prime Minister and Nigel Farage, today the Ukip leader found himself on the receiving end of David Cameron’s ire during PMQs. When asking Cameron whether the public should listen to Brexit figures like Nigel Farage, Ben Bradshaw pronounced Farage’s name as ‘Farridge’. This delighted Cameron, who proceeded to blast Farage for
Labour’s Lisa Nandy has just been on the Daily Politics, where she suggested that Naz Shah should be suspended from the party. When asked about Bradford West MP Naz Shah’s comments about Israel, Nandy told Jo Coburn that the Labour party should ‘suspend anybody who makes anti-Semitic comments in line with our policy and investigate
Forget the big election debates, the defining moment of Ed Miliband’s Labour leadership was his attempt at eating a bacon sandwich. In 2014 ahead of the local and European elections, Miliband appeared pained and confused as he attempted to eat a bacon sandwich in Covent Garden. The pictures that followed went everywhere as he became
PMQs kicked off with a big fuss about improvements to our world-beating education system. To academise or not to academise? Corbo wants to let good-or-outstanding schools be good-or-outstanding. Cameron says good-or-outstanding schools can become even more good-or-outstanding. Both leaders prefer to ignore Ofsted’s lower grades, ‘inadequate’, and ‘requires improvement’. Rightly so. No one else recognises
Britain’s economic growth slowed in the first quarter of this year to 0.4 per cent, down from 0.6 per cent at the end of last year, according to ONS figures out today. What did George Osborne have to say about the slowdown? Predictably enough, he invoked the threat of Brexit and turned the news into
It’s been a terrific week for integration Britain. First the National Union of Students (NUS) elected what the BBC joyously headlined as its ‘First black Muslim woman president.’ Wahey! Another victory for diverse Britain. But amid the preliminary bunting some people still remembered that Malia Bouattia is principally known for two things: a reportedly extreme opposition
Asda shoppers need to be careful when picking up a so-called bargain from the supermarket giant’s shelves: the chain has been warned by the Competition and Markets Authority not to mislead customers with ‘confusing price promotions’ according to the BBC. From now on, multi-buy offers will represent better value than single-buy, and ‘was’ prices will
Every month, some 1,500 households across the country tell us what they think has happened to the value of their home over the last month, and what they expect to happen to its value over the next year. This data is then crunched into something called the House Price Sentiment Index, or HPSI for short.
Another Tuesday, another triumph for Donald Trump. The Republican frontrunner had a clean sweep at last night’s primaries, winning easily in all the states that voted. He took all the delegates from Pennsylvania Maryland, Connecticut, and Delaware — plus 9 of 15 in Rhode Island. After his huge victory in New York last week, that means
As Zac Goldsmith lags behind Sadiq Khan in the polls ahead of the London mayoral election, it’s a case of all hands on deck in order to boost his chances come polling day. However, while David Cameron used PMQs last week to do exactly this — attacking Sadiq Khan for his links to extremists — the Prime Minister
It was the largest debate in The Spectator’s history: we sold out the 2,200-seat London Palladium for our debate on whether Britain should leave the EU, sponsored by Rathbones. The lineup: Dan Hannan, Nigel Farage and Kate Hoey vs Nick Clegg, Liz Kendall and Chuka Umunna. Andrew Neil chaired. Here are summaries of all the speeches, as well as the full audio:
Although Nicola Sturgeon puts her career in politics down to Margaret Thatcher, she scarcely has anything positive to say about the Iron Lady. In fact, the SNP leader says that she entered politics as a result of her anger at the impact of Thatcher’s politics on Scotland. Still, she appears to have no qualms about borrowing one of the
It was all smiles for the camera as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other EU top brass visited Nizip refugee camp in the south-east of Turkey over the weekend. A photo opportunity with the Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu and some refugees dressed in traditional costumes preceded the tour. I was among the journalists covering
What is Theresa May playing at? I mean, it’s one thing to treat the Conservative party’s remaining members as fools but it’s quite another to think the same of the rest of us. Her speech yesterday in which she attempted to carve a middle way through the Tory euro-forest has been generally well received. And,
Helena Kennedy’s two-part radio programme on human rights was very predictable. She did a lot of hand-wringing. She spoke some passionate rhetoric about our common humanity. She quoted Hannah Arendt. She consulted a lot of non-Western thinkers, a lot of fellow human rights lawyers, and a token critic of the concept of human rights. The first
As more and more people identify as ‘gender-fluid’, there is growing hostility in some quarters towards traditional gender stereotypes. In fact, for some the term ‘masculinity’ has become a dirty word. Grayson Perry — the cross-dressing Turner prize-winning artist — is one such person. Perry has recently spent his time creating a whole television programme for
There is, of course, no crime more dreadful in modern society than discrimination. And how dreadful that new forms of it are being uncovered every day. The latest foul piece of bigotry, it turns out, is employers favouring male employees with kids. According to the study by the IPPR, and commissioned by the TUC, today,
Nearly half a century after Ford Dagenham women sewing machinists struck for equal pay, a new survey shows women are still being penalised in the workplace – for having children. Equal pay for equal work is enshrined in law thanks to the bravery of those strikers, yet a cavernous gender pay gap remains. But now
Yay – Izzy Christiansen! Yay – Beth Mead! I daresay you were as thrilled as I was to see that these two women had been named as, respectively, PFA Women’s Players’ Player of the Year and PFA Women’s Young Player of the Year. Izzy plays for Manchester City, Beth for Sun’lan. You have never heard of either
Jeremy Hunt has not done himself any favours in the past with his comments about junior doctors. But today – the first time junior doctors have ever walked out without providing emergency cover – was the time for sounding conciliatory. The Health Secretary said it was a ‘very, very bleak day for the NHS’. Hunt
The trial of Antoine Deltour, Raphael Halet, and Edouard Perrin opens today in Luxembourg. Reporters should mob the courtroom. Camera crews should block the streets outside. I cannot think of a more important case, or one that reveals more clearly how tax havens punish those who reveal injustice rather than those in multinational businesses and
Until now, it has not been clear to most people what the junior doctors’ strikes are all about. It began about a total pay cut masquerading as a ‘basic pay rise’. Then it became about protecting doctors’ family and social lives at weekends. Most recently, there have been accusations of sexism. Somewhere in the middle,
With the junior doctors’ strike now in full swing, it’s fair to say that these aren’t the most harmonious days staff at the Department of Health have ever seen. Perhaps that’s why they are looking for a new Director of Communications to take charge of the department’s ‘external and internal communication activities across a complex
The junior doctors’ strike that starts today has a strong claim to be the most selfish and irresponsible piece of industrial action in British history. They are refusing to carry out even emergency care between 8am and 5pm today and tomorrow. This walk out, the first all-out strike since the NHS’s creation, isn’t over some issue
Given that the last time Dennis Skinner criticised a Tory Cabinet member in the Chamber he was ejected from the Commons, the Beast of Bolsover was on remarkably mild form today. Following Jeremy Hunt’s statement on the planned junior doctors strike, Skinner told the Health Secretary that he ought to ‘wipe that smirk off his face’: ‘When the
Jeremy Hunt has been facing questions in the Commons ahead of tomorrow’s junior doctors strike. The Health Secretary said the industrial action was ‘wholly unjustified’ and said ‘we are proud of the NHS but we must turn that pride into actions’: His sentiment wasn’t enough to placate Dennis Skinner, however, with the MP for Bolsover
It’s safe to say that last week was a good one for the Remain camp, thanks in large part to the endorsement from President Barack Obama. Despite what people in online conservative echo chambers may believe, Obama remains fairly popular in Britain and his opposition to Brexit may well count for something. His tactic was to play on
Monday mornings are miserable enough as it is, but this morning the Leave campaign decided to treat us to the double whammy of a furious column from Boris Johnson in the Telegraph and an irritable Iain Duncan Smith on the Today programme. The Mayor is angry about Obama and the way the Remain campaign has
One of the worst kept secrets at Westminster is that Theresa May has a distinctly low opinion of Boris Johnson. As Home Secretary she has had more dealings with the Mayor of London than most Cabinet ministers, and there is clearly no love lost between the pair. When she decided to turn down his request
The EU referendum rumbles ever closer but after a bad week for the leave campaign following Barack Obama’s controversial intervention can those calling for Brexit fight back? And is Nicky Morgan staging a climbdown over Tory plans for academies? Spectator editor Fraser Nelson speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman about what this week holds.