All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Six days on from the Budget, and things don’t look any better for Rachel Reeves’s claim that her Budget won’t negatively affect working people. Today and tomorrow, it is the turn of the Commons Treasury Select Committee to pick through the wreckage. What have we learned so far? David Miles from the Office for Budget
As the US presidential race rollercoasters towards its finale, many Americans are already bracing themselves for a close and highly contested vote. The uncertain outcome of the election is just the beginning of what could be a fraught period for the United States and the world. There are 76 days for mischief, or worse, between
I have spent a quarter of a century caring for people dying from smoking. Deaths of this sort are not only premature but often horrible. My mother’s death from lung cancer was both. The puritan nature of my medical heart should, therefore, leap up at the new restrictions of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, introduced
‘Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all,’ said Balfour. Tell that to the American political class on the day of the 2024 presidential election. After months of the Trump–Biden–Harris drama – the criminal indictments, the disaster debates, the President dropping out, the assassination attempts – the nation is in a state of
The countdown is on, with just days left until the result of the US presidential election is announced. With pollsters across the world undecided about the likely outcome, Sir Keir’s Starmer’s government is trying to hedge its bets. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has insisted on the airwaves today that ‘there will be a really good
Whatever happened to Kamala Harris’s promise of ‘joy’? Joy was in catastrophically short supply among her supporters I met in the United States last week. I’ve never encountered a more glee-less crew. It was all Nazi this, Nazi that, ‘The world is burning’, ‘We don’t want a rapist in the White House’. If this really
Is Donald Trump going to lose Iowa? That’s the conclusion many US pundits came to after a bombshell poll over the weekend. That poll, conducted by the psephologist Ann Selzer, put Kamala Harris three points ahead of Trump in Iowa, despite Trump having comfortably won the state by almost ten points in the past two presidential elections.
The uproar following the acquittal of Police Sergeant Martyn Blake over the death of Chris Kaba exposes a deep unease with the police complaints process. Even without knowing about Kaba’s past criminal record, the jury spent barely three hours before acquitting Blake. Yet last night’s BBC Panorama documentary suggests that those in the Independent Office for Police
In approximately 12 hours, all UK news will take a back seat as the world looks to the United States and the election of a new American president. Until then, the new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is trying to drum up as much momentum as possible following her election on Saturday. This morning, Badenoch met
At long last, the Tory leadership race concluded at the weekend after Kemi Badenoch was crowned victor on Saturday. But while the Conservatives finally have some semblance of stability with their newly-appointed leader and shadow cabinet, it’s not all good news for the blues. Nigel Farage has now claimed that since Badenoch’s weekend win, his
It’s polling day across the pond and Steerpike is keen to have a flutter. Opinion polling in the US election suggests the safe money is on Kamala Harris, but his fellow gamblers seem to be telling a different story. Data analysed by Mr S’s friends in the Speccies’ data dungeon shows money is pouring in
What can the 2020 and 2016 elections, the previous votes in which Donald Trump was the Republican nominee, tell us about today’s race for the White House? There are three layers to a presidential election, only two of which really matter. The overall ‘popular’ vote only counts for bragging rights. Trump has never won it.
My reaction to fireworks is a bit eccentric. Lovely, I think, but can’t they be more meaningful? To be more precise, this is my view of Bonfire Night, formerly known as Guy Fawkes night. It would be nice, I think, if we could revive the annual event as a celebration of our shared values. To
If you didn’t know any better, you might think the 2024 US presidential election was a make-or-break moment for America and the world. Allies and adversaries alike will be watching the election results like the rest of us: on the edge of our seats. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are at the centre of the universe
Even by the bloody standards of what France has become under Emmanuel Macron, the carnage last week was horrific. In Poitiers, a shootout left five youths seriously wounded, one of whom died of his injuries at the weekend. In Rennes, a 5-year-old remains in a serious state after being hit in the head by a
The crowd gathers, wrapped in thick coats and scarves, the crisp air mingling with the scent of hot chocolate and warm smoke from the bonfire. Children sit on their parents’ shoulders, eyes wide with anticipation, as the first crackle in the sky is met with an appreciative cheer. As more fireworks light up the sky,
‘Kindness is like marmalade – a little goes a long way,’ Paddington Bear tweeted recently. But it isn’t only imaginary talking bears who take this approach on social media. The News Agents’ Emily Maitlis was inspired by the rather sickly – and given the seriousness of current events, rather inappropriate – chummy love-in between Rishi
What difference has Kemi Badenoch’s victory made to the way the party talks about education? Badenoch doesn’t want to make policy straight away, having stood on a platform promising a fundamental rethink of what the Conservatives stand for. Today’s Education Questions in the Commons suggested that in the meantime, she wants her frontbenchers to put
Universities in the UK desperately needed Bridget Phillipson’s announcement this afternoon of a rise in tuition fees. The Education Secretary has said they will rise from £9,250, to £9,535 next year and £10,500 by 2029. This was necessary if only to offset the effect of last week’s Budget announcement of a 1.2 per cent rise
Every time a chancellor sits down after delivering their budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) releases their ‘economic and fiscal outlook’. What seems a boringly-named Whitehall document is actually a treasure trove of information about the state of the country. It reveals more about how we live our lives – and what lies ahead,
The result is in. Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of the Conservative party. She faces a daunting task trying to transform the party, following its worst ever defeat earlier this year. The new Tory leader won with 56.5 per cent of the vote with her rival Robert Jenrick on 43.5 per cent. So, who
In a rather surprising development, it transpires that Scottish people are Donald Trump’s biggest fans in Europe. A Norstat poll for the Times has revealed that support for the US presidential candidate is higher north of the border than in the rest of the UK – and indeed western Europe. Who’d have thought it, eh?
It would be consoling to think that the BBC, alone among our supposedly unpartisan TV news providers, is guilty of hopelessly biased coverage of the US presidential election. This would conform to the increasingly popular notion that Auntie is in a place beyond redemption, unique in its iniquities. That notion may be true, but it
The Budget has started a fight between the government and GPs. As is often the case with doctors, that fight is about money, but there is also something even more valuable at stake: the proper public understanding of general practice and the NHS. When I ran a thinktank, I kept a list of things I
Dear oh dear. It now transpires that Starmer’s army will increase university fees in line with inflation from September next year, as announced by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson in the Commons today. It’s the first hike to tuition fees in eight years after university payments have remained frozen at £9,250 a year since 2017 –
Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser – trust is good, control is better – is a popular German saying. It’s also the state’s motto for overseeing Europe’s biggest economy, which is now being run into the ground. Germany’s economy is officially expected to shrink in 2024 for the second year in a row. Berlin’s Social
There’s been a momentous election in Africa, Botswana to be exact. Not heard about it? Don’t be surprised. The British and US media have all but ignored the story or got it wrong in the run-up. Even the BBC barely mentioned it though they bang on about Israel to such a degree you’d think the war
Well, well, well. It seems that the Guardian, the self-proclaimed bastion of ‘clarity and imagination’, has been acting rather censoriously of late. It transpires that, in a column navigating the world’s great whiskies by wine critic Henry Jeffreys, a reference to an Israeli single malt whisky was first removed from the print copy – before
Spain’s King and Queen were pelted with mud yesterday when they visited Paiporta, epicentre of the flood disaster zone in the Valencia region. Over two hundred people have died in the flooding, dozens of them in Paiporta; more are thought to be trapped and, by this time, surely dead in underground garages and car parks.