All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
GB News has dealt with a number of Ofcom complaints in its time, but now things have become a little more serious. The media regulator has today announced that it plans to impose a whopping £100,000 fine on Gbeebies for ‘breaking due impartiality rules’ after it aired a pre-election interview with outgoing Tory leader and
Anyone who is serious about the condition of the armed forces and Britain’s defence policy will not look a gift horse in the mouth. Rachel Reeves’s announcement in yesterday’s Budget that the government will spend an additional £2.9 billion on defence next year is welcome and desperately needed. But while it’s headline-grabbing, in reality it
‘No plan for the economy’ is the charge being made against the government, as Conservatives take to the airwaves following the Budget. The problem is that, in this case, the charge is simply untrue. Labour do have a plan for the economy. It is called securonomics: a worldview set out in some detail by the
The United Nations this week criticised France for refusing to allow women and girls to wear a Muslim headscarf on the sports field. In a report published on Monday, a panel comprised of what the UN called ‘independent experts’ concluded that France’s measures banning women from wearing hijabs in sports were ‘discriminatory’. The experts said that
Budget day has been and gone and this morning Rachel Reeves was expected on the media morning round to discuss the fallout from her fiscal statement. Only it appears that the Chancellor seems to think she has better things to do than speak to the usual selection of broadcasters about her tax-raising Budget the morning
In the history of devolution, no Westminster government has ever given Scotland as large a block grant settlement as the one announced by Labour on Wednesday. In her fiscal statement, the chancellor declared that politicians north of the border will receive £1.5 billion this year and a record £3.4 billion next year via the Barnett
‘Fixing the Foundations’ is the phrase the Labour government wants in your head after the Budget. But the thin gruel for dealing with the challenge presented by our ill-health and disability benefits system suggests those words don’t count for much. Apart from the defence of the realm, there is nothing more foundational to society than
The Chinese Communist party (CCP) is spooked by Halloween. In Shanghai, police have rounded up people gathering in costumes that included a Donald Trump with bandaged right ear, Spiderman, Deadpool and Batman. A man dressed as Buddha was also shown being escorted away in videos posted on Chinese social media, but quickly deleted by online
Sabotage seems to be back with a bang – and if not with a bang, certainly with a lot of smoke. Incidents have come thick and fast since 2022 when someone – and it still is not clear who – sabotaged pipelines in the Baltic Sea to disable the flow of natural gas from Germany
Warring parties often strike deals. Exchanges of prisoners, ceasefires to deliver aid, covert talks between intelligence services – and eventually, hopefully, peace. But since Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of troops across the Russian border into Ukraine on 24 February 2022, there have been no peace negotiations and no sign of meaningful compromise from either Moscow
No sombre music accompanied Rachel Reeves’s Budget, nor was there a reading from Corinthians. Yet, those details aside, one point is surely clear: Labour’s first Budget in 14 years was a requiem for entrepreneurial Britain. The four decades from the Thatcher reforms of the early 1980s, that turned the UK into one of the best
As the post-Budget scrutiny gets underway, there is one group of obvious losers from today’s statement: farmers. The rural community is up in arms about Rachel Reeves’ changes to tax relief on farmland. From April 2026 this will be capped at 50 per cent for assets over £1 million – which works out at around
It has been a good day for investors in the Alternative Investment Market (Aim), with the index of the top 100 Aim shares up 4.3 per cent. But that merely serves to undermine the damage that Rachel Reeves had done to the market by previously suggesting that she might remove the exemption whereby Aim shares
Rachel Reeves’s fiscal statement has been and gone but the fallout from today’s Budget is still being assessed. One rather interesting element of the Chancellors’ speech this afternoon concerns the Labour government’s claim that the Conservatives left a £22bn blackhole in the economy after the party’s 14 years in government. Despite shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt
‘Judge us by whether, in five years’ time, you have more money in your pocket,’ Keir Starmer told the Mirror earlier this week. This comment came ahead of his speech in the West Midlands, which was designed to prepare the country (and markets) for the Budget. ‘Everyone can wake up on Thursday and understand that a new
Rachel Reeves sounded triumphant as she delivered Labour’s first Budget in 14 years. ‘Invest, invest, invest,’ the Chancellor said. She claimed hers was a Budget for growth and prosperity and, that most of all, it was a Budget to help working people. But the Office for Budget Responsibility – the body set up 14 years
The Tories lied! That was the thrust of Rachel Reeves’s first Budget today. She was very specific about the falsehoods. At the time of the spring financial forecast, she said, ‘they hid the reality of their public spending plans.’ Parliament and the public were the victims of ‘a cover up’ about pressures on our economy.
The government came into office promising to prioritise economic growth. Now, after their first Budget, I suppose we have some idea of what that means: more borrowing to fund public sector capital projects, and higher tax and regulatory burdens on business. This does not seem very likely to prove a successful recipe, and furthers the
At long last, the Conservative leadership race is about to come to an end. After four months of hustings, debates and backroom deals, voting ends tomorrow in the Tory membership round. Yet despite the ballot closing at 5 p.m. Thursday, the result will then not be announced until late Saturday morning. It has got some
Rishi Sunak’s final act in the Commons as leader of the opposition was one he clearly enjoyed. The outgoing Conservative leader had what is normally the unenviable task of responding to the Budget just minutes after it had been delivered, before the small print reveals the real story. Rachel Reeves had helped him quite a
Rachel Reeves didn’t want to surprise anyone with this Budget. She didn’t want to shock the markets, nor did she want any accusation that she had played fast and loose with the public finances. So by the time the Chancellor stood up in the Commons today, the bulk of her big decisions were already public
There were few silver linings in today’s Budget announcement – but one measure the Labour lot are rather keen to harp on about is the cut to draught duty by 1.7 per cent. What exactly does this work out at? Er, a rather measly one penny off the cost of a pint. How very generous…
All the political framing of the past three months has been around Rachel Reeves’ first Budget. Black holes have been ‘discovered’, public services have been found to be in a worse state than expected, and Liz Truss has been exhumed at every opportunity (or at least, when she hasn’t been inserting herself into the political
When Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, he and Keir Starmer had some of the most repetitive and uninformative sessions at Prime Minister’s Questions. Today was his final stint as leader of the opposition in this forum, and the session was charming. It covered the coast-to-coast route, which travels through his Richmond constituency, the importance of
Axel Rudakubana, the alleged Southport killer, has been accused of possessing a terrorist document, yet the police still insist there is no evidence of a terrorist motive. How can both be the case? The document Rudakubana is accused of downloading is a version of the 180-page ‘al-Qaeda training manual’. It is also known as the
Taxes will rise by £40 billion following Labour’s first Budget for 14 years. The Chancellor announced: • An increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions from April to 15 per cent, raising £25 billion • That the freeze on income tax and National Insurance thresholds will not be extended past 2028 • That the lower rate
Hillary Clinton has a simple but bitter lesson to teach Donald Trump’s supporters in 2024: the best way to lose an election is to assume you’ve already won it a week before it happens. The MAGA movement – aiming to Make America Great Again, namely by Making Trump President Again – has never been more
If there’s one thing the SNP truly excels at, it’s maintaining double standards. The extraordinary case of the Scottish government and the missing legal advice makes clear just how hypocritical the SNP is when it comes to conduct in public life. Scottish nationalists are swift to condemn opponents at the slightest whiff of impropriety but,
To the subject of office decor, with Rachel Reeves now in the spotlight for matters other than her Budget. It now transpires that the Chancellor has made some rather controversial alterations to her workspace’s wall art — in replacing a portrait of Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor with a founder of the, er, British Communist party. Good