All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Yesterday morning, the British Prime Minister travelled to Paris at the invitation of the French President to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe. Sir Keir Starmer was the first UK leader to attend an Armistice Day ceremony in Paris since Winston Churchill did so alongside General
There is something slightly uncanny about the musical Marsh family of Faversham in Kent, who recently gathered millions of YouTube views with ‘Gimme Hope Kamala’, their rewrite of Eddy Grant’s ‘Gimme Hope Jo’Anna’. They are a combination of two big fads of the 70s, The Partridge Family and Jonestown. Mad Ma Marsh in particular has the shining
After years of tweaking the tail of BBC bosses, it seems that Gary Lineker has finally had enough. The left-wing centre forward is reportedly stepping down from Match of the Day at the end of this season after 25 years in post. The 63-year-old is currently the Beeb’s highest-paid star, earning more than £1.3m a
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Under leaden November skies, came news of what many have suspected: energy rationing for British households could be officially on the cards. The NESO-Miliband plan for a low-carbon future is going to involve a lot more than just waiting a while for a cup of tea The bearer of
A huge surge of support from the Latino community helped Donald Trump to victory in the US election. I could never envision myself voting for Donald Trump. But my aunt in New York, who became a citizen many years ago did just that: last week she cast a ballot for the Republican candidate. So why did she, and so many
In a year of elections, none are bigger than that for Oxford Chancellor. Just five candidates remain in the race to head England’s oldest university, with William Hague and Dominic Grieve of the Tories taking on Labour peers Jan Royall and Peter Mandelson plus Dame Elish Angiolini. Voting in the second – and final –
Donald Trump has won his third presidential election and across Europe heads are exploding. This should not be the case. Many European leaders were briefed earlier this year that a Trump victory was more likely than not. But wishful thinking appears to have defeated grim experience in many minds and many civil service buildings. To
Was Donald Trump’s win unexpected? Not if you followed the betting markets, which had Trump at a two-thirds chance of winning days out from the election. The polls, on the other hand, told a different story. Analysis of polls carried out in 15 competitive states in the three weeks before last Tuesday’s election shows that
What is it with separatist health secretaries claiming from the public purse for the footie? First there was the £11,000 iPad scandal, which caused a headache for hapless Humza Yousaf and pushed former SNP health secretary Michael Matheson out of his government job. Now his successor Neil Gray is in the spotlight after the Sunday
It’s extremely difficult to imagine that today’s meeting between Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron produced anything substantive beyond a photo opportunity at the Arc de Triomphe to mark the 106th anniversary of the 1918 armistice. This year is also the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale and it suits both Starmer and Macron to big up
It is very kind of Nigel Farage to offer his services as a kind of intermediary between our government and the new American president. Keir Starmer certainly needs one, because protest though he might, nobody believes the line that Donald Trump is hugely impressed with the Labour government or that JD Vance has a new
In an address to 1,500 school and academy trust leaders, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson last week asked schools to stop focusing solely on exam results. She said the government would not have a ‘tunnel vision’ on academic success, but ‘widen our ambition’ to give students a ‘sense of wellbeing and belonging’. On the surface this
It emerged over the weekend that Tesco might have to start putting up prices. So, we have learned over the past few days, will Sainsbury’s, BT, and even JD Wetherspoons, a company that is usually committed to keeping prices as low as possible. One by one, many of the major consumer brands in the UK
There are less than three weeks to go until MPs vote on Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying private members’ bill. Cabinet Secretary Simon Case wrote to ministers last month to say that, while they ‘need not resile from previously stated views when directly asked about them, they should exercise discretion and should not take part in
Has The Rest is Politics podcast peaked? Its hosts have certainly had a rather rocky ride of late – with ex-Tory MP Rory Stewart widely mocked last week over his bullish assertion that ‘Kamala Harris will win comfortably because Biden’s admin has been solid’ before the Democrat candidate went on to lose to Donald Trump.
Our new government’s most closely-held commitment is to the primacy of human rights law. Shortly after taking office, Keir Starmer vowed that under his leadership the UK will ‘never’ leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Last month, the Attorney General, Lord Hermer KC, undertook ‘to counter the false choice, offered by some, between parliamentary democracy and fundamental
When Donald Trump won the US presidential election last Wednesday, one leader’s message of congratulation was conspicuously absent. It took the Russian president Vladimir Putin more than 24 hours to pass comment on Trump’s win. He eventually praised the President-elect as ‘courageous’ and stated he had ‘nothing against’ Trump trying to resume contact with him.
There was a cranky call doing the rounds online last week suggesting veterans should turn their backs on Sir Keir Starmer as he laid a Remembrance Sunday wreath. Naturally I opposed it, alongside many other conservative-leaning commentators. We argued that honouring our war dead is something we should want all the main strands of political
While Sir Keir Starmer is in France this Armistice Day to place wreaths at the Arc de Triomphe, the Prime Minister’s defence secretary is doing the UK morning round. John Healey was across the airwaves this morning discussing president-elect Donald Trump, the war in Ukraine and the small boats fiasco. But on the issue of
The celebrity cook Jamie Oliver has a sideline as an author. Not all his books are about cooking and food: Oliver has written two children’s books as well, Billy and the Great Giant Adventure and its sequel, Billy and the Epic Escape. Oliver’s books sell very well, thank you, and have presumably made a fortune for him and
Wars begin and end in controversy. The war that ended 106 years ago today with the armistice of 11 November 1918 carried the germ of controversy before it even broke out. Prior to Britain declaring war on the German Empire on 4 August the Germans rushed into print their ‘White Book’ of diplomatic documents on the
We went to Skye last year on a family holiday – an amazing island, beautiful scenery, so many great people. Towards the end of our trip we visited Dunvegan Castle, ancestral home of the mighty Clan MacLeod. It featured much about the history of the family and its famous sons and daughters, although I noticed that
Was it Peanut wot won it? One of the stranger and more incendiary aspects of the run-up to the recent US election was a Twitter/ X howl-round about Peanut the squirrel. The house where Peanut lived was raided, and this blameless rescue-rodent euthanised, after a complaint was apparently filed to a government agency by a
Justin Welby has said he considered resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over the findings of the Makin Review into the serial abuser John Smyth. That report, which emerged this week, found the Church of England had, from 2013, missed opportunities to bring Smyth to justice: from that point onwards, Welby and other senior figures knew
Georgia is defined by its fight for survival. Lying in the shadow of Russia, Turkey and Iran, it has navigated – not always successfully – between the great powers for centuries, longing for freedom. The 26 October parliamentary elections were billed as the latest existential chapter in this centuries-old struggle – a choice between returning
It is our duty on Remembrance Sunday to honour the fallen. But to do justice to their sacrifice, we should also remember why the world descended into war in 1914. The history of the Great War has captivated and divided historians since Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip fired that fateful shot at Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand
If this year’s Remembrance Sunday was unusually affecting, it was in large part due to the presence of both the King and the Princess of Wales at the service. After one of the hardest years for the monarchy in living memory, surpassing even the so-called ‘annus horribilis’ of 1992, there is hope that, as 2024
Labour ministers are very keen to be good Europeans. But could the cause of closer continental ties come at the price of Wes Streeting’s smoking ban? Tobacco firms are perplexed as to how proposals to ban tobacco products for younger Brits will work in Northern Ireland. Under the terms of the UK’s revised Withdrawal Agreement,
Xi Jinping was quick with his congratulations, urging Donald Trump to ‘forge the right path for China and the United States to get along in the new era’. After the previous election in 2020, the Chinese president was one of the last world leaders to message Joe Biden on his victory. His speed this time