All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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Katharine Birbalsingh, headteacher at the Michaela community school in Brent, is being challenged in the High Court over a policy which allegedly bans students from praying. Ms Birbalsingh has defended the policy, arguing that it is vital to ‘maintain a successful learning environment where children of all races and religion can thrive.’ Should the Tories
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Biden administration earlier this week that he objects to the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intended audience was his base of supporters – or what little of it he has left. Since the start of the war on 7 October 2023, Netanyahu had zig-zagged between rejecting
Hurrah! The UK is just about to reduce its carbon emissions by a further 1.5 per cent. As for Wales, it is going to get even close to the holy grail of reaching net zero, with 15 per cent of its carbon emissions wiped off its slate in one go. True, there will be 2,800
It seems the renegade royal has run away again. All of Fleet Street was eagerly anticipating the mother of all media showdowns this month, with Prince Harry due in court for his libel trial with the publishers of the Mail on Sunday, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL). The MoS is the biggest selling Sunday in the
Rishi Sunak has been caught on camera apparently walking away from a woman who has just started telling him about his daughter’s ordeal waiting for NHS treatment. As she starts to complain, he is looking anxiously over his shoulder at his aide, and then says he needs to get to the next appointment. She then
Once upon a time, a young unionist politician marched out of a talks process. Recalling the incident later, he said: ‘I asked myself the question, could I walk out of here and go down to my constituency, the people of Lisburn, look them in the eye and say this is a good deal. I could not
The saga of the Scottish Government’s WhatsApps continues to rumble on. The SNP regime has never been slow in condemning the Tories for a lack of transparency in the ongoing UK Covid Inquiry. So it was to Steerpike’s amusement then that Humza Yousaf and his Scottish government have been facing considerable criticism in recent months
In Spain’s general election last July, the right-wing Partido Popular and the even more right-wing Vox won 170 seats, just short of the 176 they needed to form a government. The support of an MP from Navarre and another from the Canary Islands took them to 172 but that only added to the frustrating sense
The Tory party’s plan to further cut taxes in the Spring Budget is not exactly a secret. Still, Jeremy Hunt’s suggestion at Davos that they are indeed coming has sparked imaginations – while his party continues to debate internally where these tax cuts should land. Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum’s conference
Investigative journalism has often been deadly for the careers of corrupt politicians in Ukraine, with stories leading to resignations and even imprisonment. Now, under the conditions of martial law (including the closure of public data services) and limited opportunities for society to control the actions of the authorities, Ukrainian journalists became the main watchdogs over
Consumers seem finally to have thrown in the towel: they are no longer propping up the economy. After a year in which the predicted recession kept failing to arrive, the high street finally ran out of steam in December with a hefty 3.2 per cent fall in sales volumes compared with November. Non-food was down
The great and the good of this world met in Davos this week to tell each other how wonderful they are. But amid all the bonhomie and back-slapping there loomed the spectre of You-Know-Who. Donald Trump’s landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses was his first significant step towards a second term in the White House.
‘You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,’ Donald Trump reportedly told top European officials while he was U.S. president. In the present situation, with a war not seen on this scale since 1945 being fought in geographical (if not yet political)
Eventually then, enough was enough. After months of Houthi drone and missile attacks on Israel and vessels in the Red Sea, the US and the UK launched retaliatory strikes in Yemen last week. But how did we get here? The Houthis have been a nuisance for at least 30 years, when they emerged as a
Each year the World Economic Forum’s conference in Davos, Switzerland draws the attention of conspiracy theorists. In truth, nothing is happening in the ski town that doesn’t happen every other day of the year: it’s the world’s most senior politicians and biggest business leaders working together to implement their vision for the future. The only
He’s at it again. Like those unscrupulous bosses he professes to despise, Sir Keir Starmer enjoys taking the credit when things go right – but is rather less keen to take the blame when things go wrong. A prime example of this was offered today in an interview today with ITV, when he was asked
Just when you thought Putin’s regime couldn’t sink any lower, it somehow manages to. Like something out of George Orwell’s 1984, the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov declared that, actually, the Kremlin’s bloody war in Ukraine had had a ‘positive impact on life inside [Russia]’. Speaking at a foreign ministry press conference, Lavrov said this was
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After much back and forth, the Rwanda Bill passed last night with only 11 votes against while other critics, such as Lee Anderson who resigned his party role, abstained. Rishi Sunak can celebrate a small victory as it appears that the Brexit ‘Spartans’ of yesteryear are something of a spent force today. Cindy Yu talks
You know your brand is struggling when even the boss wants to ditch it. For it seems that hapless Humza Yousaf has ‘done a Ratner’ today by distancing himself from the increasingly-toxic SNP brand. With his party set to lose half their seats to Labour, the flailing First Minister has decided that now is the
There’s a new mantra in championship boxing. Try speaking to anyone from that world – a big-time promoter, trainer or fighter – and before you can get a word in, they’ll say something like: ‘I’d like to thank His Royal Highness King Salman Abdulaziz al-Saud, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and, of course, the chairman of
Who is to blame if no flights with asylum seekers leave the UK for Rwanda ahead of the election? In a Downing Street press conference this morning, Rishi Sunak tried to suggest the answer would be the House of Lords or Labour rather than his government. In a bid to capitalise on the ‘Safety of
It was a detail that most novelists or screenwriters would have rejected as being too much. Shortly after yesterday’s announcement that the Princess of Wales will be hospitalised for up to a fortnight after abdominal surgery at the London Clinic, a second proclamation was made. We learnt that King Charles is to attend hospital next
Pakistan’s retaliatory military strike on suspected militant bases in Iran – in response to Iranian attacks in Pakistani territory – can only escalate tensions between the two countries. It will also ring alarm bells elsewhere across an increasingly jittery Middle East but also further afield in India and China. The Chinese have friendly relations with both
We won’t know for some time what the outcome of the claim that a London school has broken the law by refusing to allow ritual prayer on its premises will be. But whatever the result, the case neatly exposes the problems of the rights culture we now live in. The school is Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela
‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ said Franklin D. Roosevelt, famously. The Democrats of 2024 have a rather different message for the world: Be Very Afraid! ‘I’m scared as heck,’ said vice president, Kamala Harris, yesterday, as she discussed the ‘crazies’ who might put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office. Not for
Rishi Sunak will have been delighted last night to see his Rwanda Bill pass in the Commons, by 320 votes to 276. An expected Conservative rebellion was quelled, with only 11 Conservative MPs voting against the measure and no amendments accepted. The vote exposed the posturing of the Conservative rebels. Fifty nine Conservative MPs were prepared
Tory MP Lee Anderson’s name was a curious omission from the list of rebels who voted against Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Bill. Anderson’s absence was surprising given that this week he resigned as deputy chair of the Conservative party over the legislation to ‘stop the boats’. ‘I don’t think I could carry on in my role
Despite warnings that self-driving cars are not yet safe to hit the roads, the government is pushing ahead with making automated vehicles (AVs) legal. But their rush to get driverless cars approved before the technology is ready is irresponsible – and could turn our roads into a giant testing ground. This would bring risks not only to other
There is a scene in the film Reservoir Dogs where three gangsters are pointing guns at each other and one suggests they should put down their weapons and ‘settle this with a conversation’. Instead the trio create the ultimate bloodbath by all pulling their triggers. The absence of trust can do that to people. Just
In voting through the government’s Rwanda Bill, Conservative MPs have made a declaration: they want to reduce illegal immigration but they don’t want to take any of the hard choices required to do so. The final version of the Bill is the worst of both worlds, tailored to the sensitivities of the Tory left and
In prison, I met a lot of men who said they shouldn’t be there. They presented detailed mitigations, and listed all the flaws in the prosecution’s evidence. The truth is though, that most of us had been sentenced for crimes we’d committed. There were very few men inside who shouldn’t have been there. Mark, though,
As expected, the Commons has backed the Safety of Rwanda Bill at third reading by 320 votes to 276. Just 11 Tory MPs voted against, with the full list below. This afternoon, the noise from the rebels became rather more muffled, with the ‘five families’ of right-wing backbenchers announcing that the majority would be supporting
