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Australia, where King Charles will return to on Friday, is where the monarch became a man. In 1966, Charles had a memorable half-year at the Timbertop bush campus of Victoria’s Geelong grammar school, where, he once said, he ‘had the Pommy (metaphorically) bits bashed off me’. The following year, his first major adult engagement was
Has anyone ever come up with a better put-down for Nick Robinson? It is even better that it came from his own boss. Interviewed on the Today programme yesterday morning, BBC director-general Tim Davie said ‘we often refer to people like yourself as ‘talent’, but I’ve kind of banned that.’ From now on, he intimated,
Like many people this weekend, I couldn’t tear myself away from videos of the booster rocket of Elon Musk’s Starship shrieking back to earth, to be clutched in the giant ‘chopstick’ arms of a towering metallic cradle. I must have watched it now about 50 times from varying angles. The most impressive are the videos recorded at
A wave of violence is convulsing Israeli society. It’s not caused by Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi, or Iranian attacks. Instead, it’s the daily violence meted out, not by terrorists or enemy governments, but by citizen against fellow citizen. Amidst the chaos of war, Israel is suffering a crime wave. Murder is a crime that happens in every
Is Kemi Badenoch running scared? It’s not an accusation often levelled at the shadow housing secretary, who is usually criticised for being too keen on a scrap. Badenoch’s campaign team say she wants to tell the Conservatives ‘hard truths’, and that she is the opponent Keir Starmer would most dread across the despatch box. But
It seems that one of the great posts in British politics has been filled at last. The title of ‘Minister for Sticky Wickets’ was held by the likes of David Gauke and Michael Ellis during the Tory years. Now, with Keir Starmer on the back foot over freebies, it is Ellie Reeves filling that role.
Despite getting off to a rocky start – including nearly losing £1 billion worth of investment – Labour’s much-anticipated Investment Summit seems to be delivering exactly what ministers had hoped for. The good news, including a combined investment of £6.3 billion from four US technology firms to expand data-centre infrastructure in Britain – is rolling
Heartfelt tributes were paid to the late Alex Salmond in the Commons today. A number of politicians from across the house shared memories of the former first minister of Scotland in a series of points of order, with the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn first to speak on the ‘most talented, formidable and consequential politician
The flawless launch of SpaceX’s 5,000-ton Starship and its Super Heavy Booster, and the precision recovery of the booster on its launch pad, has opened the way to a manned mission to the moon next year and perhaps to Mars as soon as 2030. One giant leap for Elon Musk’s company on Sunday was one
It’s investment summit day for Sir Keir’s Labour government and, like much else about Starmer’s reign, it hasn’t got off to the greatest start. Despite drafting in the King to win over big business, the Starmer army has still managed to rather make a mess of proceedings. From reckless cabinet minister comments to embarrassing email
Postman Tadeusz Potoczek had completed his deliveries for the day. At around 3 p.m. on 3 February, the 60-year-old was returning from work via the London underground, still wearing his red postman’s coat. As the southbound Victoria line train rumbled towards Oxford Circus, he headed for the far end of the platform, perhaps in the
These days, it seems the Beeb is better at being the news than making it. Now the co-host of BBC MasterChef, Greg Wallace, is on the Sun’s front page, after it emerged that broadcasting bosses had investigated the TV star over alleged inappropriate sexual comments made to a female member of staff. It transpires that
As Hurricane Milton battered Florida last week, Kamala Harris did her best to look and sound presidential. The Vice President hosted a live broadcast with the leadership of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She then called into CNN, live, to reassure Americans that her administration was tackling the crisis. The message was meant to be
‘The hills are alive,’ warbled Julie Andrews as she strode through a verdant Alpine mountain meadow, ‘with the sound of music. With songs they have sung, for a thousand years.’ But there was always a dark side to the peaks she sang about in The Sound of Music, and they have just claimed another victim. The
Andrew Comyn ‘Sandy’ Irvine disappeared while attempting to climb Everest in June 1924 with his partner George Mallory. For a century, the 22-year-old British climber’s body lay undiscovered. But last month a startling discovery was made on the mountain: a preserved boot with a red label attached; the lettering inside read: ‘AC Irvine’. Could this
When Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, addresses the Future Resilience Forum in London this afternoon, he has a clear mission: to fight for the BBC World Service’s future. Davie will warn that ‘when the World Service retreats, state-funded media operators move in to take advantage.’ Whether you love or loathe the BBC, Davie
In the same week that over 1,000 migrants arrived in England, the head of MI5 admitted his agency had ‘one hell of a job’ on its hands. Ken McCallum said that while there is a threat from Russia, China and Iran, it was Islamist terrorism ‘that concerns me most’. In particular, al-Qaida and the Islamic
To Luxembourg, where David Lammy is making headlines yet again. The Foreign Secretary has today bragged about his attendance at an EU summit on the conflict in the Middle East and the Ukraine war – with the meet set to include discussion over Russian interference across Europe and the threat posed by Iran. But Mr
So, is it really time in invest in Britain, as the heads of fourteen banks and other financial institutions have declared in a letter to the Times today, ahead of Keir Starmer’s investment summit? Sorry, but the more that I read the letter, signed by Amanda Blanc of Aviva and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs
Happy summit day, one and all. Today is the new Labour government’s first big business bash, as proceedings kick off at the Guildhall. Ministers are insisting that Britain is open for investment (honest, guv) ahead of Rachel Reeves’ Budget on 30 October. Yet while there were some early positive signs for the Prime Minister –
Lebanon is teetering on the edge of a seismic political shift, facing increasing pressure both from internal factions and external military threats. Years of dominance in Lebanon’s political and military arenas have not shielded the terror group Hezbollah from devastating external blows, including the assassination of its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The group’s entrenched power
Last night, a single Hezbollah drone managed to inflict more damage on Israel than 200 Iranian ballistic missiles so far. A ‘swarm’ of drones launched by the Iran-backed terror organisation based in Lebanon exploded south of the northern city of Haifa, with one hitting the Binyamina military base, home to a training camp for the
Anti-fascism ain’t what it used to be. It used to mean signing up to go to fight Franco’s fascists in Spain, turning out against Oswald Mosley in the East End, or trading punches with National Front thugs. Now it means trying to get right-wing Tory MPs no platformed on elite university campuses – and occasionally
Still making headlines, it seems, is one of the more trivial scandals to have dogged the Labour government in its first 100 days in office: to wit, the police protection given to the pop singer Taylor Swift. File firmly under circuses, you might think, rather than bread. For those who need catching up, the American
President Javier Milei isn’t believed to have attended Sir Paul McCartney’s Buenos Aires concerts last weekend, but if he had, he would have heard thousands of Argentines belting out ‘Getting Better’. Are things getting better for Argentina? There’s enough in the World Bank’s latest assessment to give Milei optimism. While his brutal austerity measures have
We are now just three weeks away from Labour’s first Budget and the mood music out of the Treasury is all rather ominous. On 30 October we find out the answer to the great question of British politics: can Rachel Reeves square her spending plans with her past promises on tax? With Labour desperate to
Jonathan Reynolds: Transport Secretary’s comments on P&O Ferries ‘not the government’s position’ This week, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh described P&O Ferries as a ‘rogue operator’ and encouraged consumers to boycott the company, leading parent company DP World to threaten they would pull out of the government’s investment summit on Monday, and put a reported £1bn
Happy 100 days of Labour being in power! To mark this auspicious occasion, the British electorate have decided to give Keir Starmer a present that he really did not want – the end of Labour’s lead in the polls after a whopping 934 days. Yes, that’s right: the Starmer army have led in every single
In reflecting on the life of Alex Salmond, I should begin by paraphrasing his successor as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. I cannot pretend that the last few years of the breakdown in his relationship with the mainstream of the party he once led did not happen, but we cannot help but reflect on a remarkable
