All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I’ve always been something of a news addict, but recent events in America and Ukraine have turned me into the kind of junkie films get made about. ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ an affliction you once sniggered at in others, is now sweeping the world faster than Covid-19, and is oddly easy, at the moment, to fall
An animal rights activist has exposed extreme cruelty at a slaughterhouse in Arley, Warwickshire. Joey Carbstrong’s secretly recorded footage shows staff slamming sheep hard onto concrete floors, dismembering sheep while they are still alive and playing recordings of wolves to the terrified animals as they were dying. The shock here is not just the cruelty itself: repeated
It has a whiff of the old trailer for Jaws 2, the one where viewers were disabused of the idea that it was safe to go back into the water. In January, Matt Wrack, the left-wing, Corbyn-supporting general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) lost his attempt for re-election. But if anyone thought it
The UK signed up to a UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of GNP on aid way back in 1970, but didn’t hit that level until 2013. In 2020, aid spending was cut to 0.5 per cent and last week Keir Starmer reduced it further to 0.3 per cent. This will save about £4
What do the Tories do with a problem like Reform? Kemi Badenoch’s party in Westminster has some time to consider this, with over four years to go until it has to put her strategy – whatever that is – to the test. But the same cannot be said of Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservative party
European leaders are in Brussels today for an emergency summit on defence, and the future of both Ukraine and the continent. In a further attempt to hash out a peace plan for Ukraine, the 27 EU heads of state are joined by Volodymyr Zelensky. Arriving this morning, Zelensky declared, ‘It’s great we are not alone’.
Oh dear. Poor Richard Tice is the latest politician to have an embarrassing memory lapse. During his first trip to Scotland of 2025, the Boston and Skegness MP appeared in Glasgow this morning to reveal his party’s newest defectors. Except, er, he couldn’t quite remember their names… When he was grilled by one Scottish hack
The names of leading republicans like Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Bobby Sands are well known, but how many in Great Britain can identify a Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary – or, indeed, a single security force hero of the Troubles? Blair Wallace, who has died aged 87 and will be buried tomorrow,
It seems that NHS Scotland still hasn’t learned the lessons from the Sandie Peggie furore. Now it turns out that a ‘cultural humility’ training module for healthcare workers produced in December 2023 told them to call bearded trans staff ‘women’ – and even suggested gender-neutral toilets should be introduced in care homes. With over 700,000
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Labour have found themselves facing accusations of enabling ‘two tier policing’ following new guidelines from the Sentencing Council. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick has been quick to criticise the government, but Labour’s Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has also urged the council reconsider their recommendations. Yvette Cooper’s former adviser Danny Shaw joins Katy Balls and James
On no issue are Britain’s established political parties so compromised as on efforts to stop illegal immigrants gatecrashing our borders via the English Channel. For half a decade the Tories told us they would stop the crossings and yet the volumes of arrivals kept increasing. Rishi Sunak has just declared that the biggest regret of
There is a striking interview in today’s Daily Mail between Andrew Pierce and Rupert Lowe. The Reform MP is known for speaking his mind and he certainly does not hold back. Asked whether he thinks Nigel Farage would make a good prime minister, Lowe praises him as a ‘fiercely independent individual’ but says that ‘it’s too early
Fox News’s Brit Hume, one of America’s most respected political analysts, and a man more given to wry scepticism than to partisanship or hyperbole, described Donald Trump’s speech to Congress as: ‘the most boisterous, the longest, the most partisan speech I’ve heard a President give… to a joint session of congress… and I go back
‘“Shalom Hamas” means Hello and Goodbye – You can choose.’ So began Donald Trump’s furious social media post, an ultimatum wrapped in a linguistic dagger. The Hebrew word ‘shalom’ has a third meaning – peace – but Trump left that one out. Perhaps we can all agree: that option is no longer on the table in any outcome.
The United States’s decision to suspend all intelligence sharing with Kyiv is a less visible but almost as serious and more immediate blow to Ukraine as the pause to arms deliveries. It also raises worrying questions about the future of intelligence sharing amongst Western allies. Ukraine is used to supplies of military materiel coming in
Emmanuel Macron spoke to his people last night in a television address and told them that the future of Ukraine cannot be decided by America and Russia alone. It can, and it probably will, after Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky signalled his intention to sign Donald Trump’s minerals deal, the first step in the peace plan
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has accused his Labour counterpart Shabana Mahmood of not believing in ‘equality under the law’ and ‘enshrining’ a ‘double standard’ over who is, and isn’t, sent to prison. The accusations against Mahmood – and the Labour government – came after new guidelines from the Sentencing Council were published, which
Did anyone really expect Huw Edwards to return the £200,000 he ‘earned’ – or, more correctly, was paid – between his arrest in November 2023 and when he finally resigned from the BBC the following April? The BBC’s chairman, Samir Shah, appeared to think so when he faced the Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media
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With reports of ‘billions’ of spending cuts earmarked for the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, taking place later this month, Michael Gove and Kate Andrews join Katy Balls to discuss what exactly Rachel Reeves could cut. With little fiscal headroom and sluggish forecasts of growth, Reeves doesn’t appear to have many options. It’s likely that welfare will
‘There are judges in Jerusalem,’ Menachem Begin is reputed to have proclaimed, following a court ruling which he believed vindicated one of his policy positions. The phrase has been appropriated by critics of judicial reform and others keen to see Bagatz, the Israeli supreme court, remain a bulwark against illiberal overreach by the government. ‘There are judges
There is little over a year to go until the 2026 Holyrood election and Scottish party selection processes are underway. This morning, two of the biggest names yet have said they will stand down at next year’s election: Finance Secretary Shona Robison and Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop have announced they’re off. ‘The decision to retire
Israeli leaders recently made clear that the IDF’s current military deployment into south-west Syria is not intended as a stop-gap measure until its northern neighbour stabilises. Rather, in a speech last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told IDF officer cadets that the force’s troops would stay on the formerly Syrian side of Mount Hermon, and
Giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee this afternoon, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey doubled down on a point he has previously made to the committee: the economy is being pulled down by an extraordinary fall in productivity in the public sector. Relative to 2019, he said, productivity across the public sector is now
Small boat crossings since the start of the year are at a record level. Yesterday 326 migrants arrived, bringing this year’s total to 3,224. Last year 2,983 migrants crossed the Channel over the same period. The number who have made the journey since Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, having promised to ‘stop the small boat
What was the most important moment at Prime Minister’s Questions today? It was not the somewhat pedestrian back-and-forth between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch on support for Ukraine. It was instead a subsequent point raised by David Davis on the subject of Britain’s Special Forces. Davis – a textbook example of a free-thinking backbencher –
It has been widely reported that, during his meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week, President Trump gave his consent to the UK’s proposed deal to transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. However, this is not quite what happened. What he actually said was that he thinks the US ‘will be inclined’
A bit of a stitch-up at PMQs, or so it seemed. The ‘opposition’ leader, Kemi Badenoch, ignored her duty to voters and spent ten minutes feeding softball questions to Sir Keir Starmer about President Zelensky. At issue was Donald Trump’s decision on Monday to withdraw military aid from Ukraine. Kemi meekly asked Sir Keir if
There is a grim irony in today’s announcement of the commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May – at the very time that the Western alliance is collapsing. The plans include dressing the Cenotaph in Union flags, a military procession and flypast in London and a service of remembrance and thanksgiving
Keir Starmer has clearly decided that the only way to disagree with Donald Trump and his administration without angering the US President is to make statements that contradict him without ever mentioning him or J.D. Vance by name. Today he opened Prime Minister’s Questions by paying tribute to six young British soldiers who were killed
It’s a day ending in ‘y’ – which means there’s more bad news for the BBC. Now the government has taken aim at the broadcaster, with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy slamming the Beeb today in a parliamentary statement. In the scathing text, Nandy wrote of how she is ‘deeply shocked and disappointed’ about the Hamas
Is Lindsay Hoyle turning into John Bercow? Mr S first asked the question in January after revealing that the Speakers’ Office had doubled in size on Hoyle’s watch. And now other outlets are running with the same theme, by looking at the Speaker’s trips abroad. It seems the man of the people rather enjoys the
Is Angela Rayner really being sidelined in this government, having been steamrollered by the rush for growth championed by Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves? That is a hypothesis which has been put forward many times in recent months, but it is not true to judge by the reaction of businesses to the Employment Rights Bill.
The rape gang scandal that has afflicted Britain compels us to review the assumptions that underlie multiculturalism. It’s time for us in the free world to look at human beings and their various cultures as they truly are, and not as the bien pensants wish and then so dangerously insist they must be. A society