All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I may be the last person in the UK to have seen the 1999 film Human Traffic (rereleased last month). Justin Kerrigan’s inspired, low-budget comedy – which I watched this week – is about a group of clubbers and ecstasy-heads out for a night’s fun in Cardiff. Starring actors like John Simm, Shaun Parkes and
The golden era of flying is over: rowdy passengers, greedy airlines and miserable airports make travelling nowadays rather grim. The Air India crash in June, which claimed the lives of all but one of the 242 people aboard and 19 others on the ground, has also made many passengers rather jittery, not least because questions
17 min listen
Does – or did – Nigel Farage have a woman problem? ‘Around me there’s always been a perception of a laddish culture,’ he tells political editor Tim Shipman, for the cover piece of the Spectator this week. In last year’s election, 58 per cent of Reform voters were men. But, Shipman argues, ‘that has begun
You truly could not make it up. Kneecap, who spent the past three months whingeing and complaining about their gigs being cancelled because of their views on Gaza, have signed an open letter demanding a small community festival be shut down. All that guff about the sanctity of free speech and artistic expression. It was
Another day, another scandal in Britain’s collapsing public sector. Today’s concerns the country’s courts. A BBC investigation has turned up an internal report, not for public circulation, from HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) about an IT bug that deleted or hid information on hundreds of pending cases. The problem itself was bad enough: Britain’s state
28 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to podcast host and commentator Candace Owens about her story investigating whether Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigitte is a man, why she remains firm on her views about Gaza, and how Trump is doing in his presidency.
A uniformed group of volunteers is planning to patrol the mean streets of Bournemouth in response to a recent surge in crime in the once sleepy south coast retirement haven. More than 200 have signed up so far, including ex-forces personnel. They will be equipped with radios, stab vests, and body cameras and have promised
‘Spain is and will be forever the land of Christian people’. These are not, as you might think, the words of a marauding conquistador, but of a spokesperson for Spain’s right wing Vox party. They were posted on X this week, in response to a ban on Muslim religious celebrations in the southeastern town of
18 min listen
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has given a wide-ranging interview to the BBC’s Amol Rajan in which she touched upon her Nigerian upbringing, her feeling of identity and she even revealed she called out a peer for cheating at school. But perhaps her most interesting comments came when she revealed how she lost her belief in
If you hadn’t heard of Rushanara Ali until her resignation yesterday, then good for you. If you still hadn’t until now, even better. With her departure British politics is robbed of one of its most promising minnows. With Ali’s departure, British politics is robbed of one of its most promising minnows The former homelessness minister
First came the Starmer-Macron handshake, sealing the UK-France migrant treaty. Following that was a series of Home Office stories about crackdowns on illegal working and smuggler gang adverts, filling the sleepy summer news pages. Then, the 21-page treaty itself was unveiled. And, finally, on Thursday morning Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, sombrely declared that the
Hans Christian Andersen didn’t write a fairy tale called ‘The Ugly, Pornographic Duckling’, yet his stories often feature alienation, exile and the struggle for acceptance. ‘Ugly and pornographic’, meanwhile, is how Politiken newspaper’s art critic, Mathias Kryger, has described the ‘Big Mermaid’: a 14-ton, 13-foot tall, notably buxom statue which between 2006 and 2018 stood on
Data published yesterday has piled yet more pressure on the government to change its asylum policy. Analysis by the Telegraph has shown that 211 people living in asylum seeker hotels have been charged with crimes since the beginning of the year. This includes eight who have been charged with 12 sex offences against children, 32 sexual
As the issue of immigration continues to assert itself as one of the top concerns facing the country, Brits are increasingly concerned about small boats crossings in the English Channel. So much so that some people have started seeing migrant crossing where there, er, aren’t any at all. Take for example ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe,
Will yesterday’s cut in interest rates bring relief to the government in its economic problems, offering a breather to people who feel that their living standards are declining? That is unlikely for two reasons. Firstly, people buying homes with mortgages – the most obvious beneficiaries of a cut in interest rates – are more likely
When I joined the House of Commons Clerk’s Department 20 years ago, there was a helpful list of formerly common phrases which were no longer to be used. Among them was ‘Spanish practices’, that arch description often applied to irregular or restrictive workplace arrangements, which I suspect had hardly been spotted in the wild for
In a decision of historic weight, the Israeli government has formally approved a plan to expand its military operation and establish full control over the Gaza Strip. This has come despite the opposition of Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, who raised pointed warnings during a meeting that began at 6:00 pm Israeli time last night
Kate Forbes’s announcement on Monday that she would be standing down as an MSP next year caught most people – her political allies, former backers, current colleagues – by surprise. She decided to make her intentions clear a few days prior to her attendance at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, where she was set to be
Britain is in a terrible state (you may have noticed). We have a busted economy, a broken social contract and also what are euphemistically known as ‘community tensions’. But Reform is riding to our rescue. Apparently. Now if I’m drowning I’ll grab gladly at any piece of passing driftwood, however unpromisingly flimsy. But I’m afraid
A relatively quiet recess has been enlivened by a government resignation. Rushanara Ali quit as Homelessness Minister after accusations of hypocrisy by the i newspaper over how she handled rent increases on a house she owns in east London. Ali ended her tenants’ fixed term contract to sell up but then re-listed the house for
The problem of evil has stumped some of the greatest thinkers in the history of human philosophy and theology. It was, however, a cinch for Kemi Badenoch. In an interview designed to make the sometimes aloof Leader of the Opposition seem more relatable, Mrs Badenoch described how the case of Josef Fritzl made her ‘reject
There’s no rest, they say, for the wicked. Nobody, however, ever deigns to inform us what amount of downtime will be allocated to the incompetent. If the presence of Rachel Reeves in Wales this afternoon is anything to go by, they don’t get a great deal of rest either. In the midst of the summer
It wouldn’t be recess without a sleaze scandal, eh? Now Sir Keir Starmer’s wife is in the limelight, after it transpired that she has accepted yet another set of freebies. Victoria Starmer accepted free tickets to Royal Ascot worth hundreds – almost exactly a year on from when Lady Starmer and the Prime Minister were
15 min listen
Some excitement on Threadneedle Street today after the Bank of England cut interest rates to 4 per cent. The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has just voted five to four – after a revote – for what is the third cut this year. This takes interest rates back down to levels not seen since the
The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 4 per cent. Threadneedle Street’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has just voted five to four, after a revote, for what is the third cut this year. This takes interest rates back down to levels not seen since the beginning of 2023. Concerns about an increasingly slack
Victoria’s capital, Melbourne, has a dubious meteorological reputation. Our weather is so predictably unpredictable that Melbourne can easily have four seasons in one day. At any time of year, a typical Melbourne day can start off beautifully until the clouds gather, the winds freshen and turn bitingly chill, and it’s time to haul in the
Major listed companies have already switched from London to New York. The non-doms are all fleeing for Milan and Dubai. And now it turns out that company directors are quitting Britain in record numbers. The exodus of entrepreneurs is accelerating all the time. And yet, so far the Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Sir
As the man who first gave Britain a £150 billion deficit, I don’t think Gordon Brown is the best person to advise the current government on its fiscal policy. But even so the gaping hole in his call for higher gambling duties does raise the eyebrows. Brown seems to think that higher gambling taxes are
With just a day to go until the expiry of his ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to halt the war on Ukraine or face dire consequences, Donald Trump has once more reset the clock. Trump intends to meet in person with President Vladimir Putin of Russia as soon as next week, the New York Times has
‘The testing of your faith produces perseverance’ – James 1:2-3. That may be the case, but too much testing can also result in secularism apparently. In an interview with the Beeb, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch has said that while she was ‘never that religious’ growing up though would have ‘defined myself as a Christian
When I moved to London two years ago, my friends who already lived in the capital shared various warnings. From the cost of housing to the oppressive heat of the Central Line in summer – they tempered my excitement at moving to the big city with sober, sensible advice. But more than anything, the one