All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Ginger Pimpernel – as the world will probably not be calling the Duke of Sussex – has popped up once again. It was widely assumed that, after his surprisingly successful quasi-royal visit to Britain this week, he would be returning to Montecito and his family, but he has wrongfooted everyone by instead hopping over
Angela Rayner’s failure to get proper tax advice on her house in Hove could be one of those ‘butterfly effect’ moments, where a seemingly trivial incident (like the flap of a butterfly’s wings) sets off a chain of events with precipitous consequences. It could well lead to Keir Starmer’s removal as Labour leader. This is
There is a unique, and bitter, flavour to the corruption of the men of the 1990s. Peter Mandelson – who was yesterday sacked as UK ambassador to Washington – Tony Blair, and the former German and US leaders Gerhard Schroeder and Bill Clinton came from the left, and offered a hard but plausible message to their
Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk was shot dead while taking questions at Utah Valley University. Kate Andrews speaks to eyewitness and reporter Eva Terry about the chaos on campus, the reaction across America, and what comes next.
Oh dear. It’s not just in Westminster that Keir Starmer’s party is having trouble. Welsh Labour are also having a meltdown as they prepare to face their next electoral test. The Caerphilly by-election – called after the tragic death of Hefin David – has kicked off in earnest, ahead of polling day on 23 October.
I can’t remember when I last wrote anything as reckless, but the last week has been a good one for Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives, perhaps the best since she won the leadership last November. After months of ineffectual performances (not least the week before when Badenoch missed an open goal on Angela Rayner’s stamp
‘Oh, Mandy Well, you kissed me And stopped me from shaking And I need you today Oh, Mandy’ So sang Barry Manilow. I can imagine at one point, looking into his bathroom mirror, in the early days of his leadership, so did Sir Keir Starmer. Today, however, the government needed Mandy like a hole in
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Another week, another departure. Conservative MP Neil O’Brien – who serves in the shadow cabinet as minister for policy renewal and development – was granted an urgent question in Parliament this morning, to question the government about Peter Mandelson. Then the news broke that Lord Mandelson had been sacked by Keir Starmer following further disclosures
A day is a long time in politics. On Wednesday Keir Starmer said during PMQs he had full confidence in the UK’s ambassador to the US, Lord Mandelson, despite concerns about his relationship with American paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Less than 24 hours later, Mandelson has got the sack. Life comes at you fast, eh? While the
When even green energy tycoons are telling him to embrace the North Sea oil and gas industries, Ed Miliband really is beginning to look somewhat isolated. Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity and a Labour donor (as well as a former donor to Just Stop Oil, no less), has made an extraordinary intervention today, suggesting that
It’s not been a quiet news week. From Israel’s strikes in Qatar to Russian drones appearing in Polish airspace to the increasing scrutiny of Donald Trump over Jeffrey Epstein – and the sacking of UK ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson over his links to the paedophile – there’s been no let up. In the
It is a worker’s cooperative. It promotes sustainability, emphasises its social responsibility, invests in its people, and, of course, has an attractive range of home accessories in every shade of beige you could possibly imagine. If the government is looking for a company that symbolises the kind of economy that Labour is trying to champion
Peter Mandelson has been sacked as British Ambassador to the United States after further revelations emerged about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The Prime Minister Keir Starmer dismissed Mandelson less than 24 hours after insisting: ‘I have confidence in him’. Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty told the House of Commons this morning that Mandelson was
The King received a man at Clarence House yesterday afternoon who has a justifiable right to be aggrieved with the ill treatment that has been meted over to him over the years. He has been unfairly discriminated against for reasons that are not his fault, and he has dealt with the opprobrium that has been
Emily Thornberry has this morning dropped out of the race to be Labour’s new deputy leader. The one-time shadow foreign secretary was the first to signal that she wanted the job, using an interview on the BBC on Sunday to politely fillet Keir Starmer’s government. But, in a race dominated by identity politics, she was
He was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Freedom’. A one-word rallying cry emblazoned in black across his chest. It was his core belief: that liberty, especially the liberty to speak, is preferable to tyranny. Then, following the crack of gunfire, that word was stained red with blood. We’ve heard of blood being spilt for freedom:
There were over 500 arrests and numerous violent incidents across France on Wednesday but the far-left failed to bring the country to a standstill. The Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, thanked the ‘responsiveness’ of the police and rejoiced that the ‘blockaders did not block France’. Most of the demonstrators I saw were students and
Charlie Kirk was not storming a government building. He was not brandishing a weapon. He was not even shouting. He was on stage, mid-sentence, addressing a university audience at a speaking event. Then he was shot in the neck. And now he is dead. No civilised society can survive a situation in which public speech
In May, Charlie Kirk, who was killed on Wednesday from a gunshot wound, visited the United Kingdom to debate the students of Oxford and Cambridge. The Spectator asked him to write about the experience. The result was this well-observed, funny and now strangely prophetic-sounding piece about the condition of England. Charlie Kirk believed in free
Charlie Kirk was shot on stage yesterday, speaking at a campus event at Utah Valley University. The Turning Point USA co-founder was announced dead by the President of the United States. ‘The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of
Did Iryna Zarutska’s life matter? Judging by the delayed, sheepish media coverage of her killing in North Carolina last month, it seems not. Apparently the violent death of this young, beautiful refugee to the United States was a non-event, undeserving of the liberal rage and tsunami of pained thinkpieces that tend to follow other senseless
Poland woke yesterday morning to what its prime minister, Donald Tusk, called an “unprecedented violation of Polish airspace.” In the early hours, a “huge” swarm of Russian drones – at least 19 by Warsaw’s count, perhaps 23 according to Polish media – crossed the frontier during overnight strikes on Ukraine. Polish and Nato fighters scrambled,
Statute 343.36 in the US state of Minnesota reads thus: ‘No person shall operate, run or participate in a contest, game, or other like activity, in which a pig, greased, oiled or otherwise, is released and wherein the object is the capture of the pig’. I hope, for the sake of the integrity of their
Can Lord Mandelson cling on as Our Man in Washington? That is the question all of Westminster is asking this morning. The British ambassador to the United states did a grovelling interview with the Sun‘s Harry Cole today in which he admitted that he had continued his association with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein ‘far
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Kemi Badenoch has just skewered Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions on the topic of Peter Mandelson’s association with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Badenoch learned from her mistakes last week and devoted all six of her questions to trying to get Mandelson fired as British Ambassador to Washington. She pointed out that the victims
Kemi Badenoch learned from her mistakes at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, and devoted all six of her questions to trying to get Peter Mandelson fired as British Ambassador to Washington. Badenoch devoted all six of her questions to trying to get Peter Mandelson fired as British Ambassador Last week, she tacked on random observations
Provocation, mistake, or something in between? Either Putin sent Russian drones into Poland’s airspace on Tuesday night to test Nato’s reaction, or Ukrainian electronic jamming scrambled the targeting systems on Russian drones and sent them haywire. Or perhaps the Kremlin is playing a grey-zone game, launching an accidentally-on-purpose attack to push Europe’s boundaries. The problem
To smear your opponents as fascists or Nazis has always been the perennial temptation of those who seek to terminate an argument – or have no argument of their own. It’s the last resort of the callow, the ignorant and the desperate. And it’s an argument that just won’t go away. They’re doing this –
The audacity of it! The hypocrisy! First, Nicola Sturgeon says yesterday in a TV interview that she’s ‘not that into flags’ and tells us all to ‘calm down about flags’. Then, later in the day, her successor as first minister, Humza Yousaf, chimes in with one of those creepy walking-while-talking videos in which he informs us that
Anyone continuing to labour under the misapprehension that the Scottish Green party is primarily concerned with matters environmental should stop doing so, immediately. Yes, the Greens have long attracted those who hold standard left-wing views on issues from the economy to Palestine to gender ideology – but the raison d’être was always saving the planet,
Nepal’s prime minister KP Sharma Oli has resigned after nationwide demonstrations descended into bloodshed. At least 22 people have been killed and hundreds injured in the country’s deadliest protests for nearly two decades. Spearheaded by the Nepal’s disaffected youth, the ‘Gen Z protest’ has evolved into one targeting the corruption of the government coalition led by the Congress and Communist parties. The protests were
On Tuesday evening, my six-year old’s suburban Melbourne primary school staged a wonderful concert, an all-school celebration of contemporary song, dance and collaboration. It was, however, preceded by an elaborate Acknowledgement of Country and Aboriginal Australians, in which a group of children led incantations to the ‘Old Ones’ that the rest of the school echoed