All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Is Banksy a Tory propagandist now? His latest juvenile stunt suggests he might be. On the day the government announced that it will soon be mandatory to wear face masks in shops, Banksy released a video showing himself daubing a Tube train carriage with pro-mask slogans and images. Way to stick it to the man,
Matt Hancock appeared to have no time for Donald Trump’s boasts this morning when asked about the US President taking credit for the U-turn on the use of Huawei technology in our 5G network. Asked on Sky News whether he believed that the decision to scrap Huawei’s involvement was down to Trump, the Health minister replied
Britain has been here before when it comes to furores about face masks. Exactly 80 years ago the same argument was raging, with the country split between those who wanted the wearing of gas masks to be made compulsory on pain of financial penalty, and those who maintained it should be an individual choice. Unlike
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Much as expected, the government has u-turned on Huawei, though the new government policy doesn’t go as far as some of the most hardline Tory MPs would wish. On the podcast, Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson about the UK’s China policy in the years to come. Also on the episode: masks
Earlier today, Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times and published a devastating letter of resignation on her website (also available here). There will be those who try to pretend that this is no big deal, or that it is just a storm in a journalistic tea-cup: they would be wrong. For several generations
Dear A.G. (Sulzberger), It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from the New York Times. I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives
The government has announced that wearing face masks while shopping will become mandatory from 27 July. It’s fair to say though that some Conservative backbenchers aren’t best pleased about the decision. ‘Nothing would make me less likely to go shopping than the thought of having to mask up’, Tory MP Desmond Swayne rallied in the House
Layla Moran’s Lib Dem leadership bid has taken something of a hit in recent weeks. The Oxfordshire MP has been the subject of a slew of coded criticisms after she said that under her leadership the Lib Dems would be ‘even more radical than Labour’. Both Tim Farron and Vince Cable came out against her
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir? That defence of the political u-turn was purportedly uttered by the great economist John Maynard Keynes and is recognised as the classic intellectually respectable case for abandoning a stance in favour of an opposite one. It is certainly the best defence available
It is a big deal that the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is being totally excluded from the UK’s new fast 5G mobile network, and is redolent of a de facto cold war between the West and China. But Johnson has taken a more gradualist approach to the exclusion of Huawei than his Tory critics wanted
The government has today u-turned on allowing Huawei a role in the building of the UK’s 5G network. From the end of this year, mobile providers will be banned from buying Huawei kit and it’ll have to be removed altogether from their 5G networks by 2027. The UK government’s line is that this change in position
It is an uptick so small that it could almost be comic, but the UK economy started to grow in May: by 1.8 per cent following a 20 per cent slump in April. Office for National Statistics figures out today show that, even in lockdown, surging online retail sales – coupled with signs of a recovery
The government’s messaging on the coronavirus has left a lot to be desired in recent days – with confused statements on the easing of lockdown and the efficacy of face masks becoming the norm. Now it appears that even the government’s own ministers are struggling to keep up. On Monday, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland was
Is the Chancellor’s latest round of economic measures just another instalment of Keynesian emergency funding, necessary only until the crisis has passed? Or is the Government on the road to a command economy? Policy-makers are currently being pulled in two contradictory directions by these questions, as the Government’s response to the crisis is impaired by
The narrowness of President Andrzej Duda’s victory in this weekend’s Polish presidential elections, where he defeated Rafał Trzaskowski, the Mayor of Warsaw, by less than 2 per cent, was God’s gift to opinion commentators. What with Brexit, Trump et cetera we can write 800-1200 words about a nation being ‘divided’ and ‘polarised’ in our sleep.
A five hundred quid shopping voucher for everyone. Five per cent off VAT across the board. Maybe suspending income tax for a couple of months, or getting rid of corporation tax until the end of the year. As today’s disappointing GDP numbers landed on his desk, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak must have been tempted to
The government will announce today that from 24 July face coverings will be mandatory in shops and supermarkets. Those who don’t wear one risk a hundred pound fine. This decision is partly about reducing the spread of the virus – in a shift from the beginning of the crisis the government now thinks masks are
As Sir Keir Starmer marks 100 days this week as Labour leader, the polls have shown encouraging signs for his leadership. After leading Boris Johnson a few weeks ago on the question of who would make the best prime minister in an Opinium poll, an Observer poll over the weekend found that he also leads on competence, while 52 per
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In recent days, more supportive noises have been made by those on the top of government about the wearing of face masks indoors, especially in shops. Scotland has already made it compulsory. But it wasn’t long ago when the government was saying that face masks may even harm efforts to control the virus. So does
This week, former Chancellor Philip Hammond delivered a stark warning to Boris Johnson’s government about China. Speaking on Radio 4, the former Tory MP suggested that Britain should avoid weakening trade links with the world’s second largest economy, and instead be ‘frank’ in private about our ‘strong differences of opinion’. It was a strange intervention
When police kit out their patrol cars in rainbow flags or when officers don pride polo shirts, two questions spring to mind: Should the police be doing this? And how much does it cost? Now, we have some answers to the second of these questions. Among the top spenders on supporting and promoting LGBT causes
The Labour Party has officially joined the advertising boycott of Facebook, following the lead of several large corporations over the past few weeks. Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said on the BBC over the weekend that the boycott was in ‘solidarity with the Black Lives Matter campaign’ but also ‘to express
Parents! How do you support LGBT+ kids? As a parent, a teacher and as a trans person, I think the answer is simple: treat them just like any other child. They need space to explore what it means to be human, activities to learn about the world, and boundaries to keep them safe. When BBC
I was followed three times in five days by men I didn’t know. During a pandemic – at any time, really – you would think they would have something better to do. They made gestures, shouted, catcalled, but I managed to lose them each time, partially because they had none of my details. They didn’t
In a summer where sport as we know it has been cruelly cancelled, opportunities to celebrate athletic heroism are hard to seek. But today, not one but two titanic achievements occurred independently – and only a few miles from each other. Both have a strong chance of being the country’s most impressive running feats of
Michael Gove – We want to see more people back on the shop floor It was Michael Gove’s turn to lead the government’s broadcast rounds this morning. Sophy Ridge began by seeking clarification from the Cabinet Office Minister about the government’s message on returning to the workplace: MG: We want to see more people back
Last month, Dr Priyamvada Gopal, of Churchill College, Cambridge University, tweeted ‘White Lives Don’t Matter’. She was abused online and received threats of violence. Cambridge issued a statement: ‘The university defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions, which others might find controversial… [It] deplores in the strongest terms abuse and
Politics begins and ends with sovereignty: the duty and right to make the legitimate final decision. We have seen this clearly during the pandemic. In every country, people have come to depend on their governments, whose authority rests on acknowledged sovereignty. This is as true, or even truer, in democracies: while monarchs and aristocrats could
The BBC is losing me. It’s a sudden estrangement and an unwelcome one but I can’t seem to shake it off. The cause is the Corporation’s coverage of this thing that is happening that we still don’t have a name for but definitely should not call a ‘moment’. The butterfly effect from George Floyd’s killing
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Dominic Cummings will be touring key Ministry of Defence sites ahead of this year’s defence review. So how would he like to reform the UK’s military and defence capabilities? Katy Balls finds out from James Forsyth and the Times’s Defence Editor Lucy Fisher.
A truism is emerging that the Tories’ massive public spending has left Labour politically with nowhere to go. This quasi-social-democrat version of conservatism supposedly leaves all of the opposition’s attacks on the Tories blunted – if there’s a Conservative government spending big, what does Labour have to offer? There is another way of looking at
In 1992 a young footballer named Dion Dublin left my local team, Cambridge United, to take up one of the most coveted jobs in football – centre-forward at Manchester United. After a promising first few outings, disaster struck when he suffered a broken leg. By the time he was restored to fitness a genius named
