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Norman Tebbit, who has died at the age of 94, was one of the dominant political figures of my youth. An effective industry secretary under Margaret Thatcher, he was also the party chairman during the 1987 election landslide. Depicted as an uncompromising skinhead by Spitting Image, he was the knuckleduster in Thatcher’s velvet glove, someone
Britain is in trouble. That’s the judgement of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in their ‘fiscal risks and sustainability’ document released this morning. The language is polite, matter of fact and bureaucratic. But read between the lines, look at the numbers and it paints a damning picture of the risks we face as a country.
The death of Norman Tebbit at the great age of 94 marks a real ending of an era. They simply don’t make politicians like Lord Tebbit any more: caustic, high principled, Tebbit was a fighter rather than a quitter. The modern day Conservative party would be a very different outfit if it had a man
Norman Tebbit, the longtime keeper of the Thatcherite flame, has died at the age of 94. His career in public life spanned more than 50 years, from his election to the Epping constituency in 1970 to his retirement from the House of Lords in 2022. A Monday Club member and ardent right winger, he might
Marcus Fakana, a British 18-year-old, has been in prison in the United Arab Emirates since December. His crime? Having consensual sex with a 17-year-old British girl on a trip to Dubai. Now, thanks to the granting of a royal pardon by Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Marcus has been freed and is back
Welcome to the Isle of Sheppey, a stretch of pebbled beaches and caravan parks that regularly stars in the ONS’s index of multiple deprivation. Health outcomes, like household incomes, are well below the national average: the life expectancy here is nine years lower for men and four years lower for women, while the rates of
Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, has published his first annual report since Labour took office. It will make grim, embarrassing reading for the government. The report shows that despite a year of efforts to control drugs, violence and crime in prison, our jails have become even worse under Labour. The report says they
It is unquestionably the case that people who should have known better were blinded by the Capri-Sun King’s glare when they reassured us that Donald Trump would not abandon Ukraine, that a second Trump administration would not really cut off military aid to Kyiv or effectively offer a free pass to Vladimir Putin. Yet that
Something was scarce, if not absent, in the commemorations of the 7/7 Islamist attacks yesterday, and that is the fact that these were Islamist attacks. The word did not appear in the Prime Minister’s official statement to mark the anniversary. Keir Starmer commended ‘the unity of Londoners in the face of terror’, but what kind
If ever a French president needed a state visit to Britain, it is Emmanuel Macron. All the pomp and ceremony will brighten his soul and help him forget the mess he has made of his own country. This week’s visit, which starts today, is the first of its kind to Perfidious Albion since Nicolas Sarkozy
When the supermodel Brooks Nader’s period started at Wimbledon, naturally she turned to social media. ‘Tries to be chic. Starts period at Wimbledon,’ Nader wrote, alongside a snap on TikTok showing blood stains on the back of her skirt. ‘A canon event for all us girlies!’, someone bleated in response. The American model was praised
Today’s Urgent Question in the House of Commons about the state of the economy was dominated by two people who weren’t there: Liz Truss and Rachel Reeves. One wouldn’t expect Truss to be present; after all she lost her seat last year and is presumably busy on some important project elsewhere. Perhaps working on her
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Keir Starmer will have been hoping for a more relaxed week – but he certainly won’t be getting one. He is facing a fresh rebellion over support for children with special educational needs (SEND), which threatens to become welfare 2.0. The plan involves overhauling the SEND system and it’s another case of Labour MPs exclaiming
‘Bear in mind these dead, I can find no plainer words,’ wrote the Northern Irish poet John Hewitt reflecting on the Troubles’s terrible death toll. How we remember the victims of terrorism and articulate the harm it causes comes to mind today, the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 Islamist attack on London’s transport network. The
It’s hard to exaggerate how isolated Easter Island was before its discovery by Polynesian sailors eight or nine centuries ago. This tiny island, which you can walk round in a day, is thousands of miles in any direction from inhabitable land. Yet a new study claims that long before the first European ship arrived in
Only last week, I was having lunch when The Salt Path came up in conversation. ‘That’s the one about the woman with the terminally ill husband who went off round Cornwall, wasn’t it?’ said one friend. I responded, perhaps a little heartlessly: ‘Yeah, and then the husband weirdly failed to die and she got a
Does anything work in Broken Britain? You’d be forgiven for wondering when even during our most prestigious sporting tournaments the transport is chaos, the digital ticketing system has crashed leaving gaps in the crowd, and even the supposedly cutting-edge line-call technology appears to go on the blink. Wimbledon has seen three major ‘Electronic Line Calling’
Britain and other western nations have abandoned the women of Afghanistan in pursuit of a UN programme of engagement with the Taliban that has demonstrably failed. For the fourth time since the Taliban takeover in August 2021 representatives of the few countries that still have an Afghan policy met the Taliban again in Doha last
Keir Starmer’s government is heading for trouble – again. Last time it was welfare reform, now it’s SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) funding in schools. It’s being widely reported today that Labour MPs are kicking off over ministers’ refusal over the weekend to rule out cuts in SEND provision, by which councils are legally
We will no doubt hear lots of familiar excuses if later this week, as seems increasingly likely, the British steel industry faces 50 per cent tariffs on its exports to the United States. There hasn’t been enough time. The White House has been too busy, and so has the Prime Minister. The trouble is, none
It seems that some people really can’t take a joke… In the magazine this week, Rod Liddle wistfully contemplated the idea of nuking Glastonbury, pointing out that a small-yield nuclear weapon dropped on the festival ‘would immediately remove from our country almost everybody who is hugely annoying.’ Rod added, for good measure: Given our current lack of
After an eight-week trial followed avidly around Australia and the world, and a week’s jury deliberation, Australia’s answer to Lucrezia Borgia today has been found guilty of murdering three of her dinner party guests and attempting to murder the fourth. The jury of five women and seven men decided, beyond reasonable doubt, that the presence
Last night, Israeli fighter jets struck multiple military targets belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime in Yemen, marking one of the most expansive and targeted responses to date. Among the sites hit were the ports of Al Hudaydah, Ras Isa, and Salif, as well as the Ras Kanatib power plant. The IDF confirmed that the
For some years now, one of the greatest worries among a certain coterie has been that of ‘misinformation’. This is the idea that the masses, left to their own devices – figuratively and literally – are unable to discern what is true and what is false. This is what has prompted the establishment of such
What a week it has been in British politics. After the welfare rebellion on Tuesday and then the shambles of PMQs on Wednesday, life in CCHQ must now seem a little easier. This week, it was the turn of Kemi Badenoch to address the Conservative Group dinner at the Local Government Association annual conference. And
You’ve heard of the two-state solution (or delusion, as I call it). But have you heard of the eight-state solution? Or the Palestinian Emirates plan? This is the idea of Professor Mordechai Kedar, who I spoke to in February 2024, just four months into the war started by the Palestinians on 7 October, 2023. If
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has announced that he intends to create a new third party in the US called the America party. After his own poll on X showed that two out of three favoured the venture, the outspoken billionaire has now put his money where his mouth is and taken the plunge
If Ireland’s foreign affairs minister expected plaudits from EU leaders for the republic’s looming ban on Israeli settlement goods, he was sorely disappointed. Ireland, Simon Harris pontificated in Brussels, ‘is the only country in the entire European Union that has published any legislation ever in relation to banning trade with the occupied Palestinian territories, but
How do you solve a problem like modern fatherhood? According to Jonathan Reynolds, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, paternity leave is how. As he launched his new review looking into maternity, paternity, shared parental leave and financial support offered to new parents this week, Reynolds stated that he wanted it to become as
Displays of sheer physical bravery are always impressive. Having been in precisely one real fight in my life, I enormously admire those who put their lives on their line for the rest of us every day, so I almost found myself applauding when I saw last week the police bodycam footage of Inspector Molloy Campbell
For a gateway into hell, the innocuous brown wooden front door of 61 Freedom Street in downtown Riga is surprisingly narrow – just two feet across. Known as the Corner House, the two-foot-wide door into the old KGB Latvian HQ would be easy to miss amidst the wide boulevards and the ornate, art nouveau, balconied apartments
Supermarket staff in London are now serving customers from inside glass and metal cages. The unveiling of such desperate security measures, including at a Sainsbury’s store in Battersea, should shock us. Yet in Britain, we’ve become so accustomed to shoplifting and crime on our streets that its introduction generates barely a murmur. Our supermarkets and
Health Secretary Wes Streeting says that the changes to the Welfare Bill will ‘give people peace of mind’. Perhaps for some, but certainly not economists. Britain’s welfare crisis is staggering – £313 billion a year is spent on disability payments, Universal Credit, winter fuel payments, Motability, child benefit, and, most expensive of them all, the
This weekend, Formula One returns to where it all started 75 years ago: Silverstone. But although the first F1 Grand Prix took place in the UK, the sport was initially dominated by Italian cars and Latin drivers, rather than Brits. Dottore Giuseppe Farina, a lawyer turned racing driver, won that first F1 race in front