All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The core consumer price index of inflation held unexpectedly steady at 2.6 per cent in July, further removing any possibility of an interest-rate rise this year. So what’s the downside? My eye is drawn to a bulletin from Nationwide, the UK’s most sensible mortgage lender. It reports a fall in quarterly profits after a rise
Despite Taylor Swift’s aspiration that her sexual assault trial last week should stand as an example for all women, what’s been notable outside the courtroom is how little support from the sisterhood Swift’s had. When Swift’s pop contemporary Kesha faced her own sexual assault case last year – against music producer Dr Luke – female
This summer, MPs have had to grapple with one of the big issues of our time. No, not Brexit – the planned closure of Big Ben. With the Great Bell to be silenced for four years while renovation work takes place, some politicians have expressed upset at the plans. Jacob Rees-Mogg argues that it would be ‘symbolically uplifting’ for
Election day polling by Michael Ashcroft showed a Britain divided not so much by class or region as age. The 45-54 age group split almost evenly between the two main parties. Older voters went for the Conservatives; younger ones for Labour. Among 18-24 year olds, only 18 per cent voted Tory, while 67 per cent
The invitation to submit a disgustingly flattering poem in heroic couplets in praise of a contemporary person of power saw you at your bootlicking best: Donald Trump, Anthony Scaramucci, Xi Jinping, Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin were all on the receiving end of some serious sucking-up. Bill Greenwell’s tribute to Justin Trudeau caught my eye:
The subtitle of Al Gore’s new film is ‘Truth to Power’, which is supposed to give the impression of brave old Al fighting for right against the mighty fossil fuel establishment. But it is somewhat ironic, given his response when the power being challenged is Gore himself. The former vice president was in London last
When a new MP is offered a job as a parliamentary private secretary for a cabinet member, it’s often a test to see if they really would do anything to get into government. It involves running errands, spying on colleagues, ferrying messages around the Commons and planting inane questions for backbenchers to ask in the
I can’t work up much indignation at the collapse of London’s Garden Bridge project, which has been strangled by the refusal of mayor Sadiq Khan to guarantee its continuing operational and maintenance costs — assuming its trustees, led by former banker and minister Lord Davies of Abersoch, would have succeeded in raising the £150 million
To the Business School at the University of Edinburgh to be interviewed on the theme of ‘Great Political Disasters’. Main criteria for inclusion: decisions, often taken for short-term reasons, whose unforeseen consequences have echoed down the ages. Everyone will have their own little list, but mine included the Balfour declaration, Partition, Suez, Wilson’s failure to
As a tot growing up in a provincial proletarian Communist household in the 1960s, I’d been led to believe that socialism was colour-blind. But when I moved to That London in the 1970s, I quickly became aware that the non-working-class Left operated what was best described as Paint-Chart Politics – the further from white, the
Football’s back, I’m afraid, and, in the imperishable words of David Mitchell, every kick in every game matters to someone, somewhere. Still, it’s the Premier League’s 25th anniversary, so a good time to take stock. There’s no doubt that with Sky’s help the PL has sexed up the English game and moved it once and
Long before student activists started talking about pulling down statues of Cecil Rhodes, a cultural war was being waged in America over monuments honouring General Robert E. Lee and other leaders of the Confederacy. In 2001 there was a petition to remove some of these statues from the University of Texas on the grounds that
As Brexit continues to dominate the headlines there is, understandably, a great deal of anxiety surrounding the UK’s future prosperity, and our ability to protect and grow Britain’s reputation as a major business centre. What is agreed almost across the board is that we must ensure we make post-Brexit Britain an attractive business environment. The
Before Trump or Farage, before Wilders or Marine Le Pen, there was Pauline. Pauline Hanson was the original rabble-rouser who disrupted the pieties of liberal multiculturalism. Along came this copper-topped fish ’n’ chip shop owner with her screechy, strangled sentences and her gut prejudices about immigrants, welfare wasters and Aborigines. Unexpectedly elected to Parliament in
Although Theresa May has returned from her summer holidays to find her job safe, it’s only a temporary fix to the Conservative party’s woes. MPs plan to keep May as Prime Minister until the end of the Brexit negotiations – by which point they hope to be able to have a Tory leadership contest which
The statement from the White House makes little attempt to disguise what happened. ‘White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.’ This is pretty much the same form of words used when Anthony Scaramucci
Why was Spain targeted by terrorists? asked the Guardian on Friday, a question that is also being posed by other media outlets. After all, Spain has not participated in the Allied bombing campaign in Syria, which according to the Daily Telegraph ‘was seen as lowering the risk that the country would be targeted by Islamic State’.
It’s official: people who talk about the problem of Pakistani men abusing white working-class girls have no place in polite society. Raise so much as a peep of concern about Muslim grooming gangs and you’ll be expelled from the realm of the decent. You’ll be shushed, exiled, encouraged to clean out your polluted mind. That
In the wake of the referendum and a series of messy leadership battles, Ukip is a party without a plan. But a lack of direction isn’t the only thing troubling the Kippers. The party’s interim leader Steve Crowther has issued a press release calling the former EU President Martin Schulz a ‘complete idiot’. The strong
‘Here we go again’, says the Sun, which criticises the ‘chorus of doom-mongers’ who pop up whenever the government proposes a ‘sensible, serious suggestion for moving towards Brexit’. On Tuesday, this reaction was sparked by details setting out plans for a customs union after Brexit. Now, a fresh wave of cynicism has greeted the idea
It has been ten years since the start of the global financial crisis, and much has been written about whether the crisis of 2007 has changed the financial system… whether lessons have been learned, and so on. Frankly, lessons haven’t been learned and if the UK doesn’t play its cards right, there could be another
No one receiving their A-level results this morning can fail to be aware that the first of the coalition government’s more rigorous exams were sat this summer. Whatever their individual results, students – and parents – should be pleased with a new system which is more reliable and a better preparation for university. They should make sure to
On this week’s episode, we’re looking at whether the ‘sex trade’ is a form of sanitised modern slavery. We also ask whether the Tory leadership battle is a phoney war and if university education is going downhill. In this week’s magazine Julie Bindel looks at the sex trade, decrying what she sees as an attempt to suffocate the
Stereotypes die hard. Consider the summer game, for instance. It is axiomatic to complain that cricket is a desperately conservative game, run by fuddy-duddies, inimitably hostile to reform or change or modernity. If anything the pad is on the other leg; there are times when cricket’s rush to attract new audiences leaves one suspecting that
For this week’s podcast, in celebration of Robert Lowell’s centenary year, I’m joined by the critic and writer Jonathan Raban — who not only knew this titan among American poets of the last century, but lived in his basement, and found himself contributing to literary history when Lowell took to consulting him, on the hoof,
With the German elections now barely a month away, the Bundesrepublik remains beset by worries about terrorism and immigration. Yet, just like the river in the song, the German economic juggernaut just keeps rolling along. The latest GDP figures are even better than expected – 0.6 per cent growth in the second quarter – the
Since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, resignations from the shadow cabinet have been ten-a-penny. The latest Labour MP to quit hasn’t done so over Brexit or Corbyn though – and the reason for her departure doesn’t bode well for the state of debate within the top ranks of the party. Sarah Champion has stepped down
There is a strain of wickedness so contagious that it infects every pore of the places it touches. It can be found in the failed human beings who snatch at glory by the mass slaughter of children; they have changed forever the towns of Dunblane, Newton and Columbine. New York and Paris have emerged from
A brief trawl of the Foreign Office’s travel advice for Brits thinking of paying a visit to Sudan will tell you that’s it’s not the best idea – with cholera, the threat of terrorism and clashes between government forces and rebel groups on the menu. What’s more, the British Embassy no longer registers UK nationals in Sudan
Avoiding a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is the government’s top aim in Brexit talks. Brussels wants much the same: the EU Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt has insisted that there should be no return to a fixed border. This is an aspiration shared by the EU, which makes the issue one
With the Retail Price Index figures released yesterday, commuters are up in arms at the news that rail prices are set to rise by up to 3.6% as of January. It’s not all fares that will be affected; only those that are regulated by the government – and the price increase won’t happen until the
Writing in the Times today, Hugo Rifkind charges that centrists do not want to smash up the existing order and start again. As someone who runs a centrist think tank, I can only say: guilty as charged, your honour. And if it please the court, I’d like a further crime to be taken into consideration:
Identity politics is turning violent. It’s been brewing for a while. Anyone who’s witnessed mobs of students threatening to silence white men or Islamists gruffly invading the space of secular women who diss their dogmas will know that, as with all forms of communalism, identity politics has a menacing streak. And at the weekend, in
The decision to allow Anne Marie Waters – co-founder of anti-Islam group Pegida UK alongside former EDL leader Tommy Robinson – to stand for leadership of Ukip has created fresh fractures within a party that is preparing for its third leadership contest in a turbulent twelve months. Criticism of Waters’ candidacy has come not only from the modernising