All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The standard conservative response to Jeremy Corbyn’s proposal to impose VAT on private schools would be to attack it as as a policy motivated by class envy and dreamed up to please his party’s levellers — except that Michael Gove, too, questioned private schools’ charitable status a few weeks ago. Private schools might moan and
With health bosses warning last month that the NHS faces a ‘mission impossible’ to meet the standards required by the government with the current levels of funding, there are financial worries over its future. So, how is the NHS spending its limited funds? Well, the latest register of interests shows that Naz Shah has been brought in to
Only the EU, an organisation with four presidents, could have two ‘chief negotiators’ charged with agreeing the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU. I am not sure, then, how seriously to take the figure of Guy Verhofstadt, a Belgian MEP who has been appointed the European Parliament’s chief negotiator. If we agree something with
According to archaeologists and all the papers last week, the 11th-century villagers of Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire, used to mutilate their dead, chopping off their heads and breaking their legs to minimise the danger of zombie resurrection. ‘Imagine being afraid,’ I chortled while reading this, ‘that the undead might put you in mortal danger!’ Whereupon
Two of the top tips in Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal, of which I wrote last week even though he allegedly didn’t write it himself, are ‘Think Big’ and ‘Maximise the Options’, also expressed as ‘I keep a lot of balls in the air’. How should Theresa May apply that advice in response
The sorry saga of what Labour decides to do about Ken Livingstone isn’t over yet. In the last few moments, Jeremy Corbyn has released a statement saying Livingstone will now face a fresh probe into comments that he made about Hitler since yesterday – when he avoided being booted out of the party for doing exactly
Listen to Douglas Murray and James Forsyth debating Ken Livingstone’s non-expulsion: In the past, Labour has been quick to take a stand against bodies where racism, sexism, and homophobia were allowed to fester. Discrimination was discrimination, and institutions in which it routinely took place were culpable for it. But anti-Semitism now routinely takes place in the
Well, Theresa May met half of the Foreign Office’s dress code for women in Saudi Arabia when she arrived there yesterday. Her coat was loose, you couldn’t take exception to her trousers, but it was the hair that was the great thing. She was bare-headed, just like Angela Merkel was when she turned up in
Is Theresa May’s media honeymoon over? The bungled Budget might have led to a raft of bad headlines for the Government, but these were mostly aimed in Philip Hammond’s direction. Today, the Sun turns its fire on the Prime Minister. The paper says May has ‘shown she understands what most Brits want’ from Brexit. But
A new report revealing that using wood pellets to generate electricity can actually speed up global warming should be the final nail in the coffin for the flawed policy of biomass subsidies. Policies designed to incentivise green energy use are not only having a dubious effect on climate change, they are destroying biodiversity and even killing many
Although Nick Robinson claims the BBC no longer has a duty to ‘broadly balance’ the views of Remain and Leave in its Brexit reports, this hasn’t stopped the Today programme facing flak for its seemingly gloomy broadcasts. A recent News Watch study found that — in the six month period after the referendum vote — of
Oh dear. Someone at the BBC is having a very bad day indeed. Earlier today the corporation announced that Brian Matthew — the veteran BBC presenter and former host of Sounds of the 60s — has died aged 88. The news was soon followed up by several newspapers, with obituaries published and a message of condolence from
Chippy tea. Just writing those words makes me yearn for fish and chips, lathered in vinegar and dosed with salt. Perhaps some mushy peas on the side and a bottle of ketchup to hand. While a world without fish suppers would be a cold, cold place (for me, at least), new research shows that people
It’s that time of year again when savers are repeatedly asked the same old questions: do you have an ISA, did you invest your 2016/17 ISA allowance, have you decided where to put the new allowance? In previous years the answers were pretty straightforward, but things aren’t so simple these days. It’s rather like a countdown
Hold the front page. The Guardian may have just had its best idea in decades. According to the Times, brains at the Grauniad are pondering moving the paper’s offices back to Manchester in an attempt to save money. Senior executives at Guardian Media Group are said to have held ‘top secret’ talks about moving the newspaper’s
Listen to Douglas Murray and James Forsyth debating Ken Livingstone’s non-expulsion: We never loved each other, Ken Livingstone and I. We first clashed in public more than a decade ago, and have enjoyed castigating each other ever since. But, now that he has been suspended from the Labour party for a second year in a
To say Labour’s decision not to expel Ken Livingstone from the party — but instead suspend him for a year — over his comments on Hitler and Zionism has gone down like a cup of cold sick with the PLP would be an understatement. Following the move, Luciana Berger branded it ‘a new low’ for
Listen to Douglas Murray and James Forsyth debating Ken Livingstone’s non-expulsion: Ken Livingstone has not been expelled from the Labour party for his comments about Hitler and Zionism. Instead, he has been suspended for two years; but he has already served one year of that suspension. Given the offensiveness of what Livingstone said and the
The decision by Conservative MPs to walk away from the Commons Committee on Exiting the EU is one of the most unintentionally revealing abdications of duty I have seen. The report they refused to endorse was polite to the point of blandness. The necessity of securing cross-party approval meant that its restrained language bore little
One looked in vain for the words ‘Islamic extremist’ in the Guardian’s reporting of the Westminster attack a fortnight ago. Even after Isis claimed the attacker, Khalid Masood, as one of its own, the paper declined to accept him as a terrorist motivated by religious extremism. And who knows, maybe it was right. Masood had
Although Nick Robinson once accused the Corporation of anti-Corbyn bias, he takes a different approach when it comes to allegations of Brexit bias. After 70 Eurosceptic MPs signed a letter accusing the BBC of a biased and ‘pessimistic’ view (and another 80 Remain MPs sent a letter asking the BBC to stay strong), the former
As the events of the last few days show, the increasingly toxic issue of Gibraltar means the UK’s Article 50 talks with Spain might become more fraught than either party would like. It’s not just that Spain wants to share sovereignty of the Rock with Britain; more dangerous is the fact that Brussels can exploit this dispute to punish the UK for Brexit.
It’s judgment day. Today Ken Livingstone is expected to find out if he has been expelled from Labour, over controversial comments he made last year about Hitler and Zionism. So in the final hours before the verdict, how is Livingstone occupying himself? Well, by talking about Hitler, obviously. Only now Ken has a new enemy in his
Theresa May says the way to deal with the row over Gibraltar is ‘jaw-jaw’ rather than war. And there is plenty of chatter on the subject in today’s newspapers: Of course we don’t want a war with Spain, says the Sun. But ‘nor will we sit quietly’ and let Madrid ‘launch its latest ridiculous attempt
Last week, disgruntled MPs walked out of a meeting of the Commons Brexit Select Committee — chaired by Hilary Benn — in protest at a report they claimed was ‘too gloomy’. Today that report has been published in its 155-page entirety. As expected, the committee is divided over its contents — with Tory members of
Oh dear. Jeremy Corbyn’s war with the MSM (aka mainstream media) entered a new fractious chapter tonight thanks to an interview with ITV. Following months of dire polling, the Labour leader lost his temper when he was asked whether he should stand aside in the wake of the party’s poor ratings: Jeremy Corbyn reacts angrily to a question
Cadbury has changed the name of its annual ‘Easter Egg Trail’ to ‘Cadbury’s Great British Egg Hunt’, callously dropping any reference to the Christian festival celebrated by 31.5 million Brits. (Actually, the word ‘Easter’ appears multiple times in the marketing, but it’s out of the title, and that’s the important bit.) Theresa May has taken
Today the news agenda has been dominated by Easter eggs — or just eggs, depending on who you speak to. Theresa May sent hacks into a spin on her official visit to Saudi Arabia when she declared the National Trust’s decision to drop the word Easter from the name of their egg hunts ‘absolutely ridiculous’. Jeremy Corbyn has
I have always had a soft spot for building societies. Maybe it’s because I worked for one in the 1980s as an economist. Bristol & West it was called, and long since gone to the cemetery for building societies (not many plots left). Lovely departmental boss, no work pressure and little economic analysis required. But
This morning there has been much outrage following the National Trust’s decision to drop the word Easter from the name of their egg hunts (previously called ‘Easter Egg Trails’), in association with Cadbury. The Prime Minister has branded the decision ‘absolutely ridiculous’ as Easter is ‘a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the
Like many households, my electricity meter is not in a terribly accessible spot. Reaching said meter requires a short stepladder or standing on the kitchen counter. That said, there’s no need for crampons. And so every time someone comes to read the meter, I’m met with the same response. ‘Oh no lass, health and safety.
As a type of (Platonic) gerontophile, I never expected to say this, but can the dinosaurs not shut up? In recent weeks the nation has had to suffer repeat appearances on the television by Lord Heseltine. In each interview the Remain-supporting peer appears ever more viciously angry – brimming over, indeed with a sort of concentrated,
ICM, who Vote Leave used for their own referendum polling, have some striking numbers on what elements of an EU exit deal British voters would find acceptable. 54 per cent of voters regard maintaining free movement as part of a transition deal – something that Theresa May wouldn’t rule out in her interview with Andrew
Remember the hoo-ha about the sharp fall in the number of EU students applying to study at British universities? Numbers were down, we were told, and there was only one reason: Brexit. In the months since the referendum, applications from EU students have fallen by seven per cent. Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, told MPs