All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The government is facing a defeat on the Budget. But rather than a Brexit showdown or the DUP pulling the rug from under Theresa May’s feet over the rumoured backstop, the issue is a domestic one. After Tracey Crouch resigned from government over the decision to seemingly delay reducing the maximum stake for fixed odds
When I was working as a speech writer in the Home Office, under Theresa May, one of her special advisers told me that she wanted to give a statement to parliament on the police’s use of stop and search. Part of the motive for doing this, he explained, was political: stop and search is a policy
The German politicians who were once larger-than-life figures, dominating their political parties as easily as they dominated Germany’s political discourse, are fast becoming dinosaurs. First it was Martin Schulz, who resigned as chairman of the Social Democratic Party in February after some backbenchers opposed the party’s decision to enter into another grand coalition with Angela
Asia Bibi was accused of blasphemy after refusing the demands of her co-workers to reject her Catholic faith and embrace Islam. A mob invaded her home and attacked her and her family. The police responded to this brutal, unprovoked assault as you would expect: they arrested Asia Bibi and charged her with blasphemy. The local
The House of Lords privileges and conduct committee recommended today that the former Lib Dem peer, Lord Lester, be suspended from the chamber until 2022, after he was accused of offering ‘sexual inducements’ and sexually harassing a complainant – which he strenuously denies. If the House of Lords agrees with the recommendation (which it will
I dreamed I saw a monster advancing through a devastated town centre, mighty footsteps shaking semi-derelict buildings. I awoke in my armchair to find I had been reading a news item about Sports Direct tycoon Mike Ashley’s latest gambit: buying the 60-shop Evans Cycles chain out of administration for just £8 million, to follow his
With Theresa May’s government seemingly on the brink of collapse over the backstop agreement, the Prime Minister can take heart that the Opposition are also experiencing Brexit turbulence. Over the weekend, Jeremy Corbyn set the cat among the pigeons by telling a German newspaper that Brexit cannot be stopped. The Labour leader’s comments dismayed a
To anyone who knew the late and much-missed Norman Geras, the idea that the state could consider his work an incitement to terrorism would have been incomprehensible. Geras was an inspirational politics professor at Manchester University, and a polemicist and moral philosopher of exceptional insight. He devoted much of his energy to opposing the murder
Damian Hinds – May’s opponents should consider ‘what the alternatives are’ As the nation prepared to mark the centenary of the end of World War One, and to pay its respects to those who have died as a result of war, politicians from both major parties sat down for their final TV interviews before the
The spark for the latest challenge — to write a short story in the Gothic style with a topical twist — came from the recent reopening of Strawberry Hill House and Garden, the neo-Gothic creation of Horace Walpole, whose 1764 chiller The Castle of Otranto is regarded as the first Gothic novel. Russell Clifton deployed
Jo Johnson has noticed that Theresa May has managed to unite the country, in that both Leavers and Remainers worry that her deal will let the EU pass our laws and regulate our markets but leave us no say in that process. But why does he think that staying in the EU is a remedy
How on earth should one do it? How should the centenary of the end of a war be marked? Not just any war — the Great War. A war which involved almost every country and resulted in millions of deaths. As we approach the 100th eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month,
After Jo Johnson resigned on Friday over the government’s Brexit position, his brother Boris was quick to take to social media to commend Jo for taking a brave stand – by calling out the flaws with the proposed Brexit deal. However, the former foreign secretary stopped short of backing his brother’s call for a second
Pity Olly Robbins and Sabine Weyand who are as we speak negotiating a Brexit deal for their respective bosses, Theresa May and the EU27. Because following the resignation of Jo Johnson, it is now clearer than ever that the deal they will probably agree this weekend, to be put to the Cabinet on Monday (or
This weekend, of all weekends, is a moment for reflection. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month will be a real thing. One hundred years on, but remembered all the more because of that. Here, as all across Europe, the centenary of Germany’s capitulation will be marked by the customary services
Jo Johnson’s resignation, the DUP kicking off and the European Commission’s Article 50 task-force talking about a lack of progress mean that it hasn’t been a good end to the week for Theresa May. As I write in The Sun this morning, one government source says ‘if there’s no November Council, then no deal goes
When Boris Johnson declared this week that Theresa May’s new deal would be a ‘Christmas present of the finest old Brussels fudge,’ he embraced one of Brexit’s most enduring motifs: food. This week’s Spectator cover story ‘Brexit is Served‘ is full of culinary metaphors. The language of food seems to cross the Brexit divide: Remainers
Brexit has divided the country. It has divided political parties. And it has divided families too. Although I voted Remain, I have desperately wanted the Government, in which I have been proud to serve, to make a success of Brexit: to reunite our country, our party and, yes, my family too. At times, I believed
As Theresa May prepares to unveil her Brexit deal, we ask: just how bad is it, and what happened to ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’? In the American midterms, the Blue Wave didn’t happen, but Democrats did take control of the House of Representatives – what next for Trump’s presidency? And last,
Collapsing retailers. A looming far-left government threatening nationalisation. And perhaps most significantly of all, our potentially chaotic rupture with our largest, closest and most significant trade partner. It doesn’t seem to matter what you throw at it, the British economy continues to be surprisingly resilient. Figures out today showed it expanded at 0.6 per cent
The conundrum of economic growth continues. The withdrawal process from the EU is, even by the admission of the most ardent Brexiteers, going pretty badly. We have a rearguard Remain lobby trying to talk down the economy at every opportunity – something which you might think ought to be undermining confidence. And yet still there
Last week I was in the Somme, visiting the first world war battlefields before the great and the good descend on the region this week to mark the centenary of the Armistice. In one cemetery I found propped against the headstone of Captain Frank Morkill a plastic folder, left two months earlier by a relative.
There are times when you wonder whether our culture is too stupid to survive. The thought has kept occurring over recent days as I have watched the cooked-up furore over the appointment of Sir Roger Scruton to chair a British government commission looking into beauty in architecture. What are Scruton’s qualifications for this unpaid job?
Today, the BBC news channel ran a short piece on the increase of hate crime incidents against disabled children – which have tripled in four years. As part of the report, the BBC visited a school which catered for disabled children in Newcastle, which had recently been broken into and vandalised by thugs who destroyed
Asia Bibi and Sir Roger Scruton don’t have much in common. She is a lowly farm labourer from a rural part of Pakistan where she experienced great poverty, hardship and persecution, on account of the fact that she is Christian. He is an erudite professor, a knight of the realm, and not short of a few
Just when you thought identity politics couldn’t get any more confusing, along comes along Emile Ratelband. Mr Ratelband, who is described in the Guardian as a ‘motivational speaker’ and ‘positivity guru’, has appeared in a court in Arnhem in the Netherlands trying to persuade the judge to allow him to change his official birth date
As soon as Donald Trump says ‘I’ll be honest,’ which he did at his press conference today, you know he’s about to tell a lie. The media, he proclaimed, ‘really does bring disunity.’ No, it doesn’t. What it brings is coverage of his administration rather than the beatification that he craves. Trump’s performance was more
When Peter Hain used his parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the businessman accused of harassing and bullying several women, it’s fair to say he received a mixed reception. While initially praised for breaking the court ordered injunction, criticism began to mount that he had abused his parliamentary powers. Hain will be glad to
Midterm elections are traditionally nightmares for the party of a sitting president. Just ask former president Bill Clinton, who suffered the humiliation of seeing his Democratic Party lose 54 seats during Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Republican Revolution. Ask George W. Bush, whose blunders in Iraq cost the GOP control of both chambers of Congress in 2006.
Anthony Ekundayo Lennon, the white director who has identified as black, is on the receiving end of a backlash from black and ethnic minority actors. They are aggrieved that Lennon has taken a black person’s place on an Arts Council England-funded programme. The Independent’s Paula Akpan lambasted Lennon, “you don’t get to pick and discard which signifiers of
The leaked plan of how the Government might try to sell the Brexit deal contains a telling passage. The memo instructs the Cabinet Office to talk up the agreement by ‘comparing it to no deal but not to our current deal’. For all the claims by a government spokesman that the ‘misspelling and childish language in this document should
Here we go again. Perhaps there should be a template for journalists writing about transgender issues and the treatment of women with the “wrong” opinions. The template would look something like this: A small group of noisy, angry people, many of them male, have demanded that [Insert woman’s name] not be allowed to speak/ appear/ have
Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument,’ wrote Sir Roger Scruton. ‘Your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience.’ Unfortunately, that experience is due to
President Donald J. Trump thinks only in terms of winning and losing. On Tuesday, he won and he lost, which might muddle his pride. But any pain Trump feels at losing the House of Representatives will be as nothing to the satisfaction he will feel at having gained seats in the Senate. The Republicans have