All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Attempting to explain Brexit in 90 seconds might remind you of a Monty Python sketch, but this is what Jeremy Hunt attempted in front of a class of Japanese high school students on Monday. The foreign secretary gave a carefully worded summary of the Brexit situation using the graded language of the English language teacher he
In 2016, Labour’s shadow justice secretary and Corbyn ally Richard Burgon was asked a rather simple question by Andrew Neil when he appeared on the Daily Politics. The show took place shortly after allegations were made in the Daily Mail that the MP has said ‘Zionism is the enemy of peace’. As you would expect, in the
“Paris outraged, Paris broken, Paris martyred, but Paris liberated!” intoned General de Gaulle on 25 August 1944 from the Hotel de Ville on his first appearance before the French people following the capital’s liberation. The following day he attended the Te Deum at Notre Dame Cathedral, that other high symbol and site of memory and
Sadly, politician misleads public is regarded by most people as a dog bites man story. But it is still quite rare for a politician to be caught in a straight untruth. This is what happened to Richard Burgon today, though, when video emerged of him saying that ‘Zionism is the enemy of peace’ when he
In what Communities Secretary James Brokenshire described as ‘the biggest change to the private rental sector in a generation’, the government has announced a ban on so-called ‘no-fault evictions’ of tenants by their landlords. ‘By abolishing unfair evictions, every single person living in the private rental sector will be empowered’, Brokenshire claimed. The Prime Minister
In American law there is a concept called ‘the fruit of the poison tree’ which means that if the source of some alleged evidence is rotten, or has been wrongfully obtained, then everything coming from it is also recognised as tainted. After this past week I would suggest a similar concept enters the lexicon in
The conversation in France changed abruptly last night. Perhaps the blaze in Paris was the wake-up call that France needed. My neighbours, and all of France, seem deeply shocked. Almost numb. The fire seems to have touched a nerve. Whether this sentiment is transient remains to be seen. Notre Dame cathedral will be rebuilt. It
Almost every day, somebody somewhere recycles the idea that President Donald J. Trump doesn’t want to be president. He never did, they say. His heart is not in it. He wants to protect his business empire first and foremost. He doesn’t like having to answer to Congress. You’ll have heard these arguments in one form
People are protesting on the streets of London again. But this time it’s got nothing to do with Brexit. Instead, activists belonging to campaign group Extinction Rebellion have attempted to bring London to a standstill today by blocking roads as part of what the group says is the ‘last best shot at survival’. Some of those
On the afternoon of 13 April 1919, troops commanded by brigadier-general Reginald Dyer opened fire on thousands of unarmed Indian protesters massed at an enclosed garden in Amritsar in Punjab known as Jallianwala Bagh. When the shooting stopped – and it stopped only because Dyer ran out of ammunition – some 500 people, mostly Sikhs, lay dead.
The European Union already has a lot on its plate. The continuing doom of Brexit, upcoming parliamentary elections, a resurgent and ever strident nationalist movement across the continent and migration to name only a few. But over the last week, Libya can be added to the list. The armed conflict just across the Mediterranean is
Last Thursday the Prime Minister told MPs that ‘if we were able to pass a deal by 22 May, we would not have to take part in European elections and, when the EU has also ratified, we would be able to leave at 11pm on 31 May.’ Her point – since picked up by ministers
It is not good form for the British to be awkward and obstructive. The art of the compromise was the polite British way of doing things. Or so it used to be thought. But Europe’s axis has tilted since Theresa May’s inability to secure an exit from the EU. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recent tweet calling for
As Tory leadership rivals get their campaigns up and running – and start to work out how to torpedo their rivals – Game of Thrones returns to our screens. Now in its final series, the back-stabbing/front-stabbing fantasy drama sees various characters fight and plot their way to the Iron Throne. So, Mr S was curious
Speaking on the radio this morning, the Foreign Secretary refused the temptation to condemn the Legal Aid Authority’s grant of legal aid to Shamima Begum. He was right to do so. We give legal aid to those accused of murder and genocide. This is not because we have sympathy with murderers and genocidal killers but
Civilisation only ever hangs by a thread. Today one of those threads seems to have frayed, perhaps snapped. It is impossible to watch the footage coming out of Paris, all that can be done is to groan and turn away. It is not possible to watch the spire of Notre Dame collapse. It is not
Firefighters are continuing to tackle a blaze that has devastated Notre Dame in Paris. The medieval cathedral’s spire and roof have both collapsed as a result of the blaze. President Emmanuel Macron, who has arrived at the scene of the fire in the centre of Paris, said: ‘Like all of my countrymen, I am sad
David Lammy – ERG far-right comparisons ‘not strong enough’ Andrew Marr interviewed David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham who has been at the forefront of calls for a second Brexit referendum. Lammy doubled down on comments he has made about not ‘appeasing’ the pro-Brexit European Research Group. Marr challenged him on the remarks made to
As tensions in Westminster continue to grow over Brexit, it’s become commonplace for politicians to use language that would have been unheard of in the past. Yet, even in these febrile times, the Labour politician David Lammy managed to go a step further earlier this month when he compared the ERG faction of the Tories to
The latest challenge was to submit an extract from a novel that chronicles the adult life of a well-known fictional hero from children’s stories. I enjoyed Jess McAree’s account of Paddington Bear’s Conrad-esque voyage — ‘evicted by Brexit, residence visa revoked’ — to the heart of darkness in deepest Peru. Hugh King, D.A. Prince and
A once famous question posed to job-seekers at Microsoft was ‘Why are manhole covers round?’ The question was revealing not because there was a single right answer, but precisely because there wasn’t. It helped elicit whether the applicant was someone happy to supply one plausible answer or someone who looked beyond the obvious. At a
The news that 83 per cent of Conservative voters are over 45, compared to 53 per cent of Labour voters, is depressing. That was a finding of a poll carried out by Hanbury Strategy for Onward, a right-of-centre think tank that’s just produced a report called ‘Generation Why?’. More alarmingly, Hanbury discovered that the ‘tipping
In his famous speech to both Houses of Parliament in March 1960, General de Gaulle praised Britain: ‘Although, since 1940, you have gone through the hardest vicissitudes in your history, only four statesmen [Churchill, Attlee, Eden and Macmillan] have guided your affairs in these extraordinary years. Thus, lacking meticulously worked-out constitutional texts, but by virtue
Dear Remainer parliament. Although we’re the voters who spurned the petition for this very course of action, we the undersigned formally request that you please revoke Article 50 at your earliest convenience. For Philip, Oliver, Dominic, Amber, Greg, et al (forgive the familiar first names, but over the last few months we’ve come to feel
In acknowledging post-colonial guilt, William Dalrymple asks us to perceive how others see us. If only those critics could ever see themselves (Books, 6 April). The Amritsar massacre of 1919 was a failure, but how many more families were affected by the Amritsar massacre of 1984? More people were killed by the Indian republic in
In September, Labour conference will impose on Jeremy Corbyn a policy of backing a second referendum in all circumstances. So, I say in The Sun this morning, what will he do between now and then? Corbyn has two paths open to him. He can either decide to embrace a second referendum now or do a
The political dysfunction in Parliament seems to be rubbing off on much of our commentariat. Many have concluded that the whole political system is about to undergo an earthquake as seismic and landscape-changing as anything that mere plate tectonics can conjure up. The main political parties will no longer be Labour and Tory, defined by
My first encounter with a plan to hold not one but two referendums on Britain’s European Union membership happened more than three years ago. At least two individuals were actively entertaining the idea. Both were Leavers. Dominic Cummings had proposed it in one of his blogs. Boris Johnson had not publicly endorsed such a thing,
There was publicity last weekend for a report (Generation Why?) by Onward, the think tank of semi-young ‘mainstream’ Tories. Its survey seemed to confirm the widespread belief that hardly anyone young supports the Tories, which may not matter quite as much as Onward thinks, since it also showed that the young have astonishing difficulty in
For 21 weeks now the Gilets Jaunes have taken to the streets of French cities to protest. It began as a demonstration against high and rising fuel taxes. These tax increases hit families getting children to school and the adults to work, and cut the earnings of the self-employed working from their vans and cars.
A friend of mine – another twenty-one year old – has resigned his membership of the Conservative party this morning over a single issue. It’s not Brexit; it is the comments made by Conservative MPs James Brokenshire, Tom Tugendhat, and Johnny Mercer about the sacking of Roger Scruton from his unpaid government advisory role following
While Friday may mean the end of the working week for most of us, for many in France, it means the start of a long weekend out in the streets clad in a gilet jaune. As Emmanuel Macron pushes for a tough stance against the UK in Brexit negotiations in Brussels, domestic problems continue to
It’s hardly a surprise that Russian and American views of the world differ sharply. But there is one area of unexpected congruence in Moscow and Washington: Brexit. Travelling between both capitals, it is hard to tell the difference between the perplexity and even suspicion with which Britain’s ongoing and bungled departure from the EU is being
