All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
When Piers Morgan called Daniel Craig an #emasculatedbond for carrying his daughter in a baby carrier, Twitter responded in the best way possible. Apart from feminists scoffing (and yes, I was one of them), dads from all walks of life tweeted pictures of themselves with babies in carriers. Society has shifted, but Piers didn’t get
The FTSE100 fell by more than 10%, which is generally regarded as a ‘correction’. How does that compare with other ones recently? Dec 1999–March 2003 -49.6% Oct 2007–March 2009 -47.5% April 2010–June 2010 -16.1% Feb 2011–Sept 2011 -16.7% March 2012–May 2012 -11.8% April 2015-Feb 2016 -21.9%
‘Uncertainty is draining investment from the UK, with Brexit having a negative impact on eight in ten businesses,’ says Carolyn Fairbairn of the CBI. OK, let’s pause for a chorus of ‘She would say that, wouldn’t she?’ But even if we shade off for ‘scaremongering’, her survey (of 236 firms) is bleak: ‘44 per cent
Most people were scandalised by John McDonnell’s proposal to promote a four-day working week. But before we get incensed about giving people more leisure during their working life, we need to ask another question. If it really is so vital to the economy that people spend more time at work, then why does the government
If you think about it, it is obvious that The People’s Vote march last Saturday in London could not have been attended by 750,000 people, as its organisers allege. That is the equivalent of every man, woman and child in Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge (to take three Remain-voting cities). Sky News reported that the organisers
When Mohammed bin Salman was first made Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, the West rejoiced. It looked as if, finally, a young reformer with 21st century values was taking the reins of the state. After he allowed women to finally drive, the West hoped the Saudis would free jailed journalists, meaningfully engage with Europe and America
Theresa May should offer to go to the 1922 Committee every week between now and March 2019. Her appearance led to a, predictable, rallying round. There was the usual desk banging and lots of calls for unity. I’m told there were about half a dozen questions on tone and language following the hideous quotes given
Mrs May survives. That’s the sensational news from today’s PMQs which was conducted in a remarkably sedate and leisurely atmosphere. The Tory leader came under little pressure from Jeremy Corbyn. And she got no grief at all from her own back-stabbers, sorry, back-benchers who seem to have decided to delay her dethronement until Hallowe’en, or
The conventional wisdom that we live in echo chambers always seemed too convenient an explanation of political polarisation to be true. Believers could convince themselves that their causes lost, not because they were faulty or fantastical or outright wicked, but because their opponents had brainwashed a majority of the electorate to reject them. For all
Given relations with her own party, Theresa May will have been far more worried about the second half of Prime Minister’s Questions than the first. On the basis of the backbench questions that were asked, the session went pretty well. Only one Tory MP raised Brexit at all, and that was Jacob Rees-Mogg, who asked
Will tonight’s 1922 Committee meeting be a firework display of Tory anger? Theresa May has decided to face her MPs after days of feverish speculation that some of them might be about to force a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. There are plenty who have much to complain about on many different
Amy Schumer won’t be appearing in any Super Bowl ads this year. Not because she’s just announced she’s pregnant (mazel tov!) but because she wants to show solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players standing up — or, more accurately, kneeling down — to racism. Though, as the New York Post points out, it’s
Once again, rumours began to swirl around Westminster on Tuesday that there would – finally – be a confidence vote in Theresa May. News outlets and journalists on Twitter breathlessly announced that the chairman of the 1922 committee, Graham Brady, had received the necessary 48 letters from MPs to call a confidence vote. Unfortunately for
In this week’s Books Podcast I’m talking to the behavioural geneticist Robert Plomin about his new book Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, in which he argues that it’s not only height and weight and skin colour that are heritable, but intelligence, TV-watching habits and likelihood of getting divorced. I asked him about
So, just a week after starting work on releasing the gas trapped in the shales beneath Lancashire, energy company Cuadrilla Resources decided to stop work, at least for the rest of the day. Soon after they had started pumping water into the rocks a mile below the surface, there were a series of microseismic events
The speculation that Theresa May is perilously close to the 48 letters required for a confidence vote has – as Steerpike documents here – been going on for some time. That’s not to say it won’t happen. Morale is at low point within the party. But as a consequence of that, the sheer number of
If last week’s Cabinet was a unified affair with everyone agreeing about the problems with the EU’s version of the backstop, today’s was not. On the one hand, you had Geoffrey Cox warning that the backstop would be like being stuck in Dante’s first circle of hell. On the other, you had David Lidington, the
Theresa May is to face her MPs at the 1922 Committee tomorrow, it has been confirmed. There had been calls for the Prime Minister to do so, after feverish speculation that Tory MPs were plotting to remove her because of her disappointing Brexit performance. She has clearly decided to take on those critics and face
Would it really be so terrible if there were checks at the Irish Sea instead of at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland? Such checks could be carried out without threatening the constitutional status of Northern Ireland as part of the UK. Some say that there should be no differences between Northern Ireland and
This week the House of Commons commission will meet to discuss its response to the Cox report on bullying and harassment at Westminster. The report concludes that a number of officials, including one John Bercow, could need to stand down in order for real change to come about. Only there is very little chance of that happening
Savers who are looking for a fixed return on their cash but who don’t want to invest over the longer term will be pleased by latest research conducted by moneyfacts.co.uk, which shows a vast improvement to rates offered on one-year fixed bonds in the last two years. Here are some of the best bonds on
Remainers’ first response to the news that James Dyson will build his new electric car in Singapore was to accuse him of hypocrisy. Here is a man who expects others to be patriotic, goes the argument, and yet when it comes to his own interests he dumps Britain and takes his business elsewhere. But those
At this rate, there’s going to be a very empty hospitality tent, and a heck of a lot of canapés left over in Saudi Arabia. One by one, the bigwigs of the business and financial worlds have been pulling out of the Saudi investment conference, dubbed ‘Davos in the Desert’, which opened today. The reason? They
Theresa May tried her best to persuade grumpy MPs that a Brexit deal was still in sight when she addressed the Commons this evening. With colleagues from across the Conservative party losing faith in No 10’s negotiating strategy, the Prime Minister insisted that ’95 per cent of the Withdrawal Agreement and its protocols are now
After a hectic political summer, with multiple cabinet resignations and minor rebellions, even the most seasoned of Westminster watchers were struggling to keep track of all the junior ministers in Theresa May’s team. But even after the resignation dust has settled, it seems that Commons staff are still struggling to remember who’s in the government
There is an operation in progress by Tory Brexiters to persuade fellow backbenchers to write to Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 backbench committee, calling for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May as leader of their party. This is what one of them told me: ‘I’m campaigning myself. We need 60-70 letters, not
Two beliefs obsess the Remain cause. First, that voters were lied to during the referendum campaign. (Questionable). Second, that the negotiations are being botched. (Indisputable). But while Remainers believe that their opponents are fibbers, they can’t see that they too are being misled. At the People’s Vote rally last Saturday, I found general acceptance of
If you had to draw up a list of people and things it is de rigueur to loathe, it would definitely include Ryanair. Tabloid newspapers, Jeremy Clarkson, Brexit, red-hued men who pop up in the Question Time audience to moan about Jeremy Corbyn, and Ryan-bloody-air — these are things that every self-respecting member of the
Theresa May is entering her third week of Brexit hell. With no resolution in sight on the issue of the Irish border and suspicion growing over No 10’s grand plan, the Tory party is looking more fractious than ever. As James notes on Coffee House, although every week there are reports of plotting and an
In this week’s Spectator USA Life ’n’ Arts podcast, I’m casting the pod with David Pryce-Jones. Novelist, correspondent, historian, editor at National Review and, most recently, author of the autobiography and family history Fault Lines, Pryce-Jones has the longest association with the Spectator of any Life ’n’ Arts podcaster yet. In 1963, Pryce-Jones began his
Dominic Raab – ‘We need to hold our nerve’ Andrew Marr was joined by the Brexit Secretary as the deadline for achieving a deal with the European Union draws ever closer. Marr asked Dominic Raab about rumours that the mood in the party is restless enough to trigger a leadership contest against Theresa May, with
Ever since Chequers there has been almost constant speculation about an attempt to remove Theresa May but with nothing actually happening. So it is tempting to ignore it all, to conclude that those agitating against Mrs May are all hat and no cattle. But this weekend, something does appear to have changed. Whether it leads
The performance poet Megan Beech was so incensed by the abuse heaped by Twitter trolls on her idol Mary Beard that she wrote a poem called ‘When I Grow Up I Want to Be Mary Beard’ (‘an academic and a classy lady to boot’). With this in mind, I invited you to provide a poem
Can you think of a serious crime which does not involve hate or, at the very least, contempt? You must hate people to murder them, rape them, rob them, beat them up, post excrement through their letterbox or even defraud them. This intense hostility is a good reason for punishing such actions. The concept of
