There is an unspoken truth about British life: we have two classes of citizen. The first are those born or formally settled here, who have all the rights and protections of the law. Then there are perhaps a million others who may have lived here with their families for years but without the proper documents.
Home Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Labour MP for Chorley and deputy Speaker since 2010, was elected Speaker by the Commons. His first words were: ‘No clapping.’ Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit party, proposed an electoral pact with the Conservatives, but only if Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, repudiated the agreement on Brexit that
I’m writing this in Crete where a late summer has seen brilliant sunshine and temperatures reaching 25°C — but can I enjoy it? The unrelenting diet of gloom coming at me from every direction leads me to question even the dazzling blue Aegean and the cloudless sky. It’s surely a sign of global warming and
National characters How useful is it to characterise an election with a single anthropological specimen such as ‘Workington Man’? ‘Worcester Woman’ was identified by Tory strategists ahead of the 1997 election as a key voter who had helped John Major win, against expectations, in 1992. Worcester was then a Conservative seat. Has the city followed
No special protection Sir: Rod Liddle’s joke that the election might be held on a date when Muslims cannot vote, thereby reducing support for Labour, has apparently led to outrage. There has been no similar outrage over your front cover (‘A vote is born’), which satirises the Christian nativity by portraying Johnson, Corbyn and Swinson
