This week Brexit reached its Somme. The government has been bogged down in votes on amendments inserted into its Brexit bill by the House of Lords. Theresa May saw off the threat of cabinet resignations only to have a more junior minister resign, as he put it, in order to voice the concerns of his
Home Negotiations over Brexit acquired an even stronger admixture of chaos and old night. Phillip Lee resigned as a little-known justice minister over Brexit, saying: ‘The 2016 referendum is detrimental to the people we are elected to serve.’ The government managed to reject in the Commons by 324 to 298 a Lords amendment on giving
Awake to the Today programme and ordure being dumped on me by Polly Toynbee while the Mail’s legendary Dame Ann Leslie sings my praises. I recall how Toynbee penned a venomous piece about my predecessor, Sir David English, only days after he died at 67 (though, through a slip in the actualité, his Who’s Who
Mortal combat Health secretary Jeremy Hunt promised more protection for medical staff accused of criminal malpractice after a doctor was struck off over a boy’s death from sepsis. How many people die as a result of inadequate healthcare? — In 2016, the ONS listed 141,101 out of 597,206 UK deaths as ‘avoidable mortality’, which was
From ‘The Baltic question’, 15 June 1918: The future of Scandinavia and the Baltic must depend on the outcome of the war. If indeed Germany were to emerge victorious, then all the evils on which the pessimists delight to ponder would come to pass… The Baltic would be a German lake, and its commerce would
Exacerbating incivility Sir: I agree wholeheartedly with David Goodhart that if our politics is to ever recover from its current vicious state then all of us need to do our bit to ‘stand up for civility’ (‘The age of incivility’, 9 June). Goodhart explains well that what has ‘gone wrong’ with our politics is exacerbated by,
