Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
To think they said Brexit would cost us friends. The UK Government has found itself a new chum in Viktor Orbán, Hungarian prime minister and global alt-right pin-up. Last week, the European Parliament voted to initiate Article 7 proceedings against Hungary, citing its lurch towards authoritarianism. Fifteen Tory MEPs voted against while a further two
Guido Fawkes has a disturbing video of a protest outside the home of Jacob Rees-Mogg from yesterday. There are demonstrators bearing a banner, at least one of whom is wearing a mask, and police officers are there. One of the demonstrators harangues Rees-Mogg before turning on his children and shouting at them: ‘Your daddy is
Former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has been roughed up enough lately and I am loath to add to the calumnies but something he keeps saying bothers me. ‘The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews.’ Sacks has dropped this aphorism into speeches and articles for the past few years and no wonder: it’s
Scots are used to tumult and unpredictability in their politics but this morning they are waking up to something of a different order. Former first minister Alex Salmond has been reported to police following allegations of sexual assault by two female staff members, according to the Daily Record. One of the alleged incidents, the paper
The Labour Party’s war on the Jews grows more lunatic by the day. The Daily Telegraph reports that shadow chancellor John McDonnell gave a speech in 2012 in which he accused Israel of attempting a genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. According to the journalist responsible for the story, when Labour was contacted for
Barely had the ink dried on Stephen Robinson’s imaginative apologia for Boris Johnson — he is compared, courageously, to Churchill — than the former foreign secretary reminded us of his capacity for blunder. In his Telegraph column Johnson assailed the ‘burka’ for leaving Muslim women ‘looking like letter boxes’ and ‘bank robber[s]’. I say ‘burka’
I’m fairly certain the Pope’s a Catholic but Andrew Cuomo is anyone’s guess. Barely had the Holy Father revised Church teaching to declare capital punishment ‘inadmissible’ than the New York Governor tweeted this: The death penalty is morally indefensible and has no place in the 21st century. Today, in solidarity with @pontifex and in honor
With the Labour Party losing the plot, it’s reassuring to see the Tories holding true to the principles of liberal democracy. On Wednesday, Conservative MEP David Campbell Bannerman tweeted the Telegraph’s splash, ‘Jihadists should be prosecuted for treason’. By way of comment, he added: ‘It is about time we brought the Treason Act up to
It is my sombre duty to inform you that Scotland is talking about independence again. It probably seems like we never stopped. Your continued patience is appreciated. This time, it’s the economic case — or lack thereof — for going it alone. In May, the SNP’s Growth Commission produced its long-awaited (not long enough, perhaps)
Labour’s new code of conduct would not allow the return of Ken Livingstone, according to an internal party document seen by Coffee House. A briefing note sent to Scottish Labour MPs and MSPs addresses the case of the former London mayor, who resigned from the party two years after he was suspended for claiming that Adolf Hitler
One of the joys of a world seized by identity politics is that everyone wants to let you know their self-identification: Israel identifies as a Jewish state and has passed a Basic Law explicitly saying so. The law is, as a millennial might say, problematic, even if most of it is uncontroversial. It defines the name, flag,
There are moments that cut through the din of braggadocio, vindictive utopianism and arrant stupidity surrounding Brexit. Anna Soubry has provided one in an impertinence during yesterday’s debate on the cross-border trade bill. She let into Jacob Rees-Mogg and his European Research Group (ERG) for coercing ministers to abandon much of the substance of the
Snap. It was a long time coming but it was always coming. Jeremy Corbyn, who has traded on an image of saintly anti-racism for his entire career, was finally confronted by someone who sees through it. Yesterday, Labour’s national executive committee adopted a new policy that rejected the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of
There are moments that cut through the din of braggadocio, vindictive utopianism and arrant stupidity surrounding Brexit. Anna Soubry has provided one in an impertinence during yesterday’s debate on the cross-border trade bill. She let into Jacob Rees-Mogg and his European Research Group (ERG) for coercing ministers to abandon much of the substance of the
David Davis has walked away. It’s what he does best. DDexit was inevitable from the moment he was appointed Brexit secretary. Davis is a quitter, not a fixer; asked to compromise, his preference is always for blowing the whole show up. Reports suggest he was especially irked by the No. 10 briefing about ministers being
Is it coming home? If it is, don’t expect all the home nations to welcome it. In Scotland, the dismal grunt of ‘Anyone but England’ (ABE) is the balm that soothes our aggrieved wee souls. It’s never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman watching England do well and even the most fleeting flicker of sunshine.
Pity the flunky at Bute House, official residence of Nicola Sturgeon, whose job it is to get the red carpet ready for formal visits. The poor lad mustn’t know whether he’s coming or going. Two weeks ago, the First Minister said it wasn’t ‘appropriate at this time for the red carpet to be rolled out’
To understand what has gone wrong in the American judicial appointments process, look no further than the apocalyptic hysteria which has greeted the retirement of Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy. Reagan appointee Kennedy has come to be seen as a ‘swing vote’ on the Court, though deciding to retire during the Trump administration has seen
Forgive me if I seem out of sorts but my country has been through a lot this past week. We have been subjected to ‘provocation’ and our imperial masters in Westminster intend to ‘exert a kind of colonial authority’ over us. Our parliament has been ‘slighted’ and we are bearing the ‘impact of such condescension on
The SNP thinks Westminster is an anachronism but boy does it love those anachronisms. The Nationalists’ London leader Ian Blackford got himself thrown out of the Commons for disrupting Prime Minister’s Questions. Blackford attempted to move — inartfully and tagged onto a question rather than as a substantive motion — that the House sit in
