The least deserving Sir: In your leading article (‘All that glitters’, 14 October) you point out that Keir Starmer avoided mentioning inflation and illegal migration at the Labour conference because the Labour party has historically been weaker than the Conservatives on the two issues. On the first of these issues, the current administration, and indeed the
Home At the Labour party conference, cheerful in the hall but overshadowed by the war in Israel, Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said that in government he would build 1.5 million homes and a host of ‘Labour new towns’. He wanted to spend £1.1 billion a year on higher overtime payments within NHS England to
In hibernation and a huff. No work for six months. Will I have to invent an illness as explanation? My desires are simple — a pot of English breakfast tea, a piece of nougat. I can’t affect ‘a lifestyle’. I am sick, though, of this view. Brick wall. Drainpipe. Grey tracksuit pants on clothes line.
It is remarkable that in his conference speech in Liverpool, Sir Keir Starmer hardly mentioned the government’s biggest failures. There is burgeoning public debt, caught in a feedback loop by soaring gilt yields. It didn’t even feature. We have persistent inflation but although Starmer mentioned the ‘cost of living’ crisis several times, he missed out
The puzzle appeared on 23 September 2023. The unclued lights reveal TWENTY TWENTY-THREE’S AUTUMN EQUINOX OCCURS TODAY AT SIX-FIFTY AM, GMT. First prize Sally Reeve, Bath Runners-up John Pugh, Ely, Cardiff; J. Gill, Warlingham, Surrey
Court creep Sir: As a former foreign secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind gives eloquent voice to the conventional wisdom that the UK should remain within the ECHR not for our own sake but for the good of others (Letters, 7 October). On this view, membership of the ECHR has always been about foreign policy, not our
The next generation will never be allowed to buy cigarettes. So we asked some of our writers for their favourite moment with a fag. Rory Sutherland One of the last ever cigarettes I had on a plane, I think. Looking back, it was kind of insane that you could ever smoke on aircraft (I think
The history of education reform is a graveyard of acronyms: TVEIs, GNVQs and so on. There have been many well-meaning initiatives that made sense at the time but struggled to gain acceptance. Rishi Sunak needs to proceed with caution before he launches into yet another reform of school qualifications, especially if it means the end
The unclued lights are PUB NAMES which include the pair 38/31 First prize Mary Newbery, Devizes, WiltshireRunners-up David Burnside, Rosewell, Midlothian; John Brown, Rolleston-on-Dove, Staffordshire
Overs and out Mark Nicholas, the new President of the MCC, suggested he would favour ending the annual Eton vs Harrow cricket match at Lord’s when its future is next reviewed in 2027. Which school is the better at cricket? – The fixture has been running since 1805, 72 years before the first test match.
Party season Unusually, the Conservatives are holding their party conference before the Labour party. It has become tradition that the Lib Dems hold theirs one week, Labour the next and the Conservatives the week after that, with the latter concluding in the first week of October. The tradition held even in 2020 when conferences moved
Flaubert said ‘You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies,’ while Voltaire, asked to renounce the devil on his deathbed, said ‘This is not the time for making new enemies.’ First prize P. and J. Chamberlain, Rushden, Northants Runners-up Tony Hankey, London W4; Willie Hamilton, Exeter
Bed and breakfast Sir: Cindy Yu asks, in her ‘Leaving Hong Kong’ piece (23 September): ‘Where are they?’ I can help with that one. I live near Epsom, Surrey, and there has been a huge influx of people from Hong Kong here over the past 18 months. The area is attractive because housing is affordable
The old carmakers were slow to realise the potential of electric cars and didn’t innovate. So Elon Musk, an internet tycoon, bought Tesla and stole a march on an entire industry. The internal combustion cohort then rushed to catch up: Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo and Ford all committed to go electric-only by 2030. The problem
Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, proposed reaching net zero in 2050 ‘in a better, more proportionate way’ such as by delaying a ban on the sales of new petrol and diesel cars and delaying the phasing out of gas boilers. Ford the car makers told him it would undermine the three things it needed from
Within limits Do 20mph speed limits save lives? – A 2018 report by Atkins/AECOM/UCL found that 51% of motorists conformed to the new limit (47% in residential areas and 65% in city centres). – When a 20mph zone replaced a 30mph one the median speed fell by 0.7mph in residential areas and 0.9mph in city
Whose victory? Sir: Politicians are often accused of engaging in doublespeak, and I fear in the case of Boris Johnson’s article (‘Bombshell’, 16 September) the accusation may be valid. According to our former prime minister we’re to believe two contradictory assertions; firstly that a Russian victory risks an immediate and existential threat not only to
8A/31D, 23A/19D and 36D/7D are eponymous 29D/12A characters. 7D originally suggested D’Urberville, which needed to be changed to DURBEYFIELD, making new real words at 21A, 24A, 30A and 35A. First prize Magdalena Downton, Maidstone, Kent Runners-up Nicola Fletcher, Horsmonden, Kent; David Andrews, Ash Vale, Surrey
It can’t be coincidence that led Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron to unveil their proposals for a new class of associate membership of the EU while Keir Starmer was visiting the latter in Paris. In the Labour leader, they are presumably hoping they will find a receptive ear. With a UK election due next year
As Napoleon is reputed to have said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. So why are Republicans seeking to impeach Joe Biden when he’s looking increasingly capable of losing next year’s presidential election all by himself? We will never know what kind of president Biden would have made in his prime,
