Last month, word began to spread around Whitehall that the Prime Minister would not take kindly to any ‘mansplaining’ — after No 10 took umbrage at male politicians, officials, diplomats and journalists talking over, patronising or failing to listen to May. As the Times revealed, the row was triggered after Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the national security adviser, managed
Today’s Supreme Court hearing on Brexit is undoubtedly the most controversial in the court’s seven year history, says the Times. The case will examine the Government’s appeal against the earlier High Court ruling that Article 50 cannot be triggered without the say-so of Parliament. But what’s most remarkable about today’s hearing is the fact Theresa
It started with a blog, and it could end up with a new Prime Minister. Beppe Grillo’s 5-Star movement, which wants Italy out of the Euro, has called for an election within a week – to pick up on the momentum which saw Matteo Renzi lose the referendum by a margin of almost 20 points,
Claws out in Westminster. Since Theresa May was appointed Prime Minister, several of her one-time cabinet colleagues have taken issue with her government’s Brexit stance. After May sacked Nicky Morgan as education secretary, Morgan has become a key member of the post-Brexit awkward squad — regularly voicing criticism of the PM. Over the weekend, the pair’s relationship took another
Matteo Renzi has conceded defeat in the referendum he called on his constitutional reforms and announced that he is resigning as Prime Minister. NO are on course for an overwhelming victory, they are ahead by a close to 60-40 lead in the count at the moment. Needless to say, this referendum result has profound implications for
Norbert Hofer has just conceded defeat in Austria’s presidential election after exit polls and interim results showed him losing by 47 per cent to 53 per cent. Victory goes to Alexander Van der Bellen, the 72-year-old former Green party leader. He has said the election result sends a message ‘to the capitals of the EU that
I do hope it’s a terrible winter this year: a total bastard where everyone’s snowed into their drives and those few who do manage to escape end up being slewed across the road or filmed in tragic tailbacks by drones for BBC news bulletins or stuck in ditches and having to tramp miles across icy
It’s easy to see the allure of ongoing Zac bashing. Can there be a pleasure more satisfying for all of us, stuck in our daily work-home, bread-butter routine, than watching a public humiliation of a wealthy tree-hugger, son of a billionaire with ‘a face carved out of caramel by angels’. Let’s kick him while he’s
In 2011, when the Liberal Democrats’ poll ratings had fallen to 10 per cent, Nick Clegg ordered a rebranding exercise, even looking at whether the party’s name should be changed to distance the Lib Dems from their betrayal on tuition fees. Today, the Lib Dems are still polling around 10 per cent (on a good day). But what about
The latest competition, to submit an extract from a speech in which a well-known figure from history comments on a pressing item on today’s news agenda, saw you on blistering form. Rob Stuart gave Pythagorus’ view on the new Toblerone (not a fan); Frank Upton offered Thomas Crapper’s perspective on transgender public conveniences; Michael McManus
It was Henry Fairlie in his famous article in The Spectator in 1955 that made the critical point about the way ‘Establishment’ power (political, legal, media, foreign office, civil service and so on) is exercised in Britain: namely such a ‘matrix’ of influence was exercised ‘socially’, behind closed doors; or maybe ‘closed chambers’ would be more apt as the
‘We’re going to have not just consumers represented on company boards, but workers as well,’ Theresa May declared in July. ‘I can categorically tell you that this is not about… the direct appointment of workers or trade union representatives on boards,’ she corrected herself in her CBI speech last month. ‘It will be a question
On the few occasions when something I have written has directly affected a person, I have usually regretted it. During the row about the hunting ban, I got furious with Rod Liddle, then the editor of the Today programme, because he wrote an article attacking people who hunt. I composed a thunderous leader in the
The Article 50 case has at last woken people up to the power of the Supreme Court. On Monday, at Policy Exchange, I appeared on a panel which included the former Supreme Court judge Lord Hope. He seems a dear and distinguished man, so I felt for him when he complained that current ‘vicious’ press
It’s the intellectual bromance of the last century. Two psychologists — Danny, a Holocaust kid and adviser to the Israel Defence Forces, and Amos, a former child prodigy and paratrooper — meet at the end of the 1960s, and sparks immediately begin to fly. They spend countless hours locked in rooms together at Hebrew University
Voters in Austria and Italy head to the polls tomorrow and could plunge the EU into a political and economic crisis, as I say in The Sun today. In Austria, the candidate of a genuinely far-right party—its first leader was a former SS officer—could become president. If the Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer does win, and
In November the High Court decided that the Government had no power to give notice to leave the EU under Article 50. Leaving the EU would entail changes in the law that embodied the rights of citizens and such changes could not be brought about by the prerogative power but only by primary legislation in
Is democracy in danger? This is the belief of a Harvard lecturer called Yascha Mounk whose thesis was profiled in an interesting New York Times piece this week. Mounk began studying the subject after writing a memoir about growing up Jewish in Germany which ‘became a broader investigation of how contemporary European nations were struggling
In all the arguments surging about Fidel Castro, I have noticed the lack of simple, even tourist-level observation, of what his country has been like in recent years. This can tell you more than disquisitions on land reform or geopolitics. A friend who went there this year reports that the level of goods available to
It seems perplexing that François Fillon, now the Republican candidate for the French presidency, should be a declared admirer of Margaret Thatcher. Although she certainly has her fans in France, it is an absolutely standard political line — even on the right — that her ‘Anglo-Saxon’ economic liberalism is un-French. Yet M. Fillon, dismissed by Nicholas