Tottenham MP David Lammy has been writing in the Evening Standard about how it makes sense now for London to become a ‘city-state’, following Brexit: Over the course of the next two years as the reality of Brexit begins to bite, the economic, social and political cleavages between London and other parts of the country
In an appearance on the Today programme on Monday, Ken Livingstone silenced his critics by managing to refrain from mentioning Hitler once during the course of the interview. Alas, his good behaviour wasn’t to last. Speaking on Radio 5 Live this morning, the former Mayor of London — who is currently suspended from Labour after he argued that Hitler
Sales of The Spectator are not just at an all-time high, but growing at the fastest rate in 30 years. We’re growing, we need help and are looking for a digital guru to provide it. The job is now known, in the industry, as Head of Product. It’s a rather unromantic way of describing what
First they came for your nail scissors, then your liquids, and now they’re after your electronics. The news this week that the US has banned passengers from taking laptops as carry-on onto flights from ten Middle Eastern airports has sparked horror among the global jet-setting community, which only intensified when the British government promptly followed
There are many mysteries in life. Where did we come from? Why do I always forget to take my bag for life to the supermarket? Why does the word lisp have an ‘s’ in it? And, in the name of all that is holy, why does it take up to six days to clear a cheque?
I never met Martin McGuinness, but I was certainly affected by him from an early age. His decisions, and those of his colleagues on the IRA Army Council, indelibly coloured my childhood. Belfast in the 1970s and ’80s was a grey, fortified city, compelling in many ways, but permanently charged with the unpredictable electricity of
Martin McGuinness’s death has sparked a wave of fawning and fury in the obituaries. So: ‘man of war’, peacemaker or something in between? The Sun’s verdict is clear: the ‘pious praise’ for McGuinness is nothing short of ‘revolting’. It’s true, the paper says, that the ‘second part’ of his life differed from his early days.
Well the obituaries for Martin McGuinness are in. And many are as morally illiterate as the man himself could have wished for. For instance, various obituarists have noted that the young McGuinness’s failure as a young man to get an apprenticeship as a mechanic started him off on the road to terror. Few of these
‘I think pre-nups are brilliant,’ Catherine Zeta Jones told Vanity Fair back in 2000, shortly after marrying Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas. ‘If I were marrying someone of lesser fortune who was 25 years younger, I’d be doing exactly the same thing. Why should Michael be in a position where half of his fortune, which he’s
Ulster is where memory burns long and forgiveness comes slow. The death of Martin McGuinness will pass without the spilling of sorrow by many Unionists in Northern Ireland and here in mainland Britain, where the IRA’s terror campaign paid regular, outrageous visits, there will be those who mutter a cold ‘good riddance’. Douglas Murray writes: ‘[W]hile
Blistering barnacles! Thundering typhoons! What dastardly double-dealing! To bolster their puny team of pen-pushing, quota-quoting civil servants, those fiendish Brussels bureaucrats have recruited Europe’s greatest investigative reporter. With Tintin on the EU’s side in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations, do our valiant Brexiteers stand any chance at all? No idea what I’m on about? Then let
In an age of fanaticism, it was always unlikely that the urge to censor would be confined to the left. If you think that the insults conservatives have thrown at liberals will not boomerang back to injure them, consider the following examples of right-wing invective. Conservatives claim millennials are ‘special snowflakes,’ unable to handle criticism
For someone who once branded his own Cabinet colleagues ‘bastards’ — and two decades later said he only called them bastards because they were bastards — John Major has of late become weirdly sensitive to rough, colourful language. He’s peeved at what he calls ‘ultra Brexiteers’, who are big meanies, apparently. These ultras are launching
The economists were right. For months now, they have been warning that the Brexit vote and the subsequent fall in the pound would drive up prices. Today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics confirm that consumer prices are rising at their fastest rate for more than three years. According to the ONS, the Consumer Prices
So I am feeling a bit better about my lack of radio experience. These are exciting times for free movement of labour and with Westminster under the control of Tory and Labour cabals, lovely jobs outside Parliament are tempting. George Osborne is no more qualified to edit the Evening Standard than Tristram Hunt to run
Predictably enough it didn’t take long for the rearguard Remain lobby, and other opponents of the government, to jump on the latest inflation figures, which show the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) for February rising from 1.8 per cent to 2.3 per cent. Frances O’ Grady of the TUC, for example, said that Britain risked ‘sleepwalking into
Was it a case of fate or a helpful tip off from No 10 that meant Brexit Central‘s Brexit party fell on the same day Theresa May announced the date she would trigger Article 50? Either way, it made for a joyful atmosphere as the likes of Vote Leave’s Matthew Elliot, Nigel Evans and James Cleverly
Belatedly, goodnight to Chuck Berry. Almost everything that has been worthwhile in rock music for 60-odd years has derived from his clever, knowing, mix of cracker-country and black blues. Most of the guitar solos you ever heard had their roots in that raucous and effective two string – E and b – chiming of Chuck’s:
Finally, we have a date: March 29th will see Theresa May trigger Article 50 and set the Brexit train in motion. After all the hype, what can we expect? The Sun says it hopes that the European Parliament will handle things better than its ‘muppet of a President’. Jean-Claude Juncker, who the paper says is a
It was the burkini that brought Monday night’s debate to life between the five main presidential candidates for next month’s French election. For the first hour of the televised debate there had been much posturing and postulating but no sharp exchanges. That changed when Marine Le Pen accused Emmanuel Macron of turning a blind eye