Justine Greening has found the cash to soften her department’s new funding formula. After much to-ing and fro-ing between the Department of Education and the Treasury in recent weeks, Greening has announced a £1.3bn increase to school funding. Speaking in the Chamber, the Education Secretary said she had recognised public concern over levels of school funding
Like an ex-politician with a hot take on Brexit, Game of Thrones is back. The first episode of this seventh, and penultimate, series – ‘Dragonstone’ – saw the entire ensemble of familiar faces return, as the finely poised situation in the show was laid out for all to see. The first six seasons charted the
There is, let us be honest, a certain kind of England supporter who derives some cheerful satisfaction from disaster and weak-minded capitulation. Many England cricket supporters – for it is summer and time to put away minor matters such as Brexit and concentrate instead on more substantial civilisational matters – are naturally crepuscular, forever looking
Jodie Whittaker: what an inspired choice for the new Doctor. Not only is she a very fine actress, whether she’s playing stricken with grief, as she did in Broadchurch, or a comedically exasperated trainee nurse stressed out by aliens and chavs in the wonderful little film Attack the Block. She also exudes that quality every
Theresa May is to rebuke her Cabinet tomorrow for the way its members have been behaving over the past week. What started as ‘warm prosecco’ plotting, as Damian Green put it, has now moved to open insults being traded over top notch champagne at Westminster parties and ministers telling journalists the gory details of Cabinet
Byng was the name of the unfortunate admiral executed in 1757, in the words of Voltaire, “pour encourager les autres” after the fall of Minorca. I fear that poor old Michael Byng might be about to go the same way. Having put out a report estimating that the first phase of HS2 could cost £48
I am thoroughly enjoying Melissa Kite’s latest, justifiable, gripes which have been provoked by her move out of London. Stuff shuts too early, for a start. And there are signs everywhere telling you what you can and can’t do, officious Lib Dem and Labour parish councillors and a general air of nastiness. Also, they won’t
This post was first published on Slipped Disc On the first night of the BBC Proms, the German-based pianist Igor Levit played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in Liszt’s solo-piano reduction as a token of his opposition to Britain leaving the EU. His was a reasoned and reasonable gesture by an artist who has strong views
You know, the quality on which the British pride themselves, pragmatism, has its limits. There’s a case for abstract moral thinking and it’s especially true when it comes to the fraught moral question of euthanasia, assisted suicide, right-to-die, whatever. And essentially the distinction is between actively killing someone, or allowing them to die – of
As Isabel reports, after a week of briefing and backstabbing among the Cabinet, there is a growing feeling from Conservatives that Theresa May needs to stamp what little authority she has left on her party. In this vein, May is expected to tell ministers to keep a lid on it at tomorrow’s Cabinet meeting. But
I was on the radio this morning with David Mellor who accused the Cabinet of being appallingly ill-disciplined because of ‘leaks’ in the weekend press. James Forsyth revealed on Saturday that Philip Hammond had told Cabinet that being a train driver is so easy that ‘even’ a woman could do it. Yesterday, Tim Shipman revealed in the
Although an MP is supposed to act in the best interests of their constituents, Emma Dent Coad appears to have missed the memo. The new MP for Kensington appeared at an anti-monarchist Republic event over the weekend – where she wasted no time in laying into the residents of Kensington Palace. The Labour politician said
Last month, David Davis warned that a Tory leadership contest would be ‘catastrophic’ for the Brexit negotiations. But as the Brexit secretary heads to Brussels for the second instalment of talks, the jostling among MPs to be the next party leader is well underway. The weekend papers have been filled with Cabinet members briefing against one
Philip Hammond – Public sector workers paid ’10 per cent premium’ Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has landed himself in hot water after he apparently claimed that public sector workers were overpaid during a recent meeting of the political cabinet. Andrew Marr challenged Hammond repeatedly over what he did in fact say, and gave
This one is priceless, believe me. Truly priceless. For a long time now I’ve been buying The Guardian for its unintentional hilarity. Not just the columnists, but even more so the letters pages. This is from their fatuous Saturday family section: yes, it is a minor miracle that such a reactionary receptacle still exists at
For months now, it’s proved a daily challenge trying to work out what exactly Labour’s position on Brexit is. While the 2017 manifesto said the party wanted to retain the benefits of both the single market and the customs union, a lot of confusion follows when one tries to pin down whether that means staying
After an agonising year-and-a-bit wait, Game of Thrones, the biggest TV show on earth bar none, returns in the early hours of tomorrow. Given the prolonged gap between the seasons – necessitated by storylines that have now outrun George R. R. Martin’s source material – here’s a pre-release primer on the situation around Westeros, now
‘We need to talk about why the internet is falling in love with Jacob Rees-Mogg, because it’s not OK,’ warns a recent post on the Corbynista website The Canary. Its anxiety is not misplaced. Polite, eloquent, witty, well-informed, coherent, principled — Jacob Rees-Mogg is the antithesis of almost every-thing the Labour party stands for under
Be fair. Theresa May’s plan actually half-worked. No, there was a plan. I know the consensus now seems to be that the entire election was motivated by little more a succession of senior Tories saying ‘Gosh yes, everybody loves you!’ to the Prime Minister while Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy stood behind her chair, slapping
The latest challenge asked for a sonnet that takes as its opening line Keats’s ‘Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:’ (This was a sonnet Keats chose not to publish but transcribed into a long letter he wrote over a period in early 1819 to George and Georgiana Keats, his brother and sister-in-law.)