Theresa May’s official spokesperson has just issued a statement on Catalonia’s declaration of independence that will please Madrid. It makes clear that the ‘UK does not and will not recognise the Unilateral Declaration of Independence’. It says that the declaration is ‘based on a vote declared illegal by the Spanish courts’. It concludes by saying
This Sunday – 29th October – the clocks go back, giving us an hour longer in bed, but darker evenings. This might be a blessing for many of us (yes, I would rather get up at 6am than 5am, thanks very much), but the darker evenings can also be a blessing for burglars. I learnt
The Catalan Parliament has voted for a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain. President Carles Puigdemont had toyed with taking the decision but in the end left it up to the legislature. It is now not a question of Madrid deposing him; it will have to shut down the whole operation. Direct rule is all
The Catalan crisis deepens by the day. This afternoon, the region’s parliament backed a declaration of independence from Spain. Here is the moment Carme Forcadell, president of the Catalan parliament, announced the outcome of the vote: The country’s senate did not take long to react by voting to impose direct rule in Catalonia. This triggering
In my Daily Telegraph column today, I write about the incredible story of Östersund football club. It hasn’t quite been picked up in Britain yet, but I suspect it will one day be made into a Moneyball-style film: about how a small-time English coach was hired to move to a small subarctic town in Sweden
The Czech election was something of a shock to those who thought the ‘march of the populists in Europe’ is over Andrej Babis – who ‘shares the anti-migrant stance and hatred for EU refugee policy of Hungary’s premier Viktor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s ruling party’ – was the ‘clear winner’, says the FT. What’s
If proof was needed that deference is dead in Parliament, look no further than the interview Tom Tugendhat has given to The House magazine. The new chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee uses his first interview since winning the coveted position to make clear he’s ready and willing to be Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary
It’s been a tough week for Jared O’Mara. The MP for Sheffield Hallam had the Labour whip removed after a series of sexist and homophobic comments were unearthed online. Since then, allegations have been made regarding his behaviour towards women in his home of Sheffield. So, the news that he decided not to hold a
Books on the world championship matches used to appear regularly, with some having multiple written accounts. In recent years, though, these have declined, not least because of the decision by Fidé, the World Chess Federation, to keep reducing the length of the matches. When Labourdonnais and Macdonnell clashed in London in a series of contests
Black to play. This position is from Arda-Melia, Antalya 2017. How can Black win? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 31 October or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize
It’s hard to admire communist art with an entirely clear conscience. The centenary of the October revolution, which falls this month, marks a national calamity whose casualties are still being counted. When my father-in-law comes to visit, I have to hide my modest collection of Russian propaganda: he grew up under the Soviets and has
In the 1880s the young Max Klinger made a series of etchings detailing the surreal adventures of a woman’s glove picked up by a stranger at an ice rink. At a certain point the glove washes up, nightmarishly large, beside a sleeping man’s bed on to which a shipwrecked sailor is desperately hauling himself. Storm-tossed
Students eager to pull down statues and silence debate on topics of which they disapprove — and vice-chancellors who pusillanimously cave into them — would do well to consider the history of such censorship. The Roman historian Cremutius Cordus was on the sharp end of what can happen. In 44 bc, Brutus and Cassius led
Meeting halfway Sir: If our Brexit negotiator David Davis has not read Robert Tombs’s wonderful article ‘Lost in translation’ (21 October) on how different the French and the British can be when it comes to the negotiating table, he really should, as it splendidly exemplifies how useful history can be. The trouble is, of course,
Littler Hitlers Cabinet secretary Damian Green appealed to commentators to halt the ‘ridiculous rise of routine comparisons to Hitler’. A small selection of examples in the past week: — Chants of ‘Go home, Nazis’ met a white supremacist rally in Florida, where at least one attendee was in a swastika T-shirt. — Ex-US vice president
It was always going to be difficult for Theresa May’s government to secure a legacy beyond Brexit. With the negotiations running into difficulty, it becomes all the harder. Ministers must avoid, however, resorting to well-meant gestures which open the government to ridicule. Take, for instance, the revelation that Britain has insisted on the UN’s International
To ITV’s London headquarters at the ungodly hour of 3.30 a.m. Piers Morgan is sunning himself in Beverly Hills and I’m sitting in for him on Good Morning Britain. I’ve known and liked Piers for 30 years, from the days when he used to scribble for the Mirror’s showbiz page, and although we could hardly be
Home Of perhaps 400 Britons returned from the former territory of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, those who ‘do not justify prosecution’ should be reintegrated, Max Hill, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the BBC. Rory Stewart MP, asked about foreigners fighting for the Islamic State in Syria, said that ‘the only
Theresa May’s style of negotiating with the European Union is coming spookily to resemble David Cameron’s. She is in the mindset where the important thing is to get a deal, rather than working out what sort of a deal is worth getting. The EU understands this, and therefore delays, making Cameron/May more desperate to settle,
I hate to say this, but the quality of life in the Bagel has crashed in a Harvey Weinstein-like way. The city has always had a sort of rollercoaster feel, its ups and downs driven by Wall Street and budget cuts, but its present state is the worst I’ve experienced by far. When I first