All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The biggest lesson to come out of the first report of the official Covid Inquiry is what a mistake it was to hand to job to lawyers. They have interpreted their job as one of conducting a show trial of politicians, civil servants and advisers who were involved in handling the pandemic. The have obsessed
Was 52-year old Anglesey man Nathan Gill, a member of the European parliament, taking money from the Kremlin, or just from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch? We may never know. But today Gill was sent down for ten-and-a-half years at the Old Bailey, after he was found guilty of accepting bribes from Ukrainian operatives in exchange for
If you want to make a Japanese high school teacher break out in a cold sweat and suffer heart palpitations, just whisper the word ‘monpa’ in their ear. For ‘monpa’ or ‘monster parents’, the bane of a Japanese educator’s life, are serial complainers notorious for their persistence, aggression, unreasonableness and irrationality. They have become such
It’s difficult to recall any minister in recent years, let alone a Home Secretary, who has been lauded with such praise for command of their brief as Shabana Mahmood over the past week. Even those who are far from convinced that her plans to reform the asylum system will do the job intended are mostly
It was shortly after my fifteenth birthday that I discovered the music of The Beatles. A school friend and I stumbled upon the Fab Four while browsing in a record shop. We were hooked: we’d listen to their songs with almost religious devotion. One thrilling touchpoint for me was their manager, Brian Epstein. As a
I’ve been a fan of Mariusz Szczygiel, the Polish author, investigative journalist and TV presenter, since reading his book Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia some ten years ago. Gottland – a series of 20th century Czech histories without the boring bits – was a knockout, winning the 2009 European Book Prize and
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Chris Curtis and Maxwell Marlow may have different political ideologies, but they agree on one key diagnosis: Britain is broken. Their solution can be found on baseball caps and bucket hats across social media and SW1: ‘Build Baby Build’. Less than a week before the Budget, Chris – MP for Milton Keynes and chair of
The National Curriculum Review, published earlier this month, was a rare opportunity to ask some fundamental questions about the purpose and outcomes of British education. It is an opportunity that has been missed. In some ways, the review has a laudable conservative tenor. It is, for the most part, grounded in practical evidence rather than
Nigel Farage has had better afternoons. Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform UK in Wales, has just been sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in prison after admitting taking bribes to give pro-Russia interviews and speeches. The one-time Brexit party MEP is believed to have received up to £40,000 in total for helping Kremlin-friendly politicians in
Standing outside his presidential office in Kyiv tonight, on the same spot as on the second day of Ukraine’s full-scale war with Russia, Volodymyr Zelensky addressed Ukrainians. He said he hadn’t betrayed the country then and wouldn’t do so now. Ukraine faces ‘one of the most difficult moments in our history’, he said, while the
Another one bites the dust. Iqbal Mohamed has become the second Independent MP to quit the left-wing Your Party amid party infighting. The group, founded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, has seen unedifying splits become very public as serious rifts grow between the MPs involved in its launch. The animosity between Corbyn and Sultana
Why are so many young adults not in education, employment or training? The latest statistics show that almost one million 16 to 24-year-olds are unemployed, or ‘Neet’, to use the inappropriately cheery-sounding acronym. Fractionally down on the previous quarter, this is still close to a ten-year high. The number of Neets has been consistently above
News just in: the former leader of Reform UK in Wales has been handed a prison sentence of 10 and a half years for bribery. Nathan Gill admitted to taking pro-Russia bribes and was paid thousands to give TV interviews that favoured a key ally of Vladimir Putin. He also made pro-Russia speeches in the
Kyiv, Ukraine The rumour reverberating around Kyiv is that the FBI has been leaning on Ukrainian anti-corruption police to investigate Zelensky’s inner circle in order to force him to swallow the bitter US peace deal. Trump, as they say, has put the screws, or the feds, on Zelensky. Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) – which
It was a madhouse in Perth, in the latest instalment of sport’s oldest international skirmish. England, who opted to bat after Ben Stokes won the toss, were skittled before tea for 172: no score at all. Stokes then galvanised his men to take nine wickets before stumps, the captain leading the way with five strikes
The University of Nottingham, one of the most prestigious Russell Group universities, is preparing to close its languages department, as well as 48 undergraduate courses across music, nursing, agriculture, theology, microbiology and education. It seems strange that at an institution which claims to be a ‘global university without borders’, students will no longer be able to
Rachel Reeves has been speaking to the newspapers trying to sell her Budget, which given her communication abilities is a bit like asking King Herod to do your babysitting. The Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to be getting the excuses in early; it’s almost as if she, like everyone else, knows that next week’s announcements
As the Budget approaches, Westminster is full of chatter about Rachel Reeves’s decision to take the ‘smorgasbord’ approach to fiscal policy: lots of small, detailed measures, each raising only modest sums for the Treasury. Conventional wisdom says, correctly, that this is risky. Every little tweak is another opportunity for something to misfire. And when people
Let’s imagine that an international jihadi network, with cells in London and Europe, had just been busted, with dramatic arrests in Britain, Germany and Austria. Let’s imagine that the group had been planning a string of atrocities, with a weapons cache discovered in Vienna. Let’s imagine that security services had unearthed ‘tens of thousands of
Well, well, well. Just days after MI5 alerted MPs and peers to Chinese espionage threats, it appears that Prime Minister Keir Starmer could be ready to give a Chinese embassy in London the green light. According to the Times, two Whitehall departments will submit their responses to the proposals in the next few days, ahead
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Yesterday we had the publication of the second module of the Covid Inquiry on the decision-making at the heart of government. It confirmed a toxic and disorganised culture at the heart of No. 10 and the headline is that the government acted ‘too little, too late’, costing as many as 23,000 lives in England. That
Bitcoin is crashing all over again, and it is taking the smaller crypto currencies down with it. It has fallen by a quarter from its highs, and there is little sign that the relentless selling is going to stop anytime soon. Plenty of people will be reheating arguments about how the digital currency is completely
It’s hard to think of a more shambolic budget than the one Rachel Reeves will deliver next week. His Majesty’s Treasury has spent the last month pitch-rolling policies in the Financial Times – using the paper as a sort of town crier – then pulling them back as the OBR’s forecasts have wobbled. Directly, the
After the pandemic the Boris Johnson government took a fateful and disastrous decision to suppress rising inflation by massively expanding migration. It was one of the worst decisions made by a British government in my lifetime, made all the more appalling because it followed a solemn promise that Brexit would bring a tough, ‘points-based’ migration
A crisis of authority now festers at the heart of Israel. A shrill, violent fringe of extremist settlers in the West Bank is not only terrorising Palestinians, but undermining the authority of the Israeli state, its security and diplomatic relations. This week, there have been reported attacks by settlers near Deir Istiya, near Nablus, and in
Trends in society always come and go, but one that shows no signs of abating is the propensity among many to take offence at words or symbols. Just because that derisive word of the last decade, ‘snowflake’, has fallen out of fashion, it doesn’t mean that these hypersensitive souls have disappeared. Being compassionate in a
One must say this for the Home Secretary, she is a Parliamentary Pugilist. While the general demeanour of the government in which she serves has a Sir Robin the Chickenhearted attitude to parliamentary spats (one can imagine the adenoidal cry of ‘Run Away’ ricocheting around No. 10 every Wednesday), Shabana Mahmood seems to enjoy a
Back to the Covid inquiry, where chair Baroness Heather Hallett has presented the findings of its report. The conclusions don’t particularly paint anyone in a good light and the report even claims that acting ‘too little , too late’ cost the country as many as 23,000 lives in England – although this figure is already
With Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s political authority already under grave assault in the wake of a major corruption scandal, he now faces a new challenge – this time from his erstwhile ally, the United States. A high-level US delegation led by army secretary Daniel Driscoll is meeting Zelensky in Kyiv today to present the latest
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While we wait for the findings of the Covid Inquiry into the decision-making during the pandemic, Shabana Mahmood has given a statement in the Commons outlining further details of Labour’s migration crackdown. The headline is that those who arrived during the so-called ‘Boriswave’ will have to wait up to 20 years before achieving settled status.
When, as a snivel-nosed provincial reporter, I arrived at the Sunday Pictorial (now the Sunday Mirror) the news editor gave me a lengthy briefing, a huge unlit cigar rolled around his mouth: ‘This not the Croydon Advertiser Tom’, he advised. ‘I don’t want reporters. I want operators. When you do the big story for me, you don’t
Zack Polanski’s Green party has experienced a membership boom in recent months, after the new leader was elected at the end of summer. Under the eco-populist’s rule, the party has seen its membership figures soar and its accounts are looking healthier than ever with recent reports suggesting that party has, er, too much money to