World

Isn’t it amazing how all the woke rules for how to talk about women and people of colour go flying out the window when it comes to Priti Patel? You can say anything you like about Patel and the PC set won’t bat an eyelid. In fact they will cheer you on. Patel is possibly the only female, Asian-heritage public figure in the UK who enjoys absolutely none of the protections of political correctness. It’s always open season on Priti. So for years we have been told that we shouldn’t call successful women ‘bossy’ or ‘bitchy’. Those are sexist insults against women who have simply shown the kind of resolve

It’s increasingly popular to say feminism can never be capitalist; no exceptions. Capitalism, by its nature, supposedly exploits women. But if feminism cannot be capitalist, how does one explain Katharine McCormick, the woman who single-handedly financed the development of the pill? McCormick was a committed feminist, a campaigner for women’s voting rights, and a signed-up member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In the 1950s, when the U.S. government would not invest in contraception research, McCormick used her own capital to advance the studies eventually leading to the pill. Is this the kind of story that today’s feminists would sweep under the rug, in order to advocate for socialism

David Davis – Huawei decision could be among worst ever made The former Brexit Secretary David Davis joined Andrew Marr this morning to argue the case against involving the Chinese tech giant Huawei in the UK’s rollout of 5G infrastructure. Davis said that because this arrangement had the power to compromise the ‘Five Eyes’ agreement on intelligence sharing between the UK and its Anglophone partners, it could pose a serious risk to national security: DD: China will score a success with this if what they do is fracture the ‘Five Eyes’… [Johnson] will not want… historians to look back and say that was the worst decision a British Prime Minister

In Iowa, Americans had to wait the entire night before a caucus winner was declared. Today in Nevada, the wait was much, much shorter – with barely four per cent of the state’s precincts reporting, Bernie Sanders was announced as the victor. That the result was declared so decisively and so early on, was a fitting illustration of how superior the senator’s get-out-the-vote organisation was on the ground. Democratic voters in Nevada know Bernie, and they like what they see. While MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was comparing a Bernie Sanders victory in the Democratic primaries to the fall of France in 1940, Bernie’s supporters were jubilantly celebrating a big win in

A year ago, did anyone look like they would come out of Brexit better than Leo Varadkar? Here was a leader of a small country on the fringe of the EU suddenly catapulted to its centre. He was the one pushed forward by Juncker, Barnier, Merkel and Macron, as they sought to leverage advantage from the tricky problem of the Irish border. Not only was Varadkar seen to be standing up for the Republic’s interest, but by driving a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, he seemed to be setting himself up as the instigator of possible Irish reunification – he was drawing the issue

Leo Varadkar, the Irish Taoiseach, has tendered his resignation. After gambling his political career on an election in which he hoped Brexit would be the defining factor, the Irish voters decided they cared about pretty much anything but. In fact, just one per cent of Irish voters cited Brexit as a decisive factor for them in this month’s general election. Instead, voters focused on issues that might actually affect their lives such as housing and healthcare. The result was that Varadkar’s Fine Gael party was knocked into third place, behind Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein. The gamble clearly failed. Ireland’s new parliament, the 33rd Dail, met for the first time

Could motorists be hit with the first fuel duty rise in ten years in this month’s Budget? According to the Sun, the PM’s chief advisor Dominic Cummings wants to use petrol and diesel as a revenue-raiser to fund big infrastructure projects outside the capital. But ending the fuel duty freeze after a decade might not be a good idea, particularly when many new Tory voters in the North are likely to be the worst affected. Fuel duty is an easy way to raise revenue in theory, as the demand for fuel is always high. It is also a tax that is difficult for motorists to avoid (though this doesn’t stop some from trying). Yet

Former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg got a taste of front-runner status on Wednesday night, getting absolutely walloped by his primary opponents during the ninth Democratic debate in Nevada. Bloomberg, who was not on the ballot in the Iowa caucus or the New Hampshire primary, has been surging in the polls thanks to massive ad buys and a social media-oriented campaign. However, his absence from debates has allowed him to avoid scrutiny for the issues raised by massive opposition research dumps. Bloomberg took a gamble by appearing at Wednesday’s debate — presumably he assumed he had the political experience to put up a good performance. Instead, he was hammered repeatedly