Politics

Why on earth did Owen Smith say that he might consider re-joining not just the European Union but also the euro and Schengen? Some of the Labour leadership contender’s colleagues have been asking the ‘why on earth’ question a fair bit this summer, not least when he made the interesting decision to out-Corbyn Corbyn on the small matter of Islamic State. But today the Pontypridd MP told Andrew Marr that if certain conditions, such as a further recession, privatisation of the NHS and so on, were met, ‘I think the sensible and responsible thing for a Labour government to do is to say we’re better off in the European Union’.

I had been wondering where Gorgeous George Galloway might pop up next. Defenestrated from his seat in Bradford West, humiliated in the London mayoral elections — where he received 1.4 per cent of the vote — and no longer apparently an attractive proposition to the reality TV producers, his public life seemed sadly to be drawing to a close. But nope, here he is with a film about the person all left-wing people hate more than any other, Tony Blair. It’s a good film, too, in the main. The Killing$ of Tony Blair was partly crowdfunded and it may well be that the only people who watch it will be

There is no humbler reminder of Britain’s diminished place in the Universe than the sight of hostile aliens from Mars choosing to commence their assault on Planet Earth in New York City – rather than at the strategically vital Surrey towns of Dorking or Woking, as H G Wells had originally conceived it in The War of the Worlds. For another example, look no further than the exceptional 1996 B-movie, Independence Day, where there is but a fleeting British moment when the all-conquering megalithic flying saucers of the invading extra-terrestrials obliterate the Houses of Parliament. For the rest of the time it’s the yanks that feel the heat. Welcome as

I’m not a great optimist about the whole Brexit thing, although my colleagues would mostly disagree. It’s as if we were expecting a storm and we’re now cheering because it’s gone quiet. Strangely, eerily quiet. Anyway, like with climate change, I hope I’m wrong, and whenever I have my doubts about the whole thing, I think about the ‘Remain’ protests led by Eddie Izzard. Let’s hope these obviously counter-productive demonstrations continue for the next five years. However, one disaster that doesn’t seem to have materialised yet is the warning that Brexit would lead to a brain drain. One guy in the Guardian, called Mr Imhof, says he’s going, which is a shame, as

Never speak on the same platform as Sir Malcolm Rifkind. I tried it once, at a Spectator debate held during the Scottish independence referendum campaign in 2014, and I will not be repeating the experience. The former Foreign Secretary spoke as usual without notes, and with such ringing clarity and confidence that all the other panelists were easily eclipsed. That included Kelvin McKenzie, the former editor of the Sun, speaking in favour of Scottish independence. Sir Malcolm might just as well have recited the Edinburgh phonebook from memory, in his Jean Brodie tones, and the audience would still have cheered him to the echo. It was a magnificent performance from

On the morning of the 24th June, Britain woke to find its stock market shattered and its pound pummelled. It appeared – for a brief moment – like all the prophecies of the Brexit doomsayers, not least the Great Seer Osborne, had come true. But then, from the wreckage of that mid-summer morning, green shoots began to appear, and now, more than two months down the line, it seems that Britain has bounced back. In his cover piece this week, Ross Clark argues that the Remain campaign fell victim to the perils of believing their opinion to be ‘objective fact’, and that economic recovery has humiliated the Treasury, Bank of