Politics

The Daily Mail calls those who ‘heaped adulation’ on Fidel Castro over the weekend – including the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell – ‘useful idiots’. The paper says after Castro’s death on Saturday, the Cuban leader’s supporters are ignoring the ‘poverty he inflicted on his people’ as well as his torturing of political opponents and the fact that he ‘failed his people abysmally’. So why, the Mail asks, do those like the Labour leader have such a different view of the former Cuban leader? The paper suggests in its editorial that there is a simple answer: ‘Messrs Corbyn, McDonnell and Co have never grown up since their student days’. Meanwhile,

To hear Jeremy Corbyn hail Fidel Castro as a great hero of social justice is to be reminded that those who toast communists are never those who have actually lived under communism. Corbyn has visited Cuba: He might have been taken on a day tour of Havana, where tourists are ushered to buy famous Cuban cigars, replicas of Che Guevara’s hat and postcards with historic revolutionary slogans such as ‘¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!’ On his bicycling tour Corbyn will have doubtless visited the charming colonial towns of Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba and Cienfuegos, perhaps swam in the Bay of Pigs or conducted a pilgrimage to Castro’s 1950s rebel headquarters in Comandancia

In the autumn statement, Philip Hammond chose to mock Boris’ failed leadership bid. This wasn’t the first time that one of the Foreign Secretary Cabinet’s colleagues had had a laugh at his expense. At our parliamentarian of the year awards, Theresa May joked that Boris would be put down when he was no longer useful. But Boris and his circle are getting rather fed up with him being the butt of the joke, as I say in The Sun today. Those close to Boris feel that these gibes undercut him on the world stage. ‘If they want the UK to be taken seriously, they need to back him not mock

It’s not been a great week for Sir Kim Darroch. On Monday, he suffered the embarrassment of having the president-elect call for Nigel Farage to take his job. Now the interim Ukip leader has stuck the knife in further, giving an interview to Sam Delaney on Russia Today — natch — about the current UK ambassador to the US. Asked about his apparent job rival, Farage said he was unimpressed with Darroch when the pair previously met: ‘He once came to my office in Brussels and it was one of the most unpleasant conversations I’ve ever had.’ He also criticises Sir Kim’s pro-EU credentials for dealing with the Trump administration: ‘He

From the moment she arrived in 10 Downing Street, Theresa May has been commendably clear about her economic priorities for Britain. She wants the country to be a beacon of free trade, at a time when protectionism is on the rise the world over. She is annoyed at the way in which quantitative easing has manipulated asset prices, making property unaffordable. And while David Cameron was very successful in raising the incomes of those at the bottom, she is concerned that those in the middle have not fared as well. She wants a ‘country that works for everyone’ — that is to say, one where effort is always rewarded. This