Politics

As Rishi Sunak faces concern at home that his five priorities are slipping out of reach, he is flying to Washington tonight for another foray on the world stage. The Prime Minister will spend two days in the USA where he will meet President Joe Biden for his first bilateral in America (and the fifth since he entered No. 10). While Boris Johnson made his dislike of the phrase ‘special relationship’ well known, Sunak has no such qualms – though one government aide suggests that it still may not appear in his lexicon: the Prime Minister prefers instead to refer to America as the UK’s greatest ally. While the Windsor

What a surprise: the ultimate Whitehall insider looks set to be cleared by Whitehall. Sue Gray, the keeper of ministers’ secrets, caused outcry back in March when it was revealed she was lined up to become Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. How, asked outraged Tories, could a supposedly impartial mandarin defect from being the government’s sleazebuster-in-chief to go and work for the opposition? Surely such a move ought to be against the rules? Well, er, no it turns out. For the Times is reporting today that Starmer will be able to appoint Gray in the autumn, after watchdog Acoba – the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments – recommended Gray should

I was in my fondly forgotten twenties when I made it to 53 Christopher Street, site of the 1969 Stonewall riots and, since 1994, the second most historic address in Greenwich Village. (The apartment building from Friends is three blocks over.) The Stonewall Inn that stands there now is only the latest establishment to bear that name, the premises having served as a stables, then a bakery, and later a speakeasy before the mafia relaunched it as a gay bar in the late Sixties. There were no fire doors and no running water; the walls were painted black to cover up past fire damage. It was no Studio 54. In the small hours of

Has the BBC been taking diversity hiring tips from the RAF? Leaked emails released last week showed RAF officials urging the recruitment of fewer ‘useless white male pilots’. Now it appears BBC 5 Live might be just as done with white men.  Steerpike notes a tweet from Rick Edwards, co-presenter of the radio station’s breakfast programme, calling for applicants to a paid placement scheme: ‘You definitely do NOT need to be an Oxbridge-educated white man to apply,’ he writes. ‘We’ve got plenty of them.’ If Edwards is worried about diversity at 5 Live, there is one member of the breakfast team he might persuade to step aside in favour of a more

When Rishi Sunak replaced Liz Truss in Downing Street last autumn, fundamentalism gave way to incrementalism. So far, the results have been suitably unspectacular: a nudging down of the inflation number more slowly than anyone envisaged; the bare avoidance of outright recession; debt at best stuck as a share of GDP; NHS waiting times that are only very slightly less appalling than they were. According to new polling from Ipsos UK, the electorate is so far unimpressed with these baby steps and generally believes Labour could do a better job.  Today Sunak travelled to Dover to give us an update on the last of his five key pledges – to