Politics

Vladimir Putin’s 36 hour ceasefire in Ukraine, which came into effect at noon today, didn’t last long: less than two hours in, the Russian army broke it. The temporary truce had been announced yesterday by the Russian president to allow soldiers and civilians to celebrate Orthodox Christmas and attend church.  But shortly before 2pm local time, air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine, including in the capital Kyiv. Artillery fire and shelling were reported in the eastern cities of Bakhmut and Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, later confirmed by the Ukrainian presidential administration. One unverified video quickly surfaced, showing two Ukrainian soldiers who claimed to be recording the sound of shelling

You thought Isis was old news. The world celebrated its territorial defeat nearly four years ago. The group that once controlled an area the size of the UK had been battered by more than 30,000 airstrikes, and tens of thousands of its militants had been killed. It was over. Really, though, the war against Isis never stopped. The US military has just announced that last year some 700 Isis militants were killed and 400 captured in operations in Iraq and Syria. The group was responsible for more than 500 attacks on Iraqi and Syrian soil. Isis is not going away. When Isis was ‘defeated’ at Baghouz in eastern Syria in March

Keir Starmer’s new year speech was better than Rishi Sunak’s. It’s easier to give a speech about fixing problems when you’re in opposition and someone else has caused them. But it was just more interesting than what the Prime Minister had to say yesterday. There was the politically audacious decision to pick up Vote Leave’s ‘take back control’ mantra, not just as a slogan but also in the form of a ‘Take Back Control Bill’ which will devolve new powers to local communities and give them the right to request more authority from central government. There was a rejection of the old Labour way of doing things: Starmer said he

It was inevitable, with a book as highly anticipated as Prince Harry’s memoir Spare, that there would be a leak of its contents ahead of its release next week. Given the Duke of Sussex’s antipathy towards his family, it is fitting that the newspaper that landed this exclusive is the republican-leaning Guardian. Nonetheless, it is something of a marmalade-dropper to see the headline ‘Prince Harry details physical attack by brother William in new book.’ We might have thought we have heard all the details of the acrimonious relationship between the two royal siblings before: clearly, there is still more to come. The accusation is an unedifying one. Harry describes how,

The battle of the New Year launch speeches enters its second day, with Labour leader Keir Starmer giving his own address in East London. Rishi Sunak said yesterday he had five ‘immediate priorities’ for fixing Britain. The Labour leader is offering a similar repair job this morning, while also trying to reassure voters this won’t involve his party spending vast sums of money. Starmer will say that, while his party will ‘give people a sense of possibility again’, this is not ‘code for Labour getting its big government chequebook out again’. Starmer hasn’t been that bothered by complaints he’s a bit boring Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves have