Politics

Marine Le Pen has been declared ineligible to run for president of France. She has been given a suspended prison sentence, she will be barred from standing in elections for five years, and she will have to wear an ankle bracelet for two years. She will also have to pay a fine of €100,000 after she was found guilty of using European Parliament money to pay her own party’s salaries. This has been determined to have been embezzlement but her supporters describe it as a purely technical offence and her disqualification as lawfare. The dramatic judicial intervention into the French presidential campaign is threatening to deny to voters the choice

Sooner or later, it is going to dawn on the owners of electric cars that they have been enjoying one of the longest introductory free offers in history. The moment of realisation may even come tomorrow. That is when, for the first time, electric cars (EVs) are going to become liable to pay road tax. It won’t necessarily be too onerous. Drive an EV out of a showroom tomorrow and you will pay just £10 in car tax for the first year, rising to £195 for your second year of ownership and beyond. Owners of vehicles registered between 1 April 2017 and today will pay £195 a year. Those registered

Zut alors. The trial of the decade is concluding in France today, with major ramifications for the next presidential election in 2027. This morning Marine Le Pen and eight MEPs were found guilty of misappropriation of public funds. The case revolved around the alleged embezzlement of EU funds to pay RN staff for party work. Talk about being good Europeans! The RN leader was found to have misappropriated €474,000, in particular for the contracts of her bodyguard, Thierry Légier, and her former parliamentary attaché, Catherine Griset. Sentencing at the court in Paris will occur later today, with Le Pen potentially barred from holding public office for the next five years.

A decades-long failure to take Vladimir Putin’s warnings at face value has proven dangerously counterproductive. Putin has made it clear that Nato’s eastward expansion is perceived as an existential threat to Russia, using it as justification for his invasion of Ukraine. Despite this, Keir Starmer persists in advocating for Nato peacekeepers in Ukraine – a proposal destined to fail and which risks squandering precious time Ukraine does not have. When Foreign Secretary David Lammy declares that Putin should have no veto over security arrangements, he denies the fundamental reality of peace negotiations. Of course, Putin does hold an effective veto: no ceasefire can take hold without Russia’s agreement, just as it cannot

Justin Welby says he forgives serial abuser John Smyth On the BBC this morning, former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby gave his first interview since resigning in November last year. He told Laura Kuenssberg that he was ‘profoundly ashamed’ of his speech in the House of Lords in which he had joked that ‘there is only, in this case, one head that rolls well enough’. He also reiterated his claim that he knew nothing of Smyth’s abuse before 2013, and said he had not moved fast enough while in office because he’d been ‘absolutely overwhelmed’ by the scale of abuse. When Kuenssberg asked if he could forgive Smyth, Welby said

A historic election defeat leaves the Conservatives crushed, Reform rampant and a left-wing government securely entrenched in power. The similarities between Canada in 1993 and the UK result of 2024 have been much remarked upon. But what is less discussed is the aftermath of that ‘93 result and the ten years it took to finally ‘unite the right’ under the merged Conservative party of Canada in 2003. The man at the centre of those debates was Preston Manning. He founded and led the Reform party from 1987 to 2000, spending the final three years as Leader of the Opposition in parliament. Manning, now 82, is something of an intellectual godfather