Society

After Simon Danczuk was barred from standing as the Labour candidate for Rochdale, there have been reports that the Leader’s Office are keen for Corbyn adviser Katy Clark to be put forward for the seat — after she lost out in Leigh. However, now the word on the ground is that Labour want a local candidate over concerns a non-local candidate could lose the seat if Danczuk runs as an independent. So, could it be another Corbynite who is in contention to make the shortlist? Applications for the seat open today and close tomorrow. The chatter in Labour is that Paul Mason may go for it — after he was apparently spied visiting the Leader’s Office today.

I’m in one of those moods. The one where I’m beset by delusions of adequacy, I can’t work up the energy to pretend I like people, and every email is filled with doom and gloom and stories of bad behaviour. Which brings me to today’s missive from the comparison site uSwitch. According to new research, consumers have been stung with more than £300 million in unarranged overdraft fees by banks which prevent them from opting out of this costly system. I know, banks are (for the most part) upfront about charges for unauthorised overdrafts. But that doesn’t make the stats any less startling. Consider this: typically, consumers are charged £33 each time

Oh dear. Although Labour have had a lacklustre campaign so far, things are beginning to look up. While the shadow home secretary might not be able to get her figures right on bobbies, the party is still capable of a good old-fashioned stunt. Today hacks are gathered at a venue in Westminster to hear Philip Hammond and David Davis speak for the first time in the Conservative campaign. The message on the screen is that Corbyn would mean ‘no bombs for our army’ but ‘one big bombshell for your family’. However, the event has gone off message thanks to a Labour activist who managed to sneak her way into the

Today George Osborne has begun his new job as the editor of the Evening Standard. Given that the paper’s proprietor previously claimed the former chancellor would provide the real opposition to Theresa May, it should come as no surprise that Osborne has wasted no time in turning his ire on the Prime Minister. In today’s leader, Brexit is branded ‘an historic mistake’: ‘The British people were asked last year whether we should remain in or leave the European Union. Although the majority of Londoners wanted to remain, the country — by a small but clear margin — voted to leave. This paper respects that democratic decision, even though it continues

As lenders’ names go, The Bank of Mum and Dad is rather appealing. There’s instant brand awareness, the prospect of small or non-existent interest rates, and the likelihood that financial negotiations will end with a hug and a few happy tears. I’m a member of this institution. When I moved back up North following 14 years in London, I found the perfect house outside of Manchester. But I couldn’t sell my flat in the capital and was leaking money left, right and centre. A bridging loan was out of the question, as was anything resembling a deposit. So my Dad stepped in, loaned me a sizeable sum, and it all

On the one hand, perhaps he should only be thinking about football, Minecraft, his Lego Millennium Falcon and whether he is actually capable of magic. On the other, I can’t let this window of opportunity go by. Being five-years-old is a prime time for learning about the world and how things work. It might seem a bit too young to be dulling his imagination with compound interest, but it’s a lesson he probably won’t get at school (unfortunately) and is one he would do well to get sooner rather than later. That’s why I’ve started giving my five-year-old son £2 pocket money every week for the completion of very minor

Why study history? It’s a question which often gets asked, and the historian R. G. Collingwood’s answer – that history should enable us to ‘see more clearly into the situation in which we are compelled to act’- is one of the best responses. The idea that the study of the past should be applicable to the present has directed the career of Niall Ferguson, who was recently bemoaning the degradation of the subject. Discussing the current focus on race, class and gender in history faculties in a recent speech, Ferguson argued that undergraduates are being robbed of the chance to study events of real significance. Faced with a list of politicised options,

Another election that catches my business eye is the one for mayor of Greater Manchester. The winner will have a powerbase with huge potential: a city-region of 2.7 million people, an enterprise culture that has evolved over two centuries, an outstanding university science base, strong flows of inward investment, Europe’s largest industrial estate at Trafford Park, a global sports brand at Old Trafford, and a world-class airport. Yes, it also has problems of ‘entrenched worklessness’, NHS overstretch and underperforming schools — and nine of its ten local authorities are Labour-controlled. But that’s no reason to award the mayor’s job to yet another socialist opportunist. I refer of course to Liverpool-born

Each year, this column has the melancholy duty of reminding the public of the Prince of Wales’s prediction, made in Brazil in March 2009, that there were only 100 months left to prevent ‘irretrievable climate collapse’. Those 100 months will have elapsed at the end of next month, so it looks as if we are all doomed. The general election on 8 June will therefore be pretty pointless. It is noticeable, however, that the Prince has not, in recent years, repeated his exact dating of the catastrophe, muttering, in 2015, that it might be 35 years. Even more striking was his co-authorship, at the beginning of this year, of the

A French friend tells me that Emmanuel Macron represents the ‘Uber-isation’ of politics. I suppose that makes Le Pen the spokesman for the black cab interest. I want to live in a country which manages a modus vivendi between these two schools of thought. If life is all Uber, it will be freer and cheaper, but also more ignorant and grotty. If life is all black cabs, prices will be too high and cabbies will revert to the surlier service they used to give in the 20th century. Perhaps such peaceful coexistence is an impossible dream. This is an extract from Charles Moore’s Notes, which appears in this week’s Spectator

Coming out of a celebratory dinner at a Montparnasse brasserie after topping the poll in the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron had a brief brush with the press. A reporter asked: ‘Is this your Fouquet moment? This referred to a notoriously showy celebration by Nicolas Sarkozy at Fouquet’s restaurant after his own victory in 2007. The 39-year-old centrist was visibly cross. He simply wanted to thank his secretaries, security officers, politicians and writers, he said. Then came the dig. ‘If you don’t understand that,’ he said, ‘you understand nothing about life. I have no lessons to learn from the petit milieu Parisien.’ This dismissive

Considering that their party is expected to win by a landslide, the Tory spin doctors sound unusually panicked. They are keen to point out that the polls aren’t always right, and the pollsters are still trying to correct what they got wrong at the last general election. They insist that national voting tells you little about what will happen in the key marginal seats. These are normally the pleas of a party that is failing, and trying to persuade voters that it is still in the race. But Labour isn’t doing a good job of spinning its own prospects — so the Tories are doing it for them. This is