All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Every 11 November, the United Kingdom stands still. Bugles sound, heads bow, and for two minutes the nation remembers – not just the fallen, but the idea that peace was bought at an impossible price. Yet remembrance, if it is to mean anything, must also be a warning. Europe is again unstable, deterrence is fragile,
Here’s a question for you to contemplate, this Remembrance Day: If you found yourself in the chaos of a terrorist attack, or if your child was kidnapped, who would you most like to come to the rescue? My particular hope is that the Prime Minister and his Attorney General, Lord Hermer, consider this question, because
The International Olympic Committee looks set to ban males who identify as trans from all female sports after a review of the scientific evidence. World Athletics announced a similar ban way back in March 2023, but athletics is only one of the constellation of sports that make up the summer and winter Olympics. To say
By now you’ll know all about the crisis at the BBC, especially if you watch or read or listen to the BBC, which seems to be reporting on little else. There is nothing that exercises the corporation quite like the opportunity to talk about its specialist subject. You know the resignation of director general Tim
We are all familiar with the different excuses for why we find ourselves stuck at the Spoons in Luton or Stansted airport for hours, trying to avoid the stag party, as we wait for our flight. There is fog over the Channel. The French air traffic controllers are on strike. There are not enough planes.
14 min listen
With two weeks until her Budget, Rachel Reeves has received more bad news: unemployment is now at its highest level since the pandemic. With the Chancellor hinting at income tax rises, could this be dangerous for Labour as it increasingly becomes the party of higher earners? Polling suggests the public would lay the blame for
August 29,1989 is a date that is burned into my memory. It’s the date that I first walked up Regents Street from Oxford Circus tube station and into the ornate lobby of Broadcasting House to begin my career at the BBC. That was the day, as a 23-year-old news trainee, that I began to learn
After its Gotterdämerung week, capped by the ‘sorry not sorry’ resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, it didn’t take long for the BBC and its supporters to start flinging mud. You are political; we are not. We are only being nice; you have mounted a ‘right-wing coup’. I’m trying to imagine what a Daily
The results of last night’s Booker Prize – the most prestigious and generous prize for literature in the country – were not entirely as anticipated. In a notably strong shortlist, which was finely balanced with three men and three women, it was anticipated that Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter would be the frontrunner for
Nine retired senior military officers have written an open letter to warn that the expansion of human rights legislation is damaging morale within Britain’s armed forces and undermining their effectiveness. These are among our most eminent generals: all have held four-star rank; three have served as Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of
Britain’s unemployment rate has hit 5 per cent – the highest level since the pandemic. Figures, just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), also show 117,000 payrolled jobs wiped out in the last year. The hiring slowdown seems to be getting worse as what was initially a reaction to the Chancellor’s £25 billion
Just how much more desperate can Rachel Reeves get? Giving an even heftier clue to Radio 5 listeners on Monday that she is going to break Labour’s manifesto promise and raise income tax, the Chancellor explained that this is necessary in order to raise Britain’s lousy productivity record. Sticking to the manifesto commitments, Reeves said:
The police want us to know one thing about Anthony Williams, the alleged LNER knife attacker. We can only speculate about his motives, his record or whether he was responsible for an earlier attack in the London Docklands. But one fact was broadcast almost immediately: he was British-born. The police put out a statement soon
No sooner did Democrats in the American Senate reach a deal to end the federal government shutdown than a frenzy of liberal pearl clutching ensued. The Democrats should have held out longer, they argued. Healthcare subsidies could have been rescued. Donald Trump’s approval ratings were plunging. Golly, maybe the Democrats could even have driven the
Europe’s public broadcasters were created to stop propaganda. Born in the wreckage of war to protect democracy from lies, they now preach soft, sanctimonious, state-approved truths. The resignations at the BBC this week are only the latest symptom of decay across the European media landscape. The model built to keep power in check now serves
The generation that fought in the First World War is gone, and the days are closing for those who served in the Second. Since I started as a doctor, one of the standard questions, to check whether people were oriented, has been to ask them the dates of World War Two. In the past few
There are just two weeks to go until Rachel Reeves’ second Budget. Twelve months after telling the CBI that she was ‘not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes’, she is now planning to do, er, exactly that. All sorts of various measures are being tipped and touted in the newspapers. But the most
Winston Churchill is one of Britain’s enduring symbols. His relentless drive, deep conviction and steadfast leadership means that he remains admired by millions around the globe. Yet for years, the political mainstream has been compelled to defend his memory from spurious attacks from the left, such as John McDonnell calling him a ‘villain’. Depressingly that
There are just sixteen days to go until the Budget – and the pitch is being well and truly rolled. Having conducted her ‘I can’t talk about that’ press conference last week, the Chancellor has now done an interview with 5Live to drop a few more hints about the truly Awful Statement she is planning
12 min listen
It seems that the BBC is once again setting the news agenda – via tales of its own incompetence. The Corporation has spent days battling accusations that it aired a doctored clip of a speech by President Trump in a Panorama documentary back in January 2021. The White House Press Secretary has called the Beeb
The government has deployed two aircraft to the Channel to detect and monitor small boats crossing under the cover of darkness. The planes, De Havilland Dash 8s, are equipped with hi-tech cameras and sensors and will give Border Force ‘eyes’ on the boats heading from France to England. The optimists within government hope that the
As New York’s wealthy elite weigh up the options under their new ‘democratic socialist’ Mayor Zohran Mamdani, many of them are now reported to be considering fleeing to London instead. But will it really offer them the safe harbour they are searching for? The truth is that under the Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Mayor
Readers who woke to Radio 4’s Today programme at around 6:30 a.m. can be forgiven for leaping out of bed in alarm. ‘There has been a coup at the BBC!’ cried presenter Nick Robinson, or words to that effect. Clearly, as we lay snoozing, a hostile takeover of our state broadcaster was underway. ‘These are not,’ Robinson
The rot at the BBC is worse than people think. It’s far more serious than the occasional twisting of facts to get one over on a politician the Beeb hates, like Donald Trump – an act of journalistic malpractice for which director-general Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness have now resigned. This scandal exposes
The resignations at the top of the BBC mark a critical juncture for an institution long seen as a pillar of British public life. Yet their departures, while welcome, are insufficient. The BBC’s failure is not confined to the mistakes of individual executives. It is institutional, entrenched, and long overdue for a reckoning. The BBC
The double-decapitating explosion over BBC bias is a gift for commentators, but much of the commentary misses a key central point. It is not just that the BBC is paid for by a compulsory tax on television ownership, which people are sent to jail for not paying. But just as importantly, it enjoys a position
You know you’re not a proper political party, until you’ve had the obligatory youth wing scandal. Pubescent politicos have long been a feature of Westminster life. In the Starmer army they have NOLS – National Labour Students, where generations of power-crazed identikit drones have been churned out, each bearing the same dead eyes and rictus
As Washington rolls out the red carpet today for the former al-Qaeda chieftain and now Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s minorities continue to live in terror. An army of destruction, half Mad Max, half Lollapalooza is rolling through the desert somewhere south of the country’s capital, Damascus. Who has ordered these militants into action? No
Another Director-General bites the dust. And the number two with him. What a facepalm. What a honking, stupid, first-day-in-the office sort of error to make. What cost Tim Davie his job, and presents the BBC with its latest existential crisis, was not just an error: it was an unforced error of the most wince-making kind. Defenders of the BBC regard this as a confected row, a political
I’m not going to rehash here the details of the memorandum by Michael Prescott, the former independent editorial standards adviser to the BBC, which has now led to the resignations of both Tim Davie, director-general, and Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News. You’d have to have been in a cave for the past week –
One of the greatest dangers posed by the government’s curriculum review is that it will result in children abandoning more demanding subjects such as history, geography and languages at GCSE. This is the fear voiced by a number of educationists, including Baroness Spielman, the former chief of inspector at Ofsted, who said that scrapping the
Oh dear. It seems that the BBC is once again setting the news agenda – via tales of its own incompetence. The Corporation has spent days battling accusations that it aired a doctored clip of a speech by President Trump in a Panorama documentary back in January 2021. The White House Press Secretary has called
Happy Remembrance Sunday one and all. With the Green party soaring in the polls, who better to have on the weekly TV circuit than Zack Polanski? Sporting both white and red poppies – work that one out – the onetime hypnotherapist was grilled by Sky’s Trevor Phillips on the party’s plans for defence. Predictably, Polanski
Those who believe in free speech, and those who are particularly concerned by plans to have ‘Islamophobia’ codified, ought to be delighted. A judge has ruled that criticising Islam, or viewing the faith as problematic, is a protected belief under equalities law. As reported in The Sunday Telegraph this morning, an employment tribunal judge has