All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Uh oh. Former Labour health minister Andrew Gwynne was sacked and suspended at the weekend after some rather controversial message exchanges involving the MP were revealed. A second MP, Oliver Ryan, had the whip removed on Monday after his role in the controversial group chat – ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ – came to light. But now,
The Labour government was pinning everything on an ambitious industrial strategy to boost growth. It was meant to make the UK the fastest-growing economy in the G7, reboot the economy, raise real wages and generate all the extra tax revenues that were going to pay for improved public services. The trouble is, there is not
Finally, some good news on the free speech front: a Christian school worker who lost her job after sharing posts about gay relationships has won a crucial legal battle. Seven years ago, Kristie Higgs, a pastoral worker and mother at a primary school who held firm Christian views, used her private Facebook account to complain
The UK economy grew by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics’s latest report. December, when the economy expanded by 0.4 per cent (the market consensus had been 0.1 per cent), was the saving grace. This helped tip the final quarter of 2024 onto the
With the phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the quest for a peace deal for Ukraine is off to a troubling start. The conversation hinted at an eventual normalisation of United States-Russia relations and signalled that negotiations are likely to be led over the heads of Europeans – and Ukrainians – and possibly
The election of Donald Trump and the advance of populism across Europe confirm that we have already entered a postliberal era. Our age marks the end of liberal hegemony that first emerged in the 1960s and 1970s before triumphing after the end of the cold war – the fusion of left-wing social-cultural liberalism with right-wing
Football fans attending the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia will not be allowed to buy alcohol during their time there. Hands up anyone who is surprised. The sale of alcohol is outlawed in the desert kingdom, and penalties for consumption include flogging, jail or deportation. Prince Khalid bin Bandar Sultan Al Saud doesn’t come
How far can Neil Gaiman fall? The acclaimed author has been accused of sexual misconduct by eight women. One of his accusers, a woman who had been babysitting Gaiman’s child, alleges that Gaiman offered her a bath before joining her in the tub naked and assaulting her. Gaiman denies the allegations against him. ‘I’m far from a
The question now facing Israel is this: will the war in Gaza recommence? The ceasefire agreement was signed less than a month ago, and it is already looking shaky. The first phase of the deal has not yet been completed. Sixteen of the 33 Israeli hostages scheduled to be freed in this phase have been released, and
In a move likely to mark the beginning of the end of the Ukraine war, Donald Trump today announced that he had begun talks with Vladimir Putin. Trump has already held a ‘lengthy and highly productive phone call’ with Putin, he announced in a post on Truth Social, adding that they agreed to ‘have our respective
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Professor John Mearsheimer comes back on the Americano show with Freddy Gray to discuss how seriously we should take Trump’s foreign policy. They cover the President’s plans to rebuild Gaza, why Netanyahu and Trump won’t agree on what to do with Iran and whether Trump can strike a deal with Putin.
It was in a plush central London office space lined with leafy wall plants that Reform UK chose to make its big economic announcement today. Attendees were warmly welcomed with a lavish spread of wraps, canapés and even beer on tap – before Nigel Farage and Richard Tice cut to their news: ‘We will scrap
Donald Trump has spoken to Vladimir Putin on the phone and agreed to begin negotiations to end the war in Ukraine ‘immediately’. The US President announced details of the conversation between the two leaders on his social media platform Truth Social. According to Trump, the pair had a ‘lengthy and highly productive’ discussion, touching on
The bonfire of DEI cobblers continues. Disney is reportedly removing its patronising trigger warnings from many of the films on its streaming service, presumably having finally realised that audiences do not like being talked down to, and that Peter Pan, Dumbo and The Aristocats are not actually engines of racist radicalisation, as its more insufferable execs
Almost every day there seem to be new headlines about abuses of the asylum and immigration system. The latest involves the case of a Gazan family who were granted the right to remain in the United Kingdom after they applied to enter the country under the Ukraine Family Scheme visa. Unsurprisingly, the Home Office determined that
It wasn’t Kemi Badenoch’s best day in the House of Commons today. But amid Keir Starmer’s endless demands that the Tory leader ‘do the homework’, the Prime Minister might just have slipped up halfway through the weekly Q&A. Badenoch asked her Labour counterpart about a ruling by an immigration judge which suggests that Palestinian migrants
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Today was the final PMQs before recess, and Kemi Badenoch had been hoping to leave on a high before the break. She started promisingly, opening with the case of a family from Gaza being granted asylum in the UK under the scheme designed for Ukrainians. Starmer replied to say he disagreed with the decision of
Kemi Badenoch has made PMQs her own. Her own what? Her own select committee. That’s how she runs it. She asks long rambling questions that exhibit her knowledge of the subject. Then she hands over to Sir Keir who rambles back at her, taking his time, feeling no pressure to answer. Not much drama or
Sir Keir Starmer’s Attorney General has had a rather rocky start to his role. Richard Hermer KC has come under scrutiny over his links to Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial Chagos deal, his stance on slavery reparations and his position on Israel. And now, at Prime Minister’s Questions today, the Prime Minister had to fend off questions
Kemi Badenoch has come out against the Football Governance Bill, and not before time. In November 2021, Tracey Crouch, the former Tory sports minister, led calls for a football regulator in her ‘Fan-Led Review of Football Governance’, and in March 2022, Boris Johnson backed the plans. Once that muddy ball started rolling, even three changes
Prime Minister’s Questions is rapidly becoming a challenge for Kemi Badenoch to come up with a topic that the Tories aren’t vulnerable on so she has a decent chance of attacking Keir Starmer. Given things aren’t exactly going swimmingly for the Labour government, it shows how very weak the Conservatives are that Starmer can get
Has Rachel Reeves broken her fiscal rules? It’s been speculated for some time now that the Chancellor lost her headroom when borrowing costs surged last month. Capital Economics forecast at the start of the year that Reeves’s limited headroom (about £10 billion) had been wiped out by rising gilt yields. This left the Chancellor in
Vice President JD Vance told world leaders at yesterday’s AI summit in Paris that the ‘the AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety’. Here’s the full transcript. Thank you for the kind introduction, and I want to start by thanking President Macron for hosting the event and, of course, for
How much does a sell-out cost? Mr S has been trying for months now to work out what the Chagos deal will mean for British taxpayers. The Financial Times originally reported an estimated total bill of £9bn – before the Mauritian prime minister suggested last week the sum would be much higher. With a sum
Imagine living in your own holy fiefdom, with some of the strictest security on earth, and lecturing other nations about how to deal with illegal immigration. That’s Pope Francis for you. There he is in the Apostolic Palace, sentries at every door, wagging his be-ringed finger at Donald Trump’s America for its ‘mass deportation’ of
For all the efforts on every side to manage expectations, there is a sense that some kind of Ukraine deal – even if more likely a ceasefire rather than some comprehensive settlement – is coming. With the risk that this is, as Vladimir Putin would prefer, a decision made between Moscow and Washington, over Kyiv’s
Picture the scene: the press conference room at New Scotland Yard in March 2023 – just after the publication of a damning report into the Metropolitan Police by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Casey’s review, announced following the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met officer, had concluded that ‘predatory behaviour’ was
Desperate times call for desperate measures seems to the mantra of the day in Labour HQ. First a foreign office minister insisted that ceding the Chagos Islands was essential to avoid, er, war – and now Labour MP Stella Creasy has invoked Paddington Bear to stand up for illegal migrants. You couldn’t make it up…
Electricity bills are going up. Netflix is adding a couple of pounds a month to the price of a standard subscription, and council tax is going through the roof. Most of us are probably struggling with the cost of living. There is, however, one piece of good news: the sub four per cent mortgage is
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has hit out at the longstanding US ban on cocaine, in response to Donald Trump’s crackdown on the drugs trade. ‘Cocaine is illegal because it is made in Latin America, not because it is worse than whisky’, Petro argued last week, adding that ‘scientists have analysed this’. He also suggested that
Jean-Luc Melenchon has broken a taboo in French, and Western, politics. The de facto leader of the French left, whose La France Insoumise party is the driving force of the coalition that won most seats in last July’s legislative elections, told students in Toulouse: ‘Yes, Mr (Eric) Zemmour, there is a Great Replacement! This replacement
Just when you think Labour’s Chagos saga can’t get any stranger, it does. Now foreign minister Stephen Doughty has claimed that ceding the archipelago to Mauritius is necessary to avoid sparking war. Writing in the Times today, Doughty has rather bafflingly insisted that there is a risk foreign powers like China or Russia could exploit
When it comes to behaviour policies, schools have fallen into two extremes. Across the border in Scotland, schools practise ‘restorative justice’: a relationships-based, non-punitive approach that favours constructive conversations over traditional sanctions. On the flip side, academies across England are adopting an authoritarian, zero-tolerance approach, where detentions are given for minor infractions and routines are