All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There have been a significant number of occasions in the last year or so on which I have disagreed with the Number 10 policy line – ranging from accepting the Commission’s sequencing of negotiations through to the language on Northern Ireland in the December Joint Report. At each stage, I have accepted collective responsibility because it is
This piece was first published in the ‘190 years of The Spectator’ special. 15 March 1986 It is difficult to estimate the number of young investment bankers, stockbrokers and commodity brokers earning £100,000 a year. Perhaps there are only a couple of thousand, but they are so mobile and noisy that they give the impression
I listened to the Coffee House podcast about Danny Dyer’s David Cameron rant. Fraser Nelson appears to live in a parallel universe. It is true that Cameron probably expected to be in a coalition with the Lib Dems again in 2015 and to never have to fulfil the promise of an EU referendum. However it
The Brexit Secretary David Davis has quit. Davis’s resignation is the biggest political crisis that Theresa May has faced since the loss of her majority in the general election and leaves her facing a battle to save her premiership. Davis has gone because he could not stomach the opening UK negotiating position agreed at Chequers.
Although Moggmentum has been building for some time among the Tory grassroots, conventional wisdom dictates that Jacob Rees-Mogg is still very unlikely to make it to No 10 – no matter how enthusiastic the members – thanks to the fact that he doesn’t have the support of enough Tory MPs to get onto the ballot
After an away day at Chequers on Friday, the Cabinet has finally agreed on a compromise approach for negotiating the UK’s future Brexit deal. The proposals include a ‘free trade area for goods’, a joint institutional framework for the European Court of Justice and a ‘common rulebook’ to maintain high regulatory standards in a variety
From the flurry of joint op-eds from Cabinet Ministers today, you might be forgiven for thinking that the Chequers deal is the deal. But, of course, it is not. Rather, it is the UK’s government opening position in the negotiation on the future relationship. So, logically, you would expect the government to have to make
The career of the new President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (‘Amlo’), suggests he is a populist. He jumps from party to party and ends up founding his own. He advocates price ceilings for tortillas. Disputing his defeat in the presidential election of 2006, he proclaims himself ‘legitimate President’, wearing a presidential sash. Yet
Is it coming home? If it is, don’t expect all the home nations to welcome it. In Scotland, the dismal grunt of ‘Anyone but England’ (ABE) is the balm that soothes our aggrieved wee souls. It’s never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman watching England do well and even the most fleeting flicker of sunshine.
The latest challenge was to cast a well-known figure on the world stage, living or dead, in the role of agony aunt/uncle, submitting a problem of your invention and their solution. Adrian Fry, channelling Emperor Nero, had these nuggets of wisdom for Worried of Dorking, who is concerned about his grandson’s pyromania: ‘I agree that
Ten years ago today, I was pronounced dead on the front line in Afghanistan. I had collapsed with acute heatstroke in temperatures of 52°C during a military foot patrol. I am a reporter not a soldier, but for four minutes, as a medic attempted to restart my stopped heart, I was a category A. That’s
In January, a pair of pandas flew to Finland on a diplomatic mission. Hua Bao and Jin Bao Bao had been dispatched from their native Chengdu as a gesture of goodwill from China’s president Xi Jinping. Their arrival, part of China’s ‘panda diplomacy’, is one of several signs that the country is on a High North charm
Tory MPs and ministers have consistently under-estimated their leader. What Theresa May achieved at Chequers yesterday was extraordinary. She persuaded her cabinet to sign up for a Brexit plan that drives a coach and horses through what the Brexiters in her team – especially Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – said Brexit was all about,
Theresa May is through Chequers with a plan that proposes having the UK follow EU rules on goods and agri-foods. This isn’t what the Cabinet’s Brexiteers would have expected two years ago, or even nine months ago. But as I say in The Sun this morning, the biggest single reason they are putting up with
As someone who follows the news on Radio 4 at 6, 7 and 8 each morning, I notice that the bulletins begin very leftish and become slightly less so later. I assume the unit responsible, ‘Newsgathering’, works through the night from its default political position. So it relies heavily on the ready supply of ‘news’
Even though I don’t watch much football I love the World Cup because it’s my passport to total freedom. I can nip off to the pub, slob indoors on a sunny Sunday afternoon, leave supper before we’ve finished eating, let alone before the dishes are done. And where normally that kind of behaviour would at
Pity the flunky at Bute House, official residence of Nicola Sturgeon, whose job it is to get the red carpet ready for formal visits. The poor lad mustn’t know whether he’s coming or going. Two weeks ago, the First Minister said it wasn’t ‘appropriate at this time for the red carpet to be rolled out’
Theresa May’s Cabinet away day is finally over and the Prime Minister can go to sleep safe in the knowledge that there have been no resignations… yet. In a No 10 statement this evening, May said the Cabinet had agreed its collective position for the Brexit negotiations – for a common rule book on industrial goods
Today has been so bigged-up as a day of destiny for Britain that it can only deliver disappointment. Even if we do have white smoke rising from the chimneys of Chequers by the end of the day, together with a photo full of strained smiles as the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary apparently agree on a
Stop it. Stop saying we can’t be sure why people voted for Brexit. Stop saying it was just a screech of rage against politicians and so must now be tempered and made into sensible policy. Stop saying it’s fine for Theresa May in her Chequers showdown to ‘soften’ Brexit and keep us entangled in a
Theresa May has come under some pressure these last few weeks over her plan for Britain’s post Brexit trade relationship. Both wings of her party have aggressively pitched their preferred version. Today it’s crunch time as the Cabinet head to Chequers to thrash out a position. But has the most convincing argument for the Brexiteer
The young writer Guy Stagg threw in his job a few years ago to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem via Rome – choosing a hazardous medieval route across the Alps. It nearly killed him: at one stage, trying to cross a broken bridge in Switzerland, he ended up partially submerged in the water, held up
At 3pm tomorrow, a thin blue line will be drawn across my living room. My wife will be supporting her motherland, Sweden. I’ll be rooting for my adopted country, England. We’ll have food and drink from both countries on either side – but the question is who gets custody of the kids for those 90
God knows one tries, but there are times when it’s difficult to take the Church of England entirely seriously. And the news that it is considering doing away with the seal of confession, whereby clergy are absolutely prohibited from disclosing the sins penitents bring to them in confession, is just such an occasion, even if
This week NATO meets. Mr Trump will want more progress with increasing spending by European allies. Many of them are still well below the 2% of GDP minimum spend they are asked to achieve to contribute to collective security. NATO will argue that members together have been increasing their spending in real terms since 2015,
In this week’s Spectator books podcast I’m talking to the distinguished scholar of Japanese literature Jay Rubin, editor of the new Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. Many of us in the West know little of Japanese literature beyond, perhaps, Haruki Murakami, Yukio Mishima and perhaps Banana Yoshimoto and Kenzaburo Oe. Jay fills in the blanks. Did you know
Earlier I wrote about how a paper circulated to ministers before Chequers makes clear that the UK’s plan to follow a ‘common rulebook for all goods including agri-food’ with the EU ‘would not allow the UK to accommodate a likely ask from the US in a future trade deal’ as the UK would be unable to
It’s the night before the Chequers summit and it’s all starting to kick off. After James revealed on Coffee House that the key Brexit customs paper passed by No 10 to Cabinet Ministers ahead of tomorrow’s meeting could be perceived as effectively ruling out a post-Brexit trade deal with the US, Brexiteers have been quick to
Earlier this afternoon, Cabinet Ministers received key papers ahead of the Chequers meeting tomorrow. The paper states that ‘The UK should maintain a common rulebook for all goods including agri-food’. It goes on that the UK will make ‘an upfront choice to commit by treaty to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods’. As I
‘Happy 70th Birthday to our wonderful NHS,’ the Labour MP Naz Shah tweeted earlier today. Shah isn’t the only one marking the anniversary, but it would seem that the Labour MP has more to celebrate about our health service than most. The latest register of MPs’ interests reveals that last month Shah received £1,800 for providing
Happy birthday to the Spectator. This week, we’re celebrating our 190th birthday. Lara Prendergast takes a walk down memory lane with three editors of the Spectator, past and present. But before that, it’s the podcast as usual. This week, we’re asking – do anti-Trump protests achieve anything other than virtue signalling? And are driverless cars
Seventy years ago, when the National Health Service was founded, the UK established the principle of universal access to healthcare. Rich or poor, young or old, you have the right to obtain treatment for your condition. It set a standard amongst the rest of the world, that healthcare is a vital part of a safety net
After counter-terror police confirmed that two people who had collapsed in Amesbury, Wiltshire over the weekend had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, Home Secretary Sajid Javid has announced that he will chair a meeting of the government’s emergency committee, Cobr. In a statement released a few minutes ago, Javid said: ‘The Amesbury investigation
With just two days to go until Theresa May’s big Chequers away day, the Cabinet headed to 22 Old Queen for a pre-sesh. Theresa May held court in the garden while Michael Gove charmed guests on the merits of getting rid of tusk – ivory, not the EU leader naturally. Given that this was no