All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Today was a reminder of the lost art of how to construct a series of questions at PMQs. Emily Thornberry started off by asking Damian Green if he was prepared to be held to the same standard as he held government ministers when he was in opposition. Sensing a bear trap, a clearly wary Green
The PM is in the middle-east on her ‘strong and stable leadership’ tour. Replacing her at PMQs stood Damian Green, a hesitant, avuncular figure who seems ill-suited to front-line politics. He’s uncomfortably tall, and he dips his chin as he speaks to make his troubled, slender jowls less conspicuous. His hair has quit the fray
The most important thing coming from No 10 this morning is not anything they have said – but instead what they haven’t said. Following a report yesterday that the UK’s Brexit divorce bill has been agreed as being somewhere in the region of £45bn, the government have not tried to deny it nor pour cold
There is much outrage, among both Leave and Remain voters, at the size of the ‘divorce bill’ ministers have reportedly agreed to pay the EU. Figures of €60-65bn (£53-58bn) – more than one and a half times’ the UK’s annual defence budget – are being presented as fact. I share much of this outrage. The sheer
A high speed rail line from Manchester to Glasgow. Three of the shiny new Elizabeth lines crossing London. Thirty or forty hospitals, almost sixty Manchester City squads, and perhaps a dozen Bitcoins (although it might be only eleven by the time you are reading this). There is still a lot you can get for 40
Britain First hasn’t really taken off as a political movement in Britain, but it has caught the attention of the most powerful man on the planet. Today President Donald J Trump decided to brighten his and everyone else’s morning by retweeting three videos, posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, purporting to
Theresa May left it to Damian Green to fill in for her at PMQs today and it’s fair to say that things didn’t go entirely smoothly. The deputy PM remains the subject of a Cabinet Office investigation into his behaviour and there was silence in the Commons when he was asked by Labour MP John
When I negotiated the Good Friday Agreement nearly 20 years ago, no one foresaw a day when the United Kingdom would be leaving the European Union. It was impossible to imagine how the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, from which the barriers were removed as part of the agreement,
All eyes this morning are on Britain’s Brexit divorce bill, but meanwhile Labour’s Brexit strategy remains as confused as ever. Diane Abbott is the latest figure from the party’s frontbench to hint at the possibility of a second referendum, despite this being ruled out by Jeremy Corbyn in the run-up to June’s snap election. In
Oh dear. You can tell a meeting has gone badly if you leave £15,000 poorer then you were when you went in. So, spare a thought for Andrew Bridgen at yesterday’s meeting of the Regulatory Reform Select Committee on Tuesday. Bridgen is chair of the committee – with select committee chairs earning an extra income of £15,025
Britain’s Brexit divorce bill offer has now risen again, if today’s reports are to be believed. ‘At the very least’, says the Daily Telegraph, Britain is looking at handing over £40billion. It’s a ‘lot of money’, the paper concedes, and even though the ‘complex formula’ used to calculate the final bill will allow the government
There will be howls of outrage in some quarters if it is confirmed that the government has offered the EU a ‘divorce’ bill of £50 billion or so. Some on the leave side of the debate have insisted that the bill should be zero. They ask: does the EU not owe us some money for our
The Irish government has just survived a precarious wobble which would have plunged Britain and Ireland into further chaos over a future Northern Ireland border. Until the resignation of Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Frances Fitzgerald earlier today, there was a clear and present danger of Leo Varadkar’s minority administration falling apart – all because of a
If you have a certain amount of savings money going spare, investing a lump sum in a fixed rate account will guarantee good returns – just as long as you can wait patiently for it to mature! Here are some of the best fixed rate bonds on the market at the moment Data supplied by
The case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British mother jailed in Iran, has attracted cross party support after Boris Johnson’s comments at a select committee led to the Iran government re-examining her sentence. Of all the MPs to call on the Foreign Secretary to do more to help improve her situation, few have been as vocal as Tulip
Contrary to what the liberal gushing might suggest, Meghan Markle marrying Prince Harry and joining the royal family is a very modest step forward for racial equality. The much bigger issue is that for the foreseeable future the UK’s head of state can never be black. The hereditary system excludes by default the possibility that the symbol
Ahead of the crunch EU council meeting next month, the government is doing everything it can to try and ensure the UK is given the green light from Brussels to move the negotiations on to trade. As part of this, talk has been rife that Theresa May is ready to considerably up her financial offer
Nobody said Brexit was going to be easy, did they? It turns out that even talking about how difficult Brexit is going to be is pretty tricky, and the person feeling that most keenly is David Davis. Today the Brexit Secretary came under fire from all parts of the House of Commons for the heavy
So, Frances Fitzgerald, the Tánaiste, has resigned. It now looks as though Leo Varadkar’s minority Irish government will not face a vote of no-confidence that it would likely have lost and, consequently, there will be no Irish election before Christmas. That’s a matter of considerable relief in Dublin but also in London. Irish political scandals
As faith wanes in democracy, arguments against it have more power than arguments for the status quo. People still quote Churchill’s line about democracy being the worst system of government apart from all the others as if it settles the matter. For what it is worth, I think it is true. But as memories of
Can anyone really be surprised that among the worst districts for social mobility identified by Alan Milburn’s Social Mobility Commission are some of the wealthiest areas in Britain? Ranked out of 324 districts in England West Berkshire comes in at 265, Cotswold at 268, Herefordshire 271, Chichester 287 and West Somerset bottom at 324. Surely
Being a backbench MP can be pretty dull. In recent times, former members of the government have found the experience of merely being a member of the legislature so upsetting that they’ve downed tools and left Parliament altogether: David Cameron made a big show of saying he’d stay on and serve Witney from the backbenches,
Today MPs are working themselves into a bother over the government’s Brexit impact reports. Although David Davis has handed them to the Brexit select committee – as ordered by the Speaker – MPs have been left disappointed given that the document in question is rather sparse on details as it does not include anything the government
A Royal engagement is dominating the headlines once again. Here is how The Spectator has marked royal engagements over the years, from Prince Albert’s 1839 proposal to Queen Victoria, through to Prince Charles popping the question to Diana in 1981: 30 November 1839: Queen VictoriaNow that it is certain the Queen has done with declining and is
One of the nicest things in life is the discovery that one-time enemies are in fact terrific, brave people who you might have been wrong about and have grown to respect. For instance, when I was growing up I had a rather marked dislike of Germaine Greer. Then, in recent years, I discovered she was
It’s a summer of change for the House of Windsor — out with the old, in with the young. The Duke of Edinburgh has just announced that he is standing down. The Queen carries on, but she’s 91, and now the younger members of the royal family are expected to step up. For an institution
We’ve had a brown president in the White House and today, that palest of institutions, the Royal family, is formally admitting a mixed-race girl into its bosom. Wow, just wow. I do wonder, speaking as a mixed-race girl myself, does this acceptance of colour into one of the world’s oldest monarchies mean that brown people
The zombie company concept was developed in Japan, to suggest that persistent low interest rates allowed heavily indebted companies (who might, at more normal rates of interest, have been liquidated) to stay in business, thus preventing the Schumpeterian creative destruction that allows the business sector to innovate and improve. It has since been applied to
After Priti Patel had to resign as International Development Secretary over unofficial meetings with Israelis ministers, the MP promised to continue to be ‘a strong voice for Witham and Britain’. At tonight’s Spectator panel discussion ‘What is the future of the Tory party?’ at the Emmanuel Centre, she certainly seemed intent on doing the latter. Now able
Why does Emma Dent Coad continually get into trouble for spiteful comments, tweets and jokes about her political opponents and those with a privileged accident of birth such as members of the royal family? Perhaps the Kensington MP is suffering from a strange cognitive dissonance resulting from having to represent a fair few people whose
Every time I write about Bitcoin you can probably take it as a major sell signal. The last time I did so was in January 2014, at which point Bitcoin was trading around the $935 mark. Had you been inspired by my golden words and invested immediately in BTC (as we aficionados call it), here’s
Why is a Conservative government publishing an industrial strategy? This afternoon, Business Secretary Greg Clark tried to insist to MPs that the white paper he was presenting wasn’t a return to the mistakes of previous governments in picking winners and constraining businesses, but a means of ensuring that Britain was able to compete with other
The engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is great news. Great news for them, of course, because they are clearly in love, and who doesn’t like to see a handsome young-ish couple in love? And it’s great news for republicans like me, too, because it confirms the monarchy has now completed its transformation from
It’s quiet up in Scotland at the minute. We’ve not tried to secede in a few months, some MSPs are away pursuing reality TV careers, and Nicola Sturgeon is still deciding the best punishment for parents that smack their recalcitrant offspring. The downside is that when things are quiet, some geyser of nationalist lunacy inevitably explodes.