All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
As a schoolboy, George Washington transcribed 110 Jesuitical maxims later published as Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. In this pamphlet he counsels a regimen of behaviour so meticulous it forbids blowing on a spoonful of soup to cool it and specifies the proper method for dipping bread in sauce. Presidential mores have
Nigel Farage met Michel Barnier on Monday and is now calling, inexplicably, for a second EU referendum. He wants to rerun the whole thing. Well, I too have just got back from Brussels and no doubt Barnier said the same things to me and my three colleagues as he did to Nigel. That being the
The anti-Trump forces have been having a field day on Twitter with the hashtag #ICancelledMyTriptoLondon – poking fun at Donald Trump’s claim why he called off his trip to London to open the new £880 million US embassy. The President claims he can’t bear to cut the ribbon because the Obama administration got itself a
Oh dear. More than three months since Germans went to the polls, and gave the CDU-SPD government a bloody nose, its politicians have finally emerged from the latest coalition talks – and the result is yet another cosy alliance between the CDU and the SPD. You’ve got to feel for German voters. In the Fatherland
Emmanuel Macron and half a dozen of his top team are heading to the UK late next week. I write in The Sun today that they’ll sit down with Theresa May and a handful of senior Cabinet Ministers at Sandhurst for an Anglo-French defence summit. The occasion should be a perfect opportunity for Theresa May
Carrie Gracie is more or less in the right, but I did laugh out loud when I heard her, on the BBC programme she was herself presenting, say that her resignation from her post as China editor over the equal pay issue had brought wonderful sympathy from ‘across the country and internationally’, as though speaking
Here’s an aspect of Donald Trump’s personality that I’ve never got past: his hatred of dogs. When Trump tweeted on 5 January that his former aide Steve Bannon had been ‘dumped like a dog’, he recycled an insult he has hurled more than a dozen times since declaring for president, according to the indispensable TrumpTwitterArchive.com.
2018 will be a crucial year for the gig economy in the UK. Only a couple of months ago, the work and pensions, and the business, energy, and industrial strategy committees of the House of Commons jointly presented a new framework for modern employment. This latest report adds to an already wide-ranging set of proposals
After Theresa May’s underwhelming and chaotic Cabinet reshuffle on Monday and Tuesday, Jeremy Corbyn has followed suit and carried out a minor reshuffle of his front bench. With loyal Corbynista Chris Williamson resigning from the shadow cabinet on Thursday following his call to double council tax for large properties, there was speculation that the Leader’s
Since joining Parliament in the snap election, the Labour MP created a media-storm last year when she declared that she would not be friends with a Tory. Happily, Jeremy Corbyn sees no issues with such a stance and has just promoted Pidcock – appointing her Shadow Minister for Labour. Only it’s a bit complicated. Just a
On this week’s episode, we examine Twitter’s mob mentality, get to the heart of PTSD, and look at how Russia is preparing for this year’s World Cup. First up: At the end of 2017 it would’ve be hard to guess that the name of everyone’s lips during the sunrise days of the new year would
I am fascinated as well as appalled by the new morality being created in our country. Last night, Dawn Butler MP was on the television again (this time Question Time) making charges against Toby Young and doubling-down on a point she had made earlier in the week on the Daily Politics. The essence of it
This week’s Cabinet reshuffle proved underwhelming on the whole but for one man, it marked a great change in fortune. Philip Hammond remained in post as Chancellor – something that seemed rather unlikely during the snap election campaign when Theresa May was plotting to sack him in a revenge reshuffle. So, it’s little wonder that
In this week’s Spectator Books podcast — arranged in partnership with the male suicide prevention charity CALM — I talk to Johann Hari about his controversial new book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression — and the Unexpected Solutions. In it, Hari argues that the psychiatric establishment overprescribes chemical antidepressants, and that the
Boris Johnson is absolutely right to say that his successor as London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has behaved like a ‘puffed up pompous popinjay’ about Donald Trump’s cancelled visit to Britain. And they aren’t the only ones. The whole ‘Trump visit’ story has become an embarrassing mass exercise in British grandstanding. In fact, if you want
This week Question Time moved to Islington. David Dimbleby chaired a panel comprised of Dominic Raab, Labour’s Dawn Butler, Gina Miller, comedian Nish Kumar and Piers Morgan. However much of time was spent discussing Toby Young, who resigned from the Office for Students this week. With various derogatory comments made about Young, it fell to an
You could, I suppose, feel sorry for Justine Greening if you were a nicer person than me, not just for losing her job, but for being in the job after it had been occupied by Michael Gove. Mr Gove had the radical, indeed revolutionary perception that it was a scandal that there should be such
I naively thought that if I resigned from the Office for Students, stepped down from the Fulbright Commission and apologised for the offensive things I’d said on Twitter the witch-hunt would end. In fact, it has reached a new, frenzied pitch. The mob’s blood lust is up and it won’t rest until it has completely
The news that Chris Williamson has resigned from the Labour front bench has been met with dismay by Conservative MPs who quite enjoyed his calls to double council tax on some of the highest-value properties. However, fear not, Williamson will continue to play a pivotal role in Corbyn’s Labour. In an interview with Corbynista site Skwawkbox
The farming community was hoping, until a few days ago, that Michael Gove might be moved to pastures new in the reshuffle that hardly happened on Monday. One Yorkshire neighbour of mine with a big muckspreader used to refer to the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs as ‘the Grim Reaper’. But
Chris Williamson’s resignation from the Labour frontbench shows that the party isn’t just a protest movement any more. The staunch Corbynite found himself the focus of Tory campaign graphics this week after suggesting that council tax should be doubled on some of the highest-value properties. This afternoon, Labour confirmed that their Shadow Fire Minister had
The headlines just about write themselves. A hard-left Labour shadow chancellor flies off to Davos to preach revolution and socialism to the world’s most elite gathering of business leaders. Surely that is a sign that Jeremy’s Corbyn’s Labour party is being taken seriously by the big wheels of global business. And a sign as well
What to make of Nigel Farage talking about why there might need to be a second Brexit referendum? To some on the Remain side, this is a moment—the Evening Standard have splashed on it, the Liberal Democrats have welcomed it and Labour MP Chuka Umunna has declared that Farage for ‘the first time in his
Donald Trump is playing hard to get. Asked yesterday at the White House whether he would meet with Special Counsel Robert Mueller for an interview, Trump began back-pedalling on his previous and emphatic ‘100 per cent’. Now, Trump said, ‘we’ll see what happens’. For good measure, he threw in a few of his favourite terms
Was there ever a more pathetic piece of political posturing than the attempt by New York mayor Bill de Blasio to sue five oil companies, including BP and Shell, for the cost of building £14.8bn ($20bn) worth of sea defences to protect vulnerable parts of the city? To add to his virtue-signalling, de Blasio has
Breaking news in today’s Evening Standard. George Osborne has splashed on the revelation that Peter Stringfellow – the nightclub owner – has ditched the Conservatives in protest over its stance on Brexit. Stringfellow – who often attends the Tories’ black and white ball – says he is quitting the Tories ‘unless they change their direction
Tim Farron is a conservative evangelical. Such Christians think they are braver than wishy-washy liberals when it comes to sin – they are not afraid to put it at the heart of their message. But in fact they’re in a muddle on sin. Farron embodies it. During the election he was repeatedly asked by journalists
This week, Theresa May’s Cabinet reshuffle proved rather underwhelming. In some quarters, the Prime Minister’s decision to not promote or move any of the big beasts in her Cabinet has been seen as a tactical move so as not to fuel speculation over her eventual successor. That plan may have backfired. Mr S was curious to
Ben Bradley had an inkling that his first week back at work wasn’t going to be an ordinary one when he received a text at 7am on Monday. The MP for Mansfield was summoned to 10 Downing Street for 11.30am with no explanation as to why. Given that this was the day Theresa May was
Theresa May’s Cabinet reshuffle proved puzzling for a number of reasons – from what the point was, to why Chris Grayling was falsely announced as party chairman. However, within the Conservative party it’s the movement of figures from the Department for Education that has caused the most chatter. Justine Greening left government after she was
Is the only reason Dry January is so popular because people tend to drink a little too much over the festive period? Or is part of it down to wanting to save money after spending too much on overly pricey last-minute Christmas presents? I wouldn’t be surprised if it were more due to financial reasons
Cuts, queues and death. These motifs dominated the New Year instalment of PMQs. At the end of the last episode, shortly before Christmas, there were 12,000 patients lying in ambulances in hospital car parks. Two weeks later, according to Mr Corbyn, the figure stood at 17,000. Excellent news for Mr Corbyn because it sounds as if
Why the big fuss about the 100 eminent Frenchwomen, including Catherine Deneuve, who have criticised the #Metoo movement as a puritan backlash? Their viewpoint, expressed in a letter to Le Monde, is little different to the one expressed by their president in November, when Emmanuel Macron spoke out against sexual violence and harassment but warned
Anyone hoping that 2018 would bring an improvement in the quality of debate between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, or a reduction in the length of John Bercow’s interventions, would have been disappointed by today’s session. Corbyn and May traded the usual blows on the NHS. There was little in the exchanges that was enlightening.
