All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
This piece first appeared as the leading article in this week’s Spectator magazine. It is only a few months since gloomy economic commentators were confidently predicting that the world was about to plunge into a dark era of protectionism. Yet the global economy begins this year in its healthiest state ever, growing faster than any
Perhaps, the most remarkable thing about Momentum’s clean sweep in Labour’s National Executive Committee elections was how expected it was. If even two years ago, you’d have told people in the Labour party that Jeremy Corbyn would not only still be leader but have solid support in the shadow Cabinet and a majority on the
Ever since Gavin Williamson was appointed Defence Secretary, there has been a briefing war between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury over defence spending. Keen to prove his defence credentials, Williamson – or Private Pike as the Chancellor’s allies prefer to refer to him – has hardly discouraged backbench MPs from kicking up a
Here we go again. The results of the latest election for Labour’s National Executive Committee are in and it’s a clear run for Momentum. The three members selected are all Momentum candidates: Jon Lansman, Yasmine Dar and Rachel Garnham. Alas, not everyone is a winner. Or more precisely, Eddie Izzard is not a winner. The comedian-turned-aspiring-politician
Conservative ministers are going through a green fit in an attempt to appeal to voters they lost at the last election. They want to show the world they’re doing good. ‘You know what some people call us – the plastic bag party,’ seems to be the political re-branding calculation. As the former No.10 spin doctor
One of the most influential and popular ideas of the post-war era was that of the Authoritarian Personality, which linked fascism with a number of personality traits, including conventionalism, anti-intellectualism and prudery. Conservatism, in other words. It has become popular to believe that being right-wing is synonymous with being authoritarian. Society may have no common culture
Were I a politician observing Henry Bolton’s embarrassment with glee I think I might just stop short of demanding his resignation as leader of Ukip. What point, anyway, in trying to destabilise a party which has destabilised itself to the point at which nearly every credible challenger for the leadership seems already to have left
If I am reeling from the collapse of Carillion it is because the company, the banks, its advisers and the government apparently thought it was worth having a conversation about a possible bailout of the outsourcing and construction company. Because what we learned this morning is that the gap between Carillion’s debts and the value
It’s been an awkward week or so for John Humphrys. The Today programme presenter – who is thought to earn over £600,000 per annum – found himself in the naughty corner when an audio surfaced of Humphrys appearing to make light of his colleague Carrie Gracie’s decision to stand down as China editor over ‘pay discrimination’.
It’s here, at last: the backlash against #MeToo. Finally people are sticking their heads above the parapet and asking if perhaps #MeToo has gone too far. They’re braving the inevitable fusillade of shaming tweets and accusations of ‘rape apologism’ to raise awkward questions about this hashtag movement. They’re wondering out loud if this movement that
How to signal your virtue is one of the most perplexing problems in modern etiquette. It has to be done, obviously. No one can get on in life, or at least on Twitter, without making clear to friends and strangers that they are for good things and against bad things. So pressing has the need
OMG. New Conservative chairman Brandon Lewis has announced a ‘digital toolkit’ to help young right-wingers battle the Left on social media. Lewis wants ‘more of our activists and people who support some of the principles we’re outlining… getting out there in the digital world saying so and spreading that message with us’. To that end,
In the brief for the latest challenge — to submit poems entitled ‘January’ — I mentioned William Carlos Williams, R.S. Thomas and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as all of them wrote poems with ‘January’ as their title. But that most maligned of months also lands a starring role in the opening stanza of George Barker’s charming
When you pay £8 for fish and chips, where does the money go? That’s the question one restaurant has been busy answering after a customer left a two-star review on Facebook. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the food – in fact it was ‘lovely’ and the staff were ‘amazing’. But Debbie Davies still
Carillion is set to go into liquidation, putting at risk thousands of jobs and leaving question marks hanging over its involvement in major government projects, including HS2. The firm’s troubles are hardly new: repeated profit warnings have been issued in recent months. Yet still new contracts were handed to the company by ministers. Why? The
Blockchain is an idea whose time has come. By which I mean it’s still mostly an idea, and is currently the only thing tech people want to talk about. But it’s in danger of getting hyped out of control, which in the end will damage it. So what actually is a blockchain? Very broadly speaking, a
The Trump presidency has been a disorienting moment in American political life. Imagine a time traveller starting in the year 1990. He steps forward 25 years to 2015. Who are the leading candidates for president? Bush and Clinton — again! What are the top issues? Iraq and healthcare — again! Now step backwards 25 years
The return of Esther McVey to the Cabinet is bad news for John McDonnell and Labour’s claim of a kinder, gentler politics. It has led many hacks and broadcasters to return to remarks he made about ‘lynching’ McVey, at a Remembrance Sunday event back in 2014. But when they do so, Labour complain. The shadow
The Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was given the prime interview slot on the Andrew Marr Show this morning. Noting the change in SNP rhetoric since before the 2017 election, Marr pushed Sturgeon for a timeframe as to when Scottish voters could expect to see a second independence referendum: NS: There is a lot of
What is Michael Gove up to? The Environment Secretary seems to be on a tree-hugging rampage at the moment, announcing a new green measure every week. Not content with unveiling the Tories’ 25 year environment plan last week, Gove has given an interview to today’s Sunday Times in which he attacks the water companies for
It used to be the case that tabloid stings struck the fear of God into politicians and celebrities. Now social media is claiming the scalps of public figures on an almost weekly basis. Quite simply, life is on the record 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you want to enter public life
Here we go. As of Monday, the Guardian is a tabloid – in the physical sense anyway. The paper’s editor Katharine Viner has revealed the new look paper online – complete with masthead: https://twitter.com/KathViner/status/952647642517049344 RIP Berliner…
It is only a few months since gloomy economic commentators were confidently predicting that the world was about to plunge into a dark era of protectionism. Yet the global economy begins this year in its healthiest state ever, growing faster than any time since 2011. There has been a change in political rhetoric, but not
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
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.
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
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
Picture a village. It has a grocery shop and a pub. A little down the road you can find a cobbler and a hardware store. A factory manufactures parts for some large concern in a nearby city and local farmers supply their produce to the villagers. There are a dozen taxi drivers, a priest, a
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
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
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