All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s official: people who talk about the problem of Pakistani men abusing white working-class girls have no place in polite society. Raise so much as a peep of concern about Muslim grooming gangs and you’ll be expelled from the realm of the decent. You’ll be shushed, exiled, encouraged to clean out your polluted mind. That
Although Theresa May has returned from her summer holidays to find her job safe, it’s only a temporary fix to the Conservative party’s woes. MPs plan to keep May as Prime Minister until the end of the Brexit negotiations – by which point they hope to be able to have a Tory leadership contest which
I sometimes wonder whether news like this from last week… and news like this from this week… … will ever get joined up. Perhaps it will. Perhaps it won’t. Meantime I see that the lights were turned off on the Eiffel Tower again last night, this time to pay tribute to the dead in Barcelona.
In the early hours of this morning, as police in Barcelona continued to piece together the terrible events on Las Ramblas yesterday afternoon, another vehicle attack occurred in the seaside town of Cambrils, a popular tourist destination about 75 miles south of the Catalonian capital. Five men, some wearing fake explosive belts, drove into crowds and injured
14 people have been killed and more than 100 injured after a van ploughed into pedestrians on Las Ramblas in a suspected jihadist attack Five suspected terrorists were shot dead by police in Cambrils, a coastal resort near to Barcelona, after a second vehicle attack was foiled It is believed the incident in Cambrils – in
It has been ten years since the start of the global financial crisis, and much has been written about whether the crisis of 2007 has changed the financial system… whether lessons have been learned, and so on. Frankly, lessons haven’t been learned and if the UK doesn’t play its cards right, there could be another
No one receiving their A-level results this morning can fail to be aware that the first of the coalition government’s more rigorous exams were sat this summer. Whatever their individual results, students – and parents – should be pleased with a new system which is more reliable and a better preparation for university. They should make sure to
There are some foreign words so expressive that you long to absorb them into your own language, to add breadth, colour and depth. ‘Asshat’ (or ‘ass-hat’) for instance. This fine north-Americanism denotes a person who has their head so far up their own ass [Eng: arse] that they are literally wearing their ass as a
In the wake of the referendum and a series of messy leadership battles, Ukip is a party without a plan. But a lack of direction isn’t the only thing troubling the Kippers. The party’s interim leader Steve Crowther has issued a press release calling the former EU President Martin Schulz a ‘complete idiot’. The strong
On this week’s episode, we’re looking at whether the ‘sex trade’ is a form of sanitised modern slavery. We also ask whether the Tory leadership battle is a phoney war and if university education is going downhill. In this week’s magazine Julie Bindel looks at the sex trade, decrying what she sees as an attempt to suffocate the
Stereotypes die hard. Consider the summer game, for instance. It is axiomatic to complain that cricket is a desperately conservative game, run by fuddy-duddies, inimitably hostile to reform or change or modernity. If anything the pad is on the other leg; there are times when cricket’s rush to attract new audiences leaves one suspecting that
For this week’s podcast, in celebration of Robert Lowell’s centenary year, I’m joined by the critic and writer Jonathan Raban — who not only knew this titan among American poets of the last century, but lived in his basement, and found himself contributing to literary history when Lowell took to consulting him, on the hoof,
With the German elections now barely a month away, the Bundesrepublik remains beset by worries about terrorism and immigration. Yet, just like the river in the song, the German economic juggernaut just keeps rolling along. The latest GDP figures are even better than expected – 0.6 per cent growth in the second quarter – the
‘Here we go again’, says the Sun, which criticises the ‘chorus of doom-mongers’ who pop up whenever the government proposes a ‘sensible, serious suggestion for moving towards Brexit’. On Tuesday, this reaction was sparked by details setting out plans for a customs union after Brexit. Now, a fresh wave of cynicism has greeted the idea
Since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, resignations from the shadow cabinet have been ten-a-penny. The latest Labour MP to quit hasn’t done so over Brexit or Corbyn though – and the reason for her departure doesn’t bode well for the state of debate within the top ranks of the party. Sarah Champion has stepped down
There is a strain of wickedness so contagious that it infects every pore of the places it touches. It can be found in the failed human beings who snatch at glory by the mass slaughter of children; they have changed forever the towns of Dunblane, Newton and Columbine. New York and Paris have emerged from
A brief trawl of the Foreign Office’s travel advice for Brits thinking of paying a visit to Sudan will tell you that’s it’s not the best idea – with cholera, the threat of terrorism and clashes between government forces and rebel groups on the menu. What’s more, the British Embassy no longer registers UK nationals in Sudan
Avoiding a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is the government’s top aim in Brexit talks. Brussels wants much the same: the EU Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt has insisted that there should be no return to a fixed border. This is an aspiration shared by the EU, which makes the issue one
With the Retail Price Index figures released yesterday, commuters are up in arms at the news that rail prices are set to rise by up to 3.6% as of January. It’s not all fares that will be affected; only those that are regulated by the government – and the price increase won’t happen until the
Dry your eyes, Joanna Lumley, and try to move on. For the Garden Bridge was doomed from the start. Sure, it had all the hallmarks of an absolutely fabulous idea dreamt up by Patsy and friends in the early hours of Sunday morning after a humdinger of an evening on cocktails and Bolly. But by
Putting your savings in a fixed rate bond guarantees your rate of return – but you do have to be prepared to lock up your cash for a set amount of time. Here are this week’s best buy two-year fixed rate bonds. Data provided by Moneyfacts.
Here are some of the many insults that Donald Trump has ladled out over the years. On Senator John McCain: ‘He’s not a war hero.’ On Senator Rand Paul: ‘I never attacked his looks, and believe me, there’s plenty of subject matter right there.’ On Jeb Bush: ‘He’s an embarrassment to his family.’ On Jeb Bush’s family: ‘Do we really need another
On August 14-15 1947, after a few hundred years in India the British left behind the jewel in the crown of Empire. The Raj abruptly ended, but the struggle for India’s freedom came at a price. The creation of the Islamic state of Pakistan, carved from undivided India or partition, as it became known, resulted
Writing in the Times today, Hugo Rifkind charges that centrists do not want to smash up the existing order and start again. As someone who runs a centrist think tank, I can only say: guilty as charged, your honour. And if it please the court, I’d like a further crime to be taken into consideration:
Identity politics is turning violent. It’s been brewing for a while. Anyone who’s witnessed mobs of students threatening to silence white men or Islamists gruffly invading the space of secular women who diss their dogmas will know that, as with all forms of communalism, identity politics has a menacing streak. And at the weekend, in
It is amazing what a crowd – or a basket – of deplorables can do. Sometimes they can even strip away cant and reveal the truth. Such has been the case since a few hundred neo-Nazis and assorted other white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the weekend. They were protesting the planned removal of
The decision to allow Anne Marie Waters – co-founder of anti-Islam group Pegida UK alongside former EDL leader Tommy Robinson – to stand for leadership of Ukip has created fresh fractures within a party that is preparing for its third leadership contest in a turbulent twelve months. Criticism of Waters’ candidacy has come not only from the modernising
Would a Labour government take Britain out of the customs union after Brexit? It’s a simple enough question – but not it seems if you’re the shadow international trade minister, Bill Esterson. The Labour MP has been busy touring the airwaves this morning, criticising the government for its Brexit transition period plans. While Esterson is
Britain’s Brexit wish list is slowly being filled out. Today, the government sets out its plans for the temporary customs union it wants with the EU after Britain leaves in 2019. Brexit secretary David Davis says the aim for this new relationship is for it to be as ‘close as we can to the current
The National Union of Students isn’t good for much beyond the occasional discount voucher which it sends to its members. But its latest campaign still proved a big hit. The NUS called on its members to boycott the National Student Survey, suggesting that it could be used to justify higher fees if universities scored highly.
If he takes a break from the 24-hour feed of Fox News and switches over to HBO in time to join his country in the millennial kumbaya that is Game of Thrones, Donald Trump might find himself gazing into the uncanny valley. Daenerys Targaryen is a striking doppelgänger: same initials, same preternaturally bright hair, same reliance
There are many ways to dampen down speculation surrounding one’s leadership ambitions. However, writing an article headlined ‘I do not plan to be PM, but here is how the Tories could lead better’ isn’t one of them. This is what Jacob Rees-Mogg did this morning for the Telegraph, thereby pouring petrol on reports over the
Driving in central London is a minefield at the best of times. What with the confusion of the congestion charge zone, one-way streets at every turn, cyclists all over the place and it being nigh-on impossible to park, it’s a wonder that anyone even tries to drive in London. Perhaps this is all a tactic
When you tweet as often as I do, you learn to take the rough with the smooth. Even though it has led to death threats (dealt with by the police) I overwhelmingly enjoy it. I like the immediacy of it and I like the interaction. Best of all, I learn from it. And yesterday I