All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
If you are a writer of my disposition you tend to grasp any opportunity for self–sabotage and distraction. So here’s my shabby, rapidly declining two bob’s worth. The process to me is generally an ideal I am working towards or aspiring to, like drinking less or going to the gym more. Whenever I pompously declare
Dwight Eisenhower was right to warn Americans in 1961 of the ‘military industrial complex’, but perhaps it is now the only thing that stands between the US and chaos. The new White House chief of staff, General John F. Kelly, is the third general Donald Trump has appointed to his cabinet. Kelly is already getting
In a quiet season for business news, the giant cesspit that is the world of elite football can be relied upon to provide a money story with a pungent whiff to it. I refer to the transfer of the 25-year-old Brazilian known only as Neymar from Barcelona to Paris St Germain for a world-record fee
So here’s an interesting thing. Footage so striking that even the BBC has run with it. This is the film of a migrant boat landing on a beach in the south of Spain. In recent years for a whole variety of reasons, Spain has avoided the worst of the migrant crisis. Perhaps that’s why these
And so Jeremy Corbyn has decided not to condemn the thugs who run Venezuela and instead would like us to recognise the regime’s ‘effective and serious’ attempts at reducing poverty. Try telling that to my skeletally thin friend, Tyrone, who lives in a city in the Venezuelan Andes, almost in tears on skype. Ty is
It is August and, except in Washington and Pyongyang, the square root of heehaw is happening. This poses certain difficulties for the residents of Grub Street. Desperate times call for desperate measures and if that means burning your hot take then so be it. Hence the recent proliferation of articles claiming that Scottish nationalism is
When I first heard Donald Trump threaten North Korea with “fire and fury,” I immediately despaired—because I’m sick and tired of hackneyed Game of Thrones references. Amongst American pundits, mentioning the hit show has become a desperate way of showing off one’s knowledge of popular culture. To that end, Steve Bannon isn’t Rasputin or Jean-Paul Marat; he’s
Police paying a convicted child rapist to be a covert informant will always turn stomachs. But the real stomach-churner is that the grooming and exploitation of vulnerable women and girls is continuing. Even so, the £10,000 payment made to a sex offender who helped bring the Newcastle grooming gang to justice has sparked a backlash. The chief
Donald Trump’s latest eruption – saying that his threat of fire and fury didn’t go far enough – will have delighted Kim Jong-un. His demented regime is based on the idea of being on the brink of war with the United States: this conceit has been used to build a nuclear weapons arsenal that has
Tomorrow, 12 August, is the ‘Glorious Twelfth’: the official start of the grouse-shooting season. This normally means plenty of tweed and guns heading north, in cars, in planes, and on the railways. This year, however, there’s something of a spanner in the works. Just weeks before the start of the season, ScotRail announced that they
Modern slavery is affecting every town and city in Britain, according to the National Crime Agency. Despite William Wilberforce saying two hundred years ago: ’Let us put an end at once’ to this practice, ‘slavery persists to this day, probably within a mile of the parliament in which he spoke’. ‘In car washes and in
On this week’s episode, we’re discussing the war of words between President Trump and North Korea, and asking whether it could spill over into an actual war. We’ll also be looking at the plight of the Yazidis, struggling to recover from genocide committed by Isis in 2014, and, finally, wondering whether it’s better to stay
Donald Trump’s fighting talk has the world worried. But his promise to bring ‘fire and fury’ to North Korea will only make things harder, says the Guardian. This type of brinkmanship is nothing new – and the paper points out the ‘dire’ warnings that greeted China and others joining the ‘nuclear club’. Trump, however, is
When Nicola Sturgeon’s indyref2 gamble backfired and the SNP got slapped around in the election, it was only a matter of time before the Nats turned on each other. But few expected things to blow up quite so quickly. Anger and anguish, division and recriminations – Scotland’s separatists have spent the past few months afflicting their
The UK magazine industry figures have just been published, and The Spectator has an extraordinary set of results to report. Our sales stand at the highest level in our 189-year history. We are not just the oldest weekly magazine in the world, but today’s ABC figures show that we’re growing faster than any comparable magazine
Like the splitting of the atom – but perhaps not as significant to the whole of mankind, the bitcoin split into two on August 1. We now have bitcoin cash. For the less knowledgeable investor, the bitcoin is a digital currency which was launched in the wake of the financial crisis in 2009, borne out
This article is, partly, about Fiona Hill. You remember Fiona Hill, the most evil woman in Britain, the wicked, snarling monster who led Theresa May to disaster then quit as Downing Street chief of staff. That Fiona Hill. That same Fiona Hill is a friend of mine, so you can feel free to ignore everything
So Ruth Davidson, honorary colonel in the signals reserve, is on manoeuvres again. It is past time, the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party says, for the government to rethink its approach to immigration. Time, instead, for an adult debate on the subject at the end of which, she hopes, the government will
The latest attack in France couldn’t have come at a worse time for the government. On Tuesday night, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and his ministers dined at the Élysée Palace as the guests of their president, a “moment of conviviality” before they all head off on holidays today. It’s been a trying few weeks for them, what with
Today is the 72nd anniversary of the America atomic bombing of Nagasaki, a lovely port city that also served as a Japanese naval base during the second world war. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted Emperor Hirohito to announce in a radio address Japan’s surrender, though fanatical war hawks tried to stop him. The
Ruth Davidson has called into question the government’s pledge to bring net migration down to the ‘tens of thousands’. The Sun welcomes her comments and says that it is ‘good to hear a senior Tory…talk sense on immigration’. The migration target, according to the paper, is a ‘random, nonsense figure’ and achieving it would probably
Using fear to sell products is a powerful strategy. Unsurprisingly, many financial firms have come to rely on fear to fatten their bottom lines. But in 2017, there’s only one word to describe fear-based marketing: desperate. Firms selling pensions, investments, and financial products aimed at the over-50s, such as funeral plans, have traditionally been the
Jean-Claude Juncker is a man with few friends in Britain – and that’s before his latest expenses were published following a lengthy fight. It’s fair to say the documents, which were released today, won’t do the president of the European Commission any favours. Juncker claimed thousands of euros worth of expenses for various trips during
It started as displacement activity, my immersion in the market mayhem of the summer of 2007. I was at home looking after my wife Sian Busby and our youngest child. Sian had just been diagnosed with a horrible cancer, and was recovering from radical surgery. She did not want a fuss. And did not want
The Pride Wars are now a fixed feature of LGBT politics. Lefties attack the event for being too corporate and apolitical. Tories, not always made welcome by other marchers, complain it’s too political and not inclusive of ideological diversity. You could perform a few stonings beside the Queers for Palestine stall and still be more
After Glastonbury was certified as a leftie, middle-class Labour lovefest, best spent listening to the musical legend that is Jeremy Corbyn, where Channel 4 presenters chant: ‘f— the Tories’, it seems safe spaces for music-loving Conservatives are in short supply. So, where ought a Tory find their festival fix? As Labour politicians – including Tom Watson, Louise Haigh, and
For technology manufacturers, healthcare is already big business, and, with an ageing population increasingly comfortable with technologies that would’ve been unthinkable even a decade ago, the opportunities to innovate are only going to increase. The Future Health Index, a global report commissioned by Philips, supports the fact that it is not just the UK’s younger
What causes riots? How do peaceful, civilised protests turn into violence and anarchy? It can take just a few factors. First, the unfortunate death of a criminal who has come into contact with police. Second, poor public relations from the police or IPCC, who are too often sluggish to explain what has occurred and why
Earlier this week, a technology website published an internal memo written by an employee of Google called James Damore criticising the company’s efforts to diversify its workforce. This is where-angels-fear-to-tread territory. The America technology sector has come under heavy fire for a number of years for failing to hire and promote enough women and Google
What does being ‘a farmer’ mean to you? For those that have experienced it, the job – or lifestyle, really – the answer might be early mornings, long days, and little pay. Others imagine farming to be more like living the good life. Perhaps that’s the reason why a recent report, commissioned by the Prince’s
Having recently hosted Bono and Rihanna and taken centre stage during Donald Trump’s visit to France, Brigitte Macron now has a new role to keep herself busy. The French President’s wife was named last week as the godmother of the first baby panda born in a French zoo. Macron said she was ‘very happy’ to be asked.
The furore surrounding the Brexit divorce bill is hotting up. The weekend’s papers saw speculation that Britain would cough up £36bn as part of a settlement package for its departure from the EU. Nonsense, says Downing Street, with the Prime Minister’s spokesman saying this morning: ‘I don’t recognise the figure’. It’s not only the government hitting
John Bercow’s decision to allow MPs in the House of Commons to dispense with ties has been hailed by some as a great liberation, and by others as an insult to tradition cast by a man who ought to be wearing a wig. But Tina Stowell, who joined the government as a secretary and ended up Leader
This article originally appeared in the Spectator in March. It is being reposted on Coffee House after the former Prime Minister was pictured letting his hair down at a festival It can be cruel, the way politics plays out. At the very moment George Osborne was telling the bemused staff of the London Evening Standard
