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Twenty years ago Wales (barely) said Yes to devolution. Despite a Welsh Assembly being supported by the wildly popular new Prime Minister Blair and opposed by the very unpopular Conservatives, the public gave the most grudging endorsement to partial self-rule. A lot of water has flowed under many Welsh bridges since then. Public opposition to
Okay, it’s a rainy Sunday, but surely the new chief of the UK Statistics Authority has better things to do than send angry tweets to the Foreign Secretary? Alas not. Today Sir David Norgrove, the newish chairman of the UK Statistics Agency, tweeted out a letter declaring himself ‘surprised and disappointed’ that BoJo has ‘chosen
Amber Rudd – Boris should not ‘back-seat drive’ over Brexit The Home Secretary took to Andrew Marr’s sofa in the wake of the Friday’s failed terrorist attack on a London Underground train at Parson’s Green station. However, the topic swiftly turned from security to Boris Johnson’s latest 4,000 word essay published in the Telegraph on
For the latest competition you were asked to compose poems about Big Ben’s bongs. The decision to remove the 13-tonne bell during the four-year restoration works on Elizabeth Tower has caused a right old ding-dong, with senior ministers, including the PM, joining the fray. There were lots of entries about health and safety gone mad,
When people come to Dover, it’s usually to pass through. The magnificent castle on the cliffs may be a tourist attraction in its own right, but for the most part, Dover has been a place people go through on their way to or back from the Continent. It’s never been much of a seaside destination.
Should we place faith in a survey, conducted in June but published this week, that says London is still the world’s pre-eminent financial centre? Yes, in the sense that no one challenges that long-standing claim as of today; no, in the sense that complacency would be a huge mistake while every financial firm operating in
I used to have a lot of time for Boris Johnson. Sometimes whole days, in fact: from 8am until 8pm, I’d ring and text and email him, politely urging him to tell me what he planned to write his exquisitely expensive Telegraph column about, and when he’d deign to send it to me. It was, as
In my Daily Telegraph column yesterday, I asked where Boris Johnson had gone. We never hear from him now, I said, unless there’s been some tragedy overseas or some risqué joke backfiring in Bratislava. Since becoming Foreign Secretary, the most gifted communicator in the Tory party had been mute – a baffling waste of talent.
While Donald Trump seeks to cut a deal with the Democrats on immigration, his detractors on the right are starting to resemble the sinister clown Pennywise in the popular new horror movie It, who terrorizes a small town in Maine by living in a sewer and snacking on children. ‘Trump base is blown up, destroyed,
We are only six days away from Theresa May’s big Brexit speech in Florence. But it is far from certain what will be in it, as I say in The Sun today. The biggest domestic challenge for May, insiders say, is squaring Boris Johnson. I’m told that ‘there is quite a lot of nervousness about
Enough has been written about a Conservative government that knows its electoral success depends on Britain remaining a property-owning democracy, yet offers nothing beyond token gestures to stop the young being priced out of home ownership. Enough, too, has been said about graduates being overcharged, pensioners soaking up the largesse of the tax and benefit
Am I ready to shell out £1,000 for an iPhone X with its exciting new ‘Face ID’ feature? Of course not. Readers may recall I was keen to take several tech-steps back to the retro Nokia 3310 that was relaunched in March — but when I finally plucked up courage to take my unloved iPhone
In a raging and rousing speech to the TUC in Brighton this week, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn took aim at the UK’s ‘unscrupulous’ bosses. He reserved particular scorn for the so-called ‘gig economy’, which he presented as little more than a front for ‘bogus self-employment’. Now, it’s certainly true that there are problems in the
House prices are in freefall. Unemployment is rising relentlessly. The pound is plunging on the markets, and companies are re-locating to Paris and Frankfurt in droves. In the parallel universe Mark Carney increasingly seems to live in, that is a pretty accurate description of the British economy. In this universe, however, the picture is very
An explosion has been reported on the London Underground this morning. Passengers fled from Parsons Green in panic after a device exploded on a District Line tube at 8.20am. Witnesses at the scene report seeing a fireball hurtle down the carriage – thought to have come from a bucket left on the tube. A number of people are injured,
With no majority and disagreement rife about what went wrong for the Conservatives in the snap election, next month’s party conference presents Tories with the perfect opportunity to discuss new ideas and ponder the big challenges facing the party. However, don’t expect members of government to partake in the soul-searching. Coffee House understands that everyone from
I’ve been in Los Angeles for the last week, and it takes a special set of occurrences for someone to return to the UK from LA and think that Britain is getting a bit weird. Yet we appear to have managed it. While I was away there was the row about Jacob Rees-Mogg expressing his
As part of an effort to win over younger voters, the government is reportedly considering changes to tuition fees such as cutting interests rates and cracking down on which universities can charge the highest fees. Certainly, at 6.1 per cent, rates for this year are eye-wateringly high – and apply even before the student has
Hurricane Irma rampaged through the Caribbean at the end of last week. With some 500,000 British nationals and several British dependencies sat in the hurricane’s path, Britain was always going to be deeply involved in the fall out. In true British fashion, criticism of the response was quick to mount. Jeremy Corbyn claimed the UK
It used to be the weather that served as the catch-all excuse for poorly performing businesses – it is too cold or too hot for people to go shopping. How convenient, now we have grown a little tired with that one, that Brexit has come along to serve the same purpose. Speaking on the Today
On this week’s episode, we ask whether Theresa May is jumping on a bandwagon by playing the so-called ‘race card’. We also look at the coalitions within our political parties which are being stretched to breaking point, and consider whether doping is the real lifeblood of professional sport. First up: Next month, Theresa May is expected to
This is the Speaker’s Lecture delivered by Francis Maude on the subject of ‘The Future of the Civil Service’. I’m going to start with two quotes. One is from a leading civil servant; the other from a politician. First: Our system of a permanent politically impartial Civil Service is one of the jewels in Britain’s
In the last Parliament, Philip Davies received a lot of flak after he was elected on to the Women and Equalities Committee. As Davies has vigorously campaigned for men’s rights to be given a better hearing and raised doubts about the intentions of some feminists, some questioned his intention. However, at least Davies remains committed to the committee –
Next month, Theresa May is expected to launch her long-awaited audit into racial disparities in public services. We are being prepared for the worst. Unnamed Whitehall insiders say that they have been ‘shocked’ by the picture it reveals of racial discrimination in the UK. All this suggests the scene is being set for another bout
Locking away your money for a fixed amount of time often means that better interest rates apply. Here are some of the best fixed-term (of over four years) accounts available at the moment, according to data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.
Women passing as men is a well-documented manoeuvre that goes back centuries. The history stretches from the legend of Hua Mulan, the fifth-century Chinese warrior who took her ageing father’s place in the army, to 18th-century pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Cross-dressing women defied all odds and deserve to be honoured and celebrated. But
This week marks two years since Jeremy Corbyn was announced as the Labour leader. When he took over, he promised to shake up the way Prime Minister’s Questions was done, to make it more about the voters and less about the political point-scoring. But interestingly, he has now settled into a rather effective political routine.
Trouble in paradise? After the DUP voted with the government last night to ensure they won a crucial vote that gives the Tories a majority on key committees which scrutinise legislation, today the Conservatives got a taste of what it’s like to really be in the minority. In the opposition day debate on NHS pay, the
The news was bad at PMQs today. Gosh, it was terrible. Layla Moran started by announcing that Brexit would jeopardise thousands of jobs in Abingdon and wreck the local economy. Theresa May told her to stop spooking the voters with imaginary pessimism. ‘It’s what they’re telling me!’ shouted Ms Moran. Daniel Zeichner said the scourge
A new report on anti-Semitism in Britain makes uncomfortable reading all round. The study, a joint enterprise by the Community Security Trust and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, is an in-depth exploration of anti-Jewish attitudes, the role of animus towards Israel, and the prevalence of prejudice in 2017. It is a sober analysis and
The choice which faced us at the EU referendum has often been presented as lying between the status quo and the unknown, between security and uncertainty. Until the early hours of 24 June last year I was convinced that this would be the clincher: that the British public, though heavily Eurosceptic, would not quite have
One of the most noticeable things about MPs as they amble around Westminster today is how tired so many of them look. They’ve been kept up late the past two nights by unusually long sittings of the House of Commons, with the final three-line whipped votes not taking place before 10pm on both days. On
Jeremy Corbyn has improved at PMQs to the extent that he now touches on the topics that will cause the Prime Minister the most embarrassment. So, today public sector pay and tuition fees both got an outing. But Corbyn isn’t a good enough—or forensic enough—parliamentary performer to really makes these points tell. Theresa May for
Oh dear. Although George Osborne appeared to offer Theresa May an olive branch in Tuesday’s Evening Standard with a leader praising her work on modern slavery, there’s reason to believe all is not well. In an Esquire profile of the former chancellor, Ed Caesar lifts the lid on Osborne’s plans to use the paper to