All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Annual house price growth eased to 8.4 per cent in the month of June, the lowest rate in a year, according to the Halifax, the UK’s largest mortgage lender. The quarterly rate of growth was 1.2 per cent, the slowest since December 2014. Nevertheless, the average price of a house rose to another record high, at
The final parliamentary hustings of the Tory leadership contest has now taken place. With Theresa May assured of a place in the final two, the real interest was in whether Andrea Leadsom or Michael Gove could extract more from the occasion. Leadsom was first up, and I understand gave a better performance than she had
Tony Blair appeared emotional, sounded hoarse, and constantly fixated upon his belief that he acted in ‘good faith’ over Iraq when he responded to the Chilcot report this afternoon. The former Prime Minister spoke or took questions for two hours, and started by saying that he accepted ‘full responsibility, without exception and without excuse’. But
The Labour party’s in-growing toenail, Jeremy Corbyn, (not to be removed without much screaming and blood), behaved like a man on a zero-hours contract today. He skedaddled through his six questions as if dashing away to another gig at 12.30. But doing what? Perhaps auctioning off the ‘Remain’ badges he bought in June at ‘lastminute.com’.
Normally whenever someone mentions Iraq in the House of Commons, the Chamber descends into a grouchy scrap. But today’s statement on the Chilcot report from David Cameron and the questions that followed it were surprisingly measured and thoughtful. As James notes, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t mention Tony Blair, and he didn’t give a furious response to
In recent weeks, Westminster politicians have found themselves compared to the characters of House of Cards and Game of Thrones over their post-referendum antics. Happily, parliamentarians were able to put such differences aside on Wednesday night as they took a well-deserved break from work at The Spectator summer party. As Labour’s Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall caught up with Liz Truss, Laurence
After a seven year wait, the Chilcot Report has come back with some quite damning conclusions about the build-up to the 2003 invasion, and the lack of planning for post-war Iraq. I think we’ve certainly learned our lesson about not changing a country’s entire political set up without a credible alternative in place – that
Please, no, not Theresa May. Theresa the technocrat, who doesn’t do ideology, passion or even gossip, would be the worst PM for Britain right now. Post-Brexit Britain, where politics has become interesting again, after 17.5m souls gave an otherworldly establishment just the fright it needed, needs a leader who is properly political, up for debate,
As the House debated the Chilcot report, it was hard not to look round the Chamber and reflect how many MPs were not members when the Commons voted on whether to commit British forces to the conflict in Iraq. But the two party leaders were there then. David Cameron voted for the war, Jeremy Corbyn
In April, Dennis Skinner was ejected by the Speaker from the Commons after he called the Prime Minister ‘dodgy Dave’. However, today John Bercow appeared to feel no need to discipline the Beast of Bolsover for using the term at PMQs. When asking David Cameron to help him find the funding for a hospital in his
Last week the Daily Mail endorsed Theresa May as the next Tory leader. The declaration took many by surprise as not only was it very early in the campaign to come out for a candidate, it had been thought that the paper might opt for Michael Gove — after his wife Sarah Vine suggested Paul Dacre favoured him in
The Iraq Inquiry report is utterly scathing about Tony Blair. It paints a critical picture of his sofa government, in particular the way in which that government approached planning and preparation for Iraq without Saddam Hussein, and his ‘certainty that was not justified’ in presenting the severity of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
Should the UK have gone to war in Iraq? Did it have the necessary legal basis and intelligence to do so? And did it mess up once involved militarily in the country? Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry finally published its report this morning, and these are the key conclusions that he reached in his statement:
There has always been a faction of the Labour party that wanted Tony Blair in the dock for the Iraq war — no matter how pointless it would be. This was the sole purpose of the Chilcot inquiry. Gordon Brown agreed to it simply to assuage his backbenchers, and the whole exercise was intended to
The past week has proved to be a busy time for the Gove household. After Sarah Vine declared in her Daily Mail column that she — along with her husband — had been handed the responsibility of leading the country on behalf of the Brexit voters, she was left red-faced when an email she wrote expressing doubts about
We were appointed to consider the UK’s policy on Iraq from 2001 to 2009, and to identify lessons for the future. Our Report will be published on the Inquiry’s website after I finish speaking. In 2003, for the first time since the Second World War, the United Kingdom took part in an invasion and full-scale
‘If it falls apart, everything falls apart in the region’ Note from Tony Blair to George W Bush, 2 June 2003. The extraordinary length of time that we have had to wait for Sir John Chilcot’s report into the 2003 invasion of Iraq has not made the end result any more satisfying. For some, nothing
The Iraq Inquiry dismisses claims that the aftermath of the invasion could not have been foreseen. It describes the planning and preparations for the country after the fall of Saddam Hussein were ‘wholly inadequate’. In his statement, Sir John said that ‘despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated’. The report details both
The long-awaited Chilcot report has finally been published today. It comes during a very tumultuous time in British politics – and while its publication was always going to be fractious, it remains to be seen how the Tories – and more interestingly, Labour, use it to their advantage. The 12-volume report, which is 2.6 million words long and can
It’s a riddle of the modern age: when is your bank not experiencing ‘unusually high call volumes’? You can puzzle the answer while listening to 20 minutes of looped Vivaldi interrupted sporadically by a disembodied female voice apologising for this delay. I recently called my bank at around 10.30 at night and endured exactly the
More gloom and doom on the markets this morning after the pound hit a new low in Asian trading as concerns about the UK’s vote to leave the European Union continued to undermine investor confidence. It touched 1.2798 against the dollar on Wednesday, a 31-year low, before recovering slightly to $1.2929. According to the BBC,
The key to working out the best order in which to serve one’s wines is to mix it up a bit discovers Jonathan Ray. There were five of us to dinner last night at a BYO-friendly club in London and each of us had brought one or two fine bottles to knock back and bang
Browsing and Sluicing in Toronto and the Niagara Peninsula Jonathan Ray discovers that Canada’s most vibrant and global city is home to some exceptional restaurants and a vibrant cocktail culture with some of North America’s most exciting wines on its doorstep. Toronto is an eight hour flight from London (and not even seven back) and
Sideways has long been one of my favourite films, the hugely enjoyable bittersweet tale of two ill-matched old friends, Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), enjoying a celebratory trip road trip to the vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley in California the week before Jack’s wedding. Miles is a Pinot Noir-obsessed writer weighed
Theresa May is, without a doubt, going to the membership round—and with the support of vastly more MPs than her opponent. In the first round, she won the support of 165 MPs—exactly half the eligible electorate. The question now is who will be her opponent? Andrea Leadsom finished second with 66 votes, Michael Gove was
The Conservative party’s electoral system won an unlikely compliment this afternoon from Labour MP Ian Austin, who declared that it showed how a ‘serious party’ operated. It might look serious compared with the fiasco of Labour’s leadership crisis, but does the election of a new Prime Minister really have to be dragged out over two
Graham Brady has announced the results of the first round of the Tory leadership contest as follows: Stephen Crabb 34, Liam Fox 16, Michael Gove 48, Andrea Leadsom 66, Theresa May 165. So as expected, Theresa May is out on top by a considerable margin, but what is striking is how close Michael Gove has come
You know what to expect: Theresa May wins, Andrea Leadsom comes second. Liam Fox forced out today, Stephen Crabb probably joins him voluntarily leaving Michael Gove to fight with Leadsom for second place – or, perhaps, both dropping out to let May take the crown. You also know that the expected stopped happening in British
Last week’s announcement that Oliver Letwin would be charged with putting together different models of Brexit for whoever takes over as Prime Minister to adopt didn’t necessarily reassure that many Tory MPs. Today the head of that Brexit unit came under sustained fire from MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee who seemed staggered not just
Don’t expect to see Ken Clarke on Sky News anytime soon. The former Chancellor has been left red-faced after the broadcaster aired footage of him engaging in a very honest assessment of the Tory leadership — not realising the camera was rolling. No candidate mentioned got off scot-free during his lively discussion with Sir Malcolm Rifkind. While
I woke up on 24 June with a sense of impending doom. It was no doubt linked to the fact that after voting the day before, I had undergone an operation and so was waking up in a hospital bed. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I was also waking up to the news that Britain had voted
As I passed the Momentum rally in Parliament Square last week, I was reminded of the last time there was such a packed demonstration on Parliament’s doorstep. There might not be a huge crossover between Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters and Countryside Alliance members, but both groups seem equally passionate. Huge numbers of rural people protested against
Forget footwear. The most telling thing about Theresa May, as suggested in interview with Robert Peston, is her cookbook collection – she has 100. Her remarks about her cookery writer of choice was an extraordinary exercise in character signalling. ‘Delia is very precise,’ she said, ‘and I like a bit of… throw a bit here
Stephen Crabb is one of the least experienced candidates in this Tory leadership contest and that was on show during his interview on the Today programme just now. To his credit, Crabb – unlike Theresa May – has made it clear that he doesn’t want EU citizens living in the UK to be ‘negotiating chips’