All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Grant Shapps isn’t the most popular man in the Tory party at the moment, but at least he has a friend to keep him company this evening. By sheer coincidence, Andrew Mitchell has long been booked to speak at the Welwyn Hatfield MP’s Conservative Association annual dinner tonight. But Mitchell is very keen not to
Grass-fed beef just came off the North London dinner party menu. A report by the Food Climate Research Network at the University of Oxford dismissed claims by Prince Charles and others that grazing animals on permanent pasture can reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The old argument was that the carbon dioxide absorbed by growing grass outweighed the
There are many ways to make a conference speech memorable and Theresa May managed most of them. A prankster with a P45, a constant cough and a set that fell to bits as she spoke, the speech was a riot of metaphors in waiting. It may yet be pointed to as a decisive moment in
The German Embassy threw a lavish party in London’s Belgrave Square last night to toast the Bundesrepublik’s Day of German Unity, but although the Bier and Sekt flowed freely, and the Ambassador’s Residence was awash with chatter, disunity rather than unity was the main topic of the day. Germany’s Tag der Deutschen Einheit marks the
Our guest on today’s Holy Smoke podcast is A.N. Wilson, author of a hugely admired biography of Queen Victoria and – as you’ll hear – the most mischievous intellectual in the land. Cristina Odone and I started out by asking about Victoria’s vigorous (and possibly whisky-fuelled) persecution of Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England: the
By the simple expedients of being cheerful and attacking Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson scored a deserved hit at the Tory conference on Tuesday. It is right not to be shy about questioning Mr Corbyn’s record. But while it is true that Mr Corbyn has never wavered, over 40 years, in his extreme socialist views, it
Grant Shapps’ attempt to topple Theresa May is not going quite to plan. Tory MPs are busy tweeting their support for the Prime Minister. While others are turning their fire on Shapps himself. Nadine Dorries said the plot was ‘pathetic’ – and Baroness Warsi was even more outspoken on the subject of Shapps’ bungled bid
It’s taken me a while, but I think I’ve got my head around this now. Grant Shapps is proposing that the Conservative Party should hold a protracted contest to select a new chief, and thus render itself and the Government of Britain leaderless for several weeks, at a time when the UK economy and public
Grant Shapps’ bid to stir up a rebellion against Theresa May has almost certainly failed. Instead, his decision to publicly call on the PM to go has shown that even after the Tories’ lacklustre conference May still retains a wide degree of support among the party’s MPs. Here is the full list of Conservative MPs,
The Conservatives now have a real fight on their hands. After 1979, as champions of free-market capitalism, they seemed to embody the ruling ideology of the age. One best-selling book even called Labour leaders Blair and Brown the ‘sons of Thatcher’. Now the Labour party speaks openly of socialism and has a shadow chancellor, John
It’s safe to say that Grant Shapps’ plot to oust Theresa May is not going to plan. After being outed by The Times, the former party chairman has been turned on by many of his parliamentary colleagues. Now Mr S understands the ultimate humiliation has been handed to him. It turns out that Shapps was
A move against Theresa May led by someone with their career in front of them might be seen as a bold attempt to shake the Cabinet into action for the good of the party. But a plot led by Grant Shapps, party chairman under David Cameron, is a rather different proposition. He doesn’t seem to
The paths of two French mothers, Madame Ibn Ziaten and Madame Merah, converged in a Paris court this week, at the start of the trial of one of their sons, Abdelkader Merah. In March 2012, another of Madame Merah’s sons, Mohammed, shot dead seven people in southern France in the first of the Islamist attacks
I think it’s fair to say that Theresa May did not have a cracking conference, but the sympathy vote might even help her. I certainly felt sorry for the Prime Minister, and instinctively don’t like the nasty playground teasing from the Men of Twitter. (She does have diabetes, too, which can’t help.) But she has
In the run-up to last year’s referendum, some grave-faced pundits predicted that Brexit would prompt a mass exodus of bankers from London to Frankfurt. Nonsense, said the Leavers. Everything will be fine. As with almost every aspect of the campaign, there was virtually no common ground. Depending on which side you listened to, either the
On this week’s episode, we discuss the tragic events in Las Vegas and wonder if there’s anything we can do, or should be doing, to stop it happening again. We also be look at the contentious Catalan referendum, and ponder what makes the perfect pub quiz. First up: This week, a deranged gunman opened fire
Talk of an imminent coup against Theresa May might be somewhat overblown, but most Tories generally accept the Prime Minister won’t be around to fight another election. Not so James Gray. The Tory MP for North Wiltshire thinks May could stick it out for the next five. In an interview with the BBC, Gray said
The White Cliffs of Dover are, arguably, one of Britain’s most famous sights – immortalised of course by Dame Vera Lynn. So no wonder, then, that when the National Trust decided to launch a fundraising campaign to help them raise £1 million to secure a 700,000 square metre area of land on top of the
Is Theresa May now doomed after her conference speech went so badly wrong? Tory MPs were yesterday so shocked by all the mishaps that it took them a few hours to realise that underneath all the things that weren’t May’s fault – such as the P45 stunt and the set falling apart – were a
Theresa May must have woken up this morning wondering, for a split second, if yesterday was all just a very bad dream. The front pages will hammer home the reality of her situation – she was ‘luckless’, says one of the kinder headlines. But I wonder: how much did yesterday’s shambolic performance have to do with
Free trade hasn’t always been a British tradition. When the first issue of The Spectator hit the newsstands in July 1828, the country was firmly under the thumb of the Corn Laws. Introduced in 1815 to protect the vested interests of the land-owning classes, these measures propped up the price of British grain, artificially high
Kneeling, fundamentally an act of humility or deference, doesn’t seem the obvious protest against injustice when the National Anthem plays before a major American sporting event. The quarterback Colin Kaepernick made the gesture famous—and personal, since only he (and sometimes a couple of teammates) did it before his San Francisco 49ers took to the field
If Labour’s party conference in Brighton suggested the party was in a celebratory mood, that sense of triumphalism has been vindicated by the shambolic gathering of Conservatives in Manchester. The comparison between the two parties has been starker than ever: the buoyant Corbynistas laying out Marxism to unwavering applause, whilst bickering Conservatives can’t even sell
The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s press conference yesterday was moronic. Earlier this week, NBC News broke the story that Tillerson, exasperated by Donald Trump’s shenanigans, called him a `moron’ during a meeting in July at the Pentagon. It took the intervention of vice-president Mike Pence, in the role of Trump administration life coach, to
Oh dear. After yesterday’s calamitous leader’s speech, Theresa May’s position looks a little less secure than it did prior to her party’s conference. Although Cabinet ministers are said to have called her to say she ought to stay in post, others take a different view. Ed Vaizey has just spoken to BBC Radio Oxford. Asked
After Theresa May’s leader’s speech fell victim to pranks, health issues and technical glitches, the Prime Minister has received a rough ride in the media. Last night’s episode of Newsnight was no exception – the programme promised to ‘make sense’ of the ‘hitches’ in May’s speech: A few hitches in Theresa May's speech today… We'll
Theresa May had hoped her Conservative conference speech would not only paper over the cracks within her own party but also strengthen her Brexit negotiating position ahead of a crucial EU summit later this month. In around two weeks, EU leaders will gather in Brussels to decide whether to commence trade negotiations with the UK. The key
Theresa May’s Tory party conference speech was a memorable one if only for all the wrong reasons. A prankster, her faltering voice and a broken sign meant the Prime Minister’s reboot did not go to plan. Here is the newspaper verdict on May’s nightmare speech: The luck that all leaders need has ‘deserted Theresa May’,
Some of you may not like this, but the BBC Ten O’Clock News last night was pretty scrupulous in its coverage of the Prime Minister’s speech, and Laura Kuenssberg – not always my favourite news bunny – delivered a very good piece indeed. She trod the line between sympathy, analysis and an acute feeling in
In her speech today at Conservative party conference, Theresa May announced a draft bill that would give Ofgem full power to impose a widespread energy price cap. Here’s what Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com and cheapenergyclub.com has to say about her proposals. It’s a national disgrace that a struggling 90 year-old granny pays substantially more to boil a
Why do Tories all look the same? This year, having never been to a party conference before, I went to the Labour one in Brighton, then the Tory one in Manchester. At each, the political weather was what you’d expect. What struck me most, however, was the difference in clothing. In Brighton, I saw women
In what kind of moral universe would it be considered acceptable for the authors of a war, the people who voted for a war, to get on their high horses over those who make daft or jokey comments about that war? For the people who green-lighted the bombing of a foreign nation to haughtily chastise
‘I know he’s a good general, but is he lucky?’ Napoleon used to ask. Theresa May was certainly a lucky politician when she ran for the Tory leadership. Her rivals imploded one after another in that contest leaving May the victor. But in recent months, May hasn’t had much luck. Today, it was truly atrocious.
We have a couple of hundred years of economic history to tell us that some things are just a really, really bad idea. Printing loads of money, for example. State control of industries. Punitive taxes. Subsidies. But of all the really terrible polices a government can put in place, the very worst of all is