All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
We must all come together. Hope, not hate. Nothing to do with Islam. Nothing to do with Muslims. Just a rogue individual, possibly in the employ of some mysterious foreign agency. Just terrorism, bad people. Unaligned wickedness. Nothing to do with religion. We must all come together. And show love. And solidarity. Hope not hate.
Until last night Ariana Grande’s fans, predominantly tweens and teens, were more preoccupied with the concept of friendship than the ripple effect of international politics. I witnessed this first hand when I was working at MTV and oversaw a Twitter Q&A with Grande, where she spent an hour or so answering questions sent in by fans. As
The first victim named was from Lancashire, the second an eight-year old girl. Two girls from the isle of Barra in the Western Isles are among those still unaccounted for. A reminder, if it were needed, that though this was an attack in Manchester, the chains of personal connections to the horror stretch all across
The police haven’t yet said anything about the identity of the Manchester suicide bomber, but the Islamic State has claimed responsibility. Here’s the statement. This is the same layout as the statement released on social media after the Bataclan attacks, complete with the bizarre “breaking news” box on the top left and references to the murdered young girls as
It’s the modern malaise: online fraud. In a world where so many of our transactions happen over the internet, it’s little wonder that fraudsters have descended on the web in droves. The latest statistics paint a bleak picture. According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 11.5 million incidents of crime relating to computer misuse
I have just chaired a meeting of the government’s emergency committee COBR, where we discussed the details of – and the response to – the appalling events in Manchester last night. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and the families and friends of all those affected. It is now beyond doubt that the
Theresa May has just spoken from Downing Street about the terrorist attack in Manchester. She said that the police and the security services believed they know the identity of the suicide bomber, but do not wish to reveal it for now. She said that the bomber had blown themselves up by one of the exits
As we ready ourselves for what has become an annual pilgrimage to the polling booths, in terms of finance there is little doubt that housing is taking centre stage in this election. This was not always the case. It’s true that if you look back to newspaper coverage of the housing crisis in the late
Never underestimate the resilience of the Welsh Labour party. Up until now, this year’s general election had looked like it was going to be an historic one in Wales, where the Conservatives have not won since the 1850s, and Labour have come first in both votes and seats every time since 1922. Both Welsh polls
Today was not a day that Theresa May will want to repeat anytime soon. In the morning, she had to U-turn on one of the centrepieces of her election manifesto and in the afternoon, she faced the most difficult interview she has had as Prime Minister. Theresa May never really got onto the front foot
AN: Prime Minister, you started this campaign with a huge double digit lead in the polls, it’s now down to single digits in some polls. What’s gone wrong? PM: Well, Andrew, there’s only one poll that counts in any election campaign, as I’m sure you know from your long experience, and that’s the one that
This is the latest in a series of posts that could be entitled ‘things I could never say when I was a political journalist but now I can.’ Today’s topic: U-turns. The bottom line: they don’t matter, or at least, they don’t matter anywhere near as much as most of the coverage of them suggests. Theresa
In 1981, when President Reagan lifted the grain embargo on the Soviet Union, Washington Post columnist George F. Will went on to complain that the Reagan administration ‘loved commerce more than it loathed communism’. Well, yes. American conservatives have, more often than not, put commercial interests before ideological ones. Sometimes the two even coincide. For all
U-turning on a manifesto commitment just days after it was announced would be embarrassing for any politician. But it is particularly humiliating when your whole campaign is based around the idea that you offer competent, ‘strong and stable’ leadership. But even leaving aside the immediate political repercussions, this U-turn is a deep blow to Theresa
Just two months ago, John Prescott made the news over some indiscreet comments he made about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Following a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the former Deputy Prime Minister was reported to have ranted: ‘They are just not up to the f—ing job. They’ve always been useless and now they’re running things.’
So, the Conservatives have capitulated. After days of facing negative headlines about the ‘dementia tax’ Theresa May has given in and announced that there will, after all, be a cap on care costs faced by an individual. No wonder modern governments find it so hard to eliminate their structural deficits. So loud are the protests
Theresa May promised ‘the first ever proper plan to pay for – and provide –social care’ in the party’s manifesto. Four days later, that plan has now changed. The Prime Minister has said that there will, after all, be a cap on the amount people have to pay for the cost of their care. So
As is becoming a habit with Theresa May, the Conservatives have today performed a U-turn on their manifesto plans for social care. After unveiling proposals that would mean many would have to pay more for their own social care — up until their assets were 100k or less — there were cross-party complaints about the plans and
Little-known rules regarding ‘death-in-service’ payouts from workplace pension schemes could see grieving families hit by shock five-figure tax bills. That’s according to Royal London which says millions of employees are at risk of exceeding the pension lifetime allowance because of their death-in-service benefits. As a result, it’s calling for a change in the rules. Many
‘The Tory “dementia tax” could backfire for Theresa May’ was the Coffee House take last Thursday, perhaps the first mention of that phrase in the media last week. It took a few days for the announcement to sink in, and for the ‘dementia tax’ tag to stick. But it most certainly has backfired now. Jeremy Hunt tells the Evening Standard that the
A decade ago, while working for a national newspaper, I forced the then Labour government to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The papers showed that Gordon Brown defied repeated warnings from his own officials about the potentially devastating impact of this £5 billion-a-year raid on pension funds and went ahead with it
Optimistic Labour supporters are greatly cheered by the party’s boost in the polls. Labour has now cut the gap to single figures for the first time during the election campaign, with YouGov putting Labour on 35 per cent to the Tories’ 44 per cent. So is this proof that Corbyn’s policies are going down well with voters? And
Well, that didn’t take long. When the BBC Scotland leaders’ debate finished, it was clear who the star had been: Claire Austin, a nurse who landed a direct hit on Nicola Sturgeon. She said that she has had to use food banks and that NHS nurses have had seen their pay rising by just 1pc a year for nine of
After the agony of the recent ITV opposition leaders’ debate, the Scottish leaders’ debate felt like a much-needed upgrade – in terms of leaders, and debate. Both Ruth Davidson and Nicola Sturgeon are better speakers than most MPs, and Kezia Dugdale (Labour leader in Scotland) makes more sense than anyone on Labour’s front bench. In the
Really interesting, the new figures about public attitudes to abortion, specifically women’s attitudes, reproduced below and published in the Mail on Sunday today. They suggest a good deal of unease with the current law, an unease I would guess has something to do with advances in pre-natal screening. It’s hard to square a six month
Jeremy Corbyn – ‘All bombing should be condemned’ Jeremy Corbyn refused on several occasions to explicitly condemn the bombing campaign of the IRA in the 1980s, repeatedly insisting instead that ‘all bombing is wrong’. Asked six times by Sophy Ridge about his stance on the issue, Corbyn appeared reluctant to single out condemnation of the
Oh dear. Given that today’s papers are filled with negative headlines regarding the Conservative manifesto, one would be forgiven for thinking that all Labour had to do this Sunday was sit back and watch. However, Jon Trickett has other ideas. The shadow minister for the Cabinet Office has taken to social media to share some
On the surface, today’s front pages don’t make enjoyable reading for the Prime Minister. The Sunday Times leads on a YouGov poll which says the Conservative lead has been slashed to single figures for the first time since last year, while the Mail on Sunday splashes on a Survation poll — claiming the Tory lead has
John Stuart Mill is usually credited as the person who first called the Conservatives ‘the stupid party’, but that isn’t quite accurate. Rather, he referred to the Tories as the stupidest party, and he didn’t mean that it was more stupid than every other party in the country, just the Liberals. If you substitute the
In attending to Labour’s Free Ice Cream For Everyone manifesto out of ghoulish voyeurism, I violated a personal rule of thumb. Jeremy Corbyn will not be prime minister. This manifesto will not become law. So why agonise over whether renationalising the railways is fully costed? My rule: avoid squandering time on what ‘might’ happen. Half
On the heels of the Today programme’s invitation to discuss ‘cultural appropriation’ (again), the New York Times reported the disheartening fate of a Canadian magazine editor, Hal Niedzviecki. ‘Anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities,’ he wrote, gamely proposing an Appropriation Prize for the ‘best book by an author
The security services are a rum lot. All that intrigue gets to you eventually, and that’s not counting those who sign up with less than laudable intentions. Harold Wilson was paranoid but not necessarily wrong. So when Jeremy Corbyn’s MI5 file finds its way onto the front page of the Daily Telegraph, even those not
Last year’s Austrian presidential election looked like a turning point for the European Union. Alexander Van der Bellen, a soft left Eurofederalist (narrowly) defeated Eurosceptic Norbert Hofer, of the hard right Austrian Freedom Party, and Continental Europhiles went into 2017 with fresh hope that they might halt the tidal wave of Brexit, before it engulfed
When he was asked what kind of generals he wanted, Napoleon replied ‘lucky ones’. Theresa May certainly fits into that category, as I say in The Sun this morning. In the Tory leadership race her two main rivals, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, destroyed each other leaving her facing Andrea Leadsom who promptly blew herself