All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
How long are the Tories going to campaign on the winter fuel payment? It was their main line of attack on Monday at Work and Pensions questions in the House of Commons, with a number of Conservative MPs asking ministers to say how many pensioners were going to die this winter because of the restrictions
Keir Starmer took a different tone on Israel today. That change of tone is to a certain extent to be expected, given the Prime Minister was marking the first anniversary of the 7 October attacks. He reflected in the Commons this afternoon that there were still nearly 100 hostages unaccounted for, and families across Israel
Should we trust a new study that claims that the level of irregular migration in the UK has essentially not changed in the past 16 years? That is the assertion being made in the reporting of a project called Measuring Irregular Migration, or MIrreM – a collaboration between Oxford University and 17 other universities across
2 min listen
Who’s in charge in Downing Street? Until recently, the answer to that question would tend to reveal whether you were a Sue Gray or Morgan McSweeney supporter. Keir Starmer’s two most senior aides were viewed to be in a power struggle over the direction of the government. But with Gray’s resignation this weekend, it is McSweeney who is running
Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast interview with Vice President Kamala Harris was largely a love-in. But when you have been actively avoiding the media for the majority of your presidential campaign, even the most innocuous of questions can accidentally bite. ‘You don’t do too many long-form interviews,’ Cooper put to Vice President Harris at the start
It’s an iron law of politics that when the staffer becomes the story they have to go. Dominic Cummings had to leave Boris Johnson, and Theresa May’s joint chiefs Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy both took the blame for the disastrous 2017 election result. The reshuffle resolves a perplexing political question Lobby journalists leaving Liverpool
Who remembers Natalie Bennett, the Aussie-accented eco-warrior whose car crash interviews briefly enlivened the 2015 election campaign? The onetime Green leader has since been installed as one of our great unelected masters in the House of Lords. But it seems that all that the institutional knowledge there has not yet rubbed off on Bennett, who
Cheap Chinese imports will flood the market. Even more jobs will be lost, and the country’s industrial base will be even weaker than it already is. UK Steel, the lobby group for the industry, has today called for tariffs to stop the last remaining steel mills being wiped out by unfair competition from lower cost
New Zealand just lost one tenth of its naval defence fleet. The HMNZS Manawanui – the jewel in the nation’s small military crown – ran aground near Samoa this past weekend after hitting a reef and catching fire. The £75 million specialist survey vessel sank on Sunday morning off Samoa’s southern coast of Upolu. An order to abandon ship was made
It’s been a golden start in politics for Hamish Falconer. The son of former Lord Chancellor Charlie, the ex-Westminster boy triumphed at his first tilt for parliament in July before being appointed a fortnight later as the Minister for the Middle East. Highly regarded by many in the Foreign Office, it was to some excitement
Given the idolatry with which Americans worship the man widely seen as their greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, and the obsessive place that identity politics now occupies in the public spaces of the US, it was probably inevitable that the sexuality of American civil war winning ‘honest Abe’ would come under revisionist scrutiny sooner or later.
There’s been another development in the wearying saga of Gary Lineker, the over-salaried presenter of football on the BBC and banal takes on Twitter/ X. An email leak suggests that a draft BBC statement preparing to announce his departure from Match Of The Day is in the works, but he has laughed this off on screen and told
One year after the brutal attacks of 7 October 2023, Israel’s global reputation has undergone a remarkable transformation. Far from being undermined by the actions it has taken in Gaza and beyond, Israel’s standing has been fortified, its image strengthened with steel. While some voices –particularly in the West – have feigned concern about Israel
Who’s in charge in Downing Street? Until recently, the answer to that question would tend to reveal whether you were a Sue Gray or Morgan McSweeney supporter. Keir Starmer’s two most senior aides were viewed to be in a power struggle over the direction of the government. As Chief of Staff, Gray was ultimately in
Emmanuel Macron has chosen to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’ murderous attack on Israel on 7 October by criticising their response. In a radio interview, the president of France announced that ‘the priority today is to return to a political solution, to stop delivering weapons to fight in Gaza’. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
Change is the flavour of the month and nobody knows that better than Sir Keir Starmer’s top team, which on Sunday saw the PM’s chief of staff Sue Gray swap out for Labour campaign guru Morgan McSweeney after weeks of negative briefings about the former civil servant. Gray is down but not quite out –
It might be best described as the war for Keir Starmer’s ear in Downing Street, a battle to the bitter end between two of the Prime Minister’s most senior advisers. There was, in reality, only going to be one winner, and so it has come to pass. Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief adviser and architect
Nørrebro, Copenhagen’s hip, multicultural inner-city area, was crowned the world’s coolest neighbourhood by Time Out in 2021. Former residents include Denmark’s greatest living film star Mads Mikkelsen. If you’ve viewed Nordic noir TV dramas depicting the nexus of hip urbanism and the tribulations of mass migration, you’ll have seen plenty of Nørrebro (sometimes called ‘Nørrebronx’ in tribute
It is one year since the Jews suffered the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Nazi era, and what is the British left doing? Raging against the Jewish state. Hitting the streets in their thousands to fume against the nation that was the victim of that carnival of racist killing. They’re protesting not against
Now that Sir Keir Starmer has unilaterally decided to give up British ownership of the Chagos Islands, the last vestige of our imperial inheritance in the Indian Ocean, it seems an appropriate moment to look back at the long-forgotten history of this remote possession. Mauritius will be the happy recipient of the Chagos Archipelago, which
A year has passed since the terrible events of 7 October 2023, but for Jews the pain of that day – when 1,200 were killed and 250 hostages snatched across Israel’s border into Gaza – remains vivid. Every call and every text on that dreadful Saturday morning brought awful news. Many of those murdered were
‘Could you write a piece,’ my colleague wondered aloud, ‘saying come back Jeremy Corbyn: all is forgiven?’ Ha ha ha, said I. No. We most certainly are not there yet. And it is hard to conceive of any sequence of events, up to and including an asteroid strike on SW1 or a Day of the
Another one bites the dust. Now Sue Gray has resigned from her top job as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, taking on an ‘advisory’ position while Labour campaign guru Morgan McSweeney moves into her role. The move follows weeks of bad briefings about Gray – from claims the Starmer staffer had ‘subverted’ Cabinet over
11 min listen
Keir Starmer has not yet reached the 100 day mark but already he has lost his Chief of Staff. This afternoon, Downing Street has confirmed that Sue Gray is leaving her No. 10 role. Instead, she will be taking on an ‘advisory’ role as the Prime Minister’s envoy for nations and regions. In a statement
Back to Scotland, where the police probe into the SNP’s funds and finances continues to rumble on. Now it transpires that prosecutors are looking into findings that suggests a non-existent company was paid for refurbishment work carried out at SNP HQ. More than £100,000 was coughed up for work on a ‘media suite’ in the
Israel won’t rule out strikes against Iranian nuclear capabilities Iran launched missiles against Israel this week, and the world is waiting anxiously to see how Israel will respond. On the BBC this morning, Laura Kuenssberg asked Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely if Israel would rule out a strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities, which President Biden opposes.
Keir Starmer has not yet reached the 100 day mark but already he has lost his Chief of Staff. This afternoon, Downing Street has confirmed that Sue Gray is leaving her No. 10 role. Instead, she will be taking on an ‘advisory’ role as the Prime Minister’s envoy for nations and regions. In a statement
Politicians’ popularity only tends to go in one direction: down. John Major entered office in 1990 with a net satisfaction rating of +15 and left it having lost 42 points. Tony Blair moved into Downing Street in 1997 with an approval rating of +60 points. When he handed over to Gordon Brown in 2007, he’d
You will be forgiven for not having heard of, let alone given much thought to, a raw material called gallium. So, to explain: it’s a by-product of the bauxite-to-aluminium smelting process, it’s used in semiconductors and it is vital for the latest missile defence and radar technologies. Israel’s Iron Dome and the US Patriot Missile
It’s just four days to go until the next round of voting for Tory leader. So, with the various candidates pulling out all the stops from now until Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch has today decided to unveil her latest star supporter. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has thrown his support behind the shadow housing secretary, just days
Independent schools are an asset to the education system and they have been singled out by Labour for a tax rise which has as much to do with pressing the right buttons for the party faithful as it does with raising revenue. But really, those schools could do with better PR. Whoever thought it a
Witnessing the recent imperial progress of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, it occurred to me how impossible it is to imagine her ever shedding her current incarnation as world-bestriding, bronze-thighed musical potentate. But of course, she will. The time will come when the hits will dry up and new sorts of eras will beckon: the ‘disappointing
Many were killed. Others hid in the fields, forests and basements, sometimes for days, before surrendering to the Ukrainian forces. Frightened, ill-equipped and with very little – if any – training, hundreds of Russian conscripts (prizyvniki) have been captured in the two months since Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region began. Yet another of the
A myth seems to be developing about the 1990s. In a recent programme on Disney Plus called In Vogue: The 90s, a series of talking heads rhapsodise about the decade. ‘God, the 90s just changed everything,’ oozes Hamish Bowles, a fashion journalist. ‘It was a great time to be alive, it really felt like a
