All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
AN Wilson’s charming, 1840s terraced house sits on the brow of a hill, overlooking Camden Market in north London. Walking through the market recently, he was much taken with a particular stall. ‘There was a T-shirt for sale in the market, saying, ‘Too stupid to understand science? Why not try religion?” he says, laughing, ‘I
Although Damian Green has insisted Theresa May will lead the party into the next election, this hasn’t stopped Jacob Rees-Mogg receiving the first ‘official endorsement’ for leader. Last night, Activate – the questionable attempt at a ‘Tory momentum’ – announced that it was backing the Moggster. Given that this grassroots movement is yet to take off, it’s
Urgency is badly needed in Brexit talks, says the Sun. So the paper welcomes Theresa May saying that ‘both sides have to put more hours in’. It’s been a surprise that, up until now, ‘only a week each month’ has been dedicated to meeting face-to-face, says the paper – which makes the lack of progress
Although Lord Tim Bell is often referred to as Britain’s first king of spin, Mr S suspects he still has some work to do when it comes to mastering the art of good public relations. After his former PR firm Bell Pottinger was expelled on Monday from the UK public relations trade body for its work on
Theresa May created many problems for herself in this year’s snap election. Some are rather difficult to ignore, like fewer MPs and no Conservative majority. Others are very tempting and advantageous to ignore, like social care. The botched manifesto proposal on the long-term funding of social care has made reform even less attractive to politicians
Who does Theresa May want to promote in her reshuffle? On our Coffee House Shots podcast today, we discuss how the Prime Minister actually feels powerful enough to even consider moving ministers around, and why she might want to delay that reshuffle for as long as possible. But there’s another question worth asking, which is
Although the House doesn’t return until tomorrow, BBC Parliament has managed to get politicos in the mood for the new term with a re-run of the 1997 General Election – which saw the Conservative party annihilated as Blair won a landslide victory. Particular highlights include the Michael Portillo moment. As Dimbleby puts it: ‘This was his one
While the horrific destruction that Hurricane Harvey has left in its wake might feel like a nightmare happening miles away, we might end up feeling the after-effects in the UK as well. The RAC has warned that petrol prices could soar across the country, due to disruption at numerous US oil refineries. The hurricane affected the production of
Bashing Brexit is familiar territory for David Lammy. But Mr S thinks the next time the Labour MP wades in on the EU debate he might do so more carefully. Lammy was on Radio 4 last night following up on remarks reportedly made by EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier that Brits need to be ‘educated’ on
With second reading of the EU withdrawal bill coming this week, there’s a lot of speculation about Tory rebels and what amendments might be able to command a majority at committee stage. But there won’t just be rebels on the Tory side. There will be some Labour MPs who will be prepared to defy the
Last night’s TV debate between Angela Merkel and Martin Schulz poses a nagging question for British conservatives. No, nothing to do with Brexit – the subject wasn’t even mentioned. Rather, why was Theresa May so afraid of going toe to toe with Jeremy Corbyn before the General Election? If only she’d done a Merkel and
When Parliament returns tomorrow, Theresa May will come back to work to find her position a bit more secure than it was when she left for the summer break. With no obvious leadership challenger and her party vaguely united behind her, May looks safe in No 10 in the coming months – even if her claim
Britain will have to pay some kind of Brexit bill to leave the EU, accepts the Sun. But that shouldn’t mean having to ‘pay a penny more than is due’. The Sunday Times reported yesterday that Theresa May is considering offering £50bn to keep Brussels happy. The Sun has a simple message: we hope that
The numbers are awesome. In a matter of hours, Hurricane Harvey dumped nine trillion gallons of rainfall on Houston and southeast Texas: at one stage, 24 inches of rain fell in 24 hours. Like all American cities, Houston is prepared for hurricanes and floods — but Harvey was of a different magnitude. ‘We have not
Since Labour’s surprise victory in the People’s Republic of Kensington, new MP Emma Dent Coad has been quick to make her mark on Parliament. As well as saying her predecessors are not ‘hard acts to follow’ and calling for the monarchy (many of whom are her constituents) to be abolished, Dent Coad made the news
The latest competition invited poems in praise or dispraise of August. There was a whiff of collusion about the entry this week, so many references were there to rubbish television, rubbish weather, fractious kiddies, tired gardens, traffic jams; as Katie Mallett puts it: ‘A turgid time of torpor and delay.’ But there were some sparkling,
Last week, Brendan O’Neill described in this magazine how students regulate ‘unacceptable’ political views with ‘no platform’ policies, safe spaces and trigger warnings. Two weeks ago a student Latin course (Reading Latin, P. Jones and K. Sidwell) was ‘outed’ by an American PhD student, because the text featured three goddesses, each confidently stripping off, determined to
The Saudi town of Awamiya — like so many countless cities across Iraq, Syria and Yemen that are witnessing an unleashing of the ancient hatred of Sunni for Shia — now exists in name only. Last month, days before an assault on its Shia inhabitants by the Saudi regime, the UN designated it a place
Boris Johnson is inspecting the guard of honour and we are doing our best not to giggle. The Foreign Secretary is walking down a line of soldiers from the Libyan National Army. The red carpets are blowing over in the breeze. One of the senior officers looks uncannily like Colonel Gaddafi. And the band is
After six years of fierce fighting and with hundreds of thousands dead, the Syrian civil war finally appears to be settling down. The country is now divided into various pockets of influence, with Turkish-backed rebels in the north, US-backed Kurdish forces and their allies in the east and the Syrian regime and its Iranian-backed militias in the centre
Among yesterday’s tributes to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, one stood out. It came not from a churchman, but from one of Britain’s most divisive politicians. Tony Blair described the late cardinal as a ‘wonderful advertisement’ for Christianity. Now, you might expect a well-known Catholic to say something like that. Some reports did, after all, present Murphy-O’Connor
When this magazine endorsed Brexit, it did so in typically trenchant and elegant fashion. ‘Out and into the world’ we said. The central thesis of The Spectator’s case for Leave was that the European Union has become a parody of itself, a sclerotic, irredeemably unreformable, set of institutions that are, at some core, fundamental, level
Even some senior figures in Downing Street were unaware that Theresa May was going to say she wanted to lead the Tories into the next election, I write in the Sun this morning. The Prime Minister’s statement took Westminster by surprise. But even inside Number 10 there are doubts as to how seriously to take
There is a growing perception that Britain is floundering in its EU negotiations, with a professional team from Brussels running rings around our bumbling amateurs. It is an idea that is being put about by the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, who this week appealed for Britain to begin ‘negotiating seriously’. As he has found
Investing in the stock market can be a laborious task. Reading the latest research, calling up your broker, watching the latest trends on financial TV channels, subscribing to the Financial Times or reading Investment Week or Investors Chronicle. And once you have done all that, it turns out that the same old companies being touted.
It’s been a busy week for Brexit, with David Davis and Michel Barnier going head-to-head in Brussels, and Theresa May and Liam Fox heading to Japan to try and kick-start a trade deal. Here’s how the week unfolded: 1. UK-Japan trade deal lined up: In spite of predictions to the contrary, Theresa May won reassurance from Japanese
It is the gripe of every end-of-the-bar bigot you meet. ‘Look, I’m not saying there isn’t any racism but there can’t be as much as they claim. They exaggerate it. This isn’t me saying this, by the way. I know loads of black lads who say the same. They’re just milking it. It stands to
Things may be rather awkward for David Davis in Brussels at the moment, but at least he doesn’t need to worry too much about what’s going on in the Commons. The EU Withdrawal Bill starts its second reading debate this Thursday, with the big vote on whether it will pass to Committee stage, and how
For once, theres’s no vacancy in the shadow cabinet but when one inevitably comes up, Mr S would like to put forward his pick for promotion: Jared O’Mara. The Labour MP popped up on Channel 4 News last night to criticise the Tories for their spending on benefits. Inevitably, the dilemma of how it would
If Theresa May is in it for the ‘long term’, does this mean that she plans to do big things with her premiership? The Prime Minister promised a great deal when she stood on the steps of Downing Street over a year ago, but has so far delivered a snap election which messed up her
On Tuesday, the FT lead with a confident headline: May’s Hopes for Tokyo Dashed as Japanese Hold Back of Trade Talks – and quoting a Japanese trade official commenting on the Prime Minister’s visit to Japan by saying ‘I don’t think there will be substantial progress’. It also quoted the president of Japan’s Institute of
The victims of foreign dictatorships have become chips in our political games. In our corner of the rich world, for instance, the suffering of Venezuela matters only because Jeremy’s Corbyn’s enemies can use it to attack his support for the Chavist regime when it was unchallengeable, and his cowardly equivocation when the inevitable catastrophe followed.
People sometimes accuse me of being an immovable pessimist about our continent’s future. And I normally reply with the simple truth that when the facts are pessimistic, I am pessimistic. Allow me to highlight three recent causes for pessimism. In my recent blog on the now routine, nay mundane, acts of terrorism occurring in Europe,
Last week, I took my two youngest sons to the Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park. It is quite unlike other memorials or fountains. It forms a circular river which changes every couple of metres: shallow to deep, rushing to calm, springs to waves. Dozens of children were playing in the water; bare feet clambering,
