All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Germany lost a football match but won a moral victory last night, when Borussia Dortmund were defeated 3-2 at home by Monaco, in the first leg of the quarter finals of the Champions League. To restage a major fixture just 24 hours after a terrorist attack was a remarkable achievement. To restage it when the
President François Hollande was unable to fix France during his presidency, now expiring. Can he fix the French election by choosing his successor? Unable to run for a second term because of the problem French voters loathe him, Mr Hollande has told friends his final mission is to prevent the election of Marine Le Pen,
What does a spike in hate crime, a slump in sterling, supermarket price hikes, rising inflation and a squeeze on living standards have in common? The answer is simple, according to some: Brexit is to blame. But it’s time to stop pointing the finger at Brexit, says the Sun, which argues in its editorial that
Although Nick Robinson claims the BBC no longer has a duty to be balanced over Brexit now the referendum has been won, what about Scottish independence? With ‘IndyRef2’ on the horizon indefinitely, Mr S was curious to note the approach Andrew Marr took to interviewing the SNP’s Alex Salmond compared with unionist Ruth Davidson. When Davidson
The French have their uses, don’t they? They offer us their food, their wine and their bankers, and they also offer some reassurance. No matter how demented our politics may seem, things are never quite as dramatic, as emotional, as they are over the Channel. The best Britain offers Nigel Farage is an embarrassed slap
Last month, an article appeared in The Telegraph under the headline ‘Head of Wildlife Trust faces call to resign over hunting past’. An alternative headline could have been: ‘Anti-hunting activists have whole worldview turned upside down’, because that is really the only story here. The hunting past of Mike Bax, head of the Kent Wildlife
Let’s face it, us Brits have a dirty habit. We’re obsessed with property. We own much more of it than our European cousins, and many of us have come to see owning a nice home as not just a sign of a successful life, but intrinsically linked to our self-worth. Thanks to TV shows like
Mosul If you want to understand Mosul, there are worse places to start than a trip to the city’s zoo. After two and a half years of Isis occupation, and months of fighting between the militants and government forces, it is one of the few outdoor attractions still standing in Iraq’s second city. There is,
Oh dear. Someone at The New European is about to have a very bad Easter break indeed. Although the pro-EU paper claims it is an advocate for unity and tolerance, it seems they hold no qualms about stirring up division in UK towns. In the press release for this week’s issue of the newspaper, it’s
Steve Bannon fast became the most powerful person in the world you’ve never heard of. The man behind the Breitbart website became Donald Trump’s chief strategist and was credited with both Trump’s presidential victory and his wholehearted embrace of an America First, nationalist position in his first month in office. But Bannon’s influence has been
Although a government statement on the labour market statistics for Scotland doesn’t on the surface sound like the juiciest news release of the day, today’s has proved rather revealing. With unemployment in Scotland down by 15,000 in the period December 2016 to February 2017, the Scottish unemployment rate has fallen to 4.5 per cent — below
I’m really tired of being ripped off. Whether it’s council tax hikes, parking charges or bus tickets (a ten minute journey to the nearest town costs more than £4 where I live), I’ve had enough. And don’t get me started on the size of chocolate bars. So it’s with a weary sigh that I read
Boris Johnson fell flat on his face at yesterday’s G7 summit. Having called for tougher sanctions against Russia to punish the Kremlin for its support for the Assad regime in Syria, Boris laid the ground for the G7 to announce a firm crackdown. In the end, the G7 steered clear of any new sanctions, saying
How should Christians relate to the culture around them? That is the question raised by Rod Dreher’s article in the Spectator this week. He’s right that it’s a pretty fundamental question. If we Christians don’t know how to answer it, our message is likely to seem muddled. In common with many leading theologians of the last few decades, he claims
Is it madness to invest in cash? The simple answer is yes, but as with anything to do with investing, it is far more complex than that. We are living in a world of low returns, less liquidity, tighter regulation, increased competition and globalisation. When you include the advances in technology, it is clear to
The G7 has failed to agree on any new sanctions on Russia following the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons last week. This is a blow to Boris Johnson, who has been pushing hard for targeted sanctions on Russian and Syrian military figures thought to be linked to last week’s attacks. But it is worth
Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn launched his new small business policy with a press conference at the Federation of Small Businesses. Alas things took a turn for the worse when the BBC’s Mark Lobel attempted to ask the Labour leader about the situation in Syria: .@jeremycorbyn refused to answer a question on Syria at a business conference
As regular Spectator readers will know, universities today aren’t what they used to be. From students at LSE attempting to ban a free-speech society to City University students banning newspapers at the institution famed for its journalism school, censorship is on the rise on campus. What’s more, the election of Malia Bouattia — who called Birmingham University ‘a
There’s no such thing as a free lunch — and Owen Jones is quickly discovering that there’s also no such thing as a free jacket in a fashion shoot. The Guardian journalist has come under fire over his decision to model a £1,080 jacket while discussing the ‘collapse of capitalism’ with the men’s magazine. While Jones
Marine Le Pen sees plots everywhere. In her view the media, the Socialists, the judiciary and even the European Union have been conniving in recent months to enfeeble her presidential campaign. As she said during last week’s televised debate, ‘I’m politically persecuted’. But the plot with the potential to cause the greatest damage to the National
Are you a social media complainer? Do you use the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to vent your spleen at companies that have let you down? If so, you’re one of millions of people who eschew the traditional letter of complaint or irate phone call, choosing instead to air grievances on a public forum.
Theresa May’s £150,000 pay packet is dwarfed by that of many council employees up and down the country. Nearly 600 council staff now earn more money than the Prime Minister each year, and a report from the Taxpayers Alliance reveals that thousands of local authority employees earn six-figure sums. With many councils talking up fears about
The BBC made much this week of a recording, from 2008, of one Barclays manager instructing another to submit artificially low rates into the daily interbank Libor fixing because ‘we’ve had some very serious pressure from the UK government and the Bank of England about pushing our Libors lower’. How shocking is that? Well, perhaps
Continuing Scotland’s reputation for outspending public services in England (courtesy of funding arrangements which transfer resources from taxpayers south of the border) the Scottish Medicines Consortium today approved the prescription of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis ( PrEP) – the drug claimed to prevent the spread of HIV from infected people to their non-infected partners. The drug is
My name is Helen Nugent and I am a pavement parker. This is not a hobby or something I set out to do on a daily basis but, in many instances, it’s that or block the road to traffic and put cyclists’ lives at risk. Britain’s roads weren’t built for this many vehicles. There are
They say a picture can paint a thousand words. So, it was a curious decision by Guardian columnist Owen Jones to wear a £1,080 jacket while discussing the ‘crisis of capitalism’ in an interview with GQ. Discussing the path to true socialism in a wide-ranging interview with Alastair Campbell, Jones rallies against inequality and Tory cuts: ‘With
When a shell-shocked Ed Miliband stepped down as Labour leader following the party’s defeat in the 2015 election, he concluded his speech by saying that: ‘The course of progress and social justice is never simple or straightforward. Change happens because people don’t give up, they don’t take no for an answer, they keep demanding change’ The
After months of speculation, Alexandra Shulman’s successor at British Vogue has finally been announced. And in what may come as a shock to Samantha Cameron – who recently launched a new fashion line, and whose sister Emily Sheffield was hotly tipped for the role – the job has gone to someone cut from slightly different cloth. In fact, the powers that
A new survey finds that a quarter of British people who describe themselves as Christian say they do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. Well, it won’t surprise you to hear that I think they are on theologically dodgy ground. Christians should affirm the resurrection of Jesus, however much they struggle to reconcile it with
There was no shortage of momentous events in 1997. It was 20 years ago that Tony Blair was elected Prime Minister on a wave of New Labour optimism, Britain handed Hong Kong back to China and Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris. Less earth-shatteringly, the former Alliance & Leicester building society and the
What threat do the Liberal Democrats pose to the Conservatives? Two years ago, this question could have been brushed aside as someone trying to cause mischief. In the 2015 election, the Lib Dems lost 49 seats, a result ‘immeasurably more crushing and unkind’ than expected. At PMQs last year, Theresa May mocked Tim Farron’s plight as
Oh dear. Last week the Times reported that brains at the Grauniad are pondering moving the paper’s offices back to Manchester in an attempt to save money. Although Mr S heralded the move the paper’s best idea in decades, not everyone agrees. While Steerpike was sure the paper’s leading columnists would jump at the chance to up
Well, Islamists certainly have a useful working knowledge of the Christian calendar — probably more than most secular Brits — which accounts for the timing of today’s bloody attacks on Coptic churches in Tanta and Alexandria — the death toll is 45, and counting. The unfortunate Copts starting their Holy Week services today were intending
Alex Salmond – Theresa May ‘will crumble’ over Scottish referendum Despite Parliament having retired this week, the political debate rages on. Alex Salmond appeared on the Andrew Marr show to offer his take on the circumstances of a second referendum on Scottish independence. He remained defiant that it would still take place despite Theresa May’s