All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
What a difference three months can make. In April, Theresa May stood on the steps of Downing Street and announced that she was calling a snap election to increase her majority and stop opposition parties from ‘political game-playing’ during the Brexit process. Having lost that majority in the subsequent election, the Prime Minister will this week mark
Sir Vince Cable – ‘Brexit may never happen’ Sir Vince Cable, who remains the only candidate in the running for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats, has once again hit the headlines due to his firm standpoint against the UK leaving the European Union. On this occasion, Sir Vince has opined to Andrew Marr that
This week, Emma Dent Coad, the Labour MP for Kensington, called for Sir Martin Moore-Bick to be replaced as head of the Grenfell Tower inquiry. The reason? He does not ‘understand human beings’. Happily, her appearance on the Sunday Politics this morning presented an opportunity for Dent Coad to elaborate on her comments. Yet aside from
The Empire for International Development has a tough job justifying its deeply unpopular budget. In recent years, it has made out that development aid will stem the flow of migration. The following line appears in a piece that Priti Patel, the DFID Secretary, writes for the Sunday Telegraph today. We are taking immediate steps to protect our borders and tackle
It’s two weeks until the summer recess and judging by today’s papers, that’s two weeks too late. Despite Theresa May’s positive trip to the G20 summit, the Sundays are filled with tales of leadership plotting and planned Conservative rebellions. Although Philip Hammond was heralded as a caretaker PM a few weeks ago, it’s now David Davis
I voted Remain last year for two reasons. First, however irritating I found some aspects of the EU, I could not vote for the chaos I believed would follow a Leave victory. From the accession of Theresa May to the night of the general election, that looked like an excess of pessimism; now it looks
Until its liberation in the Six-Day War, Jews were not allowed to climb beyond the seventh step outside Ma’arat HaMachpelah, the Cave of the Patriarchs. Despite being built on land purchased by Abraham almost 4000 years ago, despite being the burial place of the patriarchs and matriachs of Judaism, despite the stone walls around the
Thursday marks the first anniversary of Theresa May becoming Prime Minister. As I say in The Sun this morning, several of her closest allies regard this as an opportunity to start trying to win back voters’ trust and respect. May has, by necessity, got rather good at apologising post-election. Her it’s my mess and I’ll
In the early hours of this morning, the tired-looking Secretary General of the UN took to the stage in Switzerland to announce the first major failure of his tenure. “I’m very sorry to inform you that despite the very strong commitment and engagement of all the delegations and different parties, the conference on Cyprus was
Now Donald Trump really has done it. He’s cutting nearly half the budget of the Fulbright programme, the fund that has paid for 12,000 Brits to travel to the US to study and for a corresponding number of Americans to come here. Given that the beneficiaries include people who’ve done terrifically well for themselves –
A cherished British institution is facing its Waterloo because young people have come to see it as an irrelevance – not the Conservative party but the BBC. Figures from Ofcom released yesterday show a dramatic fall in the amount of viewing of live television among 16 to 24 year olds who, collectively, are only watching
Having worked flat-out to defend judges over the Article 50 case in the Supreme Court, the BBC has gone the other way, in relation to the judiciary, over Grenfell Tower. Its news coverage is working hard to displace the retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick from his appointment to chair the inquiry into the fire. Groups
Twice in the first few days of this year’s Wimbledon, I have been left mystified by the optimism of the BBC’s punditry team. I have heard both Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer referred to as being “in the best form” of their careers, and the odds reflect what is considered to be an open title
What fun the internet is having now that Vladimir Putin has finally met Donald Trump. Social media is teeming with jokes, gifs, and memes about the two big dawgs of global politics finally coming together. It’s the great bromance of the populist age. Underneath the hilarity, however, there remains intense suspicions about the relationship between
We host a lot of events at The Spectator but we’ve just held our favourite: the readers’ tea party. About 200 subscribers come to the back garden for tea and cakes to meet our writers, our editors and each other. T-Sticks supplied the tea, H. Forman & Son the food and Taki brought along a bottle of Lagavulin for those in the
Theresa May is spending the day flying the flag for Cool Britannia at the G20 summit in Hamburg. The Prime Minister promised to use the trip to show that Britain remains a global player. But with May also planning to bring up the Paris climate change agreement with President Trump, how will the special relationship cope
Time was when Theresa May ran such a tight ship as Prime Minister that even so much as talking off the record to journalists was seen as a bit of a risk for a Cabinet minister to take. But post-election, the Prime Minister has so little authority that a number of things that previously seemed
On last night’s episode of Question Time, David Dimbleby made his way to Burton upon Trent to chair a panel made up of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Richard Burgon, Caroline Lucas, Susie Boniface and (Sir) Craig Oliver. Unlike last week, the BBC anchor did not have to eject any audience members for rowdy behaviour. However, that’s not to
Who would want be a member of Generation Z? Having your every youthful screw-up tracked and recorded on social media, facing the robot job apocalypse and without a lolly’s chance in hell of ever owning a home in London – even if medical advancements allow them to work until they’re 200. To top things off,
There is much celebration in Brussels today about what’s being described as a EU-Japan trade deal, but for political rather than economic reasons. Donald Trump has arrived in Hamburg for the G20 summit where he finds himself cast as a wicked protectionist, at odds with a pro-free trade global order. To hammer home this point, the EU is
G20 summits are usually dreadfully dull affairs, but this week’s global chinwag in Hamburg should be refreshingly feisty. No conference with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in attendance could ever be described as boring, and although President Trump’s first meeting with Putin will provide the main photo opportunities, there are plenty of other
The Government’s eleventh-hour political solution to Stella Creasy’s abortion amendment to the Queen’s Speech could create an unhelpful precedent within the delicate balance of the devolution settlements. I have long opposed the abhorrent abortion policies both north and south of the Irish border, so my concerns about last Thursday’s funding fudge to allow women from Northern Ireland
After days spent fighting over the public sector pay cap, today marked a return to politics as usual. The Labour party bickered about the threat of mandatory re-selection and the Conservatives tried to hide their differences on Brexit. Michel Barnier – the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator – used his first major speech since talks began
Since Jeremy Corbyn’s surprisingly good election defeat, his MPs who previously plotted to get rid of him have been queuing up to pledge their allegiance to the Labour leader. They have been doing this partly because they did make some rather dire predictions about the impossibility of holding their own seats, or indeed of Labour
Dear Sebastian, Thank you for your reply to my letter. Your words are a reality check. I have spent decades closely following economics and politics in various parts of the world and reading a lot of history. You, as you say, are not particularly political. You have pursued your career, played in a rock band
On this week’s episode, we talk about the myth of the British decline, theTwelfth of July parades in Northern Ireland, and the regrettable rise of the man hug. First, Britain seems to be relapsing into another bout of ‘declinism’, writes Professor Robert Tombs in his Spectator cover piece this week. From terror attacks to the Grenfell
Step One: Businessman criticises independence. In this case, Les Montgomery, chief executive of the Highland Spring mineral water brand. On Sunday, he told PA: ‘Businesses are fed up. The Scottish Government should be getting on with the job they are there to do. Focusing on employment, investment, those kinds of things. Independence isn’t the job
Investors are increasingly turning to shareholder activism to make their views heard, and their campaigns are working. As public trust in large businesses and politicians is at an all-time low, many argue that, in the right hands, activism is more effective than political intervention in curbing corporate excess and poor governance. According to research by
In this week’s books podcast, we’re talking about the lumbering hordes of the living dead. Yup: it’s Zombie Apocalypse time, as I sit down with Greg Garrett, author of the erudite and absorbing Living With The Living Dead: The Wisdom of the Zombie Apocalypse. More than just a survival guide, this book considers the literary, cinematic
On Tuesday, Steerpike revealed that the hunt was on to find a new No 10 director of communications, with the BBC’s James Landale pipped against his Beeb comrade Robbie Gibb for the top job. After Landale dropped out of the race, the plum job has gone to Gibb, the head of live political programming at
President Macron’s speech on Monday to the combined houses of parliament in the Palace of Versailles proved how stunningly different are the French from the British. Imagine our head of state promising to cut the size of parliament by a third. Imagine her, or even her prime minister, promising to renew the nation with ‘the
What a forty eight hours it has been for Emmanuel Macron. On Monday, he gave his regal address to the National Assembly at the Palace of Versailles, a grandiose occasion during which the French president rivalled Tony Blair and Barack Obama for swaggering self-confidence. As Jonathan Miller said in the Spectator, it’s hard not to be
It was better from Theresa May today. She was combative, prickly and forceful at PMQs. The ship is moving on a steadier course. And two toxic enemies have returned to the fold. In the days following the election, both Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan were ‘helpfully’ suggesting a possible timetable for Mrs May’s departure. Today
Now that Labour councils have been shown to be as much up to their eyeballs in the tower block cladding scandal as Conservatives ones the Left has subtly shifted onto a different target: the ‘neoliberalist’ war on red tape. Writing in the Guardian today, George Monbiot accuses the Government’s Red Tape Initiative – set up
