All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
If Health and Safety is (are?) your thing, you must always be dreaming, like Alexander the Great, of new worlds to conquer. The next one, I predict, will be cooking at home. Recently I have noticed talk about the bad effect of ‘particles’ produced by hot food cooked in or on ovens. The sequence will
As I’ve said before, the bellwether of post-Brexit prosperity will be the health of the UK car industry, rather than that of the far larger financial sector. The City is nimble enough to look after itself come what may; it requires little more than plug sockets and clever lawyers to outmanoeuvre barriers to its trade.
Washington, DC I hate to admit it, but I think I’m falling in love with Sean Spicer. No doubt Donald Trump’s stocky, gum-chewing, sartorially challenged press secretary will strike many readers as an unlikely object of passion. But it’s hard not to get red-hot for a man capable of inspiring so much outrage among the
It’s important to keep an ear out for the rhetoric of Britain’s remaining Remain parties, because they are changing, too. Having announced plans for a second Scottish referendum entirely because of Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon is now incredibly cagey about whether her independent nation would even be part of the EU, or perhaps more like Norway. The
Theresa May doesn’t do drama. She regards order as both a political and personal virtue. And this goes a long way towards explaining why she is Prime Minister. After the Brexit vote last June and David Cameron’s resignation, the Tories had had enough excitement. They turned to the leadership contender who was best able to
When a humanitarian tragedy disappears from our newspapers, there are two possibilities: that the crisis is over and life for survivors is gradually returning to normal — or that the human toll has become so routine as to no longer be considered newsworthy. Sadly, the deaths of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East
The centenary of the Russian Revolution has arrived right on time, just as the liberal democratic world is getting a taste of what it’s like to feel political gravity give way. In 2017, Lenin lives. ‘In many ways he was a thoroughly modern phenomenon,’ writes Victor Sebestyen in Lenin the Dictator, the kind of demagogue
Today Ukip went from a political party with one MP, to a political party with no MPs. Douglas Carswell has quit the party to sit as an independent. In a statement on his website, the MP for Clacton said he left Ukip on amicable terms ‘in the knowledge that we won’: ‘Like many of you,
Jean-Claude Juncker could have been invented by Nigel Farage’s spin doctors. He is sneering one-man advert for Brexit, Frexit and any other kind of EU-exit. As Hugo Rifkind argues in this week’s magazine, he is a caricature of the arrogant Eurocrat: “smug, lazy, unelected and utterly impervious to anything.” He is a notorious boozer, and managed
Ever since the 56 SNP MPs descended on Westminster following the 2015 general election, they have been criticised for failing to master Westminster etiquette — from clapping in the Chamber to taking shortcuts through the Chancellor’s office. However, is it really the Conservative MPs that are the ones in need of a lesson in good manners?
Those charged with keeping Britain safe from Islamist-inspired terrorism have always been clear that it was a question of when, not if, there would be another attack as I say in The Sun this morning. The one thing that has surprised the security services about this attack is the age of the terrorist. Up to
The best thing about being a Remainer is obviously the dinner parties, where we all sit around being incredibly well-heeled in leafy Islington. Bloody love a good heel, I do. And a leaf. Honestly, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Eddie Izzard and Nick Clegg crack jokes at each other in French, as Lily Allen
George Osborne has been a good friend to London. He sees the point of infrastructure and I hope he’ll fight hard for Crossrail 2, which has been shunted into the sidings by this government. London business rates are a huge issue, close to Osborne’s heart. He’s a supporter of the arts, with a streak of
There’s one thing that bothers me a lot about the letter sent by ‘more than 70’ MPs to the director-general of the BBC complaining about bias in its coverage of the Brexit debate. There are 650 MPs in the House of Commons, of whom 330 are Conservative. So does this mean that more than 570
In America, an argument has broken out among journalists, writers and intellectuals in the aftermath of the presidential election about whether Trump’s white working-class voters were decent, upright citizens let down by the supercilious liberal establishment or whether they were, in Hilary Clinton’s words, a racist, sexist, homophobic basket of deplorables. The curious thing about
The latest competition — asking for a poem of 16 lines in which the lines begin with the letters of the alphabet from A to P — proved to be a real crowd-pleaser, attracting not only the regulars but many welcome new faces too. You were at your witty and inventive best, and I offer
Despite David Cameron’s best efforts to keep his party together during the course of the EU referendum campaign, his personal friendships with Brexiteers did suffer. However, while both Michael Gove and Boris Johnson found themselves left out in the cold by the former prime minister, the Foreign Secretary at least is making inroads once more.
In spite of everything against them, the Labour party scored an historic victory last night in the City of London. Five Labour councillors were elected in wards that are traditionally contested by ‘independents’ (usually retiree residents who are inclined towards the pomp and ceremony). It was their highest ever total. People will, of course, be
One of the curiosities of the past 72 hours has been the manner in which it has become possible to make a clear distinction between those people who like and admire this country and those who only say they love it. There are certain ways in which the latter may be identified. The presence of
‘Northern Powerhouse fires up house prices in Manchester’ shouts one headline. ‘Manchester is at the centre of Britain’s property boom’ declaims another. ‘Manchester top for house price growth’, a third declares. As a property-owning Mancunian who has no intention of moving, this is welcome news. According to Hometrack, prices in my home city increased by
After a testing week which saw four fatalities and 40 injured following a terrorist incident in Westminster, ‘PrayForLondon‘ has been doing the rounds on social media. Happily, the BBC offered its own striking tribute to Keith Palmer — the police officer murdered in the attack — last night. "Yes, you have the power to hurt us.
Pankaj Mishra’s book Age of Anger is good in parts, but also shows the weakness of leftist thought. It is a bold history of political ideas that traces the extremism and populism of our day to nineteenth-century sources. Both Isis supporters and Trump supporters are reacting to the insecurity caused by neoliberal globalisation, he argues. ‘Cosmopolitan
This week’s Best Buys, provided by Moneyfacts, are Five-Year and Over Fixed Rate Residential Mortgages.
Theresa May told MPs yesterday that Britain will not waver in the face of terrorism. She is widely praised for her emotional address in the Commons, in which she said simply: ‘We are not afraid’. But still the question lingers: what can we do to prevent a repeat of Wednesday’s attack? Theresa May hit precisely
Loudon Wainwright III: Surviving Twin Leicester Square Theatre Even by the standards of his fellow confessional singer-songwriters who emerged alongside him in the 1970s, Loudon Wainwright III has spared us very little over the years about his marriages, divorces, affairs and — not surprisingly in the circumstances — his often troubled relationships with his children.
Well, Sir Christopher Wren’s epitaph got an airing in St Columba’s church in Derry today for the funeral of Martin McGuinness. You remember: ‘Si monumentum requiris, circumspice,’ the monuments in question being the face of London. Well, Fr Michael Canny, who delivered the homily at McGuinness’s funeral in St Columba’s church, said that if people
The hashtag ‘PrayForLondon’ is trending on social media. But so is ‘Antwerp’. Because no sooner were we invited to pray for London than a man of ‘North African descent’ was narrowly prevented from doing something similar in the Belgian city. This is life as usual in Europe now, of course. But among the endless replays
Yesterday’s appalling Islamist attack in Westminster was not just an attack on Parliament. It began on Westminster bridge, where foreign tourists and members of the public were indiscriminately targeted as they made their way over the Thames. But the attack ended at the Palace of Westminster itself, when the assailant was shot dead by police in New
As many people have remarked, a terror attack in the centre of London was expected at some point, although it is no less shocking for that. Aside from St Peter’s Basilica or perhaps the Eiffel Tower, there is probably no other European building as recognisable to Europe’s enemies as the Palace of Westminster. Theresa May
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for yesterday’s deadly terror attack in Westminster. Isis described the man involved – a British-born jihadist who has been named by police as Khalid Masood – as a ‘soldier of Islamic State’. The terror group released a short statement, saying: ‘The attacker yesterday in front of the British Parliament in London was
In her statement to the House of Commons, Theresa May said that the man responsible for yesterday’s attack was British-born and had previously been investigated by MI5 ‘in relation to concerns about violent extremism’. However, May stressed that, ‘The case is historic—he was not part of the current intelligence picture.’ Now, the fact that the
On this week’s podcast, we consider how refugees could be better aided, whether David Cameron might be envious of George Osborne’s ‘retirement’, and why getting trolled can be good for your career. First, as the government ends the Dubs amendment scheme, we ask whether there are better solutions to the refugee crisis. Paul Collier writes this week’s cover
Mr Speaker, yesterday an act of terrorism tried to silence our democracy. But today we meet as normal – as generations have done before us, and as future generations will continue to do – to deliver a simple message: we are not afraid. And our resolve will never waiver in the face of terrorism. And
There’s an episode of the TV political drama The West Wing which focuses on the raising of the retirement age. After much to-ing and fro-ing it’s decided that the subject is too toxic to tackle and so it is dropped from the President’s agenda. If only art mirrored life. A new report suggests that the