All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
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
The clock’s ticking to shield your savings and investments from the taxman for the 2016/17 tax year, which ends on Wednesday 5 April. But if you’re quick, there’s still time to to take advantage of tax relief that could save you thousands of pounds. Here’s a reminder of the key allowances to make the most
In this week’s Books Podcast I talk to Erica Benner about her new Life of Machiavelli, Be Like The Fox. Professor Benner, a Yale expert in political science, offers a new and intriguing reading of the great theorist of statecraft — arguing that in the violent and unstable Florence of his time, he learned to
Oh dear. With Scotland Yard treating today’s attack in Westminster this afternoon ‘as a terrorist incident’, hacks have spent the day trying to establish more details about the situation that has so far claimed four casualties. However, has a thirst for news meant some are a bit too eager to publish before properly checking the facts? Mr S only
Speaking in Downing Street this evening, Theresa May has urged people to go about their business normally tomorrow. In a statement that struck an appropriately defiant tone, May said that the targeting of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament ‘was no accident’. But that that any attempt to defeat the values of ‘democracy, freedom, human
I have just chaired a meeting of the Government’s emergency committee, COBRA, following the sick and depraved terrorist attack on the streets of our Capital this afternoon. The full details of exactly what happened are still emerging. But, having been updated by police and security officials, I can confirm that this appalling incident began when
A bizarre exercise in diplomacy from Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs. He manoeuvred the PM into a tricky corner and then stepped gallantly in to disperse the trouble he’d arranged. She’d been caught violating a manifesto commitment to protect school funding. The statistics proved it too. Corbyn’s back-room elves had devised a clever way to summarise
PMQs this week was a rather more even affair than usual. Since the Budget, the Labour leader’s team have clearly spent some time reading the Tory manifesto. Jeremy Corbyn came to the chamber armed with some decent questions about how proposed changes to the national funding formula broke the Tory manifesto pledge to protect the money
We keep being incited to find it heartwarming that Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley were known as the Chuckle Brothers. But what were they chuckling about? Their shared success at outwitting the British state. Both, though for opposite reasons, had made their careers out of harassing Britain, and both, in their later years, had acquired
Tottenham MP David Lammy has been writing in the Evening Standard about how it makes sense now for London to become a ‘city-state’, following Brexit: Over the course of the next two years as the reality of Brexit begins to bite, the economic, social and political cleavages between London and other parts of the country
In an appearance on the Today programme on Monday, Ken Livingstone silenced his critics by managing to refrain from mentioning Hitler once during the course of the interview. Alas, his good behaviour wasn’t to last. Speaking on Radio 5 Live this morning, the former Mayor of London — who is currently suspended from Labour after he argued that Hitler
Martin McGuinness’s death has sparked a wave of fawning and fury in the obituaries. So: ‘man of war’, peacemaker or something in between? The Sun’s verdict is clear: the ‘pious praise’ for McGuinness is nothing short of ‘revolting’. It’s true, the paper says, that the ‘second part’ of his life differed from his early days.
Today was a reminder of the professionalism and bravery of those who protect the Houses of Parliament. I heard an explosion and before I had moved the eight feet or so from my desk to the window to see what was going on, shots had rung out as the police dealt with the situation. The
Apathy. In a world where there are countless demands on our time, social media never sleeps and 24-hour news bombards us with stories of doom and gloom, it’s tempting to down tools, reach for the duvet and adopt the foetal position. But an apathetic attitude has consequences, whether it’s missing that crucial deadline or turning
Sales of The Spectator are not just at an all-time high, but growing at the fastest rate in 30 years. We’re growing, we need help and are looking for a digital guru to provide it. The job is now known, in the industry, as Head of Product. It’s a rather unromantic way of describing what
First they came for your nail scissors, then your liquids, and now they’re after your electronics. The news this week that the US has banned passengers from taking laptops as carry-on onto flights from ten Middle Eastern airports has sparked horror among the global jet-setting community, which only intensified when the British government promptly followed
There are many mysteries in life. Where did we come from? Why do I always forget to take my bag for life to the supermarket? Why does the word lisp have an ‘s’ in it? And, in the name of all that is holy, why does it take up to six days to clear a cheque?
I never met Martin McGuinness, but I was certainly affected by him from an early age. His decisions, and those of his colleagues on the IRA Army Council, indelibly coloured my childhood. Belfast in the 1970s and ’80s was a grey, fortified city, compelling in many ways, but permanently charged with the unpredictable electricity of
Well the obituaries for Martin McGuinness are in. And many are as morally illiterate as the man himself could have wished for. For instance, various obituarists have noted that the young McGuinness’s failure as a young man to get an apprenticeship as a mechanic started him off on the road to terror. Few of these
It was the burkini that brought Monday night’s debate to life between the five main presidential candidates for next month’s French election. For the first hour of the televised debate there had been much posturing and postulating but no sharp exchanges. That changed when Marine Le Pen accused Emmanuel Macron of turning a blind eye
Blistering barnacles! Thundering typhoons! What dastardly double-dealing! To bolster their puny team of pen-pushing, quota-quoting civil servants, those fiendish Brussels bureaucrats have recruited Europe’s greatest investigative reporter. With Tintin on the EU’s side in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations, do our valiant Brexiteers stand any chance at all? No idea what I’m on about? Then let
In an age of fanaticism, it was always unlikely that the urge to censor would be confined to the left. If you think that the insults conservatives have thrown at liberals will not boomerang back to injure them, consider the following examples of right-wing invective. Conservatives claim millennials are ‘special snowflakes,’ unable to handle criticism
For someone who once branded his own Cabinet colleagues ‘bastards’ — and two decades later said he only called them bastards because they were bastards — John Major has of late become weirdly sensitive to rough, colourful language. He’s peeved at what he calls ‘ultra Brexiteers’, who are big meanies, apparently. These ultras are launching
So I am feeling a bit better about my lack of radio experience. These are exciting times for free movement of labour and with Westminster under the control of Tory and Labour cabals, lovely jobs outside Parliament are tempting. George Osborne is no more qualified to edit the Evening Standard than Tristram Hunt to run
Was it a case of fate or a helpful tip off from No 10 that meant Brexit Central‘s Brexit party fell on the same day Theresa May announced the date she would trigger Article 50? Either way, it made for a joyful atmosphere as the likes of Vote Leave’s Matthew Elliot, Nigel Evans and James Cleverly
Finally, we have a date: March 29th will see Theresa May trigger Article 50 and set the Brexit train in motion. After all the hype, what can we expect? The Sun says it hopes that the European Parliament will handle things better than its ‘muppet of a President’. Jean-Claude Juncker, who the paper says is a
Scottish nationalists may want to get the champagne at the ready. Word reaches Steerpike that Andrew ‘Calamity’ Cooper – the serial bungler whose last project was the EU Remain campaign – is being sounded out to lend his expertise to Scots trying to save the union. The SNP want a referendum within two years; Theresa May
‘I think pre-nups are brilliant,’ Catherine Zeta Jones told Vanity Fair back in 2000, shortly after marrying Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas. ‘If I were marrying someone of lesser fortune who was 25 years younger, I’d be doing exactly the same thing. Why should Michael be in a position where half of his fortune, which he’s
Ulster is where memory burns long and forgiveness comes slow. The death of Martin McGuinness will pass without the spilling of sorrow by many Unionists in Northern Ireland and here in mainland Britain, where the IRA’s terror campaign paid regular, outrageous visits, there will be those who mutter a cold ‘good riddance’. Douglas Murray writes: ‘[W]hile
The economists were right. For months now, they have been warning that the Brexit vote and the subsequent fall in the pound would drive up prices. Today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics confirm that consumer prices are rising at their fastest rate for more than three years. According to the ONS, the Consumer Prices
Predictably enough it didn’t take long for the rearguard Remain lobby, and other opponents of the government, to jump on the latest inflation figures, which show the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) for February rising from 1.8 per cent to 2.3 per cent. Frances O’ Grady of the TUC, for example, said that Britain risked ‘sleepwalking into
So Martin McGuinness has died. Already this is giving vent to the sort of ‘How McGuinness became a man of peace’ stories. Personally I have always thought the salient point about the man is not that he became a man of peace but that he was ever a man of violence. Over recent years a
Ask any two Turkish nationalists how they will vote in their country’s upcoming referendum, and you’re likely to get two different answers. In just under a month, Turks will vote on a constitutional amendment that, if passed, will usher in the biggest political revolution since Kemal Ataturk founded the modern republic. It would shift the country from
