All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Édouard Philippe is the perfect fit to be Emmanuel Macron’s Premier Minister. A one-time Socialist who then switched to the centre-right Les Républicains, the 46-year-old mirrors the ambiguity of his president. Philippe has been the mayor of the northern port town of Le Havre since 2010 and the region’s MP for the last five years.
I see that the UK’s Lucie Jones has blamed her Eurovision Song Contest failure upon Brexit. Lucie actually came fifteenth, which was substantially higher than either she or the song deserved. Her song, ‘Never Gonna Give Up On You’, or some such egregious, banal, tripe, was a hugely boring ballad without even the redemption of
Never mind Eurovision. For Germany, the state election in North Rhine Westphalia on Sunday was the big one – the best indication of how Germans will vote in their national election in four months time. The result was a ‘political earthquake’ according to German media – a humiliation for Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats, and a spectacular
Over the past few weeks, Theresa May has toured the country meeting a carefully curated audience of Tory supporters. This has helped to cultivate the idea that Theresa May’s Team are incredibly popular across the land. Today, CCHQ changed the formula and the Prime Minister met with non-vetted members of the public, on the campaign trail
Nicholas Soames may be MP to one of the safest Conservative seats in the country — with a majority of 24,286 — but that doesn’t mean the Tory grandee is taking anything for granted. Winston Churchill’s grandson has been snapped out on the campaign trail — travelling by horse, natch: https://twitter.com/Tim_R_Dawson/status/864093380028100610 No doubt the horse
I can understand why Theresa May should want to toy with the idea of having ‘workers’ representatives on board’. As with Tony Blair and his promise to be tough on crime, and David Cameron and gay marriage, it has become a tradition in modern-day elections that a party campaigning from a position of strength makes
Theresa May has been continuing her UK-wide tour to convince voters in all corners of the country to back the Conservatives. This weekend saw the Tory campaign machine make a whistle stop tour in Belfast. The Prime Minister attended a local agricultural show and talked to farmers and families about why they must support the party. So
In the wake of Friday’s international cyber attack, it was logical to assume that yesterday’s complete shutdown of the Manchester tram system was another casualty of malicious ransomware. But bosses at Metrolink say the closure was due to a technical fault in the control network and has now been resolved. For a city that has
I don’t normally glean insights for my personal finance columns from police dramas on TV, honest. Recently, though, I caught up with series one of Line of Duty. One of the plotlines explored the middle-class money dilemma of our time: how much a good parent should shell out for their kids. A decent officer was
Usually in a general election campaign, MPs in marginal seats invite high profile party figures to their constituencies in a bid to generate interest from the local media and win over swing voters. This is certainly what’s happening when it comes to the Tory campaign — from Theresa May downwards, Conservative ministers have been busy touring
Michael Fallon – We warned the NHS on cyber security Early this morning, Andrew Marr interviewed the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon. Marr attacked the government for failing to adequately prepare for Friday’s mass cyber attack, which caused havoc in the NHS, creating many difficulties and rescheduled appointments up and down the country: Marr: What patently
Oh dear. With Rebecca Long-Bailey widely touted as Jeremy Corbyn’s far-left successor, the Labour MP will be hoping to use this election campaign to show that she’s got what it takes to lead a party. So, it was a curious decision by Long-Bailey to appear on today’s Sunday Politics but refuse to answer any questions.
With less than four weeks to go until polling day, tensions are running high between politicians from the two main parties. On the Andrew Marr Show, Michael Fallon and Emily Thornberry came to blows over Jeremy Corbyn’s links to the IRA. When the Defence Secretary criticised Corbyn on this issue, the shadow foreign secretary hit back
Why do Conservative politicians love Ronseal so much? Theresa May tells today’s Sunday Times that the Ronseal slogan – ‘it does what it says on the tin’ – is her ‘political philosophy’. David Cameron spent years talking about Britain’s yearning for ‘a kind of Ronseal politics’, before describing the Coalition government as operating according to the
I have been called every name under the sun by a great many people since my defence of Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger was published in the Spectator on Thursday. Naturally, most of the abuse has been online, but a little came my way on more traditional media. A caller to BBC Radio Ulster, for example,
After a tricky week for Jeremy Corbyn and his team, the party hopes to refocus its efforts on Labour’s official manifesto launch this week. But Mr S fears a new hire to Corbyn’s election team could distract from the message. Mr S understands Unite chief of staff Andrew Murray is being drafted in to help with the final stages of Labour’s
Are Leavers thicker than Remainers? The short answer is: yes. At least, on average. That’s according to a paper analysing voters on both sides of the godawful Brexit referendum, which says that: ‘When compared with Remain voters, Leave voters displayed significantly lower levels of numeracy, reasoning and appeared more reliant on impulsive ‘System 1’ thinking.’ Now
Jeremy Corbyn wants to put up income tax only for people who earn more than £80,000 a year, he says. Anyone below that figure is safe. This reminds me of John Smith’s ‘shadow Budget’ in the 1992 general election. Smith said that the top rate of income tax would rise to 50 per cent for
Theresa May’s return to Downing Street on the morning of 9 June will surprise no-one, but there is one thing political commentators will be left to puzzle over: just why did the Liberal Democrats do so badly? Tim Farron’s party should be big winners in this general election. If not matching the 62 seats they
Nothing better sums up middle-class millennials’ sense of entitlement than their demand that they be paid for interning. ‘Paid internships now!’ has become the rallying cry of young media people and the Twitterati and now the Labour Party, too. Its throwback manifesto, leaked this week, promises to ‘ban unpaid internships’, on the basis that ‘it’s
The invitation to submit an obituary for planet Earth drew a smallish but varied and heartfelt entry. The usual culprits were in the frame — asteroids, global warming, hubris, Trump, Brexit… But Basil Ransome-Davies reckons the Martians have got it in for us, which struck me as altogether plausible given how Elon Musk and co.
I must protest at the Sun’s sacking of Kelvin MacKenzie. As shop steward for the small trade union of columnists who were once editors, I can state categorically that the editor, not the writer, is ultimately responsible for what is printed. In no way, shape or form will my members be scapegoated by the boss
All publicity is good publicity, right? Wrong. The United Airlines controversy last month showed just how quickly poor crisis management can decimate company shares. And we financial journalists know as soon as we mention our job titles when making a customer complaint, we usually receive a positive outcome, such is the corporate terror triggered by
Are there any words which have such an affinity as ‘NHS’, ‘IT’ and ‘cock-up’? Older readers might remember how the Department of Health blew £10 billion of taxpayers’ money on a computer system which was eventually abandoned. Today comes news that two dozen hospitals have been affected by a massive hack of computer systems. Patients
An eagle-eyed Twitter user has spotted something that could be a metaphor for the last 12 months of British politics. Theresa May’s 2017 general election battle bus is – wait for it – last year’s Remain bus, spray-painted with new ‘strong and stable’ slogans. It looks like the number plate checks out: 1/2 Theresa May's presidential
It’s that time of the year when politicians start posting pictures of groups of people smiling eerily while holding party placards and claiming that they’ve just had a ‘great response’ on the doorstep. For the uninitiated, this sounds as though the people opening their doors in each street are just thrilled to see said eerily
Chatham House has been at the forefront of thinking on Britain’s role in the world. So with the General Election less than a month away, it’s a great place to set out my approach: on how a Labour Government I lead will keep Britain safe, reshape relationships with partners around the world, work to strengthen
‘I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and I intend to spend it’. That was how George W Bush put it after winning his second presidential election in 2004. He’s possibly not the best model for good governance, but the sentiment is worth pondering as Theresa May rolls on relentlessly towards victory. Mrs May
When it comes to voices, the words of the apocryphal Times headline come to mind: ‘Fog in the Channel; Continent cut off’. It’s one sign of the deep cultural differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’, which maybe made Brexit inevitable. You might not think a taste in voices would have any connection with this cultural divide. But
This week’s Best Buys, provided by Moneyfacts, are Five-Year Fixed Rate Buy-to-Let Mortgages.
Labour had a day to forget yesterday: the party’s leaked manifesto was plastered all over the newspapers, its leader was a no show at Labour’s poster launch and Corbyn’s car collided with a BBC cameraman. On the plus side, the party has succeeded in snatching the headlines away from the Tories. But is this wall-to-wall
Labour’s leaked manifesto is, predictably enough, a fiscal fantasy land with lots of spending pledges and rather few tax rises to pay for them – higher taxes for the top five per cent of earners would not necessarily earn an extra penny in revenue if they encouraged more avoidance or flight to tax havens. But
All the papers have been filled with stories from people who have met the Duke of Edinburgh. I can now tell mine. Early on during my time at the Treasury, I was announced to the receiving line at the state banquet in Buckingham Palace for the President of Indonesia as ‘Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer’.
The broadly welcomed admission recently by Prince Harry that he had sought counselling to help him to deal with his grief over the death of his mother, Princess Diana, when he was 12, presents a striking contrast with the stiff upper lip always favoured by his soon-to-retire grandfather, Prince Philip. Nevertheless, the Duke of Edinburgh
