All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I’ve never been a big fan of the Supreme Court, seeing it as a Blairite invention and – given our position in the European Union – a misnomer. But its decision to back the High Court and remind Theresa May that only parliament can dissolve laws that parliament makes is welcome. It has issued a useful
After being been paid a week or two early due to Christmas, and then shelling out on festive gifts and nights on the town, for many of us there’s too much month left at the end of the money. It’s at this time of the year that the overdraft facility from your bank can be
One of the advantages for Theresa May in being the first foreign leader to visit the Trump White House is that other European government are eager for information about what he actually plans to do. Both Handelsblatt and Spiegel have good pieces detailing the German government’s concerns about its lack of contact with, and information
The early departure of Robert Hannigan as GCHQ chief, announced today, marks not so much the end of an era as the transition between eras. The agency’s famous HQ in Cheltenham, a metallic doughnut the size of Wembley Stadium, might look futuristic but was designed in the late 1990s before anyone worked out just how much data the
Theresa May’s industrial strategy, launched today at a special Cabinet meeting just outside Warrington, is part of the Prime Minister’s efforts to show that she is doing interesting and original things on the domestic front while also working on the Brexit negotiations. It is also part of her attempt to show that she is different
Unusually for the Conservatives they’ve become engulfed in a row over Trident. The Sunday Times reported that a dummy Trident missile had misfired in a test in June and veered towards the US, rather than Africa. After Theresa May refused to say four times on the Andrew Marr show on Sunday morning whether she had
Industry will shrivel. Exports will dry up. The few remaining steel works will be closed down. And rugby will be banned. Okay, I made that last one up. But in a report today, the leaders of Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru have laid out the case for keeping the principality in the single market –
Thanks to the Home Office’s crackdown on hate crime, the Home Secretary recently found her conference speech officially recorded as a ‘hate incident’, after an Oxford University physics professor complained to the police that she was ‘picking on foreigners’. However, Mr S can’t help but wonder if Amber Rudd will soon be joined by her former
So Madonna says she doesn’t really want to blow up the White House. Her remarks at Saturday’s women’s march — ‘Yes, I’m angry, yes, I am outraged, Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House’ – have, she says, been ‘taken wildly out of context’. She has missed the point.
I like to prance around showing off in hats and shouting at men as much as the next broad but – apart from the fact that I can get it at home – there were several reasons why I chose not to join a whole batch of my bitches on the Women’s March this weekend.
Now we have confirmation. The official language of Donald Trump’s White House really is doublespeak. This is how absurd the row over crowd numbers at the inauguration has become. It started with an extraordinary speech delivered by Trump at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he appeared to speak off the cuff for about 15 minutes during
Some worrying news from consumer group Which? this morning regarding trading of personal and financial data on a ‘huge scale’, sometimes illegally and in breach of guidelines from the Information Commissioner’s Office. The BBC reports that after contacting 14 companies that sell data, undercover Which? researchers were able to access personal information on approximately half a million
Over the weekend, John Prescott criticised Theresa May for arranging a trip to meet Trump as thousands of women marched in protest of the US president. Given that it has since been pointed out to Prescott that it’s not completely unreasonable for a Prime Minister to arrange a meeting with the new leader of the free world, Mr S suggests
Among the words and phrases I’d be quite happy to never hear of again in 2017 is ‘Alt-Right’, up there with ‘remoaner’ and ‘liberal elite’. It’s partly the extraordinary amount of media attention given to an absolutely tiny fringe of a fringe of a fringe; partly that it’s one of those phrases that can mean
Is there something in the water at BBC broadcasting house? First Theresa May appears on Marr where she refuses to answer a question on Trident four times, then Diane Abbott comes up blank four times on Sunday Politics when asked about Labour’s Brexit position. The shadow home secretary struggled as Andrew Neil asked her a
This morning Theresa May appeared on the Andrew Marr show to talk Trump and Trident. While the Prime Minister successfully batted away suggestions that she wasn’t doing enough to challenge the US President on feminism — stating that the fact she will be there ‘as a female prime minister’ when the two meet is the biggest statement
We all love Michelle Obama. Of course we do. For the last eight years she has been ‘mom in chief’ of America – and the world. She has personified grace, courtesy, warmth, humour and, not incidentally, shown us what a good marriage looks like. Tirelessly supportive of her husband, but successful in her own right,
Entries came flooding in following the invitation to submit poems about a politician and an item of clothing. Michael Foot’s donkey jacket; Harold Wilson’s Gannex mac; William Hague’s baseball cap; Hillary’s pantsuit: all featured in what was a cracking entry. I especially enjoyed Fiona Pitt-Kethley opening line on Theresa May’s leathers: ‘Her look’s more S&M
The Women’s March on Washington is going to be big. Officials say 1,800 buses have been registered to park in the city today. The subway will open at 5 a.m. (it usually starts running at 7 a.m. at weekends) to accommodate the numbers. In all, 250,000 people are expected to join the rally to show
With Theresa May expected to head to Washington next week to see President Trump, I have a look at what the Trump presidency might mean for Brexit in my Sun column this morning. Despite his protectionist rhetoric, on full show again yesterday, Donald Trump is keen on a US / UK trade agreement. He has told
I always knew security agencies were missing a trick with the ladies. Currently, less than four in ten workers in MI5, MI6 and GCHQ are female, which isn’t just embarrassing, but bad for national security; because women have the potential to be great spies. But things are about to change. Since 2015, intelligence services have been
You would think there was enough financial scandal in the world to keep MPs exercised without denouncing the owners of private boxes at the Royal Albert Hall. But no. Sharon Hodgson, member for Washington and Sunderland West, has just shown once again that what really gets a Labour MP seething with indignation is not wrongdoing
Washington, D.C. is a police state even in good times. Unique in the land of the free, only there do you find officers casually toting assault rifles outside of Union Station as though Amtrak has just staged a coup within, or vast swaths of road abruptly shut down because the secretary of agriculture has decided
We were told Donald Trump would be displaying his “philosophical” side in his inaugural address. To me, sitting beneath a grey Washington sky, it looked pretty much the same as the bombastic side that we saw so much of during the campaign. In short he stood on the steps of the United States Capitol, symbol of
The most striking thing about Donald Trump’s inaugural address was how little it tried to reach out to those who had not voted for him. On election night, Trump made a deliberate effort to strike a graceful note. He said that America owed Hillary Clinton a ‘major debt of gratitude for her service to our
He could be the greatest disaster ever to befall America. He could go down as the man that Made America Great Again. What’s certain is that Donald Trump is the most radical US president for centuries. Trump’s inaugural speech was predictable — in the sense that we have heard Trump say it all before. In
Rather than seek to inspire or unite a country, Donald Trump’s inaugural address was a long vindictive swipe at his enemies mixed with a whinge about free trade and how America has been the loser from it. Nothing about only fearing fear itself, nothing about asking what you can do for your country rather than vice
Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: thank you. We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people. Together, we will determine the course of America
Washington, D.C. I just witnessed an anti-Donald Trump protest, and it was nasty. About an hour ago, I looked out the window on the corner of 13th and Massachusetts Avenue and saw a crowd of roughly 300 people — most of them dressed in black and wearing bandanas and hoods — moving quickly through the
Although Donald Trump has suggested that he is unhappy with the BBC’s coverage of him, it’s the corporation’s reporting of Michelle Obama at today’s inauguration ceremony that has landed the BBC in trouble. As Katty Kay, the BBC reporter, led the coverage on the news channel, she offered a running commentary of the movements of various
As Donald Trump is sworn in today as the 45th US president, not everyone at the ceremony appears thrilled to be there. In fact, both Hillary Clinton and the departing first lady — Michelle Obama — look as though they would like to be anywhere but the White House: Mr S welcomes your caption suggestions on this
It happened because you banned super-size sodas. And smoking in parks. And offensive ideas on campus. Because you branded people who oppose gay marriage ‘homophobic’, and people unsure about immigration ‘racist’. Because you treated owning a gun and never having eaten quinoa as signifiers of fascism. Because you thought correcting people’s attitudes was more important
It’s inauguration day, and as the world watches with bated breath to see how President Trump’s first days in office pan out, the dollar is dwindling. Reuters reports that it fell 0.1 pc in the hours before Trump’s speech, which economists hope will shed some light on his economic policies. Hitherto, his pledges have been
Washington, D.C. Nigel Farage’s 2016 celebration of Nigel Farage’s 2016 is a party that might never stop. And it is a jolly affair. Yesterday, at the Hay-Adams Hotel, in Washington, DC, Nigel and his pals — let’s call them the champagne populists — had a US election bash. Nigel stood up to do his usual