All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Wounded Remainers in Britain and the Hillary set in the US love banging on about ‘post-truth politics’. Lies are everywhere, they say, falling from Trump’s weird mouth, plastered on the side of Brexit buses. And apparently these lies invaded voters’ minds and made us do the unimaginable thing of voting against the EU and failing
It’s not long now until Christmas Day, that cherished time of year when we don our elasticated pants, break the seal on the Quality Street and prepare to eat until we pass out. It’s the one day of the calendar when diets, healthy eating and all thoughts of exercise are banished, to be replaced by
Transport secretary Chris Grayling says he is powerless to intervene in the dispute between Govia Thameslink, which operates the Southern Railway franchise, and the unions RMT and Aslef, whose strikes over proposals for Driver Only Operation have brought misery to passengers over a period of many months. I am not convinced. Whatever the law says,
For the past few weeks, British newspapers have been informing their readers about two contrasting battles in the killing grounds of the Middle East. One is Mosul, in northern Iraq, where western reporters are accompanying an army of liberation as it frees a joyful population from terrorist control. The other concerns Aleppo, just a few
It’s been ‘one hell of a year’ started Tom Parker Bowles in his opening address at this year’s Snow Queen Cigar Smoker of the Year Awards Dinner. The glitterati were out in full force as Americans and Brits came together to pay tribute to the best cigar smokers of 2016, as Kelsey Grammer was crowned
While Theresa May is adamant that her government will not give a running commentary on Brexit, David Davis talked relatively freely on the topic at the Exiting the European Union Committee. He said he would not negotiate control of immigration in Article 50 talks, and that the aim is to have access to the single market
PMQs began with the Labour MP Peter Dowd asking Theresa May if she didn’t wish that she had told Boris Johnson to FO rather than sending him to the FO. To which, May replied that he was a fine Foreign Secretary — an FFS. At this point, it seemed that the session, the last PMQs
Well, is it our fault? George Osborne has repeated his claim, which he has made already, that the situation in Aleppo did not ‘come out of a vacuum’ but was due to a ‘vacuum of Western and British leadership’. Specifically he was taking issue with the Commons’ vote three years ago not to back airstrikes
On Tuesday, there was surprising news in Parliament as it emerged that Philip Davies had been elected onto the women and equalities committee. Given that Davies has vigorously campaigned for men’s rights to be given a better hearing and raised doubts about the intentions of some feminists, even an outsider could hazard a guess that
The ‘price of non-intervention’ is becoming one of those awful Westminster clichés. It is a phrase which, we can be sure, will be used to justify another half-cocked and disastrous military intervention in the not-too-distant future. There is growing consensus among the political class that, had wicked Ed Miliband not scuppered brave David Cameron and George Osborne’s
What could Jeremy Corbyn attack Theresa May with this week at Prime Minister’s Questions? The Labour leader has already had a go at the crisis in social care funding, which the government is trying to patch up this week by raising the council tax precept from 2 per cent to 4 per cent. He could
Whose fault is the bloodshed in Aleppo? Yesterday the House of Commons discussed this at some length in an emergency debate on the onslaught by Syrian and Russian planes on the city. One of the most powerful speeches came from George Osborne who spoke about the impact that the 2013 Commons vote had on Syria
In the old days, Tom Watson used to attend Jeremy Corbyn’s Christmas drinks for hacks — and even offer a speech of his own. However, in a sign that relations between the Labour leader and his deputy may not be so tickety-boo, the pair held separate bashes this year. As Watson thanked hacks for their
One thing I won’t miss about No. 11 Downing Street are the Christmas cards: 2,056 Christmas cards to be exact. That was the number I had to sign every year. The recipients included 87 FTSE chief executives, 209 foreign dignitaries, six EU commissioners and one shadow chancellor. They all added up, and it involved several days
Last week the Joseph Rowntree Foundation released a report, Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2016, which revealed that more than seven million people in the UK are living in poverty, despite being part of a working family. Among the identifiable factors behind these figures were the rising costs of private renting, stagnating wages and cuts
Corbyn’s improvement continues. He thumped away at a single issue today – social care – in a determined attempt to corner Teresa May and stick the word ‘crisis’ on her jacket, like a brooch. A crisis for the elderly, he said. A crisis for families. A crisis for the NHS. ‘A crisis made in Downing
A man was arrested on Monday of this week after stabbing a man on a passenger train at Forest Hill station in London. Reports of the incident say that the knife-wielding assailant had shouted ‘Death to Muslims’ and ‘Go back to Syria’ among other things. Some reports suggest that he may have been looking for a
More than 1,000 UK bank branches have closed over the past two years, according to Which?. And HSBC has disclosed that it is shutting more than four branches a week, The Guardian reports. The bank says that a minimum of 57 more will be shut down in January. Of all the high street banks, HSBC
Southern’s strike continues for a second day today – spelling more misery for commuters. And the Sun knows who is to blame for the disruption: the ‘hard-left’ who are willing to ‘inflict misery on the public for political ends with impunity’. The Sun says that it’s time for a crackdown on strikes. It says the
SpeccieLeaks presents: Transcript of private meeting between President Trump and President Putin, 14 February 2017, Andreyevsky Hall, Grand Kremlin Palace PUTIN: So how are you liking Russia? TRUMP: Fabulous. Amazing. And this room — incredible. You have beautiful taste, my friend. Beautiful. PUTIN: You like gold? TRUMP: Very much. We used a tremendous amount of
The choosing of Exxon mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as America’s next Secretary of State – which is expected to be confirmed today — seems a typical Donald Trump move: crass, profoundly annoying to the president-elect’s enemies, yet at the same time perhaps very clever. The political class is, naturally, aghast: a corporate titan in charge of
America may need to ‘vote again,’ says former CIA operative Robert Baer – preferably in a plebiscite not orchestrated by Vladimir Putin. The spy-turned-author spoke to CNN on Saturday about the latest reports of Kremlin skulduggery to elect Donald Trump. While there is no evidence that hackers fiddled with electronic voting systems or ballot-counting machines, the CIA
Basic bank accounts – products designed for those who are ineligible for standard accounts – may levy higher fees than necessary, according to the BBC. Government figures suggest that millions of people could be paying over the odds for accounts meant to help them. Despite the introduction of fee-free basic accounts at the beginning of
So, the Remoaners have at last got a piece of economic news they can try to crow about – the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose last month from 0.9 per cent to 1.2 per cent, sparking a round of ‘I told you so’s’ on Twitter – one even describes it as a ‘cost of living
Trying to write the first draft of history on the EU referendum and the leadership mess that followed had both its dramatic and its comic elements. My phone never stopped ringing with Eurosceptics keen to tell me why their contribution to a meeting that had previously escaped my notice was the decisive factor in securing
Britain was once a nation of shopkeepers. But one wonders for how much longer. As if the combination of Amazon, councils’ parking charges and above-inflation business rate rises wasn’t bad enough, we now have a petition. Of course, we do. The petitions wants all large shops to be shut on Boxing Day, as they are on Christmas Day. It argues that
Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the party has struggled when it comes to forging a positive relationship with the MSM (mainstream media). Right wing press aside, Corbyn has taken issue with coverage from the BBC, New Statesman, The Guardian, the Mirror and Channel Four. However, are times a-changin’? Last night journalists were welcomed into the
Sleaford wasn’t terribly good for Labour, was it? Nor indeed Richmond Park. Sleaford was never very Labour friendly – although, even given that, the party’s performance was staggeringly abject. Richmond has not been historically Labour-friendly – but given its current trajectory, towards the achingly liberal and affluent London upper class, you might have expected a
One is growing at 2.9 percent, the other at 2.1 percent. In one retail sales are growing at 1 percent, in the other at 7.5 percent. In one wages are growing by 2.4 percent a year, in the other by 2.3 percent. In one, the establishment is coming to terms with a populist revolt against the
If conspiracy theorists turned their attention to the economy rather than, I don’t know, aliens or Hillary Clinton, surely it would not take long for them to notice the peculiar rise in the tax take from VAT. VAT sounds innocuous enough, perhaps because no one really knows why it is there or what ‘Value Added’
Social care was notable by its absence from the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. But the care system is now firmly back on the agenda following reports yesterday that Theresa May was set to allow councils to raise bills to plug the social care funding gap. The Daily Mail agrees that this is an issue that needs
In the past year, the Guardian has declared tea-drinkers to possess ‘the worst possible English trait, up there with colonialism‘, HP sauce as the condiment of the establishment, street parties to be ‘a front for a middle-class nationalism that celebrates austerity’, and sunday roasts to ‘evoke received memories of oppression and an enslaved work force’. So, perhaps it shouldn’t
It has been 200 years since Britain abolished the slave trade and sent the Royal Navy out to enforce the ban across the world. Times have changed. Yet slavery at home and abroad is booming like nothing else. Theresa May knows this. It’s no wonder that alongside the chaos of Brexit negotiations she has made it her
It would be extraordinary if a row about a pair of trousers had continued into a second week – if the row were just about a pair of trousers. As I wrote last week (when I thought the fight over Nicky Morgan’s comments about Theresa May owning a pair of £995 leather trousers was starting