All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Supreme Court’s landmark case on triggering Article 50 has now finished. We’ll have to wait until January to hear the verdict of the 11 judges involved. But for now you can follow all the main events as they unfolded on our Spectator live blog: 4.20pm: It’s all over at the Supreme Court. Lord Neuberger
After MPs voted last night to back the Government’s plan to invoke Article 50 by the end of March, the Guardian says it’s good news that Parliament is now finally using its powers to shape the Brexit process. The paper says it’s ‘extraordinary’ that so much time has passed since the referendum, given how there
Pity the prisons minister, Sam Gyimah, who last week found himself explaining the term ‘potting’ to MPs on the justice select committee. For those unacquainted with the depraved state of our jails, let me save you the trouble of reading the exchange on Hansard: ‘potting’ is to throw faeces and/or urine over a prison officer.
Football is no stranger to scandal, but the scale of the sex abuse allegations now circling the beautiful game is something new. Over 350 incidences of sexual abuse have been reported in football’s sprawling academy system. Crewe Alexandra was the focal point of the initial allegations, but the net has widened rapidly – taking in
Have you read what the Pope has just said about being sexually turned on by eating faeces? He wasn’t talking about himself, let me quickly add: just human beings in general. They make him sound more like a desperately tasteless stand-up comedian than the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church. I think the media have to be very clear,
Outside of London, the area in Britain that has seen the greatest settlement of eastern Europeans since 2004 has been Kent, for obvious geographical reasons. And to cater for their needs and provide creature comforts, a multitude of shops sprang up in the years that ensued. But a strange thing has started to happen here
Unless you work from home or are blessed with an understanding employer who offers flexible hours, waiting in for a delivery can feel like a sojourn to the seventh circle of hell. ‘Your delivery slot is 8am to 10am,’ intones the recorded voice. But you don’t believe a word of it. In fact, you know
There’s a slew of housing news this morning including new research from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. It predicts that the housing market will make a slow start in 2017 due to a lack of homes for sale. According to Rics, property transactions have slowed since the spring and although there is a chance they
Will someone please dress Melania Trump? She looks like something out of The Only Way is Essex in those tight-fitting, mono-coloured dresses, matched with the plastic smile. But the fashion industry will not intervene, for its members have discovered a moral conscience. Designers including Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford and Derek Lam have made known their
461 MPs have just voted for Theresa May to invoke Article 50 by the end of March. The Tory amendment to Labour’s opposition day motion passed comfortably with only 89 MPs opposing it—and Ken Clarke the only Tory amongst them with 20-odd Labour Mps joining the SNP and the Lib Dems in voting against. Now,
The PM is abroad. Her vacant throne was occupied by David Lidington, the agreeably lightweight Leader of the House. He’s confident, fast-talking, well-briefed but glib and untidy-looking. He doesn’t improvise well. Physically he’s an unrestful presence. He hops and twitches and pecks and dabs like a pigeon attacking a box of Chicken McNuggets. For comic
In today’s Article 50 debate, MPs from across the House offered their two cents worth on what Brexit means. However, one Remain MP got more than they bargained for when they sparred with Brexiteer Bill Cash in the Chamber. After Cash argued that the vote for Leave was perfectly clear, Ken Clarke intervened with a counter
There are three misconceptions about the far left. Not one of them is true. And all of them hide the crisis in the opposition, which is giving a dangerously incompetent Government unparalleled and unwarranted freedom of manoeuvre. The first is that its obsession with doctrinal disputes makes far leftists Pythonesque figures of ridicule, rather than a malicious force with malign political consequences. We
Is Labour actually managing to do its job as a decent opposition? Yesterday, the party forced the government into a U-turn over whether the Prime Minister must reveal her plan for Brexit negotiations before triggering Article 50. This was over an Opposition Day debate, which leads to a vote that is not binding on the
With Theresa May away, it was David Lidington v Emily Thornberry at PMQs today. The shadow foreign secretary asked Lidington if the UK would stay in the customs union, Lidington danced round the question. But Thornberry, unlike Corbyn, kept coming back to the same question. By the end of the exchanges, it was clear that
Chris Grayling has found himself in the naughty corner today over a leaked letter — to the Evening Standard — from 2013, which appears to show he opposed handing over control of suburban rail to keep it ‘out of the clutches’ of Labour. This is embarrassing — at the very least — for the Transport Secretary
Although the BBC has traditionally been accused of showing anti-Conservative bias, since Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader the party has found itself waging war with the Beeb on numerous occasions. However, today Steve Baker swung it back to the Tories. The Brexit-backing backbencher used a question at PMQs to accuse the BBC of breaking
Niall Ferguson’s belated decision to back Brexit has aroused a lot of mockery today. Unkind souls are presenting him as a historian in a muddle, but for followers of his writing his new pro-Brexit stance really isn’t so surprising. He says that he had been inclined to support David Cameron and George Osborne, his friends. A
Does Theresa May understand what life is like for the just-managing families she purports to stand for? The Tory party has seen a fair bit of snipping over the past few days over whether the Prime Minister’s £995 Amanda Wakeley trousers, which she wore for a newspaper interview and was then ridiculed about by one
Christmas doesn’t start until Nigel Evans sends out his annual card. This year’s is no exception, with the Conservative MP’S 2016 offering as modest as ever. He has, however, decided to share the spotlight with another man this time around. Step forward Donald Trump. Perhaps Evans could help No. 10 forge ties with the president-elect
It’s day three of the Supreme Court’s landmark case on the triggering of Article 50. Here’s how the day unfolded: 4.15pm: The Supreme Court hearing has now finished for the day. The Lord Advocate, Lord Wolffe has been putting forward the Scottish Government’s case. So far, he has told the court that using prerogative powers
MPs will vote for the first time today on the Government’s Article 50 timeline. While Labour have said the decision to spell out the plan for Brexit is a ‘welcome climbdown’ by ministers, is this afternoon’s debate merely delaying the actual process of Britain leaving the EU? That’s the Sun’s verdict on today’s proceedings, with the
With the Supreme Court ruling on the government’s Article 50 appeal not expected until the new year, Theresa May is facing a more immediate Brexit headache. After around 20 Conservative MPs were expected to back a Labour motion today — tabled by Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer — calling for the Prime Minister to ‘commit to publishing the government’s plan for
Just over a year ago I believed that new challenger banks were on the edge of glory, about to kick off an era of better and fairer banking for everybody. In an article for ResPublica I wrote: ‘When real colour is injected into the financial services industry, consumers will be better served and ultimately empowered
Sometimes a combination of news stories crop up that so perfectly sum up the spirit of the age, its absurdities and hypocrisies, that there ought to be a name for it. This week, for instance, I learned that the Home Office had barred three Iraqi and Syrian bishops from entering the country, the same department
More than 7 million Britons, including 2.6 million children, are living in poverty despite being part of working households, according to a report commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The study says that deprivation is increasingly connected to the high cost and insecurity of private rented accommodation. The Guardian reports that ‘disability is increasingly linked to the changing nature
It is a week where you’d imagine most British politicians would be occupied by the Supreme Court ruling over Brexit. But late last night and in the early hours of this, two members of the last government found time for a spat about art on Twitter. Former Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove said
We were about to see parity with the dollar. It was fetching less than an euro at the airport. Spiralling costs were about to wipe out what little remained of our manufacturing industry, and the RXS’s – that’s the racist, xenophobic scum, in case you were wondering – were all about to lose their jobs.
Michel Barnier, the Commission’s Brexit negotiator, has been giving a running commentary on Brexit this morning. Barnier, striking a predictably tough stance before the negotiations start, said that he wants the divorce aspects of the Article 50 deal concluded by October 2018, to give sufficient time for ratification. This, essentially, means that there’ll be one
The second day of the Supreme Court hearing has seen the Government continue to put forward its case for why it should be allowed to pull the Article 50 trigger without the say so of Parliament. And Lord Pannick has been arguing why Parliament must give approval for the start of the process of Brexit. Here’s
Something is happening across Europe, says the Sun – but EU leaders are still intent on burying their heads in the sand. Following Matteo Renzi’s defeat in the Italian referendum on Sunday and far-right Eurosceptic candidate Norbert Hofer’s good showing in the Austrian election, it’s clear that ‘voters across Europe are increasingly rejecting the EU’s
Of all the barbs fired at us Brexiteers, the one that’s irritated me most is ‘Little Englander’. The suggestion is that pro-EU people are broad-minded Europhiles while Brexiteers are petty nationalists who want to dismantle the Chunnel and while away our days drinking tea and slagging off Germans. It couldn’t be more wrong. In fact,
If the movie Bonnie and Clyde with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway is on TV again this Christmas, it might act as a reminder that the days when bank robbers used guns and getaway cars have been consigned to history. Nowadays, thieves are armed with broadband, not bullets. They don’t need a getaway car because
As predicted, shoppers worked themselves into a frenzy during November’s Black Friday, new figures reveal. But this year it was internet sales that soared. According to the British Retail Consortium, a record one in four pounds was spent online during Black Friday. The Telegraph reports that ‘online sales of non-food items, which includes homewares and clothing, represented