All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The backdrop to Theresa May’s Brexit speech is almost as interesting as the speech itself promises to be. First, there’s the government’s very deliberate decision to make clear—via a Philip Hammond interview in the German press—that Britain will play hardball if it can’t secure a decent deal with the EU. Hammond made clear to Welt
And so there we have it. Shortly after midday in Stormont, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill declined to nominate a replacement for Martin McGuinness, causing the collapse of the power-sharing executive after five months shy of a decade. At 5pm, authority to hold elections passes, under the Northern Ireland Act 1998, to Secretary of State for
Pull yourselves together, you wusses. It’s a minor readjustment of our tariff arrangements we’re talking about, not an epidemic or a foreign invasion or an asteroid strike. Not that anyone would guess it from the apocalyptic vocabulary you’re using. ‘A hard Brexit,’ says Keir Starmer for Labour, ‘would be catastrophic for our economy, living standards,
As Michael Gove does his bit for US-UK relations in The Times today with a Donald Trump interview on the positives of a quick trade deal, his former staff, too, are on manoeuvres to boost post-Brexit business. Mr S understands that Gove’s former SpAd — and Vote Leave adviser — Henry Cook has joined Portland Communications as the
So, ‘global Britain’ eh? This, we are told, will be the leitmotif for Theresa May’s Brexit speech tomorrow and, indeed, for her approach to international affairs more generally. And who could disagree with any of that? The argument will, of course, be couched in economic terms. The spirit of Britannia will be unleashed to sail
One of the many admirable aspects of Japanese culture is that they have developed strong taboos against triumphalism in politics. When one person scores a clear political victory over another there is pressure for him to play down that win and to present the result as a compromise. It’s the natural response of an island
As fears over the state of the NHS continue to hit the headlines, new data shows that the number of people buying private medical insurance has increased significantly for the first time since the financial crisis. Figures compiled by LaingBuisson, a healthcare consultancy, and reported in The Guardian, reveal that ‘after falling steeply between 2008
It’s difficult to escape from Donald Trump’s interview with Michael Gove in the Times this morning. The president-elect’s view that he wants a quick trade deal with Britain is not only leading a number of newspaper front pages, it’s also stirring up excitement in the editorials. Here’s what the newspapers are saying: In its editorial, the Times says
Your average milkman has more wealth than the world’s poorest 100 million people. Doesn’t that show how unfair the world is? Or given that the poorest 100 million will have negative assets, doesn’t it just show how easily statistics can be manipulated for Oxfam press releases? They’re at it again today: the same story, every January.
After rail strikes caused havoc over the Christmas period, Sean Hoyle — president of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers — was reported as saying that the industrial action had been coordinated to ‘bring down this bloody working-class-hating Tory government’. While union leaders have since insisted that the strikes are not politically
Michael Gove has landed the first British interview with Donald Trump for The Times (where he is, now, a columnist). This is his first interview since he spoke to Justin Welby for The Spectator – it’s online and as good as you’d expect. The ability to build such bridges won’t hurt Gove should he want
With the deadline for the government’s public consultation on press regulation now passed, Karen Bradley must decide whether or not to trigger Leveson 2. Should section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act be activated, any publication not signed up to Impress — the press regulator largely funded by Max Mosley — would have to pay all
The trouble with plebiscites is that they leave the plebs stranded. A complicated issue is reduced to one question: should we leave the EU, yes or no. Nowhere on the ballot does it ask whether we should leave the single market or currency union, crash into the WTO without trade agreements with the rest of
‘I’m really interested about the similarities between me and Donald Trump,’ joked Jeremy Corbyn this morning on Marr. ‘Is it the hair or something?’ When the Labour leader expounded upon his Trump-esque analysis of the system that is rigged against the people, it turned out that the main difference between him and the American president
It was October 2010 the night the priest came to our door. The knock startled Tim’s dullard beagle into a howl just as Tim’s mother was serving up dinner. She and her husband had flown in from New York a few weeks earlier to care for their dying son. Tim and I had moved to
Curbs on executive pay, restrictions on foreign takeovers and workers on boards. Not Jeremy Corbyn’s plan for Britain, but ideas raised by Theresa May and put forward for discussion at her cabinet committee on the economy and industrial strategy. Not for 40 years have the Tories had a Prime Minister so firmly on the left
When Heidi Allen announced that she would stand to be the new mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough — while continuing her work as an MP — the decision was reported to have gone down like a cup of cold sick with local Tories. The backbench rebel’s decision to seek the Tory nomination ruffled feathers, with
Mark Lyall Grant, the Prime Minister’s national security adviser, is leaving. As I report in The Sun today, the 60 year-old Lyall Grant is to retire later this year. The hot favourite to replace Lyall Grant is Mark Sedwill, the permanent secretary at the Home Office. Theresa May knows Sedwill well from her time
Boris Johnson returned from the US this week boasting that the UK was now ‘first in line’ for a trade deal with the US. He said that the Trump team and the new Congress ‘want to do it fast’. But as I write in The Sun this morning, the situation is even more advanced than
It’s easy to see TV talent shows as three-ring circuses of cheap emotion, empty promises and bitter tears – but they have their bad points, too. While I can appreciate a dancing dog or knife-throwing nutter as much as the next man, surely only a sadist could contemplate the new Saturday evening smorgasbord of stultifying
Business cards. Check. Contacts book. Check. Stylish ski jacket. Check. If it is mid-January, the global elite, and certainly anyone who aspires to membership of that slightly nebulous group, will be packing their bags and flying, preferably by private jet, to the chic Swiss ski resort of Davos. Over the course of a few days,
The latest challenge was to submit an extract from a politician’s speech ghostwritten by a well-known comedian. At the 1990 Tory party conference in Bournemouth, Margaret Thatcher famously appropriated Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch to mock the Liberal Democrats’ new flying bird logo. But although Mrs T. gamely went along with her speechwriters’ suggestion to
The language of the left is a truly transformative grammar, so I suppose Noam Chomsky would heartily approve. There are words which, when uttered by a leftie, lose all sense of themselves — such as ‘diverse’ and ‘vibrant’ and ‘racist’. It is not simply that these words can mean different things to different people —
Kind readers sometimes ask what has happened to the case against me for electoral fraud. In these Notes on 20 August, I revealed that I had drawn attention in the EU referendum to the ease with which one could vote twice. Legitimately registered to vote in Sussex and in London, I had voted Leave in
The Guardian has a very significant story on its front page tomorrow. It has obtained notes of a meeting that Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, had with senior MEPs this week. These notes show that Barnier told them that he wanted a ‘special’ deal that would guarantee access for the EU firms and countries
While observing reactions this week to allegations against America’s President-elect my mind has been ineluctably returning to 2015 and the story so inventively known as ‘pig-gate’. In case anyone has forgotten, this was a story which was pumped into the British press and then into the world’s media about the then Prime Minister of the
Like the past, Scotland is a different country. Things are done differently here. What might be thought eyebrow-raisingly inappropriate in a larger polity is considered normal here. Consider these three examples: In 2015, Scottish Television decided it was a good idea to make Nicola Sturgeon, together with her sister and her mother, the star of
How much detail does Theresa May need to give in her much-anticipated Brexit speech on Tuesday? The Prime Minister will presumably have to say more than ‘Brexit means Brexit’, and odd phrases about what colour Brexit should be (red, white and blue) won’t pass muster either. But remember that the original big Brexit speech at
If there ever was a form of green energy which showed promise it is surely tidal power. Compared with wind farms and solar farms, tidal barrages have the potential to generate significant quantities of reliable energy. While the tides are intermittent in any one location, the times of high and low tide vary along the
How many other Labour MPs will decide to quit Parliament mid-term as Tristram Hunt and Jamie Reed have done? Some had already found escape chutes in the form of Mayoral contests, as Andy Burnham has done. Others don’t have the option of staying in politics in that sort of detached role, yet are in their prime
With Tristram Hunt stepping down as Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, Jeremy Corbyn has issued a statement wishing his old foe the best. Alas, not every comrade is on the same page. Paul Flynn — a former member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet — has had to delete a tweet in which he suggests Hunt quit as
I’m drowning in a sea of Post-it notes. They are everywhere. Yellow, blue, orange, pink. They dominate my life to the point where, every now and then, I consolidate the lot into one big pile in the hope that will force me to deal with them. Life admin is exhausting. From the endless list of
Listen to Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Ayesha Hazarika on Tristram Hunt’s departure: Another month, another Labour MP resigns. Following Jamie Reed’s resignation in December, Tristram Hunt has quit as the MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central to take on a role as the director of the V&A. In his resignation letter, Hunt says that ‘there were very
There’s a glut of data about first-time buyers from the Halifax this morning, including the news that the number of this type of home-buyer has hit a ten-year high. The Halifax First-Time Buyer Review said the number of buyers entering the market hit 335,750 last year, up 7.3 per cent on 2015. But the bank also