All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s happened. Early this morning the Liberal Democrats managed to cause an upset and overturn Zac Goldsmith’s 23,000 majority in the Richmond Park by-election. Sarah Olney, the winning Lib Dem candidate, won just under 50pc of the entire vote, with 20,510 votes to Goldsmith’s 18,638 — earning her a majority of 1,872. Since Goldsmith stepped down over Heathrow to
Golden boy, Luigi Di Maio, is the 30-year-old, slickly dressed leader of the Parliamentary Italian Five Star Movement (M5S), Italy’s insurgent political party that is polling ahead of the incumbent Democrats with a smorgasbord of National Socialist-style policies, plucked from the manifestos of the left and right. And just like everyone else in M5S, Di
You can tell a lot about a country from its sexual politics. Out one night at La Fabrica, a state-funded arts venue and club in suburban Havana, a friend and I got chatting to a group of local girls. While we were talking, a trio of young black men were doing some kind of coordinated dance
Today’s net migration figures are still at their record level of just over a third of a million a year. This reinforces the need for the government to approach the forthcoming Brexit negotiations with a clear set of objectives. EU migration is now running at 190,000 a year and accounts for half of total non-British
David Davis put the cat among the pigeons in the chamber today. The Brexit secretary — who takes a more relaxed approach to discussing Brexit than his tight-lipped boss — talked at length as he was asked various questions on the government’s Brexit position. The news line came after Labour’s Wayne David asked if the government would consider ‘making
Last month, the president-elect declared war on Hamilton — the broadway musical — after his vice-president elect Mike Pence was booed and jeered at during a performance. At the end of the show — which tells the story of Alexander Hamilton — the cast addressed Pence and warned that they were ‘the diverse Americans anxious you will not protect
How much do the net migration figures mean these days? The Office for National Statistics released its latest migration estimates today, which put immigration to the UK in the year to June 2016 at a record high of 650,000 – up 11,000 on the previous year. Net migration was at 335,000. That figure comprises 189,000
Whatever happened to all those great liberal internationalists who damned the vote for Brexit as a case of isolationist Britain turning its back on the outside world? Julian Barnes, for example, is so pro-EU that not only was he against Brexit, he recently told the FT that he would still like Britain to join the Euro. It
Anyone can get rich. All you need is a positive mindset and a few quid to hand over to a self-styled ‘guru’ who will teach you the secret to financial freedom. And who better to instruct you than billionaire Donald Trump? Well, that’s what a bunch of wannabe millionaires in the US thought anyway. They
On this week’s Spectator podcast, Isabel Hardman talks about the landmark Supreme Court ruling and whether it is putting ‘Brexit on trial’. She’s joined on the podcast by Joshua Rozenberg, who wrote this week’s cover story, and Timothy Endicott, Professor of Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford, who says that: “Where we’ve got to is
British Gas is freezing its standard tariffs for millions of people over winter. Britain’s biggest energy supplier says the decision – which applies to gas and electricity – will provide peace of mind for more than six million customers, the BBC reports. The move follows similar action from SSE which has said it will cap standard
Who could have predicted that the fate of millions of people from EU member states presently residing in the United Kingdom remains uncertain? There may be something deplorable about treating their future as though it was a card to be played in the negotiations to determine the terms and conditions of Britain’s departure from the EU
Last week the Office for Budget Responsibility revised down its forecasts, suggesting the economy would only expand by 1.4pc in the next year — and warning there would be a knock-on effect on the public finances. While the OBR’s chairman Robert Chote put the gloomy predictions down to uncertainty from the Brexit vote, several Leave champions — including Jacob
One of the crueller caricatures in the 2004 satirical film ‘Team America: World Police’ is a little puppet of Matt Damon who is only able to say ‘Matt Damon’ in a rather feeble and pointless fashion. The actor himself felt he was being cruelly parodied because of his opposition to the Iraq War, and was
Sometimes PMQs is about policy. Sometimes it’s about posturing. Today everyone was striking attitudes like mad. Jeremy Corbyn over-stated the levels of suffering in the country. He painted a picture of workhouse Britain where ‘four million children’ live ‘in poverty’. He means ‘relative poverty’, an elastic term, which covers every child in the land, including
As is traditional, St Andrew’s Day will be marked in the proper style by expatriate Scots gathering to bless what they’ve left behind. For most of the rest of us it’s just another dreich November day. There is something cheering about this and at least we have spared ourselves the tomfoolery that’s made St Patrick’s
A rare event at PMQs as Jeremy Corbyn went on the economy. The Labour leader had some well-crafted questions but rather spoiled things by confusing the IMF and the IFS, enabling Theresa May to declare that it is a good job she stands at the government despatch box and he sits on the opposition front
The collective hysteria about the impending fall of eastern Aleppo to government forces strikes me as understandable and laudable only up to a point. If the advance of Assad’s forces on the rebel-held part of Aleppo means, as the French government suggested, the biggest massacre of civilians since the Second World War, then obviously it
Some will scoff when I say that we are in the first wave of an animal rights movement which will see our furry friends elevated to a new status in our society. But it’s true. In the last few years, concern for animal welfare has grown. Even the last week has demonstrated this. Take the fury
President Erdogan is no stranger to blackmailing the EU. He has previously used migrants as a ‘loaded gun’ with which to threaten European leaders. The message is clear: do what I say, or I’ll open the floodgates. This week, he’s been back to his old tricks – bashing the EU and making it clear that if
The Prudential seems shocked to find that many couples aren’t entirely honest with each other when it comes to their finances. The deceptions uncovered were manifold: there were secret squirrel savings accounts, undisclosed credit card debt and personal loans (and occasionally mortgages)- as well as a general lack of truthfulness about how much each earned.
After three weeks as the president-elect, we are starting to get a sense of what a Trump presidency will look like. Or at least a clear idea of how he is running the transition from Trump Tower to the White House. It looks much the same as his unconventional campaign, combining Twitter rants with Rust Belt
Taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland has been revealed as the worst performer in the Bank of England’s annual health check of the UK banking system. The Guardian reports that, following its failure in the Bank of England stress test, RBS has published a plan designed to bolster its financial strength by an estimated £2 billion. Barclays and Standard
After Ukip’s new leader Paul Nuttall said he planned ‘to replace the Labour party and make Ukip the patriotic voice of working people’, Jeremy Corbyn’s party are under pressure to re-connect with their traditional working class voters. With that in mind, Stephen Kinnock appeared on the Today programme on Tuesday to talk Labour and immigration.
With Emily Thornberry en route to Cuba to attend the funeral of Fidel Castro, back in Blighty landbound socialists — with selective memories — continue to take to the airwaves to heap praise on the late dictator. Happily during one such appearance, from Richard Gott — a former literary editor of the Guardian — on Sky News,
I recently had the misfortune of featuring in a BBC documentary that repeatedly breached the corporation’s own editorial standards. I happened to be at the gym when word reached me that BBC Inside Out London wanted to interview me the following day. It was late in the evening, and I was told that the documentary
In recent weeks, Theresa May has attempted to perform a balancing act between looking after the interests of ‘just about managing’ families and keeping big business on side. On becoming Prime Minister, she gave several speeches suggesting the need for a radical overhaul of the way businesses — and capitalism — work in order to
The news that Theresa May offered to do a deal on expats – only to be rebuffed by Angela Merkel – is unsurprising. The Prime Minister has ended up in a pretty bad, unbecoming position on EU nationals using them as bargaining chips in a way that has appalled her critics (and even some of
Although Eddie Izzard’s kiss of death is famous throughout Westminster, the comedian-turned-campaigner still manages to bag prominent positions in losing campaigns. Take for example the EU referendum. Izzard was hired by the Remain camp to valiantly tour the country preaching to the youth of today about the positives of the European Union. While his words failed
Of all the government departments, it’s the Department for International Trade that manages to find itself in the firing line the most often. Whether it’s a turf war between the department and the rest of Whitehall or reports of Liam Fox instructing civil servants to read his book, it’s safe to say the department has not
The Twitch-hunters, those antsy, intolerant guardians of what it’s permissible to say on Twitter, have claimed another scalp. Eric Bristow’s. The former darts champion, lovably known as the Crafty Cockney, will now probably be better known as hate-speaker thanks to the offence-taking army that took umbrage at his tweets about child abuse. For this quarrelsome
Another day, another miserable bit of news for the Labour party. This time it’s in the form of an ICM/ Guardian poll, which puts Jeremy Corbyn’s party 16 points behind the Conservatives. While the Tories are riding high on 44 per cent – their highest share of the vote in more than seven years – Labour’s
In last week’s Autumn statement, Philip Hammond appeared to channel his inner Ed Miliband as he banned letting fees and went on a borrowing splurge. Today at Treasury questions, it was Labour’s turn to cross-dress. After John McDonnell sparked much laughter from Tory benches by referring to Mark Field’s chief of staff — behind yesterday’s so-called Brexit leak
Although Theresa May is reluctant to say that Brexit means anything other than… Brexit, on Monday we were given a glimpse of what else it could stand for. Mark Field’s Chief of Staff, Julia Dockerill, was snapped carrying some intriguing notes on the topic following a reported meeting with David Davis: is this the first insight into