All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I have no idea whether Russia successfully interfered in the US election; I imagine it’s one of those situations where everyone is lying but the Russians are lying twice as much. But there are a couple of questions that no one seems to be asking, which makes me curious. Firstly, how could America have got
One morning, in early February 1952, the nation learned that the King had died. At school assembly we were told by our headmaster to stand in silence and think about this sad event. I was not sure what to think. We were then instructed to pray for the King. This was more like it; I
It’s been a few months since the Brexit vote, in which the citizens of the UK elected to part-ways with the European Union, yet its effects on the global economy are still very much apparent. Following the vote, the British Pound crashed 9% and literally trillions of dollars were wiped off the global stock market.
Theresa May is already not invited to the European Council summit dinner, and now it seems she’s not that welcome at the day activities either. Yes, the Prime Minister appears to have been given the cold shoulder this morning at the event — which sees the 28 leaders gather in Brussels to talk migrants, Turkey, Russia
Oh dear. Just in case there weren’t enough novelty Christmas songs out there, brains at Labour have decided it is time to offer up one of their own. Siobhain McDonagh, the MP for Mitcham and Morden, has rallied the troops to record ‘National Living Rage’. The track — which takes inspiration from Band Aid 20’s ‘do
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
Tax officials are attempting to recoup millions of pounds in tax relief granted to celebrities, according to the BBC. The monies relate to a scheme designed to kick start economic growth in deprived areas including the building of two data centres on Tyneside that remain unused some years on. The BBC says that ‘Wayne Rooney,
As MPs begin to wind down for the holidays, Jeremy Corbyn appears to have other ideas when it comes to a quiet Christmas. The Labour leader has plunged himself into a fresh row with his party over his links to Sinn Féin. Corbyn has hired a former Sinn Féin member of staff to join his office in
Donald Trump has a method for making his Cabinet picks. Parade the contenders in and out of Trump Tower and its waiting TV cameras. Leak and Tweet their performance ratings (‘very good meeting’). And then, once the suspense has reached something approaching a reality TV show, announce the hire on social media. And as the administration
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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’
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