All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Why do people always fall from grace for the wrong reasons? I had always hoped that if Keith Vaz finally fell from whatever form of grace he could lay claim to, it would be for really good reasons. Regular readers will know that my detestation of him dates back to 1989 when as a young MP
Women do ask for pay rises – they just don’t get them. That’s according to research by Cass Business School and the universities of Warwick and Wisconsin. The theory that women get paid less than men because they are not sufficiently pushy in the workplace is not true. Women are as likely as men to ask
If yesterday’s appearance of Keith Vaz in the Commons was a show of defiance, today will be a taste of reality for the Labour MP. The steely silence when he asked questions in Parliament spoke volumes; MPs are not happy with Vaz’s attempts to carry on as normal in the wake of allegations surrounding a
Throughout Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party, his links to Sinn Féin have been called into question by his critics. As Mr S’s colleague Douglas Murray has previously reported, Corbyn was chumming up to the Irish republican party even while their military wing was blowing up ordinary pub-goers, shooting farmers in the head and planting
‘Get back to the 1930s, you f***ing fascists’ was one of the more printable insults screamed at the small group of Brexiteers holding a counter protest at the March for Europe on Saturday. Given the event was intended by the organisers to be a ‘huge celebration of peace, tolerance and diversity’, it’s a shame that no
Béziers’s mayor Robert Ménard is adamant that France’s highest court has got it wrong. ‘The burkini should be banned, it’s a provocative symbol, nothing to do with modesty,’ he says. ‘Two years, a year ago, burkinis didn’t exist on our beaches. Now people are wearing them to make a point. But this is a Christian country.
David Davis has just finished his first statement to the Commons on the process for the UK exiting the European Union. Davis’s initial statement stuck closely to what the government has said already; the coordinated Labour backbench heckle of ‘waffle, waffle’ had some truth to it. But it was striking that Davis said he hoped
Running through the summer like the writing in a stick of rock was the continually disappointing and dismal performance of Owen Smith in the Labour leadership contest, and Jeremy Corbyn’s spectacular ability to make party members love him more by confecting his own rows about trains and women going out for drinks. The post-match analysis in
In the EU referendum, Brexit triumphed after 17 million people plumped for Leave while 16 million voted for Remain. This act of democracy was not enough to satisfy some, however, with four million people subsequently signing a petition calling for a second referendum. As a result, a number of MPs spent their first day back from recess debating the
Keith Vaz has just asked a second question in the House of Commons, despite it being unclear whether he can continue as chair of the Home Affairs Committee for the long term following allegations about his private life in the Sunday newspapers. The Leicester East MP, who has a meeting with his committee tomorrow afternoon,
Junior doctors have scrapped plans to strike next week. In a dispute which looks increasingly messy and interminable, this is a small token of welcome news. But whilst the BMA has made the right decision in this instance, they are still sticking with their threat to stage three five-day walkouts in October, November and December. What’s
Christians continue to be slaughtered in the Middle East. But as reports of genocidal atrocities mount up, our governments have found a new reason to sit on their hands. Christians, the theory goes, don’t have it as bad as the Yazidis. As ‘people of the book’, Christians enjoy privileged status. Rather than suffering the full
After the Government released its childhood obesity strategy last month, Theresa May stood accused of sidelining the issue. So, Mr S was pleased to receive an invite to an event focussing on the issue. Sharon Hodgson — the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for School Food — is holding a breakfast on Tuesday morning to call on the government
The Prime Minister and her colleagues are very slowly starting to reveal what they think they mean when they say ‘Brexit means Brexit’. This afternoon the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis will give a statement to Parliament on what the terms of negotiation might resemble for Brexit – or at
So, last week’s sharp rise in the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for manufacturing wasn’t a freak. This morning its twin, the PMI for the much larger services sector, also showed a huge rebound to 52.9, more than reversing the fall to 47.4 in July and putting it marginally ahead of PMI for the Eurozone, which
I have no recollection of my first day at school. I was four-years-old so it’s not surprising that I can’t dredge up the memory. I do recall, however, refusing to return to nursery after being scared witless by Father Christmas. Back then (late 1970s), kids were dropped off at a new school and expected to get
Although a poll in the Times last week suggested that Jeremy Corbyn will win the Labour leadership with an even bigger mandate than last time, some party insiders claim it is a lot closer than many think. So, perhaps that’s why Corbyn has called in the help of… UB40. Yes, the British reggae band are to
It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have a strong opinion about Donald Trump. But it’s worth lowering the emotional temperature for a moment, taking a step back, and looking at him through the eyes of history. Has there ever been a presidential candidate like Trump? Here I’ll confine myself just to the last twenty-five
Ill-health or disability is forcing one in eight people to stop working before they reach the state pension age, according to the TUC. The union found almost half a million people have had to leave work for medical reasons within five years before they were due to retire. In March the Government announced an independent
In the aftermath of the Leave vote, it’s safe to say that not every Brexiteer’s career path has played out as they hoped. After Michael Gove’s leadership bid backfired, the former Justice Secretary has found himself on the back bench. What’s more, his old pals George Osborne and David Cameron appear to have cut him from their
‘Brexit means Brexit’, Theresa May has repeatedly reassured us. But it seems Brexit might not mean an introduction of a ‘points-based’ immigration policy which Vote Leave – and a number of cabinet ministers, including Boris Johnson – had called for during the referendum campaign. The Prime Minister said the system was no ‘silver bullet’ and
All right, I’ll admit it – where exactly is Bologna in Italy? If you are a devotee of all things Italian, particularly the food, then I expect you already know but… for the rest of us it’s ‘somewhere up North, maybe?’ And what can a ‘wine finder’ turn up? Well, the first thing to say
Following the Sunday Mirror‘s claim that Keith Vaz is leading a double life paying young male escorts for sex, the MP for Leicester East is expected to step down from his role as the head of the Home Affairs select committee. In the texts and video footage published by the paper, Vaz appears to inquire about purchasing
During the EU referendum campaign, Eddie Izzard toured the country wearing a pink beret in a bid to convince young people to vote Remain. Alas his efforts failed to have the desired effect, with the Leave result only adding to his growing list of doomed campaigns. While Izzard’s kiss of death has since gone on to lose
In her decision as to whether to go ahead with the Chinese-backed Hinkley C nuclear power station – postponed from July apparently because of security concerns – Theresa May will find no better guidance than the advice which has been given to her and her aides while attending the G20 summit in Hangzhou this week.
Mother Theresa has been canonised today; cue for contained rapture on the part of her Missionaries of Charity and supporters in Rome and a rather different kind of satisfaction on the part of her critics, who now have a useful opportunity to air their objections to her work and cult. It’s hard to think of
Theresa May is on her way to her first G20 summit. But she has still sat down for the traditional start of term interview with Andrew Marr. Reading the transcript of it, it looks like a classic Theresa May interview: with very little given away. She avoided answering Marr’s questions on whether she would like
‘Super-rich foreigners are “forcing” the old money elite out of London’s prime postcodes.’ So declares London’s Evening Standard newspaper – confirming what the rest of us knew anyway. Indeed it was in the Spectator three years ago that I pointed out that central London was turning into Venice – a zombie city devoid of actual life
The Government plans to scrap plans to scrap plans to scrap the Human Rights Act. Here we go again. Following snugly in the footsteps of her two predecessors as Lord Chancellor, Liz Truss has promised to implement the so-called ‘British Bill of Rights’ in its place. There were never good reasons for this policy, but
Islam Karimov, President of Uzbekistan from 1990 – 2016, died yesterday following a stroke. Here’s what Daniel Hannan wrote about him in 2003: A strange little row has been bubbling away over the past two months concerning our ambassador to Tashkent. You may have seen the odd headline about it in the inside pages of the
So, where are we at on Brexit? Well, we know that Theresa May wants immigration control as part of the deal which essentially rules out a Swiss or Norwegian style deal. But, as I report in The Sun, beyond that little is settled. As one Cabinet Minister said to me after the away day at
It’s a safe bet that any post starting ‘What the mainstream media won’t tell you’, or words to that effect, will refer to something that has in fact been extensively reported in the ‘MSM’. And so it is here. I’m reproducing this Anonymous meme because a lovely Facebook friend of mine posted it, and it
Tennyson’s lines ‘bright and fierce and fickle is the South,/And dark and true and tender is the North’ (from ‘The Princess: O Swallow’) prompted me to ask for poems about either the North or South or one comparing the two. Midlands man John Priestland felt that something was missing: We know the North is at
For a certain type of social democrat, no country gets them quite as hot and bothered as Sweden. As Toby Livendell writes in this week’s Spectator cover story, Sweden has long regarded itself as a humanitarian superpower, taking in 650,000 asylum seekers in the last 15 years. But by far the biggest issue is integration.