All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Here’s a thing. Shortly after my column for this week’s magazine appeared online, Black Lives Matter UK put out the following tweet: Hey Rod Liddle: where were your calls to ban Glastonbury in order to prevent white-on-white crime? https://t.co/dnktIKwfqT — #BlackLivesMatterUK (@ukblm) August 31, 2016 Rather than answer this sliver of delusional idiocy myself, I’ll
Day by day, the vote for Brexit on 23 June is coming more and more to resemble Black Wednesday, the day when sterling plummeted out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Then, as now, the event was initially treated by many as a national calamity – before it steadily became apparent just how a big
To say Donald Trump ‘double-downed’ last night on his border rhetoric would be an understatement. He went full anti-illegal immigration throttle, and then some. ‘There will be no amnesty,’ he said, and he promised to deport criminal illegal aliens within one hour of his arrival in office. ‘We will build a great wall along the southern
If a pal turned to you for financial help, would you lend a hand? If you have the cash it’s hard to say no, but for the sake of your future friendship that may not be such a good idea. Money can be the root of all sorts of relationship evils. It’s the cause of
The gap between the best and worst performing energy firms is the widest ever, according to Citizens Advice. Small energy firm Extra Energy attracted 80 times more complaints than the best performing supplier SSE between April and June. Extra Energy received 1,791 complaints per 100,000 customers, which was worse than its record low of 1,682 complaints
The junior doctors row bubbles on. This time, medics will walk out for five back-to-back days starting on September 12. Predictably, Jeremy Hunt has condemned the strike; and the BMA is blaming Jeremy Hunt. It’s a bitter and somewhat dull stalemate which will bore many for its endless intransigence. Yet beneath this, it’s clear this
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.
For football fans, today is a special day: it’s Transfer Deadline Day – a branded, almost to Hallmark levels, moniker. It’s a day of bathos and unfulfilment. Your club will miss out on a top target, sign some underwhelming alternative, and clog up social media with pictures of them holding a shirt in a car
I do not get out very much these days, but the glorious weekend weather persuaded me that I should spend a pleasant afternoon watching people stabbing each other at our annual celebration of stabbing, the Notting Hill Carnival. I go most years and enjoy the street food, the music and the sight of white police
Theresa May welcomed the Cabinet to Chequers with this address, just released by Number 10: ‘Thank you very much for coming together today. It’s our first opportunity to meet since the summer recess, but also the first opportunity for us to meet since the fantastic success of the GB Team at the Olympics – absolutely
Pensions advice allowance. It’s not the sexiest of phrases but, if all goes to the Government’s plan, this new proposal could help millions of pensioners. So, what’s it all about? Well, it goes back to George Osborne’s final Budget earlier this year. At the time, he said that the existing tax exemption for employer arranged
August saw a ‘slight pick-up’ in house price growth despite the Brexit vote, according to the Nationwide building society, but the outlook is still ‘clouded’. The building society said prices rose by 0.6 per cent compared with July, making the average cost of a home £206,145. Prices in August were 5.6 per cent higher than a year
Could Jeremy Corbyn come out of the Labour leadership contest with an even bigger mandate? Few would be surprised and a new poll on the front page of the Times today suggests that such an outcome is highly likely. The YouGov survey indicates Corbyn is beating his rival Owen Smith by 62 per cent to
Summer is over. Or at least as far as Theresa May is concerned it is, as the PM gathers her cabinet at Chequers today to talk business about Brexit. It’s the most important gathering of her time in office so far and a chance to spell out an action plan for Britain’s departure from the
Once upon a time Jeremy Corbyn said that he would not bring back Labour’s mandatory reselection of the Eighties if elected leader. However, it seems that the recent Labour coup has caused him to have a change of heart. Just last month, Corbyn refused to rule out Labour MPs facing mandatory reselection battles before being allowed to stand. So, it’s rather
French politicians have been busying themselves recently offering solutions to Calais’s crowded ‘jungle’ camp – and it’s good news that the Home Office has said their suggestions are all ‘non-starters’. Quite right, too. Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to set up a system for displaced people living in France to apply for asylum in the UK might sound humane. In fact, it’s a
Reading this week about the European Commission’s verdict that Apple should pay €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland (even though Ireland doesn’t want it), I was reminded of Steve Jobs’s famous, if possibly apocryphal, excuse for being unkeen on charitable giving. According to a pair of his friends interviewed by the New York Times
So the European Commission has today released its much-delayed iTax. This time, it’s not an Apple innovation but a ruling ordering Ireland to claw back €13bn in back tax from Apple – a record penalty and one that the company and Ireland have both vowed to appeal. The Commission announced its decision in a typically terse ruling, in
Wasn’t it one of the ‘Remain’ campaign’s big arguments that leaving the EU would deprive us of the ‘clout’ we enjoy in negotiating foreign trade agreements? I seem to remember someone even warning us that in the event of Brexit we would go ‘to the back of the queue’ for a trade agreement with the
I was in the Netherlands over the weekend, which is always nice; it’s a bit like England, but just better. I’ve always wanted my country to be a bit more like our neighbours, especially Germany and Holland, and that includes standardisation with European norms when they clearly make more sense. Driving on the left, for
Over the weekend, it emerged that Theresa May likes to compare herself to Elizabeth I (although as I argue in my Telegraph column today, she’s been behaving more like the young Queen Victoria lately). The PM clearly meant the association as a compliment to herself, but on Saturday, Labour MP Barry Gardiner went in for
We Brits love a good anniversary – and a round number. This year we’re celebrating, among other things, the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth and the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. It’s also been 350 years since the Great Fire of London, the devastating blaze which burned for four days and in the process wiped out more
After a glorious Bank Holiday weekend, there’s depressing news for young people this morning: more than a third of them have debts of almost £3,000 and experience significant concerns about money. A survey of 2,042 people aged 18 to 24, conducted for the Money Advice Trust by YouGov, found that they borrowed using credit cards, overdrafts
It’s no surprise that demands from French politicians to scrap the Le Touquet deal and shift the migrant ‘jungle’ from Calais to Dover has gone down badly in Britain. Today’s front pages are full of talk of ‘Le Stitch up’. And the Home Office has waded in to say these plans are a complete ‘non
Yes, it was a bank holiday – but did that give the BBC an excuse to launch a licence-fee funded attack on its independent rival? The peg, if you can call it that, was ITV’s decision to turn off all its programming for an hour on Saturday morning as part of its ‘I am team GB’ campaign
Instinctively I feel I ought not to feel sympathy for the 70,000 council house tenants earning more than £40,000 a year in London (£30,000 outside London) and who are going to be made to pay an average of an extra £1000 a year to stay in their subsidised council homes. They are better off than
During the referendum campaign, David Cameron sparked fury by suggesting the migrant camp in Calais could be shifted to Britain following a vote for Brexit. Now, that threat is resurfacing. This time, it’s French politicians saying they’ll tear up the deal known as the ‘Treaty of Le Touquet’ – a change, they say, which will
Since the British people voted for Brexit in June, there has been a sense of disbelief among luvvies. While Charlotte Church has demanded her ‘f—ing European Union back’, Mr S’s colleague Lloyd Evans reports that the comedy at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe harboured a ‘pleb-hating mood’ when it came to the referendum result. So, Mr S was
What should we think about negative interest rates? What kind of Alice in Wonderland world are we living in when companies and households are paid to borrow and charged if they save? Seemingly crazy, negative interest rates are spreading nonetheless. Implemented by central banks in Europe, Japan and elsewhere, they now apply in countries accounting
After the nation voted in favour of Brexit in the EU referendum, Jeremy Corbyn faced a coup from Labour MPs left unsatisfied with his efforts for Remain. Leading the charge, Hilary Benn sparked a round of mass frontbench resignations after he said there was ‘no confidence’ in Corbyn’s ability to win the next election. However, could it all
An almost worldwide survey on penis length — the sort of thing I always read with a sense of trepidation and inadequacy — suggested that the countries boasting the largest of these flawed and devious appendages are all located in Africa. Especially West Africa, from the DRC down to the humid and still pristine jungles
Did you see that odd photo of George Osborne looking shifty, queuing up in the Vietnamese jungle for the chance to fire an M60 machine gun? I found it interesting for a number of reasons. One, obviously, is that it’s probably the first time in five years Osborne hasn’t been pictured wearing a hard hat
In the latest competition you were invited to supply a poem about a body part of an author of your choosing. This challenge was inspired by the engaging title of a book by John Sutherland: Orwell’s Nose. In 2012 Sutherland permanently lost his sense of smell. Shortly thereafter, he set about rereading the works of George
The parliamentary move against democracy is gathering strength. The notion that parliament might vote down the results of the referendum is being backed by some serious, intelligent politicians (and Labour’s Chris Bryant). My old boss Patience Wheatcroft is leading the attempt in the Lords, hoping to stall it until such times as another referendum could
