All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Gary Neville, the Sky Sports pundit and former Manchester United footballer, can’t help himself when it comes to tedious political rants. His latest comes in the form of a one-eyed defence of the Prime Minister’s right to accept freebies, including tickets to Premier League matches. Neville, a prominent Labour supporter, believes Sir Keir Starmer has ‘not
How serious is the Labour party about tackling male violence against women and girls? In June, while campaigning for the general election, then shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper pledged the matter would be treated as a ‘national emergency‘. Last week, the Home Office finally announced the development of a national initiative to use data-driven tools
Keir Starmer has his big speech today at Labour conference and, like Rachel Reeves’s offering yesterday, the Prime Minister plans to strike an upbeat tone while warning he can’t offer ‘false hope’. He will tell the hall in Liverpool that there’s ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ if the government takes ‘tough decisions now’.
President Zelensky is in the United States for his latest, possibly last, throw of the dice before the American election, in his attempt to prove that victory can be achieved against Ukraine’s Russian invaders. The redoubtable leader of Ukraine has brought what he calls his ‘victory plan’, which embraces every facet of his nation’s future.
Labour’s first conference from government in 14 years might not be taking place against an ideal backdrop, with the Prime Minister and other ministers under scrutiny for accepting designer clobber and other goodies from party donors, but there is an unlikely glimmer of hope in the form of Anas Sarwar. Unlikely, that is, because Sarwar
Keir Starmer takes centre stage at Labour’s conference in Liverpool today, but whatever the Prime Minister has to say, the truth is that the event has been overshadowed. The Prime Minister must have hoped this would be a triumphant gathering bathed in the glow of a landslide election victory less than 12 weeks ago. Instead
Labour’s honeymoon didn’t last long. Keir Starmer won power less than three months ago with a vow to ‘change Britain’. But the Labour government’s missteps over the last few weeks – not least the ongoing row about freebies – makes it hard to distinguish life under Labour to what came before. ‘Vanity snappers’, free posh
Universities today are well-known as places where progressive, hyper-liberal politics predominate. It’s only logical, therefore, that the cry for equality and diversity should now extend to the television programme University Challenge. Despite the current series witnessing the second-largest proportion of female competitors in the programme’s history – with 34 female contestants representing a 31 per
It wasn’t long ago that a Conservative government was congratulating itself for achieving the lowest unemployment figures in half a century. This won’t wash any more, since the wider picture has become clear: while official unemployment figures remain low, figures for ‘economic inactivity’ have seen a sharp rise. We have 9.4 million of working age
The mental health of people in the UK and worldwide is getting worse. Common conditions like depression and anxiety have risen by more than 20 per cent since the 1990s. Although much of the blame in recent years has been directed at social media platforms (perhaps not unreasonably), we may have overlooked another significant factor:
Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has made a lot of noise about the perilous state of the NHS, insisting the institution must ‘reform or die’. But while the rhetoric is right, what does Labour actually plan to do about it? There are ‘three shifts’, health minister Stephen Kinnock told Isabel Hardman at The Spectator’s ‘How to fix a
To Liverpool, where all the wit and wisdom of Sir Keir’s Labour party is gathered. Starmer’s army has come to the city armed with bright ideas and insightful opinions — and no one more so than Bell Ribeiro-Addy. The Labour MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill has been thinking long and hard about the woes
John Boyne still doesn’t really know why he fell foul of the transgender mob. The author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was attacked on social media and accused of ‘transphobia’ following the publication of his children’s novel, My Brother’s Name is Jessica, in 2019. The book came in for a kicking from trans
When the Tories were in power, one of the harshest critics of the government’s Rwanda scheme to deport asylum seekers were the Refugee Council, who branded the plan, among other things, as ‘absurd and inhumane’ and ‘slam[ming] our door in the face of refugees in search of safety.’ Mr S was therefore curious to know
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Chancellor Rachel Reeves has just finished her speech at Labour conference. After a brief interruption by hecklers, she addressed austerity, the pandemic, and winter fuel payments. How was the speech received, and who does it really speak to? Elsewhere, Sue Gray’s lack of appearance in Liverpool hasn’t done anything to slow down discussion of recent
Back to Labour’s freebie row, which has spilled over into conference week. Sir Keir Starmer’s top team is desperate to get on top of the scandal, yet every time they try, they somehow manage to make things worse. Take Labour’s winter fuel payment-cutting Rachel Reeves, for example, who spoke to ITV News today about the
There is a Christian preacher, a woman, who has suffered the most heinous persecutions. She has been chased by mobs, arrested, unlawfully jailed and even stabbed. Where did this hellish hounding of a follower of Christ occur? Afghanistan, perhaps? Somalia maybe? Actually it was right here, in Britain. An angry mob formed around her Her
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Labour’s first party conference in government has opened under the shadow of the ‘Frockgate’ scandal, which continues to rumble on. James Heale and Katy Balls report from Liverpool on what the mood is like – and the big topics for the party this week. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.
Have you learned anything about this Labour government from the conference speeches so far? Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ address to the hall in Liverpool this lunchtime was an announcement-free zone, and the same is true of all the other ministers who have got up to speak so far. All of them have followed the same format:
It was late in 1997 when I got to a small military base on the border between Israel and Lebanon. Straight out of training, my welcome to the base involved sitting in the war room wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest, hoping that the barrage of rockets flying over our heads, courtesy of Hezbollah,
It is not hard to imagine what will be in Rachel Reeves’ ‘industrial strategy’. There will be lots of ‘green industries’, along with plenty of ‘cutting-edge technologies’, all designed to nurture ‘national champions’ in the ‘sectors of the future’. And presumably Lord Alli, the Labour donor who has been footing the bill for Keir Starmer’s
Just as the Chancellor Rachel Reeves was talking in her conference speech about the importance of resolving public sector strikes, the Royal College of Nursing announced that its members had rejected their pay deal. Nurses have voted two thirds against the 5.5 per cent pay rise, and the College published a letter to Health Secretary
After the general election this year, Nigel Farage argued that he was now the leader of the opposition, after his Reform party took more than six million votes, and came second in swathes of seats across the north of England. The Conservatives furiously disagree with him of course, especially given the Tory party’s higher vote
Yet another natural disaster has struck in Japan as floods and landslides in the Noto peninsula, precipitated by ‘unprecedented’ rainfall, have killed seven (according to the state broadcaster NHK) with 10 people missing. As usual, these numbers are expected to rise. The Ishikawa area was pounded on Saturday with the heaviest continuous rainfall (540 millimetres
Rachel Reeves had to deal with unexpected turbulence in her party conference speech, after anti-Israel protesters interrupted her. But that was the easy bit, since she just opted to go for the Labour line for stage disruption: ‘We are a changed Labour party that represent working people – not the party of protest’. That response
It’s day two of Labour conference and Sir Keir Starmer’s freebie fiasco still hasn’t gone away. Over a week since it transpired that clothing donations to Lady Starmer hadn’t initially been declared properly, revelations that the Prime Minister has received over £107,000 in donations since 2019 have caused outrage among the party’s voter base –
It’s Rachel Reeves’ big day at conference today. After 80 days of doom and gloom, the Starmer army have concluded that this might not be doing wonders for business confidence and party morale. So the Chancellor is seeking to strike a more optimistic note in her address to activists, declaring that her budget will have
Emmanuel Macron’s new government marks, in the words of the BBC, ‘a decisive shift to the right’. That is also the view of Le Monde, the newspaper of the French left, which quotes Socialist party chairman Oliver Faure’s description of it as ‘a reactionary government that gives democracy the finger’. This government is not right
Anyone else getting fed up with ‘emergencies’? There was a time when that word meant something, but not any longer now that every other quango or town council has declared a ‘climate emergency’, ‘housing emergency’ or ‘nature emergency’ (not that the existence of multiple emergencies seems to stop their staff cutting their hours to four
To Liverpool, where Sir Keir Starmer is enjoying his first Labour conference in government, against the backdrop of rather stormy weather and an even worse week of press. On Sunday night, the Prime Minister attended the Scottish Labour reception to welcome new MPs north of the border and ramp up support for his Caledonian lot
Can Rachel Reeves inject some optimism into the debate around Britain’s economy? That seems to be her ambition today, as she prepares to address Labour conference – and the country – this afternoon, where she will look forward to a ‘decade of national renewal’ and promise ‘no return to austerity.’ The change in language is
For the second time in three weeks, the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has received a significant percentage of the votes at a state election in eastern Germany. The far-right party won 29.5 per cent of the votes in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin. Given the polls going into Sunday, the AfD might even be
In what will surely come as a relief to the German chancellor Olaf Scholz, his SPD party has won this weekend’s state elections in Brandenburg. Securing themselves another term in power, the party squeaked past the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) with 30.7 per cent of the vote. The AfD missed out by just 1.2
Introducing a tub-thumping op-ed in the Mail yesterday, Robert Jenrick quoted Orwell: ‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.’ Mr Jenrick’s thesis is a familiar one. It is that ‘England’s political and media elite’ (he didn’t get ‘metropolitan establishment’ in the text but it was supplied in