All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
With Mark Carney stepping down from his role as governor of the Bank of England in 2019, it’s been widely reported that relations between Carney and Theresa May are strained. As James Forsyth writes in The Spectator, the Prime Minister managed to rub Carney up the wrong way with her Conservative conference speech when she appeared to criticise central banks
Although Theresa May is adamant that she will trigger Article 50 come what March, today’s Times splash suggests otherwise. A ‘leaked’ memo from Deloitte to the paper claims that the government is behind schedule with Brexit preparations and is heavily short-staffed — requiring another 30,000 civil servants in order to get the job done. So, what are the current
Cast your mind back to Saturday, 5 November. It is 8.30 am in Edinburgh and Tesco Bank boss Benny Higgins is sitting down to breakfast. The taxi he orders every weekend has picked up the papers from the local newsagent so he can flick through them over salmon and scrambled egg. Higgins likes his taxis. He
Plenty of Republicans were not in the mood to celebrate on election night. About 200 gathered at the Lincoln Restaurant in Washington DC, where they had hoped they could watch a heavy defeat for Donald Trump and begin the process of returning their party to its centre-Right origins. Instead, people began drifting home before midnight. Since then,
A slowdown in the UK economy will affect tax receipts and leave Philip Hammond with scant opportunity for giveaways at next week’s autumn statement, according to The Guardian. Publishing new forecasts for GDP growth to slow next year as the Brexit vote takes effect, the consultancy firm PwC said the Chancellor could afford some spending on big projects
Theresa May used her first big speech on foreign policy last night to spell out the need for globalisation to change. She adopted a softer approach than she did in her conference speech, when she went on the warpath against the liberal elite, says James Forsyth. Yet she remained clear: this year’s political upheaval shows something needs to
Theresa May’s first big foreign policy speech as Prime Minister is a call to reform globalisation, to save it. As with her conference speech, she argues that there’ll have to be changes to the way it works if popular support for it is to be maintained. Her argument is that ‘when you refuse to accept
Life, like they say, comes at you fast. Just a week ago the reality-based world worried that the American people might send a con-man to the White House. Now serious people intoning serious thoughts implore us to think it’s a good thing that Donald Trump is a con-man. This is the peg from which hope
Bit by bit, Donald Trump’s policies and priorities are emerging into view. We know who his chief of staff is to be and in an interview last night he started to explain his plan of action after his inauguration. It begins, as you might have predicted, with immigration: ‘What we are going to do is get the
Nigel Farage is once again a thorn in the Prime Minister’s side. After Downing Street dismissed the interim Ukip leader’s offer to help May forge a relationship with Donald Trump, they were left red-faced over the weekend when Farage became the first British politician to meet the president-elect since his victory. Now the Prime Minister is under pressure to rethink her
It was a race between the first dude — Bill — and the first nude — Melania. And in the end, the first nude won, appearing next to her husband in the early hours wearing a white jumpsuit straight out of Charlie’s Angels. It may seem unfair to judge Mrs Trump so early on, but
When I was at school in the, er, 1980s, there was no such thing as financial education. Yes, we had maths lessons but they focused on the hypotenuse and mastering scientific calculators. I still break out in a sweat at the thought of trigonometry. Since my day (when all this was fields etc etc), the
The Government is to investigate claims that energy providers are pocketing larger profits than they have previously admitted, according to The Sun. The newspaper says that gas and electricity firms may be netting six times more than they state. But trade group Energy UK rejected The Sun‘s claims, saying they were ‘a misrepresentation of the facts’.
Once upon a time Labour was seen to be the party of the working class while the Conservatives that of the Old Etonians. However, in recent years the Labour party has been accused of losing touch with its working class voters. So, Mr S was intrigued to see Philip Davies and Tristram Hunt debate one another
It’s probably for the best that Theresa May wasn’t present at last night’s Evening Standard theatre awards. Mr S understands that the Prime Minister found herself in the firing line twice, with both Patrick Stewart and Lord Lloyd Webber using their stage time to take aim. First Stewart — the Star Trek actor — attacked May
Theresa May was tenth in line in the phone queue to speak to president-elect Donald Trump last week. Yet Nigel Farage managed an hour-long meeting with Trump over the weekend – and even found time to pose for pictures in Trump’s gold-plated elevator. Downing Street has so far said it doesn’t want Farage’s help to
Beijing A strong coffee always perks me up on a smoggy day, especially when I can drink it somewhere clandestine — like an ‘illegal’ church. Seek, and you shall find — but when it comes to Christianity in China, you’re likely to get a bit lost. Without being told where it was, I could have
The news that Donald Trump has appointed Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee Chairman, as his Chief of Staff is shocking — shockingly conventional. In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Trump made it clear that he felt he owed Priebus a lot for his campaign’s success. ‘Reince is really a star,’ he said. ‘And
It’s Remembrance Sunday and Marine Le Pen has just appeared on the Andrew Marr show to hail a new world order. The timing of the interview has opened the BBC to some criticism, with the National Front leader attacking NATO, discussing her father’s Holocaust comments, and waxing lyrical about Putin on a day the nation remember those who sacrificed themselves to
This week reports emerged that Nigel Farage was being lined up to act as a go-between for the government and Donald Trump. However, Downing Street sources were quick to deny the claims, suggesting that Ukip’s interim leader was an ‘irrelevance’ to the UK’s relationship with the US. However, it appears that keeping Ukip’s interim leader on side
It’s time to consider Nietzsche’s view of liberal democracy. It couldn’t work, it couldn’t bind a nation together, he said. Why not? Because of its excessive moral idealism. The belief in equality and social justice, which he rightly saw as deriving from Judaism and Christianity, would lead to fragmentation. For politics would be dominated by
Most commentators see Donald Trump’s election as a stiff middle finger to the elites, and a rejection of the neoliberal economics that’s left the working class behind. Others believe it’s because Trump is a TV star, and celebrity impresses low-information voters more than competence (or facts). Whatever. The bottom line is that Americans have fallen
Britain’s position heading into its Brexit talks is far stronger than it was a week ago, I argue in The Sun today. Why, because Donald Trump has changed the dynamics of global politics. Brexit’s critics used to claim that this country would be isolated after it left the EU. But it is hard to make
The request for your thoughts, in verse or prose, on who the Person from Porlock might have been (assuming, of course, that there was such a person) drew a large and inventive entry. Many thanks to John McGivering, who suggested this excellent competition. Some fingered, as De Quincey did, Coleridge’s doctor and laudanum source, but
I give an after-dinner speech occasionally called ‘Media Training for Dummies’. That may sound condescending, but the dummy in question is me. It’s a compendium of anecdotes about my disastrous media appearances, each more humiliating than the last. At some point I’m going to turn it into a PowerPoint presentation, interspersing the talk with clips
‘I have a horrible feeling he has enough gimmicks to be the wild card… I mean, he could go on to win it.’ We’re just beginning to come to turns with the dangerous tendency of today’s voters to reject the conventional and competent in favour of unqualified, undignified, unlovable candidates who conduct themselves like showmen
On the same day I put my spare room on Airbnb I also had my first cabshare experience, courtesy of Uber. When I mentioned this to a young friend of mine, he patted me on the back and said, ‘Welcome to the sharing economy!’ The sharing economy is one of those buzz terms that everyone
As the US election results rolled in on Tuesday, guests flocked to CNN’s results bash in Marylebone where the majority hoped to see Hillary Clinton elected president. While they didn’t have their wish granted, across town a more Trump-happy crowd gathered for Lord Ashcroft’s book launch. Nigel Farage was among guests at the Devonshire Club, in Liverpool
It’s that time of year again. Mindful of the impending big Christmas shop, people start counting up credit card reward points in the hope of turning them into vouchers and cash. But they could find that their loyalty hasn’t paid off. Reward credit cards can be a useful alterative to debit cards because they offer
In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, many embittered Democrats are crying foul. It’s a case of sour grapes. For a second day, thousands of protesters chant ‘not my president’ and repudiate the legitimacy of our centuries-old electoral process. They are vehement in their disapproval of a man who they believe represents
When I woke up on Wednesday morning it was to the news that Donald Trump was the next President of the United States, and, at the top of my Instagram feed, to a photograph of a pair of shiny silver ballet pumps. ‘Wearing sparkly shoes to make today just a teeny bit better,’ was the
Did anybody see Question Time last night? The panel largely seemed to be competing to out-outrage each other about Donald Trump. And in their great Trump-off most of the guests continued to do that sawn-off shotgun ‘phobes’ thing. Trump as a ‘misogynist, homophobic, racist, Islamophobe’ etc. You would have thought after the second election in
Not yet 72 hours into Donald Trump’s victory, and already the finest promises of the campaign are slipping away. Namely, the celebrities #WithHer who had vowed to leave the US are now backing down. As if Americans haven’t been through enough, it seems they’re stuck with Amy Schumer for another four years. ‘The interview where
Bicycle prices could rise following the Brexit vote, because the cost of importing bikes from Asia has increased. The head of Halfords Jill McDonald said the retailer was in talks with its suppliers following the pound’s fall. ‘For bikes bought in Asia in US dollars, we are seeing prices beginning to move.’ According to The Guardian, McDonald also