All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
As many as eight million people are expected to tune into tonight’s BBC Brexit debate, where Boris Johnson, Sadiq Khan and Ruth Davidson will battle it out in their final attempt to win over voters ahead of the referendum. The last time Boris appeared in a TV debate, Remain’s ‘Operation batter Boris’ was mobilised in
Although the Sun were only recently found guilty of ‘significantly misleading’ its readers with its ‘Queen backs Brexit’ splash, it seems the red top was onto something after all. While the paper reported that Her Majesty had expressed Eurosceptic views at a private meeting prior to a referendum being on the table, it appears that she
David Cameron has just given a rather bizarre statement in Downing Street pleading with voters to back Remain on Thursday. It was rather bizarre firstly because it didn’t contain anything new at all, and was just a restatement of the case for staying in the bloc, and secondly because it was in Downing Street, which
I suppose there are such things as amicable divorces. Mine wasn’t. Like the First World War, it was fought for more than four years, and ended with the Treaty of Versailles (by which I mean that it imposed territorial losses and the payment of annual reparations for a very long time). Which brings me to
Victoria Beckham has said today she wants Britain to remain a member of the European Union. But ‘Posh Spice’ hasn’t always been so keen on the EU. In this Spectator piece from December 1996, Victoria described how she thought the ‘Euro-bureaucrats are destroying every bit of national identity’. Here’s what she had to say in
A young British man was arrested last night in Las Vegas at a Donald Trump rally. He is accused of trying to seize a police officer’s gun and assassinate the Republican candidate for President. According to the BBC report: ‘He had reportedly tried to seize the gun after saying he wanted Mr Trump’s autograph at
Sooner rather than later, George Osborne is going to have to come clean and tell us what he really wants to do with our pensions – the financial vehicles we and our employers painstakingly fund and that in theory should help us live out our retirement in a modicum of comfort. Will it be yet more
It’s fair to say that Stuart Rose has not been of huge help to Remain in the EU referendum. Despite being tasked with heading up ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’, Rose has made a series of comments that have boosted the other side. Meanwhile in recent weeks he has retreated from the media spotlight, instead seeking solace in private
To be fair to David Beckham, he is at least slightly higher profile than some of the other ‘stars’ from the football world who have had their say on Brexit. And Michael Gove didn’t sound convincing when he traded off the news that ‘Becks’ had backed ‘Remain’ by saying John Barnes and Sol Campbell had
The pound has enjoyed its biggest one-day surge in value for eight years as investors bet on Britain remaining in the EU. And the FTSE 100 recorded its best day for a year as shares in British companies soared by £47.5 billion, the Daily Mail says. ‘Analysts said the rally was a sign that investors from around the world now
A vote to leave the EU would cause economic Armageddon. We know because David Cameron and George Osborne have told us so, claiming that there is a wide consensus among economists on the matter. But what if – as now seems increasingly likely – we vote to remain but then have a recession anyway? The
So long as the economy was at the top of the agenda, ‘Remain’ will have felt safe in the knowledge that ‘Leave’ could do little to win over the public’s trust. But today, the Prime Minister has his former aide and friend Steve Hilton to thank for bringing the issue of migration soaring back into
Lunch at my family home was often an amusing affair, a disturbingly brown-looking bottle of Hock or ‘Lieb’ would make a cameo at the table, my father decided it would go splendidly with the unlucky fowl positioned ready for carving. Champagne for us was not often on rotation unless we had a significant birthday, wedding
Various freak political events—the unexpected Tory election victory, the rise of Ukip—have conspired to allow Britain to hold its referendum on the EU this week. But if the rest of Europe were asked, what would they say? The Berlin-based Bertelsmann Foundation commissioned a study of 11,000 people in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland to find
After finding himself accused of putting forward a half-hearted case for Remain, tonight Jeremy Corbyn had the chance to prove the naysayers wrong in his first — and final — live television debate of the referendum. Yet instead of making a passionate plea for In, Corbyn used the Sky News debate to raise some of his own reservations with the EU. While Corbyn admitted that he is
Who is really poisoning public debate? Who is it that has turned what ought to have been a smart and deep discussion about Britain and the EU into a prejudice-fest? I know we’re meant to think it’s the Leave campaign, with its cries of ‘The Albanians are coming!’ and ‘Oh my God, Turkey!’. Leave stands
We’re in the final days of campaigning before the country goes to the polls on Thursday. But what is the mood like in both the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ camps? James Forsyth says on today’s Coffee House Shots podcast that he thinks the ‘Remain’ camp are feeling fairly confident. Speaking to Isabel Hardman, he says: ‘Remain
In recent weeks, there has been a genuine concern among Brexiteers that the In campaign are hiding Stuart Rose out of harm’s way in a secret location. The hapless Britain Stronger in Europe chairman has all but disappeared from the media spotlight after a series of campaign blunders — from forgetting the name of his own
MPs from all parties have gathered in the Commons to pay tribute to murdered Labour MP Jo Cox. Parliament was recalled today following the terrible events last Thursday. The Speaker John Bercow opened the moving session by saying politicians were gathered in ‘heartbreaking sadness’. He went on to say: ‘An attack like this strikes not
Who do you think is the first woman you would see if you typed ‘CEO’ into the Google Images search bar? Carolyn McCall of EasyJet, perhaps, or how about Angela Ahrends, who used to run Burberry and is now a big noise at Apple? Whoever you guessed, I’m willing to bet you didn’t expect her
No, there was never a Golden Age of genteel and elevated discourse. Never a time when the fate of the country didn’t seem to hang in the balance or when politics was ever played for anything less than all the marbles. Check old election-day copies of the Daily Mirror if you doubt this. Check the hammers and
Property prices in England and Wales have hit a record high, says the Guardian. Prices are 5.5pc higher than they were in June 2015, reports a study by rightmove.com. The average house now costs £310,471. Deals are also going through with unprecedented alacrity: it now takes 57 days to sell a property, compared to 65 this
Today The Times have splashed on the revelation that Baroness Warsi is defecting from Out to In as a result of the ‘hate and xenophobia’ peddled by Leave. Given that the paper have run the news on its front page, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Leave camp really are ‘in turmoil’ over the defection of
Competitors were invited to submit nonsense verse on the EU referendum. Honourable mentions, in a strong field, go to Charles Westwood, Fiona Pitt-Kethley, Jennifer Moore, Andrew Zeyfert, John Priestland, Alan Millard, Jim Davies, Martin Parker and Mike Morrison. The winners pocket £25 apiece and Bill Greenwell snaffles £30. Bill Greenwell When mithimade is allbijove Beneath
Baroness Warsi hasn’t always been one to help out the Prime Minister when he’s in a spot of bother. But her high-profile defection from the Brexit camp to Remain will certainly have put a smile on David Cameron’s face this morning. It’s not so much that Warsi was an essential part of Vote Leave’s plans;
David Cameron put in a confident, passionate performance tonight in his Question Time grilling. At one point the Prime Minister broke into a forceful rant about Winston Churchill deciding to carry on fighting the war, arguing that Britain shouldn’t quit now, either. It was clearly planned, in fact Cameron rather have the impression that someone
When it comes to making economics understandable, no one does it better that David Smith of the Sunday Times*. Today, he has written a emphatic endorsement of the case for the UK remaining in the EU. As a longstanding admirer of his work, a few points jumped out at me when reading it. Here they
Jeremy Corbyn went on The Marr Show this morning to talk about Jo Cox’s tragic death and the EU referendum. Corbyn talked movingly about Cox and how MPs don’t want to be cut off from the communities that they serve. The conversation then moved on to the EU referendum. Andrew Marr asked Corbyn if he
We are now in the final week of the referendum campaign and the swing back towards the status quo appears to be in full force. We at YouGov have published two polls this morning, one conducted for ITV’s Good Morning Britain between Wednesday and Thursday, and one conducted for the Sunday Times on Thursday and
There’s a lot at stake for David Cameron when it comes to the EU referendum. As well as having to try to mend party divisions, a vote for Brexit could bring an end to Cameron’s time as Prime Minister. Now he has another problem to deal with should the nation vote to leave — his sister-in-law will never vote
Despite the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ campaigns rightly halting as soon as the news of the savage murder of Jo Cox MP came through, some people could not pass up the opportunity to press what they saw as a political advantage. The campaign for Britain to leave the EU may have been silent, but EU officials
The murder of Jo Cox was a moment that leaves you numb; an MP paying the ultimate price for the open society we live in. For the fact that our representatives live and work among us. Despite this tragedy, democracy must go on. By this time next week, the EU referendum will be over. The
The campaigning has been halted, as the country mourns the death of Jo Cox, but the financial markets have continued and indicate that a Remain vote is significantly more likely than Leave. The pound has been rising sharply (it would likely fall in the event of Brexit) and the betting markets how suggest that a Remain vote is
‘The war on drugs has failed,’ asserted Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the Royal Society for Public health in the latest propaganda coup for the pro-drug lobby. Her society, along with the Faculty of Public Health, have parroted the familiar call among metropolitan liberals for drugs to be decriminalised. Their argument is that we should
