All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Here’s a really heart warming story, about a young criminal and all-round bad guy who became a dad and turned his life around, working a regular job and looking after his four kids. Anyway, one day he decides to take his family to the zoo, perhaps thinking, what can go wrong? And, well, the rest
It’s officially summer but not in New Malden. I got home at 7pm last night in near darkness and pouring rain. Normally, closing the front door behind me and casting off my rain gear is enough to bring some relief. But not this time. The rain followed me in. As I walked into my kitchen I
Yesterday the Nationwide Building Society revealed a cooling in the annual rate of UK house price growth. Now the Bank of England has said that, in April, mortgage lending rose at its slowest pace since the height of the 2012 eurozone crisis. The Times reports that the slow crawl followed a significant increase in lending a
This EU referendum is a particularly difficult contest to poll and after the general election we all should be wary of treating them as gospel. But there’s no getting away from the fact that the mood in Westminster—and on the two campaigns—is heavily influenced by the polls. The recent good numbers for Leave have put
When Seumas Milne wrote a letter of complaint to the BBC after Stephen Doughtly resigned from the shadow Cabinet live on Daily Politics, many in the Labour party thought it showed a lack of judgment on the part of Corbyn’s spin doctor. However, a new VICE News documentary on the Corbyn leadership — titled Jeremy Corbyn:
Labour voters will prove crucial in determining the outcome of the EU referendum, which makes the party’s near silence on the issue all the more surprising. Whilst the Labour leadership maintain their reticence, however, the TUC has stepped in with a report out today. In it, the TUC warns that Brexit would cut pay by
The recent Queen’s speech, along with the growing divisions in the Conservative Party over the EU referendum, have focused attention on how this Government will be remembered after David Cameron steps down in 2019. Many mentioned prison reform, improving university standards and tackling extremism, as signs of the Prime Minister’s determination to establish his legacy
We all know that the Remain camp has peddled the politics of fear. But what is the object of their fear? What’s the thing that makes them so scared, so convinced that a litany of social and political horrors will befall Blighty if we pull out of Brussels? It’s you, and me; all ordinary people.
Strolling around Tate Modern’s recent Alexander Calder exhibition, something bothered me. Calder is best known for creating mobile, rather than static, sculptures; most of his pieces were intended to move, but some were now sitting lifelessly by the gallery’s white walls. It’s hard to appreciate how radical Calder’s kinetic art was in its time. Hergé, who
I have a female friend who refuses to let men pay for dinner on dates, no matter how much they insist on picking up the tab. She’s not alone: many women feel that if they want equality and agency, they have to hand over their credit card at the end of a romantic meal. I,
Did you spend the bank holiday weekend with a hammer in your hand, making countless trips to B&Q and cursing the barbecue’s failure to light? If so, you weren’t alone. New research by Lloyds Bank has revealed that DIY spending has reached its highest level since 2008. Nearly ten years on from the financial crisis,
More evidence today of a cooling in the annual rate of UK house price growth. According to the Nationwide Building Society, the annual rate of house price growth was 4.7 per cent in May, down from 4.9 per cent in April and 5.7 per cent in March. However, in May alone, house prices rose by 0.2
This week Matt Hancock has found himself in the firing line over his social mobility drive. Following Hancock’s call for companies to ask job applicants if they attended private school at interview, the Provost of Eton College has threatened to resign from the Conservative Party. So, with Hancock — who attended the King’s School —
Oh we do like to be beside the seaside…but it comes at a cost. According to the latest research from Halifax, house prices have increased by a third across British seaside towns over the past decade. The annual Halifax Seaside Town Review revealed average house prices have grown from £166,565 in 2006 to £219,386 in
The latest EU referendum poll indicates that voters have swung considerably towards backing Brexit. 52 per cent of people surveyed said they were planning on voting for Britain to leave the European Union, compared to 48 per cent who are voting in. The ICM poll, carried out for the Guardian, is significant for two reasons.
Danny Dorling is one of the warmest and most intelligent left wing intellectuals of our day; an egalitarian, who proposes radical and practical solutions. He is a worthy target, in other words. Oxford University’s professor of Geography has also produced an essay entitled: ‘Why Corbyn’s moral clarity could propel him to Number 10.’ It is
Although George Osborne is currently lagging behind Boris Johnson in favourability polls, he can take heart that an intervention by an unlikely figure could hamper his rival’s leadership appeal in certain Tory circles. Caitlin Moran — the Times columnist who led a 24-hour boycott of Twitter in 2013 — has pledged to run for Parliament if BoJo ever
Is anyone else bored to tears of the mud-slinging and vitriol which has come to characterise the Remain and Leave campaigns? With more than three weeks to go until the European Union referendum vote, the Brexit argy-bargy is increasing in volume on a daily basis. Today’s shrill story comes from leading figures in the Vote
Oh dear. Over the weekend, the Guardian ran an editorial on the EU referendum entitled ‘this campaign must show more respect for both facts and voters’. In the article — published on Saturday — the paper criticised the Vote Leave campaign for ‘recklessness’. They called on the Brexit camp to put an end to ‘deceptions’ such as the claim that we
Would Brexit mean cheaper fuel bills for Brits? That’s the claim made by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove today, who say that leaving the EU would let ministers get rid of VAT on gas and electricity. With all the bunkum being banded around over the referendum, it’s fair to say that the Brexit campaign do
Last month Ntokozo Qwabe made the news after he wrote of his happiness at making a waitress shed ‘white tears’ when his friend refused to tip until she ‘returned the land’. Since then, a crowdfunder was set up to raise money to compensate the waitress for the incident, while Qwabe — who is a key figure
Dr Johnson said that if anyone truly wanted to understand themselves, they should listen to what their enemies say about them. And whilst China is not an enemy of the EU, it is certainly highly critical of it. Why then did China’s President Xi Jinping wade into the Brexit debate and call on Britain to
The absence of an outline of a post-exit immigration regime is a serious gap in the Referendum debate. That need not be so. There is a fairly clear way ahead: to minimise disruption, while achieving control of numbers. The key element that needs to be controlled is migration for work (which accounts for the bulk
At times in David Cameron’s EU renegotiations, it’s seemed as though the Prime Minister struggled to be in the driver’s seat. Now evidence has come to light that confirms Cameron’s power struggle with one of Europe’s main leaders. Speaking at the Hay Festival, Neil MacGregor — the former director of the British Museum — let
When there’s a story about Christianity in decline, or in crisis, you always get a few loudmouth lifestyle columnists gloating – sorry, imparting their secular wisdom. Barbara Ellen was not very surprised that a new report says that Christians (at 44 per cent) are now outnumbered by ‘Nones’ (at 48.5 per cent). After all, the
It was when I was going up in the lift that it struck me. The elevator stopped, the doors opened and a giant ‘ding dong’ filled the air to announce that we had arrived, the kind of thing that would amuse a five year old because it was nothing like the more usual ‘ping’ that
There is a massive stench of hypocrisy in public life. We do and say things in private that we would castigate others for doing in public, possibly the best example of this being jokes about race. Nearly all of us will have told a so-called racist joke in private that we ‘wouldn’t get away with’
Although Mark Carney has warned that a Brexit is the ‘biggest domestic risk to financial stability’, his predecessor Mervyn King takes a somewhat different approach when it comes to the impending EU referendum. The former Bank of England governor used an appearance today at the Hay Festival to hit out at the ‘wildly exagerated claims’
The knives have been out for David Cameron today. The Sunday Telegraph splashed on Priti Patel saying that he is too rich to care about immigration; the Sunday Times on a letter to the PM, signed by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, calling his failure on the migration target ‘corrosive of public trust in politics’. And the Sunday Times quoted a Tory MP
This has been another fine week for EU deceits, lies and misrepresentations. The chutzpah of the week award must go to Nicky Morgan who earlier this week ‘slammed’ Boris Johnson. Last month the former Mayor of London had urged gay people to vote to Leave the EU and specifically not to believe the lie that
I once went mad in Africa and it was no fun at all. I was snorkelling off the coast of Zanzibar and I dived a little too deep, and something in the middle of my head went click. And then I came up and fell on to a boat that took me back to the
Think Donald Trump is too vulgar, too crazy to actually make it to the White House? Then you probably thought he’d never make the nomination. When he stood, Arianne Huffington said she would cover his race in the “entertainment” section of her website. Now he has ended up securing enough delegates to wrap up the Republican
The IN campaign’s plan for victory in this EU referendum is relatively simple. ‘Do you want the status quo or the riskt alternative?’, is how one Cameron ally sums it up. To date, Remain—aided by the various government dossiers—have been pretty effective at pushing this message. That is why they are ahead in the polls.
To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Are David Cameron and George Osborne using the same techniques of deceit deployed by New Labour in the run-up to the Iraq war? In his cover piece this