All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Less than 24 hours after Mark Carney’s launch, Chrystia Freeland announced her bid to be the next Liberal party leader of Canada. The former finance minister – whose resignation last month triggered Justin Trudeau’s downfall – put out a pithy six word statement this morning. ‘I’m running to fight for Canada’, it said, simply. She
On 23 September last year at 6.30 p.m. in the evening in a street in Woolwich, London, Daejaun Campbell cried out, ‘I’m 15, don’t let me die’ as he bled out on a pavement after being stabbed. You probably won’t remember Deajaun but he was a one of nine children murdered by knives in London
Conventional wisdom says the Tory leadership of Kemi Badenoch is close to crisis. This is perhaps because the prevailing political mood is much more heavily influenced by hindsight than by foresight. The manufacture of almost every opinion that gains the status of conventional wisdom depends on a time lag to allow its repetition and dispersal
Have you seen Severance? If not, I urge you to cancel all evening plans and commit to binge-watching it for the next week. I’m not a PR for Apple TV+, or not a paid one at least, merely an optimist who believes the creators of this multi-award-winning show may have gifted mankind one of the best series of
OnlyFans content creator Bonnie Blue claims to have broken a world record by sleeping with over a thousand men in twelve hours. I say ‘slept with’ but obviously the euphemism doesn’t really apply to this dubious feat. Blue, who was born in Nottingham but now lives in the United States, added to the glamour of
14 min listen
There will be more inquiries into grooming gangs. After sustained pressure, the Home Secretary announced yesterday a series of local, government-backed inquiries, rather than a full public inquiry. Critics argue that this either doesn’t go far enough, or that Labour have been forced to go back on their word by certain figures on the right
Hapless Humza Yousaf has a lot more time on his hands after he was forced to quit as Scotland’s First Minister last year. Now it transpires that the former FM has enjoyed a sit down – and photoshoot – with Grazia Pakistan’s Beauty Editor to recount his brief stint in the top job. After his
No one came out very well from the government’s High Court defeat yesterday morning over planned changes to long-term sickness benefit. A botched, hasty, penny-pinching wheeze, promoted by the Tories but ultimately backed by Labour, came unstuck. But there is a rather more profound difficulty with this episode. Even after reading the news, most people
If it was a Netflix mystery series, it would be the moment for the ‘big reveal’. After months of boasting about how she would make the UK the most competitive, dynamic, and indeed fastest growing economy in the G7 we finally have some idea of what Rachel Reeves is going to do to deregulate the
No one expected this day to come – but here we are. Alastair Campbell, former Labour spinner and full-time Tony Blair fanboy, has – possibly for the first time ever – admitted his ex-boss and forever idol did actually get something wrong. Talk about a curveball! Speaking on the latest episode of his podcast with
I turned to Xiaohongshu during the pandemic. At a time when I couldn’t visit China, the Chinese social media app (also known as ‘RedNote’) was a little slice of the motherland when I was bored with Instagram or Twitter. I was hooked immediately: like Instagram, the app is good for beautiful pictures and well-produced reels.
Every so often, something unexpected happens in the Westminster village which disturbs the usual run of malicious gossip and misleading polling. This happened yesterday, when the whole village began buzzing about, of all things, infrastructure planning. The cause of this was a draft ‘National Priority Infrastructure Bill’, which you can read here, an oven-ready piece of
Well, well, well. Britain’s grooming gangs scandal is still dominating the headlines and pressure is piling on the Labour government to conduct a probe into matter. The Tories and Reform UK are adamant there should be a national government-led inquiry, while Twitter CEO Elon Musk has persistently taken aim online at Starmer’s army over the
With less than six weeks to go until voters head to the polls, the snap federal election campaign in Germany is finally heating up. The AfD is set to turn a third of Germany blue and clinch five of the country’s 16 states in the party list vote: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Saxony. This
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has finally bowed to pressure and announced five local reviews alongside a ‘rapid national audit’ into grooming gangs. But the plan falls short of the national inquiry that many, including some Labour MPs, want. Cooper’s plan is insufficient. Labour may well pay a hefty electoral price for it Cooper’s statement in the
As plans for a ceasefire were announced on Wednesday night, videos of Gazans celebrating with glee made their way onto international news broadcasts. The celebrations were distinctive in style, and looked nothing like those of a people experiencing the end of a genocide. Many an anchor and analyst overlooked the detail, but we would all do well to
There was some relief for Rachel Reeves earlier this week when inflation fell slightly to 2.5 per cent and the economy just about managed to grow, by 0.1 per cent (although many were expecting it to be a little higher than that). There is no joy to be had, however, in this morning’s retail sales
The Swedish government is proposing a constitutional amendment that would make it possible to revoke the citizenship of certain individuals. Those who obtained their citizenship through fraudulent means, or who pose a threat to the state, could now face being stripped of their passport. This is one of many measures which are defining Sweden’s pragmatic
What a pig’s ear the government is making of its response to the grooming gangs scandal. Ministers have spent weeks resisting growing calls for a new and comprehensive national inquiry, insisting that this would take too long and get in the way of implementing measures to help victims. Now there’s been a change of heart, of
There is no question that bombast sometimes works. President-elect Donald Trump warned hell would be unleashed if Hamas did not release its hostages and the war in Gaza did not end by 20 January, his inauguration day. He never explained what he had in mind to end the war, but he didn’t need to. The
‘Can I just say, he’s a t***.’ The taxi driver leans backwards and interjects into our conversation about one of Elon Musk’s latest forays into UK politics. Musk, he makes short shrift of explaining, should keep his beak out. We’ve just arrived in a North-East coastal town, where we will be spending the next few days
Corrupt bobbies. Local government timeservers who treat young women as playthings. A country bogged down in never-ending crises, overseen by a rancid managerial class. These aren’t the theoretical findings of some future report into rape gangs. As it happens, they’re the basis of O Lucky Man!, a film from the Edward Heath era that suggests
Like the sound of birdsong over the trenches after the machine guns have ceased roaring, the FT reports bankers are once again using the words ‘pussy’ and ‘retard’ in the course of their work with no fear of reprisal. The culture war is over. Hurrah. How funny though for those of us who over the last decade have observed
Dear Education Secretary, I am worried your time in office will destroy the huge gains made over the last decade and a half in helping disadvantaged children across England. I don’t know if you are being ideologically blind and therefore ignoring the obvious negative impact of your decisions – or perhaps you just don’t understand
As the hot Australia summer rolls on, so too do the summer silly season stories. The latest is a Sydney council imposing bans on G-string bathing costumes at its public swimming pools. When it comes to swimwear, Australia has had a long tradition of community standards conflicting with personal freedom. In the early years of
After nearly a decade of speculation about his political aspirations, Mark Carney has today formally declared that he wants be Canada’s next Prime Minister. The former Bank of England Governor kicked off his campaign to be the next Liberal party leader at a community centre in Alberta, promising to build the fastest-growing economy in the
Kemi Badenoch’s first big speech of 2024 was meant to seize the news agenda and tell the public that the Tory party is changing under her leadership. Yet in a sign of the difficulties opposition leaders have getting their messages out, Badenoch had to compete with the Labour government announcement of a ‘rapid national audit’
On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced a bizarre proposal to cap the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. This change could see as much as 95 per cent of the total nicotine content removed, aiming to ‘save many lives and dramatically reduce the burden of severe illness and disability’, according to FDA Commissioner Robert Calliff. Reducing
There will be more inquiries into grooming gangs after all – just not a full public inquiry. Yvette Cooper has just announced in the Commons that there will be five new local inquiries, including one in Oldham which triggered the most recent row on these crimes. The Home Secretary also announced that Louise Casey is going to
A government consultation on restricting access to disability benefits was ‘so unfair as to be unlawful’, the High Court ruled today, putting £1.3 billion a year of benefit savings in doubt. The Work Capability Assessment is the gateway to Universal Credit health benefits and up to £4,900 a year for recipients. The Tories planned to change parts of
13 min listen
Keir Starmer is in Ukraine today, on his first visit to Kyiv since becoming Prime Minister. And he came bearing gifts: a 100-year partnership agreement between the UK and Ukraine, covering nine ‘pillars’ from culture to science. It is hoped that the new pact will define the relationship between the two countries well beyond the