All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Terror attacks in Germany are becoming remarkably unremarkable. So when a bomb went off in the German city of Essen, near Düsseldorf – and killed nobody – it barely registered. The three teenagers who detonated the device were all members of a Whatsapp group called ‘Supporters of the Islamic Caliphate’, so their intentions seemed pretty
In the months before the referendum, the ‘Leave’ campaign’s press operation had been in control of the campaign. But in the last three weeks, the baton was passed over to the ground campaign to get us over the line. Running a good ground campaign relies on three key phases. The first two of these –
Junior doctors are striking again: this time, for five days in a row over several weeks. This level of industrial action is without precedent in the history of the NHS. Even though I will soon be employed as a junior doctor under the terms of the contract, I think the decision to strike is scandalous. In
Winning the Green Party leadership race on a joint ticket makes Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley the first ever job share at the top of an English political party (the Scottish Greens have been doing it for years by having two co-convenors at the top). The pair won convincingly, picking up 86 per cent of
Julian Assange still has not found the courage to face the women who accuse him of sexual abuse. Rather than try to clear his name, he has sat in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge for four years – a confinement long enough to drive most of us out of our minds. If
It’s a month since the Bank of England cut the base rate to 0.25 per cent, the lowest level in more than 300 years. As expected, this has dealt a severe blow to savers while the mortgage market continues to thrive. Savings The Bank of England’s decision to drop the base rate has officially fuelled the
Companies have cut new graduate jobs for the first time in four years because of fears about the economy since the Brexit vote. The number of vacancies has fallen by 8 per cent compared with last year, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters’ annual survey. The Times reports that the latest figures follow four
When the BMA announced a new round of strikes they will have been prepared for a backlash from certain quarters. The criticism yesterday from Jeremy Hunt and Theresa May, who accused striking doctors of ‘playing politics’, won’t have come as a surprise. But what is different about this latest, unprecedented industrial action are the attacks on
For about a year now, James Delingpole and I have been doing a regular podcast for Ricochet, the American website dedicated to conservative news and commentary. It’s called ‘London Calling’ and you can hear the latest one here. Among the many topics covered on this episode are the French burkini ban, Robert Tombs’s ‘The English and
Here’s a thing. Shortly after my column for this week’s magazine appeared online, Black Lives Matter UK put out the following tweet: Hey Rod Liddle: where were your calls to ban Glastonbury in order to prevent white-on-white crime? https://t.co/dnktIKwfqT — #BlackLivesMatterUK (@ukblm) August 31, 2016 Rather than answer this sliver of delusional idiocy myself, I’ll
Day by day, the vote for Brexit on 23 June is coming more and more to resemble Black Wednesday, the day when sterling plummeted out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Then, as now, the event was initially treated by many as a national calamity – before it steadily became apparent just how a big
To say Donald Trump ‘double-downed’ last night on his border rhetoric would be an understatement. He went full anti-illegal immigration throttle, and then some. ‘There will be no amnesty,’ he said, and he promised to deport criminal illegal aliens within one hour of his arrival in office. ‘We will build a great wall along the southern
If a pal turned to you for financial help, would you lend a hand? If you have the cash it’s hard to say no, but for the sake of your future friendship that may not be such a good idea. Money can be the root of all sorts of relationship evils. It’s the cause of
The gap between the best and worst performing energy firms is the widest ever, according to Citizens Advice. Small energy firm Extra Energy attracted 80 times more complaints than the best performing supplier SSE between April and June. Extra Energy received 1,791 complaints per 100,000 customers, which was worse than its record low of 1,682 complaints
The junior doctors row bubbles on. This time, medics will walk out for five back-to-back days starting on September 12. Predictably, Jeremy Hunt has condemned the strike; and the BMA is blaming Jeremy Hunt. It’s a bitter and somewhat dull stalemate which will bore many for its endless intransigence. Yet beneath this, it’s clear this
For a certain type of social democrat, no country gets them quite as hot and bothered as Sweden. As Toby Livendell writes in this week’s Spectator cover story, Sweden has long regarded itself as a humanitarian superpower, taking in 650,000 asylum seekers in the last 15 years. But by far the biggest issue is integration.
For football fans, today is a special day: it’s Transfer Deadline Day – a branded, almost to Hallmark levels, moniker. It’s a day of bathos and unfulfilment. Your club will miss out on a top target, sign some underwhelming alternative, and clog up social media with pictures of them holding a shirt in a car
I do not get out very much these days, but the glorious weekend weather persuaded me that I should spend a pleasant afternoon watching people stabbing each other at our annual celebration of stabbing, the Notting Hill Carnival. I go most years and enjoy the street food, the music and the sight of white police
Theresa May welcomed the Cabinet to Chequers with this address, just released by Number 10: ‘Thank you very much for coming together today. It’s our first opportunity to meet since the summer recess, but also the first opportunity for us to meet since the fantastic success of the GB Team at the Olympics – absolutely
Pensions advice allowance. It’s not the sexiest of phrases but, if all goes to the Government’s plan, this new proposal could help millions of pensioners. So, what’s it all about? Well, it goes back to George Osborne’s final Budget earlier this year. At the time, he said that the existing tax exemption for employer arranged
August saw a ‘slight pick-up’ in house price growth despite the Brexit vote, according to the Nationwide building society, but the outlook is still ‘clouded’. The building society said prices rose by 0.6 per cent compared with July, making the average cost of a home £206,145. Prices in August were 5.6 per cent higher than a year
Could Jeremy Corbyn come out of the Labour leadership contest with an even bigger mandate? Few would be surprised and a new poll on the front page of the Times today suggests that such an outcome is highly likely. The YouGov survey indicates Corbyn is beating his rival Owen Smith by 62 per cent to
Summer is over. Or at least as far as Theresa May is concerned it is, as the PM gathers her cabinet at Chequers today to talk business about Brexit. It’s the most important gathering of her time in office so far and a chance to spell out an action plan for Britain’s departure from the
Once upon a time Jeremy Corbyn said that he would not bring back Labour’s mandatory reselection of the Eighties if elected leader. However, it seems that the recent Labour coup has caused him to have a change of heart. Just last month, Corbyn refused to rule out Labour MPs facing mandatory reselection battles before being allowed to stand. So, it’s rather
French politicians have been busying themselves recently offering solutions to Calais’s crowded ‘jungle’ camp – and it’s good news that the Home Office has said their suggestions are all ‘non-starters’. Quite right, too. Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to set up a system for displaced people living in France to apply for asylum in the UK might sound humane. In fact, it’s a
Reading this week about the European Commission’s verdict that Apple should pay €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland (even though Ireland doesn’t want it), I was reminded of Steve Jobs’s famous, if possibly apocryphal, excuse for being unkeen on charitable giving. According to a pair of his friends interviewed by the New York Times
So the European Commission has today released its much-delayed iTax. This time, it’s not an Apple innovation but a ruling ordering Ireland to claw back €13bn in back tax from Apple – a record penalty and one that the company and Ireland have both vowed to appeal. The Commission announced its decision in a typically terse ruling, in
Wasn’t it one of the ‘Remain’ campaign’s big arguments that leaving the EU would deprive us of the ‘clout’ we enjoy in negotiating foreign trade agreements? I seem to remember someone even warning us that in the event of Brexit we would go ‘to the back of the queue’ for a trade agreement with the
I was in the Netherlands over the weekend, which is always nice; it’s a bit like England, but just better. I’ve always wanted my country to be a bit more like our neighbours, especially Germany and Holland, and that includes standardisation with European norms when they clearly make more sense. Driving on the left, for
Over the weekend, it emerged that Theresa May likes to compare herself to Elizabeth I (although as I argue in my Telegraph column today, she’s been behaving more like the young Queen Victoria lately). The PM clearly meant the association as a compliment to herself, but on Saturday, Labour MP Barry Gardiner went in for
We Brits love a good anniversary – and a round number. This year we’re celebrating, among other things, the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth and the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. It’s also been 350 years since the Great Fire of London, the devastating blaze which burned for four days and in the process wiped out more
After a glorious Bank Holiday weekend, there’s depressing news for young people this morning: more than a third of them have debts of almost £3,000 and experience significant concerns about money. A survey of 2,042 people aged 18 to 24, conducted for the Money Advice Trust by YouGov, found that they borrowed using credit cards, overdrafts
It’s no surprise that demands from French politicians to scrap the Le Touquet deal and shift the migrant ‘jungle’ from Calais to Dover has gone down badly in Britain. Today’s front pages are full of talk of ‘Le Stitch up’. And the Home Office has waded in to say these plans are a complete ‘non
Yes, it was a bank holiday – but did that give the BBC an excuse to launch a licence-fee funded attack on its independent rival? The peg, if you can call it that, was ITV’s decision to turn off all its programming for an hour on Saturday morning as part of its ‘I am team GB’ campaign