All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
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
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 —
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
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 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
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
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
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
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.
The latest challenge, to submit a poem about sharing a drink with a famous writer, was inspired by the poetry collection that made Wendy Cope’s name. I suspected this might be a popular one and so it proved. I was spoilt for choice winner-wise, so heartfelt commiserations to the many who came within a whisker
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
Football, unlike cricket, has for the most part been ill served by its writers. For every Brian Glanville and Ian Hamilton (the latter having employed his critical authority to become a first-rate reader of the game), the purveyors of hackneyed analysis are legion. In recent years there has been a propensity to celebrate tactics and
As my daughter was preparing for her AS level exam on 1984 this week, George Orwell’s dystopian classic loomed back into a news headline: ‘We are not the Thought Police, Chief Constable Tells Government’. Leicestershire chief constable Simon Cole, who’s in charge of the anti-radicalisation Prevent programme, told the press that the Government’s new counter-extremist
The Templeton Prize is known to lots of people from Richard Dawkins’ intemperate denunciation of it in The God Delusion in which it features as the unspeakable temptation for scientists to do business with the God lobby. But having been to the ceremony last night in which it was awarded to the former Chief Rabbi,
If you ask most people if they wanted to win £50 million, the answer would be: where do I sign up? That’s why Vote Leave has launched a competition this morning (here’ the link to enter) offering £50 million to anyone who can correctly predict the result of every game in this summer’s European football
Poor Ed Miliband. Since his defeat in the General Election, the former Labour leader has seen his influence fade — dropping to number 40 in this year’s Doncaster Power list. Now it seems some are struggling to even remember his name. On last night’s Question Time, Red Ed was mistaken for his brother David Miliband twice by his fellow
Gardening is the nation’s favourite hobby, contributing £9 billion to the economy annually. Just looking at the numbers of people who attend flower shows and garden centres, it’s clear to see that it’s big business. As Chelsea ends and Harlow Carr, Hampton Court and Wisley follow, even the TV programmes have trouble keeping up. A
If as a teenager you couldn’t leave home quick enough, spare a thought for the 3.8 million young adults who will be living with their parents by 2025. That’s the conclusion of a study by the insurer Aviva. The company found that a million more 21 to 34-year-olds are likely to find themselves living with their parents
If you’ve become fed-up with half-baked Treasury statistics, the start of the purdah period is welcome news. The ban on Government and Civil Service resources being used to put forward the case for ‘remain’, means there will be no more of those. But with ‘remain’ having pushed ahead in the polls over the last few