All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
With the exception of Gordon Brown – and he was always so dour it was impossible to tell what he was thinking – there hasn’t been a Prime Minister in living memory who has actually enjoyed coming to Scotland. Margaret Thatcher became spiky and aggressive when she crossed the border – well, more spiky and
Jeremy Corbyn left Labour MPs angry last night after he ducked out of answering questions at a meeting of the PLP in order to appear on ITV’s The Agenda. So, with members of his own party turning against him once again, the Labour leader decided it was an opportune time to revisit another old feud —
As a general rule politicians should spend less time saying things they do not really believe. However useful such a strategy may be in the short-term it will, sure as eggs be eggs, backfire on you eventually. But there are also occasions when it is a mistake to talk about the things in which you really
Britain’s membership of the European Union is a matter of principle and emotion for most Tory MPs. But it is also a matter of party management. David Cameron would have had an easier time as Prime Minister in the last parliament had he realised that while Conservatives will always want to bang on about Europe,
We’ve been warned that Brexit could spell the end of cheap travel. But is it really true that Britain voting out of Europe would hit holidaymakers in the pocket? Easyjet’s boss Dame Carolyn McCall said before that Brexit ‘wouldn’t be good for Britain’. And in a company prospectus, the airline warned this year that if
Jeremy Corbyn’s much-awaited appearance at the weekly meeting of the parliamentary Labour party didn’t go particularly well this evening, which means that for the group of increasingly determined MPs trying to oust him, it was a hugely successful session. MPs were reminded that the meeting is off the record at the start, before being given
Angela Merkel gave a defiant interview last night in which she defended her handling of the refugee crisis. She declared, ‘I have no Plan B’—worryingly, I suspect this is true. But how much worse the refugee crisis could become worse is made clear in leaked minutes of a meeting between the President of Turkey Recep
Even if there has been no mistake at all in the guidance to civil servants about what documents they can share with pro-Brexit ministers during the referendum campaign, the government has clearly made a number of mistakes at least in the presentation of that guidance, as this afternoon’s urgent question in the Commons showed. The
Although the Tories currently find their party divided over Europe, they can at least take heart that the opposition face greater internal conflict. In fact, rather than attack Matthew Hancock in the Commons today over the Cabinet’s Brexit issues, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson opted to make a joke about his own party’s misery: ‘Mr Speaker sadly I am not in the strongest
After months of playing nice, Marco Rubio has finally turned on his Republican candidate rival Donald Trump. After criticising Trump for his approach to business during the CNN debate, Rubio has now gone one step further and gone after his manhood. Speaking to his supporters at a rally, the Florida senator appeared to take aim at the size
Boris Johnson said he wanted to see ‘total transparency’ ahead of the EU referendum. He referred to this as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to get it right: Owen Paterson laid into ‘Project Fear’ – suggesting that by the time it got to June, ‘dragons coming out of the Thames’ and ‘serpents coming out of our taps’
Given that one of the major findings of the Beckett report into Labour’s general election loss was that the party were not trusted with the economy, it’s safe to say that John McDonnell has his work cut out when it comes to winning back voters on this issue. So, the latest individual to be appointed as
I’m planning to propose to my boyfriend this leap year. I’m proposing that he earns another £10,000 and loses a stone. But marriage? Hell, no. I don’t know why, in the age of equality, society still endorses women going down on bended knee on one solitary day every four years. The internet blames it on
During the Scottish independence referendum, the SNP claimed that Scotland’s oil revenues for 2016-17 would be somewhere in the region of £7.9 billion. However, since then the oil price has plummeted meaning the revenues will likely be just a fraction of their estimate. So, now would be an opportune time for the SNP to show that despite
The one thing quieter than the quiet Commons at the moment is the Labour leadership. Even when Jeremy Corbyn speaks in the Chamber, he makes so little impact that trees falling in empty forests have excited more attention. Last Monday during his response to David Cameron’s European Council statement, Labour backbenchers nattered amongst themselves in
If the parliamentary diary for this week is anything to go by, the next few days are going to be very quiet in Westminster. There is hardly any legislation in the Commons, save for the exciting and largely pointless circus of Private Members’ Bills on Friday, and a series of votes on estimates – public
With the Sunday papers filled with stories suggesting David Cameron’s party is in turmoil over the EU, Sky’s Dermot Murnaghan decided to raise the issue with Anna Soubry during an appearance on his show. Alas he got more than he bargained for when the Minister for Small Business — who is known not to mince her words — proceeded to
I’m one of those sad folk who rather likes airline food. On those rare occasions I get to turn left, of course, never when I get to turn right. Don’t be daft. And now that they are finally taking it seriously, I rather like airline wine. Food and drink might only be ninth or tenth
Q. What does méthode traditionelle mean on a wine label? It is the process (sometimes known as Méthode Champenoise) by which champagne and other top-quality sparkling wines are made, the bubbles being caused by a secondary fermentation in bottle. It distinguishes such wines from those sparklers such as Prosecco made by other cheaper methods. Q. It’s
It is recognised that the era of television has made it well-nigh impossible in Britain and the United States for a balding leader to win an election if pitted against one with more hair — Callaghan/Foot/Kinnock v. Thatcher, George H.W. Bush v. Clinton, Hague/Howard v. Blair, McCain v. Obama. (The only exceptions I can think of derive from the power of incumbency —
For years, now, the Sutton Trust has been releasing research showing how many doctors, judges, journalists etc were privately educated and conclude that it’s all a posh boys’ stitch-up. The British press loves banging this old drum, but in doing so they drown out a new tune. Today, there is more academic excellence in the state sector than
The papers report today that many Conservatives are furious with the way David Cameron is conducting the referendum campaign. MPs threaten that if the Prime Minister continues with the personal attacks that he launched at various opponents on the ‘Leave’ side this week, it will impossible for him to continue at leader after the referendum,
This week Sarah Vine used her Daily Mail column to reveal the details of the roast lamb supper her husband Michael Gove used to plot a move to back Brexit with Boris Johnson. Now the Mayor of London’s sister Rachel Johnson has gone one better and lifted the lid on her brother’s subsequent Brexit deliberations. Writing in the Mail on
The Spectator is run with Prussian efficiency by a dozen editorial staff at 22 Old Queen St. We don’t have very many technical gurus, and pretty much rely on our users to let us know when things go wrong. So I’d like to ask how you’re finding the website, our login system, our Apps and
David Cameron’s slap down of Boris Johnson on Monday was one of the most brutal, and personal, that I’ve seen in six and a half years of reporting on parliament. But, as I report in my Sun column today, Number 10 are now keen to calm things down. Indeed, even some of Cameron’s closest allies
Following Tom Shakespeare’s recent suggestion that now might be a good time to ditch ‘God Save the Queen’ — ‘terrible tune, with banal lyrics’ — and replace it with something that more accurately reflects contemporary Britain, competitors were invited to propose lyrics for a new British national anthem. In an entry whose tone varied wildly,
The week the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London have been at loggerheads over the EU. After Boris Johnson declared his support for Brexit, David Cameron launched a thinly veiled attack on him in the Commons. So, can expect to see a ‘posh bloke’ fight before the referendum takes place? Is it feasible that David Cameron and
One of the oddest features of the cabinet majority for staying in the EU is that almost no one in it admits to being a Europhile. How is it, then, that the very last-century ideas of Edward Heath, Ken Clarke, Michael Heseltine and Chris Patten can still exercise so much power over those who have
Badda Bing. Chris Christie has just endorsed Donald Trump for president, and suddenly Republican politics looks like a particularly nasty episode of the Sopranos. As he paid homage to the new capo di tutti capi, Chris Christie called Trump ‘the person who will do exactly what needs to be done to make America a leader around
This article, in Nature magazine, ought to have been front page news – and might have been, had it suggested that global warming was worse than we had thought. Instead, it underlines the sound science behind an inconvenient truth: that there has been a 15-year hiatus in global warming. To those of us who have been following the debate,
Jeremy Corbyn is this weekend campaigning against Labour Party policy. A year ago, it would have been quite unremarkable for the then obscure backbencher to turn up to the CND rally and give a speech against nuclear weapons. But now he’s the Labour leader, Corbyn will be speaking against the current official policy of the
Has David Cameron settled on a strategy for dealing with his opponents in the EU referendum? The Prime Minister was clearly caught on the hop by the decisions of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove to back the ‘Out’ side at the weekend, and his angry digs at the Mayor in the Commons on Monday showed
A study out today suggests that sending your kids to private schools puts them two years’ ahead of their state school counterparts by the time they reach the age of 16. The research, revealed in The Times, showed the ‘private school effect’ apparently boosted grades in almost every subject. But here, in an article first
Despite the In campaign’s best efforts to reach the youth vote with the help of Britain Stronger in Europe board member June Sarpong, some youngsters still find themselves leaning towards Brexit. Both Liz Truss and Diane Abbott learnt this the hard way on last night’s Question Time when a young audience member offered up her argument for leaving the