All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Pope Francis, spiritual leader of a billion people, has just informed them that ‘the great majority’ of sacramental marriages are invalid because couples don’t go into them with the right intentions. He was speaking at a press conference in Rome. Here’s the context, from the Catholic News Agency (my emphases): ‘I heard a bishop say some months
The biggest cultural shifts happen invisibly, bubbling away below the surface for years before someone notices a change. So it was the acceptability of moustaches and gluten-free diets. And so it is with an understanding that we will be working until we die. There was once a time when the goal of any aspirational worker
RIP Jo Cox MP. A hugely talented young politician possessed of great clarity of thought and principle. Shot and stabbed by a piece of human filth, a piece of white human filth, while attending her surgery in West Yorkshire. God bless the woman and look after her family, please. This sort of savagery and vileness
Following the news that the Labour MP Jo Cox has died after being shot and stabbed in a brutal street attack, her husband Brendan has called on the public to ‘unite to fight against the hatred that killed her’. A number of politicians have paid tribute to the MP for Batley and Spen — who
Events have a multiplier effect. And when they come in bunches the effect can be overpowering. This was already a sad and demeaning day, even before we heard the ghastly news a Labour MP, Jo Cox, had been murdered outside her constituency surgery in Yorkshire. Politics is, figuratively speaking, a contact sport. It is a
Labour MP Jo Cox has died after being shot and stabbed in a brutal street attack. The MP for Batley and Spen passed away on her way to hospital following the incident earlier today in Birstall, West Yorkshire. Chief Constable Dee Collins said: ‘I am now very sad to have to report that she has
Yesterday, on the Thames, in a bizarre battle of political flotillas, we got a glimpse of the elite rage that motors much of the Remain camp. On one of the pro-EU boats, Bob Geldof, a knight, superbly well-connected, who has earned millions, made wanker gestures and gave a two-fingered eff-you to the people on the
Labour MP Jo Cox is in a critical condition after being injured during a shooting in her constituency. Eyewitnesses said the MP for Batley and Spen was attacked close to a library in Birstall, near Leeds, where she has previously held advice surgeries. A 52-year-old man has been arrested. Reports, that have not been confirmed,
A couple of months ago, the Leave campaign seemed constantly grumpy, complaining about media coverage, colleagues and the use of the government machine in this referendum. But now, with just a week to go until polling day, this seems to have reversed. The Brexiteers’ continuing poll lead has spooked Remain, and Remain really isn’t dealing
The Bank of England’s decision to keep interest rates pegged at 0.5 per cent won’t surprise anyone. What is more interesting, after today’s row involving Mark Carney, is how much the Bank had to say about the EU referendum. Brexiteers hoping Mark Carney and the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee would keep quiet about next week’s
Amidst the fanfare surrounding the EU referendum, today’s Tooting by-election has come around virtually unnoticed. Triggered by Sadiq Khan stepping down after being elected Mayor of London, the contest does not look like it will herald much in the way of surprises. Barring a big upset, Labour’s Rosena Allin-Khan is set to win. Labour have
The Leave campaign sees the EU-Turkey accession talks as a reason to drum up fears about migration. In fact, it is a red herring. True, David Cameron may have previously been one of the most vocal champions for Turkish EU membership, even if during the referendum campaign he said that Turkey will not join ‘until
I keep telling myself that the polls showing Leave ahead are too good to be true. But then I see Remain’s latest efforts and feel reassured. One of its earliest campaigners was the self-important businessman Sir Mike Rake who, I wrote at the time, is pure gold for Leave. This week he pops up again,
Fraser Nelson and Nick Cohen discuss The Spectator’s decision to back Brexit: The Ipsos MORI phone poll released this morning shows a dramatic turnaround since its last poll which had a double digit advantage for Remain. Leave is now six points ahead amongst those likely to vote. This means that Leave has been ahead in
With a week to go until the referendum, nerves are running high in both the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ campaigns. This morning, we’ve seen that nervousness manifest itself in a spat between senior Tories and the Treasury and the Bank of England. Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard, Lord Lamont and Lord Lawson have signed a letter
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. In the magazine this week, The Spectator has urged its readers to back Brexit. In our leading article, The Spectator says that the European Union is making the
The Financial Conduct Authority has caved in to banks over payment protection insurance compensation by backing their call for a two-year deadline for new claims, according to internal documents published in The Times. The paper says this is the latest example of the city watchdog softening its stance with banks and comes after a public row over
Aside from the EU debate, it’s John Whittingdale who has become the talk of the Commons this week thanks to the black-eye he’s been sporting. While there has been much speculation as to how he came to get the bruise, his aides have insisted that it was simply won through an altercation with a lamp post.
One consequence of David Cameron’s refusal to take part in any ‘Blue on Blue’ debates is that he and Michael Gove are appearing several days apart on BBC Question Time. Tonight, it was Gove’s turn to face the studio audience. In reply to the first question, Gove made clear that—in the event of Britain voting
Oh dear. Today Jeremy Corbyn surprised everyone by using his first question at PMQs to ask for an update on Leveson and phone hacking. In doing this, he took a swipe at both Cameron and Rupert Murdoch, arguing that the Prime Minister’s Tory Brexit colleagues were guilty of ‘cosying up to Murdoch’ at the moment.
George Osborne has angered Tory MPs today by suggesting a vote to leave the European Union could trigger a series of tax rises. 57 Conservative MPs have signed a letter saying that they would not support such a motion in Parliament in a move which left Osborne flailing during a tetchy interview on the Today
What a strange farewell. The slickest, sparkiest and most brutal street-fighter the Tory party has produced in a generation found himself agreeing with his worst enemies today. ‘That says something,’ shouted David Cameron (who remains prime minister for the next week or so). ‘We have huge disagreements,’ he explained. And yet despite the fault-lines his
The last PMQS before the EU referendum will not live long in the memory, the Commons did not rise to the occasion. David Cameron was determined to try and keep his broad Remain coalition together. But Jeremy Corbyn was less than helpful to Cameron. Corbyn said that Labour would oppose any post-Brexit austerity Budget, rather
The last time Ed Vaizey appeared on the Daily Politics to defend one of George Osborne’s dodgy dossiers, the result was not pretty. The culture minister’s bumbling performance was compared to that of The Thick of It‘s Ben Swain, in his Newsnight interview. So, it was an interesting decision to send Vaizey back onto the
‘Remain’ have being having a woeful time in the polls lately, with numerous surveys putting ‘Leave’ ahead. But north of the border, it’s been widely thought that it’s a different picture and that those wanting Britain to remain in the EU outnumbered those backing Brexit. A new poll out just now suggests that whilst that
Forget the big EU debates, the most important face-off ahead of polling day is playing out on the Thames right now. Nigel Farage has taken to the water today as part of a Brexit flotilla, organised by the Fishing for Leave campaign. The stunt sees Scottish skippers boarding Brexit boats as they make the case for Out.
This is the transcript of a speech delivered by Lord Falconer during the Spectator’s second Brexit debate. Full coverage of the event can be found here. I so agree with Daniel Hannan that we are at a fork in the road. I think the public realise that as well, that the interest in the European Union referendum
This is the transcript of speech delivered by Daniel Hannan during the Spectator’s second Brexit debate. Full coverage of the event can be found here. I heard today what must be reckoned to be the single worst argument that we’ve had from any major figure on either side of this campaign. It came from Ed
With the Remain camp now seen to be lagging behind Leave both in terms of momentum and polling, it’s a case of all hands on deck with the In crowd. However, as Mr S has previously noted, Britain Stronger in Europe’s chairman Stuart Rose has been nowhere to be seen of late. After a number
The In campaign believe that they win when the referendum debate is focused on the economy. So, today George Osborne and Alistair Darling are outlining a deliberately provocative post-Brexit emergency Budget. It is stuffed full of horrors: a 2p rise in the basic rate of income tax, a 3p rise in the higher rate and
What do David Cameron and the likes of Ed Balls and Harriet Harman have in common? The answer: they’ve all described Brexit as a ‘leap in the dark’. And they’re not alone in saying those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU have no plan for what happens next. We’ve heard the ‘leap in the
The Spectator has a long record of being isolated, but right. We supported the north against the slave-owning south in the American civil war at a time when newspapers (and politicians) could not see past corporate interests. We argued for the decriminalisation of homosexuality a decade before it happened, and were denounced as the
Life is speeded up. It used to be that when a hideous atrocity occurred people waited a day or two, even a week, before co-opting it into their political armoury. Now it happens while the smell of cordite is still in the air and before the blood has dried. There is a breathtaking shamelessness about
In the final, frenzied, all-things-seem-possible days of the Scottish referendum on independence – the days when it seemed there was something in the air and perhaps the water too – some people outside Scotland began to ask a disconcerting question: Has Scotland gone mad? Scots, whether Unionist or Nationalist, disliked the question but while their huffiness