All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It is wearisome work, but I hope the ‘leave’ campaign is carefully monitoring the BBC’s coverage of the referendum. On Monday, the first full weekday since Mr Cameron’s ‘legally binding’ deal, I listened to the Today programme for more than two hours. I heard six speakers for ‘remain’ and two (John Mills and Nigel Lawson) for ‘leave’. In
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,
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
In the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks, Kay Burley became the subject of much mockery online after she tweeted a photo of a dog in the French city, with the caption ‘sadness in his eyes’. Readers were quick to question whether it was an appropriate message in the wake of 129 deaths. Sadness in
Tonight’s Republican CNN debate should be, to use the Donald Trump word, yuuge. I don’t mean to sound like a boxing promoter; I know that TV debates, especially Republican ones, are overhyped. They often turn out to be little more than soundbites and fury, signifying nothing. But anybody who thinks a bad debate can’t harm a political
Quite naturally, those campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union have seized on today’s net migration figures as evidence that staying in won’t resolve voters’ concerns about immigration. Priti Patel has said that ‘the proposed deal will do nothing to reduce the level of immigration from the EU, and will leave unelected politicians in
David Owen said it was time for Britain to leave the EU. Speaking this morning, the SDP founder said Brexit was a way of restructuring Europe in the way it needed to be. Owen went on to say there was no need for Britain leaving behind the EU to be a damaging process: Dame Janet
Yesterday PMQs descended into ‘Punch and Judy’ style politics after David Cameron responded to a heckle about his mother by laying into Jeremy Corbyn’s fashion sense. David Cameron criticised Corbyn’s shabby appearance: ‘Put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem.’ However rather than take the criticism on board, it
David Cameron had a tough time trying to convince his European counterparts at the European Council; but hopefully he will be up for seconds when he goes head-to-head with the European Parliament. He paid its Members a long overdue visit last week, but only met with a select few. He will have to do more
Niall Ferguson got me thinking about this in his Sunday Times piece, in which he rejected the allure of Brexit and declared himself an ‘Anglosceptic’. He concluded: ‘In the days before empire, Henry VIII’s version of Brexit was to renounce Roman Catholicism and divorce Catherine of Aragon. A true sceptic in those days would have
The net migration statistics have, for quite a while, been an awkward quarterly occurrence that the Tories just have to sit through and pretend isn’t happening. Today’s release from the Office for National Statistics shows that David Cameron is still nowhere near hitting his pledge of driving net migration into the tens of thousands, with
The vision of a European Common Market was a good one when in 1962 membership was first envisaged for the UK. Nevertheless, we were rightly warned even then by the leader of the Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell, that a federal Europe lurked in the background. As far back as 1971 Edward Heath’s White Paper on
Oh dear. Today Time magazine released a list of the 100 most-read female writers in American colleges. On the list were Jane Austen, J K Rowling, Kate L. Turabian and… Evelyn Waugh. Yes, the Brideshead Revisted author made it onto the all-female list despite the fact that he was a man. In their defence, Waugh’s first name has
The Dame Janet Smith report into Jimmy Savile has already been labelled an ‘expensive whitewash’ by a lawyer representing 168 victims, just hours after it was published. The review found that BBC staff knew of complaints and allegations about the entertainer but that little was done to pursue them because of a culture of fear
So, FTSE 100 company bosses have come out in favour of staying in the EU – even if, as Ed West notes, the 198 signatories in a letter to the Times represent only 36 companies. I wonder if anyone dropped out at the last moment to reduce the tally below the figure of 200. Of
The head of Amnesty, Kate Allen, was busily talking the most terrible balls on the radio this morning. In an interview on the Today programme she reminded everyone of how bad the situation in Syria is and indulged in the usual Conservative-bashing by arguing that Britain wasn’t doing enough to alleviate the refugee situation. Despite
Europe has opened up an unbridgeable chasm in the Conservative party. Labour remains, near as dammit, united. On the EU referendum, an opposition accustomed to defeat has a rare chance of victory. Yet when Jeremy Corbyn makes the case for staying in he speaks without conviction. Like a man called into work on his day
This could have been a tricky PMQs for David Cameron. Instead, it will be remembered for Cameron ventriloquising his mother and telling Corbyn ‘put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem’. What gave this jibe its potency, is that it sums up what a lot of voters think of
After Tory MPs took part in some ‘Punch and Judy’ style heckling on Monday, David Cameron was in no mood to tone things down during PMQs. The Prime Minister was asked by Jeremy Corbyn about health cuts in Cameron’s constituency. At which point a heckler shouted ‘ask your mother?’ in reference to Mary Cameron signing an
Last night Sadiq Khan appeared on Newsnight to discuss his bid to be the next Mayor of London. Evan Davis grilled the Labour mayoral candidate on his extended family’s supposed links to extremists as well as his approach to business which appears to be at loggerheads with Jeremy Corbyn’s: ED: Corbyn has said ‘now is the
Obviously the 198 business leaders who signed a letter to the Times yesterday explaining why Britain should remain in the EU are too busy and important to read what appears under their names, but surely someone in their enormous ‘comms’ teams should have pointed out to them that they were directly repeating David Cameron’s current slogan
Of all the publications from the Office for National Statistics this morning, the electoral statistics for the UK doesn’t sound like the most gripping. But it is the start of a very big political row, which is the boundary review. These electoral statistics will spark the formal review by the Boundary Commissions, which will then
Michael Gove’s BBC interview, in which he disagrees with his Prime Minister over whether his renegotiation deal is indeed legally binding, is a sign of how confusing the referendum campaign is going to get. The Justice Secretary is perfectly polite as he dismisses the stance of his own government, but he is still the Justice
Over the years David Cameron has faced much scrutiny over his close relationship with Rupert Murdoch — as well as News UK’s Rebekah Brooks. However as far as Mr S can remember, the Prime Minister never allowed Murdoch to sit in on important meetings with Cabinet members. So Steerpike was interested to read Sarah Vine’s account in
David Cameron was grilled today on plans for a ‘7-day NHS’. This is his attempt to iron out a slight kink in the NHS schedules. The trouble is that although our heroic doctors and nurses keep regular hours our deadly diseases are hopelessly unpredictable and like to smite us down whenever they feel a bit
Texas Senator Ted Cruz is running scared. The other week, he apologised to Dr. Ben Carson but refused Carson’s pleas that he discipline his staff for suggesting to Iowa caucus-goers that the neurosurgeon had dropped out of the running for president. On Monday, Cruz fired communications director Rick Tyler for distributing a video with bad
Although David Cameron insists that he wishes to remain on good terms with his Brexit-supporting Cabinet members, he’s not planning to make life easy for them. Today Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, has issued new guidance relating to the referendum that means SpAds and civil servants are banned from assisting Eurosceptic ministers with any material that could be used to back Brexit
It wasn’t quite David Cameron and his down-to-the-wire talks with the EU leaders, but it’s as close as we get in Scotland. For the last eight months, the Scottish and UK governments have been trying to secure agreement over the financial settlement which will underpin the new tranche of powers to come to Holyrood – the
The number of Tory MPs who have yet to declare what their stance is in the EU referendum is dwindling. Some of those are away, including Tracey Crouch, who is on maternity leave and gave this very amusing response to those asking about her priorities, while others have decided not to reveal which way they
As some light relief from all this EU discussion, I thought readers might like to hear about Isis. Or at least what to do about Isis. The week before last I teamed up in London with General John Allen to argue that Western boots may be needed on the ground in Syria and Iraq to
Bernard Hogan-Howe was up in front of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee today where Keith Vaz did his best to soften up the Met Police commissioner at the start of the hearing by asking him for his views on the EU referendum. But Hogan-Howe said he wasn’t getting involved: Whilst on the subject of
Labour’s angst over Trident has taken something of a back seat over the past few days as the party tries – relatively unsuccessfully – to revel in the split opening up in the Tories on Europe. But this evening, those tasked with developing Labour’s foreign policy, and particularly its stance on the nuclear deterrent, are
Ed Miliband has been keeping a low profile since stepping down as Labour leader, but could he now be angling for a return to frontline politics? Miliband was spotted engrossed in conversation this lunchtime with Team Corbyn. A beady-eyed spectator snapped a photo of Ed having a coffee with Seumas Milne — Corbyn’s director of comms —
Trying to navigate your way through the internecine wars in the Conservative Party over the referendum? Please allow the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg to help. This was her intro on the BBC website yesterday: Silence abhors a vacuum, and forgive me if you are not a fan of political conspiracy, and on a day