All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
To Ayrshire, where a former Tory councillor who quit the party in July has defected to Reform UK. North Ayrshire councillor Todd Ferguson has made the leap to Nigel Farage’s party, following in the footsteps of multiple independent and former Conservative councillors across Scotland. The blow is even more painful for Scottish Tory party leader
When the King ‘initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew’ last week – reducing his brother to plain Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – the Royal family might have hoped that it would draw an end to the scandal. But public opinion has scented blood, and righteous outrage is building.
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With Reform leading in the polls, Nigel Farage is determined to ensure that nothing can impede its growth. This morning he sought to bolster his credibility on an area that the Tories think could be his Achilles heel: the economy. Reform’s £90 billion programme of tax cuts promised at the last election has been constantly
The good news for the French police is that three of the four people suspected of carrying off the ‘heist of the century’ at the Louvre last month are in custody. The bad news is that the crown jewels they stole, worth an estimated €88 million (£76 million), have yet to be recovered. Given the audacity
Nigel Farage has shelved massive tax cuts in favour of slashing public spending in a bid to balance the books. The Reform leader said in a speech this morning that ‘substantial tax cuts given the dire state of debt and our finances are not realistic at this current moment’. The ‘back-of-a-fag packet’ economics that characterised
With Reform leading in the polls, Nigel Farage is determined to ensure that nothing can impede its growth. This morning he sought to bolster his credibility on an area that the Tories think could be his Achilles heel: the economy. Reform’s £90 billion programme of tax cuts promised at the last election has been constantly
Last year, Scotland’s former first minister Alex Salmond had a heart attack during a trip to North Macedonia and passed away. Salmond brought his country to the brink of independence in 2014 and helped establish the Scottish National party as a mainstream group north of the border – but his career was also tainted by
There can be no more Panglossian document than the UK international climate finance results published by the government last month. Apparently, since 2011 UK taxpayers have helped prevent 145 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, given 33 million people improved resistance to climate change and saved 717,000 hectares of ecosystem. How proud we can all
After the very latest mass casualty attack on Saturday night, on a busy London North Eastern Railway train in Huntingdon, police and government quickly told us not to speculate about the motives of the alleged attacker. Eleven people were hospitalised in the attack, with one in a critical condition at the time of writing. It’s
The royal family hasn’t been able to stay away from the spotlight lately, as scrutiny over Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s links to US paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have dominated the news. Last week, Andrew was formally stripped of his titles by King Charles and the royal will vacate his Royal Lodge mansion after it emerged he had
First, the power went out in the bar. A few minutes later came the familiar low, concussive thud of an explosion nearby, the kind that makes the walls tremble and the glasses rattle on the shelves. Somewhere close, a few streets perhaps, a Russian drone had found its mark. Almost as quick as it came,
The King acted with decisive authority to strip his brother, Andrew, of his Royal title and evict him from his Windsor mansion. The former Duke of York is now known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and he must vacate Royal Lodge for private accommodation at Sandringham. No formal Letters Patent were issued, nor was parliamentary legislation
Science, which has been kicked about since GCSEs replaced O-Levels in 1986, is in for another shake-up. The latest review of the curriculum – commissioned by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson – is set to recommend that all schools must teach separate sciences to children in Years 10 and 11. That should be a good thing.
We’re accustomed, by now, to Catholic priests having eccentric hobbies. Even so, 57-year-old Father Mark Rowles turned out to have a humdinger. At the end of last week, he admitted in court that while, by day, he was a sad sack of a man in late middle age with thinning hair and specs who ministered to a congregation in
If Rachel Reeves was being judged on her ability to come up with excuses, then she’d be top of her class. From Brexit to fourteen years of Tory government, from the Truss mini-Budget to the weather, the Chancellor has compiled a comprehensive list of reasons why she needs to hike taxes in this month’s Budget
Eleven people were hospitalised, with one man still fighting for his life, after a stabbing spree on a train in Cambridgeshire on Saturday night. Two men were originially arrested on suspiscion of attempted murder. Only one, a 32-year-old black, British national, is being treated as a suspect, according to British Transport Police. ‘A 35-year-old man
Europe has seen this nightmare before. On 21 August 2015, a gunman armed with an AK-47-style assault rifle, a pistol and a knife opened fire on a Thalys train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris, wounding three passengers before being overpowered near Arras. The attacker, Ayoub El Khazzani, a 25-year-old Moroccan who had trained with Islamist
Emmanuel Macron says Europeans should stop relying on social media for their news and turn back to traditional public media. Speaking in Paris on Wednesday, he said people were ‘completely wrong’ to use social networks for information and should instead depend on journalists and established outlets. Social platforms, he argued, are driven by a ‘process
My great-grandmother Netty died in June 2005, aged 99. I was four. That evening, my grandmother called us grandchildren into her living room and opened what looked like a small treasure chest. Out spilled her sparkling jewels. ‘Take whatever you want,’ she said. ‘She’d have wanted you to have them.’ I grabbed three things: a pair
Few political assassinations of a political leader have fundamentally and dramatically altered the course of a nation. American democracy, for instance, endured the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and black Americans continued to enjoy their hard-won freedom. About a century later, the murder of President John F. Kennedy did not halt the legislative process
It is getting pretty bitter in the world of evolutionary biology, and it could come down to the survival of the fittest. In August I reported here on the extraordinary spat between Professor John Wiens of the University of Arizona – who formerly wrote of a ‘sixth mass extinction’ but has since changed his mind
The British Council, the cultural arm of the UK government, is in deep trouble. The 91-year-old organisation is struggling to repay a £200 million-pound loan from the Covid era and there is anxious talk of up to 40 centre closures and a possible 2,000 job losses. Assets are being sold off to try and keep
The tale of the death of the British pub has been well told. Around eight boozers a week are serving last orders for the final time. But some pubs are bucking the trend, the most famous of which is The Farmer’s Dog in Oxfordshire, Jeremy Clarkson’s latest success story. What is its secret? Running a
We’re woefully resigned to the strange situation whereby if an alien landed, they’d believe that being famous was hereditary, like being royal. But when I looked at the Wikipedia page of Louis Theroux, I almost fell out of my wheelchair chuckling. Not only is he the son of the ‘noted travel writer and novelist’ Paul
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor will no doubt be feeling sorry for himself this morning. Stripped of his royal title and booted out of his Windsor mansion, Andrew probably feels that he has paid an unjust price following the Virginia Giuffre scandal. Indeed, King Charles’ defenestration of his disgraced brother is being described across the world as
There are plenty of accusations you could level at Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, the ex-union leader and bus driver, whose corruption and incompetence is steering the economy of his oil-rich Latin American nation off a cliff. But responsibility for America’s lethal drug habit is not one of them. That hasn’t stopped Donald Trump trying, however. ‘We
‘Utter and complete poppycock’: that was Viscount Montgomery of Alamein’s verdict on an US proposal in the 1960s for a multilateral nuclear force crewed by international Nato personnel. Famed for defeating the Nazis in North Africa, Monty didn’t mince his words about that plan. There’s little doubt what he’d make of the quiet resurgence of
What’s happening to our doctors? Researchers at an organisation called Do No Harm recently found that American healthcare professionals were more than two times likelier to be anti-Semitic than their share of the workforce, and that physicians are nearly 26 times overrepresented among individuals identified as having publicly shared anti-Semitic content. This is a worrying
The futile peace talks taking place between Pakistan and the Taliban over cross-border terrorist attacks have produced at least one revelation: Islamabad has become the Dr Frankenstein of the region. For decades, Pakistan’s generals believed they could manipulate Islamist militants and use them as instruments of their foreign policy. They thought it would be simple
What matters more – land or the lives of soldiers? For each side fighting in Ukraine, the answer is different. For Vladimir Putin, every metre of captured Ukrainian soil is worth the lives of tens of thousands of Russians. For Kyiv, the priority is to stop the invaders while keeping casualties to a minimum. Ukraine’s
Hallowe’en is nearly over for another year. Thank goodness, you might say. Each October, many Brits scratch their heads about when this festival became such a big thing. I am as guilty as the next person in doing so: only last weekend I reflected, with a combination of curiosity and weariness, that ‘when I was
On Sunday, it is one year since Kemi Badenoch was elected Tory leader. The anniversary is expected to pass with little in the way of fanfare – though her supporters were cheered by a strong performance at PMQs on Wednesday. One bright spot of her reign has been a healthy return on the donations’ front.
It turns out Kemi Badenoch’s kitchen sink approach in the recent Barnet by-election paid off. The result of the Hendon ward council by-election came in early this morning, with the poll held after former Tory councillor Joshua Conway lost his seat over a job change making him ineligible to stay on. But as Mr S
There’s been speculation for some time, mostly hushed, occasionally not, that the Epstein case has not yet run its course. The settlement reached in Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit was just that: a settlement, not an exoneration, and certainly not the end of the matter. Questions still hang in the air about who else was involved, who