All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Canada went to the polls on Monday. The election campaign only ran for 37 days, but it was a wild ride with shifts in political momentum that few could have predicted. Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney, who replaced Justin Trudeau on March 14, won last night. It’s the fourth consecutive Liberal win, but it
Ding ding ding! The gloves are coming off, as Scottish Labour backbencher Brian Leishman today took aim at Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband in the Commons over Grangemouth. First bashing both the SNP and previous Tory governments, Leishman turned the guns on his own government minister. Today marks the day that all oil refining in
The Scottish Parliament’s equalities committee has voted against removing Green MSP Maggie Chapman as deputy convenor following her attack on the Supreme Court. The fight might not be over At a rally in Aberdeen in the wake of the judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v. The Scottish Ministers, in which Lord Hodge found for a unanimous
If someone pulled on a Ku Klux Klan hood and went up on a stage and shouted ‘Up the KKK!’, what would you think of that person? Call me a literalist but I’d think that person supports the KKK. I would interpret his donning of the pointy hood and his singing of the KKK’s praises
Dear oh dear. Canada’s election results came in early this morning, revealing that – despite only being leader of the Liberal party for two months – ex-Bank of England governor Mark Carney wiped the floor with Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre. And not only did Poilievre’s party lose the election, he even lost his parliamentary seat.
Ever since President Trump started his tariff war earlier this month, the European Union’s response has been surprisingly clear. It should retaliate with tariffs of its own. It should focus on its own economic sovereignty. And it should make sure that targeted American industries feel the consequences. In other words, it should hit back, and
Despite denouncing the Supreme Court judgment that backed the biological definition of a woman, Green MSP Maggie Chapman has bafflingly managed to survive an attempt to remove her from her role as Deputy Convener of the Equalities Committee in the Scottish parliament. It seems the eco-activists can get away with anything these days… When Chapman
On the eve of Israel’s Remembrance Day, as sirens pierce the quiet of Israeli streets and the nation stands still to honour its fallen, something different will be happening far beyond Israel’s borders. This year, the pain pulses through the hearts of Jews across the diaspora. The grief is no longer distant – it is
Well, well, well. The Tories, Labour and even the SNP condemned Irish rap band Kneecap on Monday over a 2023 clip that seemed to show the trio calling for violence against politicians. Now, it transpires, the republican band is attempting to row back. The emergence of video footage – that appeared to show one of
This election could have been a lot worse for Canada’s Conservatives. As I write, they have taken 41.7 per cent of the popular vote, their highest share since 1988, and are on track to pick up two dozen seats. They have also managed to make inroads with young people and unionised workers – groups that are
When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle staged their dramatic departure from the royal family five years ago, there were various conditions attached to their ‘Megxit’. One of the most insistent was that the pair were no longer allowed to use their HRH, or Royal Highness, titles. These were solely reserved for those working royals who
It was supposed to be the broadest shoulders who were going to fund the government’s overspending. Now it seems to be the broadest bellies, too. The government is to extend George Osborne’s sugar tax to milkshakes and other milk-based drinks. It is also to consult on lowering the threshold at which the sugar tax becomes
By six o’clock this morning, electricity had been restored to 99 per cent of Spain. Restoring people’s sense of security and a full return to normality, however, will take much longer. Portugal has been similarly affected as, briefly, were parts of southern France. The sudden outage occurred at 12.33 p.m. yesterday, leaving Madrid without electricity for
Apparently Canada hasn’t taken enough punishment yet. After a close, hard-fought race that extended into the wee hours of the morning, Mark Carney and the Liberals came away with enough seats to form a minority government. They will form Canada’s fourth consecutive Liberal government since 2015. The Liberals maintained their edge, in part, thanks to the collapse
Results are still flooding in from Canada – but Mark Carney looks to have done the impossible. The Liberal leader will return to office as Prime Minister, after his Conservative rival Pierre Poilievre formally conceded. The key question is whether Carney will win a majority of 172 seats of Canada’s 343 electoral districts in the
Ian Hislop has found someone to blame for Have I Got News For You‘s failure to tackle the Supreme Court’s gender ruling: the programme’s editors. After the BBC show ignored the big story of the month on its Easter edition, Hislop launched into a rant on the latest episode – insisting that he had spoken
The crisis that threatened to poison the secret conclave of cardinals which elects new popes has been resolved. It looks certain that disgraced Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu – until 2018 number three in the Vatican hierarchy behind only the Secretary of State and the Holy Father himself – has fallen on his sword. Many in
To the Commons, where Reform MP Lee Anderson has taken a pop at Labour over Britain’s grooming gang scandal. First blasting Home Office minister Jess Phillips for not backing a full national inquiry, Anderson went on to question whether she was ‘part of the cover up’. Then the Ashfield MP took to Twitter to slam
There’s not much that the Conservatives, the SNP and Labour agree on – but it appears Irish rappers Kneecap have pulled off the improbable and united political opponents against them this week. The republican band has been the source of much outrage after video footage from a 2023 concert emerged, in which one of the
A man named Kai-Ji Adam Lo, 30, has been charged with eight counts of second-degree murder after 11 people were killed and many more were injured in a car ramming in Vancouver, Canada. He allegedly drove his SUV into a crowd gathered for a festival celebrating Filipino culture. The police say the suspect has no
Through the winter of 2011-12, police dragged dozens of journalists from their beds in terrorist-style dawn raids. It was the beginning of a four-year nightmare; a politically motivated witch-hunt triggered, I believe, by a former state prosecutor who today presides as Britain’s Prime Minister. So I was astonished when Sir Keir Starmer popped up in my
We knew it was happening all along, but it was only a matter of time before both Russia and North Korea confirmed to the world the inevitable fact that their relationship is more than rhetoric. Six months after the first North Korean soldiers were deployed to the Kursk region, the Kim regime has finally admitted
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Are we looking at a spring of discontent? It’s the final push ahead of this week’s local elections, and what Keir Starmer wants to talk about is expanding the NHS app – which he says will cut waiting lists and end the days of the health service living in the ‘dark ages’. However, what people
Back to the Beeb, which is better at making the news rather than breaking it these days. Now a new report on the conduct of its employees has concluded that a ‘minority’ of stars and managers ‘behave unacceptably’ at work with chiefs failing to address bad behaviour. The review was ordered by the BBC’s board
Who is the most powerful woman in government? For some, it is the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. Next month, her department will publish a new White Paper, outlining its plans to curb legal migration. It is expected to make it harder for foreign students who come to the UK on graduate visas to stay here
Fifty-six thousand runners completing the London Marathon yesterday may well have gasped the words ‘never again’ as they staggered across the finish line. I have never been a runner, but I imagine that even those who willingly endure the 26.2-mile ordeal must feel not only a profound sense of accomplishment but also, at the very
In its war on waste, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government has been busy scrutinising the effectiveness of quangos – and today’s news may intensity the process somewhat. For it has now emerged that more than 1,300 public body staff earn over six figures a year, with their salaries and benefits topping £100,000. More than that,
The pictures of a triumphant Rachel Reeves holding aloft a US trade deal as she boards a plane home from Washington should have been all over the front pages this morning. After spending the weekend in Washington, and with a personal meeting with the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the advance briefings were that a
The final week of the local election campaign begins today. Much of the weekend discourse was dominated by the fall-out from Robert Jenrick’s comments about a potential ‘coalition’ with Reform. Strikingly, Ben Houchen – the most senior Conservative left in elected office – used his appearance on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC show to suggest that if
Never was there more truth in the old adage about every organisation that is not specifically right-wing eventually becoming left-wing. The pay review bodies which are supposed to provide independent advice to the government on public sector pay have become a menace. They have become advocates for trade unions and care not a jot about
These have been terrible days in France. On Thursday, a 15-year-old girl was stabbed to death and several of her classmates wounded at a private school in Nantes. It was an attack of singular ferocity. The victim, who was stabbed 57 times, was killed by a fellow pupil, a boy her own age. According to
Rachel Reeves sounds surprisingly perky. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has, of course, been forced – we may think, through gritted teeth – to say nice things she cannot possibly have believed about the Trumpian tariff programme that threatens to take a guillotine to her beloved fiscal headroom without her being able to do a
The Supreme Court judgment on sex and gender was a welcome return to common sense. As far as the Equality Act is concerned, even Keir Starmer now knows that a woman is a biological female and a man is a biological male. The task of producing new – and legally compliant – guidance for employers
The Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s clarification of the Supreme Court ruling on what is a woman is not as clear as it looks. It says that trans people may not use single-sex spaces – notably lavatories – but must not be left without spaces to use. So, the hunt is on in hospitals, restaurants,