All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
France has been without an official government for seven weeks, the longest in the history of the Fifth Republic. A caretaker prime minister and government have been running the country for what President Macron declared the ‘Olympic truce’. That truce is now over, yet the President is in no hurry to appoint a new prime
The Beeb is developing a habit of being the news rather than making it – and the upcoming release of Sir Brian May’s badger documentary this Friday is no exception. The public service broadcaster has been slammed for allowing a BBC 2 programme to air after it emerged that the Queen guitarist will this week
It was easy to mock it as a piece of political grandstanding. On taking office, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves almost immediately discovered a ‘black hole’ in the public finances, and started warning of tax rises in the autumn. To many of her opponents, it looked like pure opportunism. And yet, now it turns out that
The foolishness of the government’s appeasement of the unions is becoming clearer by the day. The 15 per cent pay rise for train drivers had hardly been signed off when Aslef announced a further set of strikes on LNER trains over rostering. Now, it is the turn of the Transport and Salaried Staff Association (TSSA),
With the Democratic National Convention taking place this week, it’s crucial to consider the potential consequences for Britain and global stability if Kamala Harris emerges victorious in the presidential election in November. The past four years have not been kind to the special relationship. After Donald Trump’s warmth towards Britain, Joe Biden’s tenure called into
Another day, another drama. The spotlight is back on Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot as accusations of cronyism continue to fly in. Now it transpires that yet another civil service appointee has rather strong political links to Starmer’s army. Ex-Labour Together campaigner Jess Sargeant has been appointed to a top civil service job, with Politico
Why is there not more disquiet over Yvette Cooper’s promise to crack down on ‘harmful’ beliefs? To my mind it ranks as one of the most chilling political pledges of the modern era. The thought of a Labour government, or any government, imperiously decreeing which ideas are ‘harmful’ and which are benign leaves me cold.
The sight of a grimacing Kim Jong Un on board an inflatable rubber dinghy is not what one would expect from the leader of a country which has repeatedly threatened to ‘annihilate’ the United States. As floods ravage across provinces along North Korea’s border with China, the North Korean leader has leapt upon the occasion
The contest to be the next leader of the Conservative party, which has six entrants and will last until November, by necessity involves a great deal of reflection. It could hardly be any other way, in the wake of the party’s worst defeat in its 200-year history: every aspirant is right to understand that there
As the UK Tory leadership contest rumbles on, north of the border the Scottish race is hotting up. Last week saw a rather dramatic few days in which four of six contenders called for the competition to be paused and the party’s deputy leader quit her post after ‘disturbing claims’ about outgoing leader Douglas Ross
It’s hard to keep up with what is racist these days. It used to be straightforward. You know, discriminating against, hating or depriving rights to certain groups for no other reason than the colour of their skin. But that quaint definition just won’t do anymore. Nowadays, the countryside is racist, maths is racist, telling a
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Keir Starmer has been meeting the new First Minister Eluned Morgan as part of a two day trip to Wales. While the trip included a visit to a wind farm, Starmer quickly faced questions about the fate of steel workers in Port Talbot. What does this challenge tell us about Starmer’s Industrial Strategy and his
The new Labour government is supposedly committed to ‘defend[ing] our sovereignty and our democratic values’, as its manifesto put it, but it appears to have stumbled at the first hurdle, delaying a key measure for countering the influence of hostile states, which MI5 has described as essential for Britain’s national security. The foreign influence registration
To the Windy City, where the Democratic National Convention is in full swing. In the early hours of this morning, outgoing President Joe Biden bid an emotional farewell to conference delegates to pave the way for Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign, and former US leader Barack Obama is due to speak today. But besides the big
Just when you think the equality and diversity police can’t get any madder, they do. Now it transpires that libraries across Wales have been told to become ‘anti-racist’ in the devolved Labour government’s bid to ‘eradicate’ systemic racism by 2030 – with librarians urged not to hold meetings in ‘racist’ buildings by decolonisation training experts.
What a joke the government’s promise to concentrate on ‘growth, growth, growth’ is becoming. Since the Prime Minister uttered those words on entering Downing Street, we have had road schemes cancelled and money withdrawn from a supercomputer project at Edinburgh university, that could have given Britain’s AI industry a leg-up. We have had fat pay
I have to confess that, like many other commentators, I thought that the coming of the Labour government would mean – at least for a bit – that things might get a little quieter, at least on social media. I was quite looking forward to that. But it all seems to have got even madder.
Scotland’s drug misuse deaths – the worst in Europe – have long been a stain on the Scottish government’s record. Today it just got worse. The latest figures show a shocking 12 per cent increase in drug deaths to 1,172. It dashes hopes that last year’s dip in mortality showed that the problem was easing.
On Monday morning at 5 a.m. the superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily, leaving one man dead and six people missing. Among the unaccounted for are the British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who had been enjoying a celebratory cruise after a US jury acquitted him of fraud charges in June, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.
Elite sport is a selfish business. It’s all about achieving success for yourself. However much others have contributed to your success – your teammates, your coaches, your sports administrators, and the taxpayers and sponsors who pour money into you and your sport – they merely share your reflected glory. Even nationality itself is negotiable: if you
Good heavens. As the 2024 US presidential campaigns pick up pace, some rather damning revelations have emerged about the impression contender Donald Trump left on Queen Elizabeth II. A new biography serialised in the Mail, A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown, has set out the late monarch’s reflections on meeting the US businessman
Illegal immigrants continue to flow into England across the calm waters of the Channel. The latest data from the Home Office states that nearly 1,500 people have arrived in the last week. Weekends are proving particularly popular: 703 migrants came ashore on Sunday August 11 and 492 made landfall last Saturday. So much for Keir Starmer’s
‘Kanko kankai’ (tourism pollution) is the latest buzz phrase here in Japan as the double-edged samurai sword of the visitor boom continues to cause profit but also pain. The latest problem, along with the overcrowding, poor behaviour, and squeezed out locals, is a shortage of staff at the main attractions and the hotels and restaurants
Chicago Joe Biden has given a speech at every single Democratic National Convention since 1976. Tonight was his last and he didn’t start speaking until 10.28 p.m., local time. Far past his bed time. Why so late? Poor planning? Or a cynical attempt to push the President’s appearance past ‘prime time’ – in case he
In the sprawling and unlovely village of Billopilya, only five miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia, when death comes, it comes from the skies. Moscow had been targeting the hardscrabble settlement with glide bombs – known here as KABs – ever since Ukrainian troops smashed their way into the Kursk region on 6 August. Vladimir
Rafah, Gaza The heat, the sand, the soldiers. I’m in Rafah, a war zone unlike any other. As a former soldier, it’s an unsettling experience. Every time we get out of a vehicle, I reach for a weapon I do not have. Instead of my army fatigues, I’m wearing lightweight trousers, a polo shirt and a
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It is day one of the DNC. Freddy Gray meets two Labour MPs, Lucy Rigby (North Northampton) and Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) who have been invited to the convention to inform the Democrats on how to appeal to ‘working people’.
To Northern Ireland, where Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been speaking to reporters about emergency prison measures, the violent riots that swept Britain’s streets and the response of the police. But during his interrogation by journalists, the PM didn’t seem to be in the mood to entertain recent rumours that his chief of staff,
Russell Findlay has launched his bid to be the next Scottish Tory leader as the party descends into a civil war over the propriety of the electoral process. The UK Conservative leadership race has thus far been a pretty staid affair. Not so the Scottish party, which is on the hunt for a new figurehead
Could Belarus’s Aleksandr Lukashenko be the key to ending the Ukraine conflict? In a surprising intervention over the weekend, the long-time dictator and close Putin ally said in an interview on Russian state TV that ‘Nazis don’t exist on the territory of Ukraine’ – a key part of Putin’s stated war aims. He also called
Boris Johnson is back. The ex-prime minister is preparing to grace the nation with his musings as the launch date of his new memoir Unleashed looms. The former Tory leader’s latest work will be unveiled at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on 10 October, with his publishers promising the ex-PM will ‘explore the big decisions of
The latest information seeping out from the negotiations for an end to the war in Gaza suggest that agreement between the sides remains out of reach. According to a report by Axios today, Hamas yesterday rejected an updated US proposal, claiming that the new formula aligned with attempts by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to
One of the worst things about prison is the rules. Before I was sentenced I’d imagined jail as a rigid, structured, disciplined environment where infractions would be punished without fear or favour. The reality is much, much worse. In our prisons rules are often enforced capriciously or not at all. There’s a two-tier system. A