All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It has finally happened. In trading on Tuesday afternoon, the UK’s FTSE 100 index finally closed in on an all-time high. It hit 8,015 points, itching above the previous record closing level of 8,014 set in February 2023 – even if it was still a whisker below the intra-day trading record of 8,043, also from
For the third time in recent years a party created by Nigel Farage is threatening the Tory party’s fading hopes of re-election. But this time the Tories’ very existence is at stake. Reform UK was founded in 2018 by Farage from the ashes of Ukip – which forced David Cameron to call and lose the
A well-known French radio comedian recently suggested an armed revolution in the event Marine Le Pen is elected President in 2027. Mahaut Drama made her comments not in jest, but during a debate at a left-wing media festival in Paris entitled ‘How to fight the far right’. Envisaging a Le Pen victory, Drama said: ‘What
The death of three British citizens in an Israeli strike has prompted fierce condemnation from the UK government. In a phone call on Tuesday night, Rishi Sunak told his counterpart told Benjamin Netanyahu that he was ‘appalled’ by the attack, which killed seven aid workers in a World Central Kitchen convoy. Sunak said that ‘far
Police Scotland, who are responsible for enforcing Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act, have found no criminality in a series of tweets posted by JK Rowling. On Monday, the day the Scottish law came into effect, the author, a gender-critical feminist, tweeted about a number of men who call themselves women – and insisted they were still men.
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Freddy speaks to pollster Cliff Young about Biden’s recent gains. Is Florida becoming more of a swing state again? Does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. take more votes away from Biden or Trump? And how much pressure do pollsters feel to get things right?
In a week that will prove testing for Humza Yousaf as public outrage over his hate crime bill continues, there is a tiny glimmer of hope for the beleaguered First Minister. A new poll has suggested that out of all the leaders of Scotland’s political parties, Yousaf is the public’s top choice for First Minister.
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The SNP’s new Hate Crime Act came into effect yesterday, but already it has been met with backlash. On the episode, James Heale talks to Isabel Hardman and Lucy Dunn on why Humza Yousaf insisted on this law and whether it could overwhelm the police. Produced by Cindy Yu.
Good on Rishi Sunak. At long last we have a Prime Minister who has come out swinging in defence of free speech. When JK Rowling shared her opposition to Scotland’s new hate crime legislation yesterday, Sunak was quick to defend her right to speak out. If the PM truly believes that the Conservatives are the
In prison, drugs kill. HMP Parc, a private prison in Wales managed by G4S, has seen six inmate deaths over a period of three weeks. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO), the official body tasked with investigating deaths in prisons, soon realised that ‘at least’ two of those deaths were drug-related. Imprisoned at HMP Wandsworth,
When the New Atheism thing was new, I wrote a piece saying that the people who supported it were pretentious and cowardly. They pretended to know what religion is, and said that it caused great harm. I said this was ‘intellectual cowardice’. The intellectual coward is one who chooses simplicity over complexity and difficulty. One
Scotland’s Hate Crime Act has got off to a rather rocky start, to put it mildly. On Monday, when the bill came into force, renowned author JK Rowling took to Twitter to reiterate her concerns about how expressing gender critical views (namely, that biological sex is a reality) could be an offence under the new
The thing about having three prominent house prices indices, all of which publish monthly figures, is that they are forever telling conflicting stories. Indeed, today’s Nationwide index, itself, nods in two different directions: prices were down 0.2 per cent in March, but the annual gain in prices was up from 1.2 per cent in February
Easter recess may be in full swing, but government ministers aren’t getting a break. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was sent out on the morning round today, to talk about the Tories’ free childcare expansion package. Eligible working parents of two-year-olds can now receive 15 hours of government-funded childcare a week during term time. From September,
Among the many political advantages of the presidency, surely one is the ability to extend warm wishes to Christians, Jews and Muslims on their holidays. It’s a golden opportunity to invite a few for pictures at the White House and explain how much the holiday has always meant to you. Easy-peasy. For a Catholic president
The 2024 Eurovision Song Contest – the final of which will be held in Malmö on 11 May – is the latest peculiar target of pompous virtue signallers. The hosts of the UK’s largest Eurovision screening have announced their decision to scrap the event. The reason? Israel, of course. ‘We have collectively decided not to
On the surface of it, Germany’s new pathway to citizenship sounds like a rare dose of sense from the one country in the Western world whose modern history means it still understands why Israel has a right to exist. One surefire short-hand for establishing who means us ill is by singling out those who mean
President Erdogan’s political star rose when he won the local elections in Istanbul exactly 30 years ago. ‘The one who wins Istanbul wins the whole of Turkey,’ he once said. His famous sentence is now back to haunt him. People already talk about ‘the beginning of the end’ for Erdogan In Istanbul yesterday, tens of
Last night, six missiles fired from an Israeli F-35 combat aircraft hit and destroyed a building belonging to the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. At the time, a meeting between high-ranking members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were taking place. The attack resulted in the
Humza Yousaf’s illiberal Hate Crime Act is now in force and its first day has been a doozy. The SNP’s minister for victims and community safety Siobhian Brown admitted on the Today programme that Scots could be investigated by the police for ‘misgendering’ trans people. It was revealed that one-third of police officers has still
What a surprise. Given the choice of whether or not to double council tax for second home owners from next April, 153 English councils have already reportedly decided that yes, indeed they will. Even officials in that well-known holiday hotspot, Gravesham, have decided to introduce the levy, in spite of there being a mere 21
Were I to tell you that the most significant political figure of his age celebrates a landmark birthday this week, you’d probably work out that I could not be referring to Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer. There would be an argument for suspecting I might be talking about Boris Johnson, given that he was born
Police in Paris last week arrested a man suspected of planning an attack against a church. That in itself was not unusual. According to Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, since 2017 the police and intelligence services have thwarted 45 Islamist attacks. Is this some twisted form of mid-life crisis? What was different about the man detained in Paris
Given that a fair proportion of the UK public seem to want Martin Lewis to be prime minister, the government might well hesitate to dismiss the Money Saving Expert’s latest grumble: that Ofgem’s cap on standing charges is to be jacked up from today – from 53 pence to 60 pence per day in the
The Sunday Times’s headline for the obituary of Edward Bond earlier this month was striking: ‘Briton who rose from a working class background to make an indelible mark on Theatreland.’ The month before that, the playwright Bernard Kops joined the majority, and I was interested to read in the Guardian that ‘both his father, Joel,
On 28 December 1993, after getting off a flight from Barcelona at Madrid’s Barajas airport, 23 year-old actress Maribel Verdu was suddenly surrounded by journalists and photographers. The reason for their frantic curiosity became apparent to Verdu when she was handed that day’s copy of a Spanish newspaper, in which a full-page feature claimed she
I was in my early twenties when I found out that I’m half-Jewish. Until then, as far as I was aware, I was merely a lapsed Catholic embracing the secular life. (I abandoned the faith at the age of ten; my Catholic mother didn’t seem to mind.) My father, as I understood it, was Protestant.
The news that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, had been arrested and charged with rape and other historical sexual offences, was a rare moment of genuine shock in politics. Politicians on all sides have been scrabbling to respond, to understand what has happened and what it means for the DUP
Reform are breathing down the neck of the Tories, according to the latest polls. So it’s perhaps no surprise then that hostilities have stepped up between spokesmen for the two parties. The Mail on Sunday has today run a two-page story on various eccentric candidates standing for Reform at the forthcoming election. Among them include
Most years, the royal family’s attendance at the Easter Mattins service at St George’s Chapel in Windsor is nothing more than a well-received piece of pageantry, an opportunity for well-wishers to wave and cheer and for commentators to observe whatever couture the royals are wearing. Not this year. The absence of the Princess of Wales
How many modern Chinese books, TV shows or films do you count among your favourites? Perhaps Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon comes to mind, or maybe Crazy Rich Asians, or Jung Chang’s Wild Swans. If you don’t have many more beyond that, I don’t blame you. For many reasons (not least the Chinese Communist party’s Big Brother approach to anything
Throughout the short life of the Assisted Dying Bill which failed in the Commons, the ‘faith community’ (a quaint term for that category of human beings who throughout history have been more assiduous than any other in trying to kill each other) have with skill and persistence deployed an argument of great potency. Such is
If you get up early enough on Easter morning, according to old English folklore, you might be lucky enough to see the sun dancing in the sky as it rises, rejoicing at the resurrection of Christ – although tradition also records that the devil usually manages to put a hill in front of the dancing
The classic book The Railway Children contains several episodes that must seem almost incomprehensible to modern children. None perhaps are more shocking to the modern mind than the incident where some public schoolboys on a cross country run are directed through a tunnel on a working public railway. Unsurprisingly, this does not end well, with