All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
12 min listen
The UK launched a new set of strikes on eight Houthi targets last night. Typoon jets dropped £30,000 Paveway bombs on an underground storage site and surveillance and missile capabilities controlled by the Yemeni rebel group. But are the strikes working? The Houthis have continued to attack ships in the Red Sea, and a row
Spain has approved a pointless amendment to its constitution, replacing the word ‘handicapped’ with the phrase ‘persons with a disability’. Not only did Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez, who never says sorry for genuine oversights, apologise for the delay in making this happen, but he also announced that he regards himself as having thereby paid a ‘moral
Is the BBC biased? Some Tories, including transport minister Huw Merriman, think so. But while there is plenty of evidence to suggest Merriman is correct, he might want to use a different example to the one he used when quizzed on the subject of BBC bias this morning. Sky News’ Kay Burley asked Merriman for
40 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined in New Hampshire by Ben Domenech, editor at large of Spectator World. On the podcast they discuss the pro-Trump establishment of the Republican party; how the Republican cohort have changed since the Obama election and what issues Trump can identify that appeal to voters.
It’s only Tuesday, and already Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had one of the worst weeks since the war against Hamas started last October. Israelis are losing patience with him and his band of self-serving extremist ministers. Netanyahu, whose approval rates were low before the war and have only got lower since it started,
This morning, ministers woke up to the news of a second joint airstrike against the Houthis in Yemen – and some in Westminster have been left reeling that the attacks came as a surprise. Some eight targets were struck, according to the Pentagon, in a UK and US effort to deter continued interference with shipping
The religious and political symbolism was unmistakable, as the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi led the consecration of a controversial new Hindu temple in Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh state, built on the ruins of a 16th century mosque. The Babri Masjid was torn down by Hindu nationalist mobs in 1992, sparking riots across the country that
Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, has one of the most glittering CVs in European politics. The ex finance minister of France, and former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, earns £365,000 a year for running the show at the ECB. But is she any good? An internal poll of staff
It’s an outrage! The dictionary definition of ‘outrage’ in this sense is ‘something that is grossly offensive to decency, morality or good taste’, or resentful anger caused by this. The frequency of outrages these days seems to have gone up by multiples. But is that really the case? It often feels these days that there
On the face of it, this morning’s public sector finance update is good news. The government borrowed £7.8 billion in December last year. This is well below the £11 billion that economists had expected and almost half the £14 billion last forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). These are the lowest borrowing figures for December
Of all the reasons why the Conservatives deserve to lose the next general election, their nonsensical childcare policy is among the most convincing. Labour had needlessly meddled in this sector, with little positive effect on affordability, accessibility, or maternal employment. The Tories could have taken on the vested interests and trades unions, scaled back the
Just last week Rishi Sunak held a special Downing Street press conference to warn peers not to ignore ‘the will of the people’ and block his Rwanda plan. Fast forward a few days and Sunak’s warning appears to have fallen on deaf ears, with the Prime Minister suffering his first Lords defeat on the topic
Are Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak asking the right question as they approach the spring Budget? For the Chancellor and Prime Minister, the key issue is ‘how can we cut taxes in a way that will get us credit with voters?’ But polling by YouGov for today’s Times suggests voters might want them to ask
Today is Ukraine’s Day of Unity which necessarily had to be marked with an expression of national pride. However, president Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to issue a decree ‘On the Territories of the Russian Federation Historically Inhabited by Ukrainians’ represented not simply that, but an open political challenge to Moscow, and one which strangely echoed Putin’s
Having endured months of restrictions on our freedoms to deal with Covid-19, we now face a major health threat entirely of our own making: vaccine hesitancy. Measles – a centuries-old contagious disease which can lead to serious complications – is on the rise. Hospitals in Birmingham are dealing with their biggest outbreak in years. Health
New Hampshire votes tomorrow and today Nikki Haley has just two planned events. She has a morning meet-and-greet in the city of Franklin and a ‘get out the vote rally’ in Salem this evening. Nobody could accuse Haley of not working hard. She’s famously an industrious woman. But given the make-or-break nature of tomorrow’s vote,
It’s the question every political strategist asks themselves. What is something that the public wants, is incredibly popular – and free? The answer, of course, is a good old-fashioned culture war. Amid ongoing questions about Labour’s commitment to its £28 billion ‘green new deal’, Sir Keir Starmer’s speech this morning eschewed talk of spending commitments.
14 min listen
Jeremy Hunt said he would look to cut taxes in the March budget. In the Mail on Sunday, he said he would look to emulate the late Nigel Lawson, who as Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor slashed rates. But Hunt has been promising tax cuts, and hardly delivering, for a while. Will this time be any different?
Ravenna You’re not supposed to mock the afflicted, I know, but I laughed when I read the news that the left-wing citadel of Bologna has introduced a 30 kph (19 mph) speed limit. Forcing the Italians – a nation of famously crazy drivers who make fabulous sports cars – to drive no faster than cyclists is
If you thought senior Conservatives giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry in London was rough then you should watch the footage now emerging from Edinburgh, where the Inquiry’s lawyers have moved to take evidence. It’s a bloodbath. Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and current first minister Humza Yousaf are yet to even take the
Keir Starmer is drawing up his battle-lines for the next election. First, he came for the public schools, pledging to whack VAT on school fees. Now he’s going for the traditionalist wing of National Trust members. In a speech today, he accuses the Tories of ‘waging a war’ on charities and civic society. He claims
Professor Dame Theresa Marteau seems to have something of an obsession about glasses and tableware. In the last ten years, she and her team at Cambridge university have carried out numerous experiments in the bars and restaurants of Cambridgeshire to see whether restricting the size of wine glasses reduces the amount of wine consumed. This
Poor old BBC. It’s been another torrid year for the Corporation after being embarrassed by Gary Lineker, lambasted over Richard Sharp and humiliated over various Hamas howlers. And now, even the mild-mannered Culture Secretary is having a pop at them. Lucy Frazer – never the most natural of culture warriors – was out on the
The farmers of France are mobilising. Their anger will be an early test for Gabriel Attal; the countryside is unknown territory for the new prime minister, a young man raised in the affluent suburbs of Paris, like the majority of Emmanuel Macron’s government. The first dissent was on Friday in the south-west of France, in and
A century ago today, the first ever Labour government was formed. Yet even many Labour members will probably be ignorant of the anniversary. To be fair, most historians of the party (this one included) have overlooked the government in favour of the superficially more consequential post-war administrations, especially that of 1945. After all, the 1924
Katharine Birbalsingh is back in the papers again. The head teacher at Michaela, a free school whose outstanding academic record and ultra-strict behaviour policy have made it a culture-wars lightning rod, tells the Sunday Times that she and her staff have been getting death threats ever since her board of governors imposed a policy banning any
So. Farewell then Ron DeSantis. The Florida Governor tonight bowed to the inevitable and announced he was dropping out of the race to be the Republican nominee for the White House. In a four-and-a-half-minute long address on Twitter/X, DeSantis declared that ‘it’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give
Ron DeSantis’ political action committee is called ‘Never Back Down.’ Well, he just did. A week ago, he said of Trump: ‘You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring he’ll say you’re wonderful.’ Well, he just endorsed Trump for the presidency in 2024. This morning, DeSantis campaign staff
On a call with Joe Biden this weekend, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s demand for security control over Gaza once Hamas has been destroyed, and said that this was incompatible with Palestinian sovereignty. Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps described Netanyahu’s views as ‘disappointing’, and said that the two-state
More tax cuts are on their way, according to the both the Prime Minister and Chancellor who have written comment pieces in The Sun on Sunday and The Mail on Sunday respectively to indicate their intentions ahead of the upcoming March Budget. This is interesting because their published plans suggest a rise in taxes, to levels not seen in
The first and most important principle of war for any military campaign is the selection and maintenance of ‘the aim’. The aim must be clear and unambiguous, so that everyone, from the most senior general to the private soldier, understands what is trying to be achieved. Unfortunately for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) the aim
The row that has erupted at Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela school in north London highlights the difference in how Britain and France confront Islamic conservatism in education and wider society. Birbalsingh has displayed courage in imposing a blanket ban on all ritual prayer in the school, but nonetheless in France such displays of religiosity have been
‘Spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison,’ C.S. Lewis famously said. In western countries, organised religion has been declining for the last two centuries; Friedrich Nietzsche even declared that ‘God is dead’. Does the decline and fall of religion have political consequences? Can totalitarian ideology grow
Today is the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. His Moscow funeral was marked by official communist solemnity, as if a messiah had come and departed. Trams and buses were halted and boats were tied to mooring posts. Factory whistles were sounded at the moment when his corpse, not yet embalmed for the mausoleum that stands