All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Eric Zemmour will be in London on 13 September at the invitation of Tommy Robinson. In a message posted on X, the leader of France’s Reconquest Party said he will ‘stand alongside the hundreds of thousands of Britons demonstrating against the submergence of our countries.’ Zemmour is an advocate of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory Robinson
Addressing the Commons today, Yvette Cooper promised the government will overhaul the asylum system. This will include changing the way the appeals system works for asylum claims and the suspension of new family reunion applications. The Home Secretary’s remarks coincide with figures that show the overall number of successful applications for family reunion visas has
Will Keir Starmer’s mini-reshuffle of ministers and key aides solve the Prime Minister’s problems? The Prime Minister has moved Darren Jones from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office in a change widely interpreted as an attempt to sideline Rachel Reeves and boost the government’s ability to deliver on its reforms. Jones was Chief Secretary to
Most of the people I deal with outside government agree that Darren Jones, whom Keir Starmer has just appointed as his chief secretary, is one of the most effective ministers in it. And both Tim Allan and Minouche Shafik bring to their new jobs as director of communications and chief economic adviser the authority and
How many resets does it take to make a doom loop? In another attempt to work out what the problem with his government is – and with all the mirror salesmen in the capital presumably on holiday – Keir Starmer has done another mini-reshuffle. ‘Phase two of my government starts today’ he says in a
As if it hadn’t experienced enough splits over the last few weeks, it transpires that Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new party is divided over its policy on trans issues. ‘Your Party’ – not its official name, according to a fuming Sultana – is set to have six MPs, with four pro-Gaza independents to join
The end of summer recess (in both Westminster and Holyrood) seems like a reasonable moment to leave tribal party politics at the door and assess whether 25 years of devolution in Scotland has met expectations. Has it improved the quality of life of ordinary Scots, and how it might be changed to ensure that it
Finally, some good news for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) – tagging works! Last week, the prisons minister was unleashed to proclaim that the latest data on electronic monitoring (EM) of offenders not in custody shows the concept works. Well, up to a point, Lord Timpson. A study of 3,600 offenders on tagging orders has
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The summer transfer window comes to a close today but, as Parliament also returns from summer recess today, the only team Keir Starmer is focused on is his own in Number Ten. The Prime Minister has decided to reshuffle his advisers, including bringing in Darren Jones MP to Number Ten from the Treasury. Political editor
Perhaps it’s the left’s puerile belief that all property is theft that has led to Rachel Reeves’s swingeing attack on private landlords. Her latest threat is to slap National Insurance on rental income in her autumn Budget. As a proud socialist, I’m sure Lego-lady is on board with anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s property-thieving assertion; in which case, why not go
Another week, another round of royal revelations. Following swiftly on from the publication of Andrew Lownie’s bestselling denigration of the Duke and Duchess of York – Entitled, there is now another tell-all account of the royal family: Valentine Low’s Power and the Palace. It has recently been serialised in the Times (appropriately enough, given that Low is that newspaper’s royal
Parliament’s summer recess has just ended and, on his first day back, Sir Keir Starmer has already announced a reset of his Downing Street team. A number of people have moved out – most notably James Lyons, the Prime Minister’s director of communications, who was appointed to the role just last year. It’s only Starmer’s
When my friend James Lyons told me last summer that he was going to take a gap year, I knew it wouldn’t be a normal career break. It’s common enough for successful men around 50 to take some time out from busy, stressful careers to re-evaluate, reflect and just get some sleep. I know bankers who
Despite its extraordinary discipline and repeated battlefield successes over the past two years, Israel has been judged in many quarters to have failed in one vital domain: the war of information. While Israel has neutralised enemy commanders, destroyed arsenals, and advanced through hostile territory, it has consistently been outflanked in the propaganda theatre, leading armchair
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” That perennial funeral favourite, 1 Corinthians 13, has a lot to answer for. Generations of so-called grown-ups have, whether through the fear of God or
When French president Emmanuel Macron stormed to power in 2017, his ability to respond to the weakness of France’s mainstream parties, capture a large centrist majority and defeat the populist right seemed to offer a model of hope for liberal internationalists everywhere. Yet despite the president’s undeniable talents as a political communicator, the fate of
How are you feeling about the first day of Autumn? If, like me, you get a distant sense of foreboding, then you might suffer from seasonal affected disorder, aptly acronymed SAD, caused by the body’s inability to produce enough serotonin. Surveys suggest up to five million of us, in Britain, are afflicted to some degree
It has become an article of faith in some quarters that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (the ECHR) would breach or undermine the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, played this card only last week, in response to the Reform party’s proposals for addressing illegal migration. For her part, the Leader of the
A few days ago a pedicab (or rickshaw), decked out in luminous pink, collided with a red London bus in the early hours of the morning. Three people were hurt, two seriously. I won’t delve into the rights and wrongs of what happened; you can see a partial video on social media and there are
Britain has picked a fight with the pharma industry, and it isn’t clear why we think we can win. Not only might NHS costs rise, but we may also lose access to new medications, making our health service increasingly second class and meaning that people die. Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s fight has made headlines and
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As Parliament returns from summer recess tomorrow, three rising stars of the 2024 intake join Coffee House Shots to provide their reflections on frontline politics so far. Labour’s Rosie Wrighting, the Conservatives’ Harriet Cross and the Liberal Democrats’ Joshua Reynolds tell deputy political editor James Heale how they have found Parliament so far, and their
A decade ago today, on 31 August 2015, Angela Merkel made the unilateral decision to open Europe’s borders. The rallying cry of the German Chancellor has gone down in history: ‘Wir schaffen das’ – ‘We can do this’. If we can’t, she added, ‘if Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe
There are ‘great powers’ and other powers. This is a truism of international relations thinking for those who espouse a ‘realist’ point of view. And for them, being a great power gives a state enormous advantages. Russia, for instance, was widely called a ‘great’ power before its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022
On paper, Charlbury is everything the Cotswolds is supposed to be. Stone cottages the colour of anaemic butter. Sash windows in a riot of Farrow & Ball sage. A train station that survived the Beeching cuts and gets you to London in an hour. ‘People talk about the Chipping Norton set, but that disguises how
Trying to work out what is going on with global trade doesn’t get any easier. Just as the world was settling down to the new reality of Donald Trump’s trade war and governments were stitching up hurried trade deals to minimise the sweeping damage from the tariffs announced on ‘Liberation Day’ in April, the Court
Last night, Nicola Sturgeon appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall to promote her autobiography Frankly. On stage she was questioned by Cathy Newman of Channel 4, who began with J.K. Rowling’s savage review of the book. On her website Rowling described Sturgeon as ‘Trumpian in her denial of reality and hard facts’. Sturgeon fired back: ‘Thank
Fifty per cent, or some 560,000, of those admitted to the UK under the student visa system since 2022 remained in the country after their original visa expired. Meanwhile, close to one-third of asylum claims now come from those who originally came her on a student visas. These are the stark findings of a report
The 24 hours within which Donald Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine have turned into more than six months of desultory negotiations, and there is still no sign of even a temporary halt to the fighting. This is a blow for the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’, the loose affiliation of 31 countries
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The Daily Telegraph have run a story this week that Angela Rayner may have dodged stamp duty on her second home. But beyond the story, its the photos of the Deputy Prime Minister on the beach at Hove – drinking and vaping – that went viral. Christian Calgie, senior political correspondent for the Daily Express,
It can’t be much fun, being Sir Keir Starmer right now. If the people across the country chanting ‘Keir Starmer’s a wanker’ isn’t evidence enough, consider the polls. The Labour party is not merely experiencing a dip in support – it is in a state of freefall. A YouGov poll this week has them on
For a Brit in America, flag-flying feels so overdone, almost cultish. Why do Americans fly their flag on houses, lawns, even on their lapels? An American friend once gave me a running vest – the garment that over there they call a wifebeater – emblazoned with ‘US Army’. A British veteran I ran with raised
After years of dating effete Englishmen, Taylor Swift has finally found her man. The singer is engaged to Travis Kelce, that rugged all-American specimen of manliness. Their announcement has united the United States in joy: even her former nemesis Donald Trump rather surprisingly described the forthcoming union as taking place between ‘a great guy [and]
Party conference begins next week when Reform UK kick off their two-day jamboree in Birmingham. Spirits within Nigel Farage’s party are high after a successful summer in which they dominated the recess period with a well-executed ‘flood the zone’ media strategy. A steady drumbeat of weekly announcements culminated on Tuesday when Reform’s long-awaited deportation strategy
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Freddy Gray is joined by writer and internet ethnographer Katherine Dee. She’s written about the Minneapolis school shooting and Robin Westman for Spectator World. Two children were killed and 17 others injured by a killer with a bizarre online footprint: a mix of memes, nihilism, politics and gore references. Katharine argues ‘these shooters are radicalised,