All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Trump 2024 campaign’s fundraising email operations went into overdrive last weekend. ‘Dems threaten to seize Trump Tower,’ screamed one call to donate on Saturday. ‘Maniacs want to seize Trump Tower,’ read another. ‘If they seize Trump Tower…’ said a third. ‘Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower,’ added yet another. The tone flitted from alarm to
The court appearance of the four men accused by Russia of carrying out the Moscow massacre of 137 innocent concert goers at the Crocus City Hall venue told its own grim story. All the suspects bore marks of torture: one was wearing a bandage on his ear, following reports that it may have been at
The Crocus City Hall attack blindsided Putin’s vast security state. Employing nearly a million policemen, 340,000 national guards and over 100,000 spies, that apparatus has proved ruthlessly efficient at terrorising babushkas bringing flowers to Aleksei Navalny’s grave, tracking down lone bloggers and persecuting homosexuals. But as the Crocus attack demonstrated, the Kremlin’s securocrats are utterly
Holy Week is the most important part of the year for many Christians, but it will come as little surprise that some members of the Church of England appear to be focusing on racial justice rather than Jesus. ‘I went to a conference on whiteness last autumn,’ the Venerable Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, archdeacon of Liverpool,
What difference is the revelation that China was behind two cyber attacks – on the Electoral Commission and UK parliamentarians – really going to make when it comes to the government’s approach to Beijing? Oliver Dowden told MPs today that the two attacks ‘demonstrate a clear and persistent pattern of behaviour that signal hostile intent from
The UN has passed a draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to last until the end of Ramadan in two weeks’ time, possibly leading to a permanent ceasefire. The resolution was backed by Russia, China and by the 22-nation Arab Group. This is the first time that the security council managed to
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Freddy Gray speaks to editor-at-large of the Wall Street Journal Gerry Baker about why the media’s wrong reporting of Trump’s ‘bloodshed’ comments have played to his advantage; why America has lost trust in its institutions; and whether voters think the economy was better off under Trump.
It must be a hard job being the Metropolitan Police. Too hardline and you risk howls of protest from the left; too soft and you’re lambasted by the right. So Steerpike is pleased to bring his readers news of a policing decision that will please all inhabitants of the Westminster village, regardless of their political
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Former Conservative MP Scott Benton has resigned, triggering a by-election in Blackpool South. The outgoing MP had the Tory whip removed after suggesting to undercover reporters that he would be willing to break lobbying rules for money. Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale and Katy Balls about the likelihood of another Tory election defeat in
So. Farewell then Scott Benton. The disgraced Blackpool South MP today becomes the disgraced former Blackpool South MP after he announced plans to quit the House of Commons. In April last year Benton lost the Tory whip after being filmed in an undercover Times sting in which he offered to lobby for gambling industry investors.
Islamic State (IS) has released a graphic video showing gunmen storming the Crocus concert hall near Moscow in an attack that killed at least 137 people. The footage corroborates the terrorist organisation’s claim of responsibility. The most likely culprit is the organisation’s offshoot based in Afghanistan. For years, IS-Khorasan Province (IS-K) – a branch of IS
The prime minister is in Cumbria today, visiting Barrow-in-Furness to announce a ‘national endeavour’ to support the defence and civil nuclear industry. This includes a partnership with companies including BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, EDF and Babcock to invest more than £760 million in skills, jobs and education over the next six years. The Barrow Transformation Fund
Jeremy Hunt’s promise that the Conservative manifesto will protect the ‘triple lock’ on the state pension is a desperate measure to appeal to the one group of the population whom the Conservatives feel they can rely on. But taxpayers will not be thanking him in a few years’ time. On the contrary, by keeping the
The reaction to the Princess of Wales’s courageous and affecting video, in which she discussed her cancer diagnosis, was largely as might be imagined. Most people, including those who had previously exhibited confusion or scepticism about the various failings in the royal family’s communication strategy, found it both shocking and deeply moving, and commended Kate
Since America’s disastrous scuttle from Kabul in August 2021, there had been rising concern that Afghanistan would once again become a crucible of international terrorism. The claim by the Islamic State group to have carried out the Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow appears to have justified that fear. An Islamic prophecy says that when
Come with Mr S on a trip down memory lane, to a long-forgotten era known as, er, the last parliament. Back then, Labour were all too keen to be all things to all men (and women). A prime example of that was the campaign by Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) to give compensation to
He’s only gone and done it again. Mark Blyth, born in Dundee but now professor of international economics at the prestigious Brown University in the United States – the man who was wooed by the Scottish government to join its economic advisory council in 2021 in the obvious hope he would lend credibility (and maybe
Remember when Friends Reunited was a thing? Twenty-something years ago, before Facebook even existed, this primaeval social networking site connecting people with their old schoolmates was the most searched thing on the UK internet. It is, now, at one with Nineveh and Tyre. In fact, the only truly memorable thing it achieved was to inspire
Riding high in the polls with a 20-point lead, the Labour party is preparing for government. Across the Channel with a 10-15 point poll lead in the June European elections and predicted victory in the 2027 presidentials, the Rassemblement National is making tentative preparations for government too. Two years after forming his cabinet, Sir Keir
Every year the Oscars unleashes some kind of political controversy, and this year’s revolves around Jonathan Glazer’s speech denouncing Israel. Glazer, the director of the acclaimed Holocaust film The Zone of Interest, used his moment in the spotlight to rail against ‘the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people’.
The Covid Inquiry’s recent Scottish sojourn brought several weeks of bad headlines for the SNP. One revelation got less attention than others but struck me as more significant than most, so I wrote about it for Coffee House. That revelation was an email chain dug up by the inquiry dating from the first summer of
Last week, a rebellion in the Lords drew a government pledge to ban foreign governments and their proxies from owning British newspapers and magazines. It was a historic moment for the defence of press freedom in the era of acquisitive, well-connected autocracies. It will have global significance. But the devil was always going to lie in the
It is time to wake up to the growing international threat posed by Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the group believed to be behind Friday’s terror attack on a Moscow concert hall that left more than 130 people dead. For far too long this Afghanistan-based offshoot of Islamic State, formed in 2015, has been underestimated. Ignoring it
Jeremy Hunt: Russian government creating a ‘smokescreen of propaganda’ On Friday night, a terrorist attack at a large concert in Moscow led to at least 133 deaths. Russian officials vowed revenge and suggested Ukrainian involvement, despite Islamic State claiming responsibility. On Sky News this morning, Trevor Phillips asked Jeremy Hunt how much Russia’s version of
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Freddy Gray speaks to political science researcher Richard Hanania about his (relative) optimism regarding the future of America, and how Sydney Sweeney might have ‘ended wokeness’.
Tough times for the Garrick Club, after the embarrassing leak of its membership list to the Guardian. Following the newspaper’s front-page splash on Tuesday, multiple senior Establishment figures quit the all-male club. They included MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore, Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, and Sir Robert Chote, the former head of the Office for
As Emmanuel Macron approaches the end of the second year since his re-election, his presidency seems to have become a cosplay. Out is Macron the policy wonk, mansplaining interminably. In is Macron the action man. What might be behind this remarkable transformation? Brigitte, say the Elysée-ologists. President Macron’s wife, his high school drama teacher, 24 years
Just four months into its second term, Spain’s Socialist-led government is already mired in corruption allegations. The latest scandal emerged this week and focuses on the wife of prime minister Pedro Sanchez, Begoña Gómez. Gomez is alleged to have had secret meetings with the management of Air Europa, Spain’s third largest airline, in late 2020, just
When the operators of the most popular steam train service in Britain decided to challenge the safety authorities, they were confident that sentiment and nostalgia would win out. They’ve been proved wrong. The health and safety brigade has triumphed and consequently the Jacobite train, popularised in a Harry Potter film and running along one of
Emmanuel Macron showed off his virility this week with the release of two photos in which he is seen giving a punchbag his best shots. Is Vladimir Putin scared? More to the point, will the drug cartels of Marseille be frightened into submission by the Elysee Palace’s very own Rocky? The day before the publication
The last time I saw Amichai Chikli, he was struggling to put on a suit jacket at the Israeli embassy in London. ‘Do I really have to wear one of these things just to make a speech?’ he muttered. He got it on by hoiking it over his shoulders like a rucksack. That was last
From the outset it was obvious to seasoned observers who massacred more than 130 Russians at a concert hall Moscow on Friday evening. It wasn’t, as some in the Kremlin claimed, Ukraine. What would they stand to gain from such indiscriminate slaughter? The people who opened fire in the Crocus City Hall cleaved to the same ideology
Shame on the ghouls who spread lies and rumours about the Princess of Wales. And the idiot conspiracy theorists who wondered if she might be dead or getting divorced. And the tragic social media sleuths who squealed ‘That isn’t her!’ when a video showed her shopping at a farmers’ market. And all the rest of
A branch of the Islamic State terror group, Isis-K, has claimed responsibility for last night’s stadium terror attack in Moscow. US officials, who had warned of such an attack two weeks ago have said this sounded credible. But the Kremlin has not accepted the Isis-K claim and says it’s looking at all explanations – even