All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
In the period between Christmas and New Year archives in both Belfast and Dublin are opened and documents are declassified. This regularly reveals some of the creative thinking which has been expended on the Northern Ireland problem over the years. Suggestions have included staging an Old Firm duel between Rangers and Celtic in Belfast prior
Any remaining question about who NHS strikes are supposed to benefit has been put to rest this week. Industrial action is needed, the British Medical Association’s website reads, ‘For the benefit of all junior doctors and for the benefit of all patients’ – and also, of course, to ‘protect the NHS’. Yet the union has selected the
There will be people outraged by the latest initiative of HMRC: to demand that the likes of Airbnb, eBay, and Vinted furnish it with details of everything bought and sold on their online platforms. The taxman should keep his nose out of the sharing economy, many will say. People who sell their secondhand clothes, books,
A month ago, Claudine Gay of Harvard University was obsessed with putting things into context. Asked at that now infamous Congressional hearing on campus anti-Semitism whether calling for a genocide of the Jews is a violation of Harvard’s code of conduct, Gay said it would depend on the context. Her remarks raised eyebrows worldwide. The
Anyone who wants to strike at the heart of the Iranian regime would be hard-pressed for a more symbolic target than the memorial site for Qasem Soleimani, the senior commander who was assassinated by the United States four years ago. The memorial represents everything that the Tehran regime stands for. That’s why the bomb attacks
Reform UK is the great enigma of right-wing British politics. Despite lacking a memorable name, leader, policy platform or record of electoral success, the party is polling just shy of 10 per cent – two points off the Liberal Democrats. The party held an eagerly awaited press conference this morning at which Richard Tice set
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As junior doctors begin the longest strike in history, Lucy Dunn speaks to Isabel Hardman and Kate Andrews about whether public support for industrial action is starting to wane, and how talks might be different under Labour.
The charlatans had been exposed. Its flimsiness had been confirmed. And the bubble had finally burst. Rewind to just over a year ago, and with the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX and the arrest of its billionaire founder Sam Bankman-Fried it seemed as if the legions of skeptics of the digital currency Bitcoin had
A cultural war has erupted in France over the iconic figure of Gérard Depardieu. The 75-year-old actor is considered one of the greats of the French cinema but he stands accused of multiple allegations of sexual violence and harassment. An investigation is currently ongoing into claims he raped a young actress several years ago. The
President Gay, we hardly knew thee. Six months ago, the political scientist was appointed the head of Harvard University to much fanfare: hailed as a trailblazer, Gay was the first black woman to hold such a role. Now, after weeks of damning headlines, she has a new claim to fame: she is the shortest-serving president
Economic forecasts rarely survive far into the New Year. Just look at last year’s prophecy by the IMF that the UK economy would shrink by 0.6 per cent in 2023, which was already being revised by March. But we are only three days into 2024 and already the forecasts of falling house prices are beginning to
In the end, Barack Obama, Penny Pritzker, 700-some members of the faculty, the mighty voice of the Harvard Crimson and the entire nomenclature of the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion movement could not save her from herself. Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University after a month of relentless criticism. In principle, her feckless performance on
Saleh al-Arouri may have been a senior member of the Palestinian group Hamas, but the drone strike that brought his story to an early close took place last night in Beirut, Lebanon. Pictures from the scene show a devastatingly precise hit, which also reportedly eliminated senior members of other factions. The leaders of Hezbollah, the
Israel today killed top Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri, in the most significant assassination since the war against Hamas started almost three months ago. His killing in Lebanon is not only an operational success, but will boost Israeli morale. The fight against Hamas since 7 October has been fierce and difficult. Despite successes in uncovering and
Drone lights, shining above Westminster, spelled out ‘London: a place for everyone,’ at this year’s New Year Eve show in the capital. To most watching on TV around the world, it was big, fun spectacle with bright fireworks and New Year cheer. It’s only good fortune that it didn’t become a crowd crush, of the
Mhairi Black can clearly see which way the wind is blowing. ‘I did always feel a wee bit uncomfortable,’ the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster has said of the cult of personality around former first minister Nicola Sturgeon. ‘We shouldn’t be relying on one face or one person,’ Black told Times Radio, adding that she
Israel’s supreme court has overturned a law passed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last year that would have limited the power of the Israeli courts. This legislation, known as ‘the reasonableness bill’ was meant to put a stop to the courts’ ability to cancel decisions made by the government if they were deemed to be ‘extremely
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Rishi Sunak claimed that the Conservatives have cleared the 92,000 asylum claims, despite figures showing the backlog still stands at tens of thousands of applicants, with several thousand missing. Natasha Feroze speaks to James Heale and Fraser Nelson about the figures, and whether blags like these are a gift to the Reform party.
Labour appeared stumped when, earlier this year, the government announced it would be drastically increasing its ‘free’ childcare provision. Given it was a policy that shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson was rumoured to be considering, her party would now need to find a way to outdo itself. Now, we have a clearer idea what its
South Korean voters will be among the more than four billion people going to the polls this year. With a huge potential range of outcomes, North Korea will be watching closely. The annual new year fireworks and pop concert in Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung Square concluded five days of high-level meetings of Kim Jong-un’s Workers’ Party
When is a backlog in asylum applications not a backlog? When it is made up of ‘complex cases’ and of new applications which hadn’t been made at the time ministers promised to clear the backlog. Today, the Home Office has been chirping about its success in tackling illegal migration by announcing ‘the legacy asylum backlog
There was a certain inevitability to the sacking of Wayne Rooney as Birmingham City manager. The only real surprise is how swiftly the end came. Rooney lasted just 13 weeks – all of 83 days – in charge. He won only twice, picking up a grand total of ten points, and suffered nine defeats in
Ruth Perry’s death last year was a tragedy. The headteacher had carried the burden of an Ofsted inspection pretty much alone over the Christmas holiday. The sword of Damocles was no longer dangling by a thread, but hurtling towards her. Perry knew that the inspection report was on its way but only one word mattered:
Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, has followed in Vladimir Putin’s footsteps this week by blaming popular protests on western meddling to discredit the opposition. Protests over alleged vote rigging erupted in Belgrade after Serbia’s national and municipal elections on December 17. Vučić and his Serbian Progressive party (SNS) won an emphatic victory in the national poll, with 48
The year 2024 began in the worst possible way for Japan. At least 30 people were killed by a powerful earthquake which struck the Ishikawa prefecture on the west coast of the country in mid-afternoon on New Year’s day. The death toll is expected to rise considerably. The quake registered 7.6 on the Richter scale,
Let the trumpeters trumpet and church bells across this land peal away in celebration: the Home Office has an administrative achievement to its name. According to ministers, a ‘legacy’ backlog of almost 92,000 asylum claims made before the end of June 2022 has been cleared, just as Rishi Sunak pledged that it would be. It is
Fireworks at New Year are the purest distillation of the spirit of frippery. All Sadiq Khan had to do was give ‘em the old razzle dazzle. There is no higher meaning to these colourful explosions, no significance to the spectacle beyond the fun of communal cries of ‘ooh!’ and ‘aah!’ Fireworks are quite enough – more than enough – in
Ding, ding, ding! It seems that James Cleverly took Downing Street’s instructions to get in some much-needed R&R over the holidays very seriously indeed. The Home Secretary was raring to go on this morning’s broadcast round, getting into several spats with the host of Radio 4’s Today programme, Mishal Husain. Cleverly was on air to
Another new year, and on the very first day we hear of two cases where human rights law has made a laughing stock of our immigration system. Gjelosh Kolicaj, an Albanian migrant given dual British citizenship after marrying a British woman (whom he later divorced), turned out to be a senior crime boss. After he
Danish New Year’s Eves are to be savoured partly for their predictability. First, on the main Danish State TV channel, the vintage British TV comedy Dinner for One, with Freddie Frinton and May Warden, is broadcast. Then there is the countdown to midnight on the face of Copenhagen’s city hall clock, followed by desultory fireworks
Today’s a day for waltzes from Vienna and loafing around on one of the three days of the year when people actually stop work. But tomorrow, it’s going to be business as usual – only worse. The retail sector goes all glum on 2 January. It’s out with the party food, the charcuterie platters, port and anything featuring
According to opinion polls, more Australians want to ditch the country’s ties with the British monarchy than retain it. The Labor government of prime minister Anthony Albanese includes an assistant minister for the republic. King Charles is being dropped from Australian banknotes. Most major Australian media outlets, including News Corp’s flagship newspaper the Australian, and
With ‘don’t mention the war!’ the order of the day, it felt as if Vladimir Putin’s message to his people this year was haunted by the ghost of Basil Fawlty. The New Year’s message is a Soviet and then Russian tradition dating back to the 1970s. It is watched widely across the country, sometimes with
Sadiq Khan was hoping to project a message of ‘unity to the world’ with this year’s New Year’s Eve fireworks in London, which of course included the customary genuflections to the NHS, Windrush and inclusivity. But for all the highfalutin spiel about London’s place in the world, the mayor seemed rather less comfortable talking about