All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Londoners don’t agree on much, but on one subject many of the capital’s residents are united: Amy Lamé, the mayor’s ‘night czar’, is a colossal waste of money. Whether you’re on the left or right, a cyclist or motorist, religious or not, it’s hard to defend her £120,000-a-year salary for ‘ensuring London thrives as a
Back to one of Sadiq Khan’s worst mistakes in office: Amy Lamé. The underwhelming ‘night czar’ is in the news again after Khan tried to persuade Londoners that the £120,000-a-year Lamé is worth the money. Speaking to Times Radio this morning, the London mayor was quizzed about the city’s failing nighttime economy. ‘New York is
Is Britain’s economy ‘turning a corner’? Rishi Sunak thinks so, but convincing his fellow MPs and the public is going to be difficult. At the ‘SME Connect’ conference in Warwickshire this morning, the Prime Minister spoke about the ‘tough couple of years’ the country has been through, insisting the UK economy is now heading ‘in the right
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Over the weekend, speculation about a plot to oust Rishi Sunak and replace him with Penny Mordaunt circulated the papers. It came after one of the worst weeks of the Prime Minister’s premiership and the looming May elections. This morning, key Cabinet ministers including Kemi Badenoch and Ben Wallace have come out in support of
While Michelle O’Neill and Emma Pengelly, the First and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, were in Washington last week for their annual St Patrick’s Day pat on the head from the Biden administration, a more subversive gathering was taking place in Kells, a small village in Country Antrim. Traditional Unionist Voice, the party fronted
When the government raises big questions about our national values, one has a choice: to see it as an opportunity to say something constructive, to deepen the debate. Or one could respond like a cynical intern at the Guardian, saying, in effect: how dare they try to sound all high and mighty? Where’s some holes
There was good and bad news for the European Union last week: the number of migrants arriving in Europe on the Central Mediterranean route in the first two months of 2024 dropped 70 per cent compared to the same period the previous year, the latest figures revealed. The bad news was that they were up
‘Yes… But…’. It is a phrase that Jews in Britain and around the world have become accustomed to hearing since the 7 October Hamas terror attacks on Israel and the subsequent war. It is a twisted attempt to contextualise atrocities, to justify the unjustifiable. When you hear, as I have, the stories of those who
The Tory donor racism row has entered its second week, much to the dismay of politicians on all sides of the chamber. Both the Conservatives and Labour have had to face uncomfortable questions on Frank Hester’s remarks about Diane Abbott in the last week. After the Tories were criticised for taking too long to condemn
During her last Tory conference speech, Penny Mordaunt told her audience: ‘If you remember nothing else from what I have said today remember this – stand up and fight.’ This serial Conservative leadership candidate got her way on that at least, for it was the only point from her address that stuck in anyone’s mind.
Rishi Sunak goes into the week hoping it will be better than the one that came before. Last week, the Prime Minister suffered one of his worst weeks since entering 10 Downing Street with Lee Anderson defecting to Reform, a racism row over a donor, and MPs on the right discussing whether they ought to
As expected, following a three day ‘vote’, Vladimir Putin has once again crowned himself president of Russia. As of 9 a.m. Moscow time, according to the central electoral commission, 99.7 per cent of ballot papers had been counted with Putin claiming 87 per cent of the vote – higher than he’s managed in any other
Another day, another SNP spat. Humza Yousaf spent the weekend trying to drum up support amongst his core voters for his nationalist party, which is predicted to lose almost half of its Westminster seats to Labour in the general election. The main problem with the First Minister’s message, however, was that it seemed to focus
When Photogate, or Kategate, or whatever we end up calling it, first became news, I remember taking one look at social media and thinking: you people have lost your damn minds. An anodyne photograph of the Princess of Wales and her children was issued to the press agencies by Kensington Palace to mark Mother’s Day.
Today, Russians in Serbia are heading to the polls to cast their vote and protest against what many see as a sham presidential election. A polling station in the capital Belgrade opened this morning at 8am, but many decided to turn up at ‘Noon against Putin’, a protest called by the late Russian opposition politician
‘Don’t mention the war!’ Remember that? Today, war seems nearly all that European leaders want to talk about. The prospect of conflict with Russia is real, and a confrontation seems increasingly likely. That’s why Europe’s political leaders are beginning to discuss, in frank and sometimes alarming tones, the ways their countries should prepare to fight.
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Freddy Gray speaks to Matt McDonald, Spectator World’s managing editor about the campaign to ban TikTok; who from the Republican party supports the bill and what influence the Israel lobby has.
Remember when Irish singer Róisín Murphy was set upon by the mob last year? Her crime: she criticised puberty blockers and said we should stop dishing them out like candy to vulnerable kids. The blowback was furious. Armies of activists damned her as a transphobe, a bigot, a bitch. They pronounced her ‘over’, which is
Arndt Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven couldn’t have had a worse start as Germany’s ambassador to Poland. Germany’s fraught historical legacy with the country – six million Poles killed in the Second World War and Prussia’s role in wiping Poland off the map from 1795 to 1918 – inspired Freytag von Loringhoven in his final posting
The term ‘Russians’, which the world likes to use for the 144 million citizens of my country, is often a misleading one. Granted, in the 2020 census, 71 per cent of those surveyed identified themselves with this label, with only three ethnic groups coming in above one per cent: Tatars (3.2 per cent), Chechens (1.14 per cent
The Russian Orthodox Church, which I converted to in 2018, has disgraced itself in the years since. Its Patriarch Kirill has oiled up to Vladimir Putin and his war effort on every possible occasion since Russia invaded Ukraine. My feelings about this strand of Christianity may be highly ambivalent now: what good is its staggering
Vaughan Gething, the victor in the Welsh Labour leadership contest, will now become Wales’s first black First Minister. It is both a historic moment and a huge personal achievement. Gething, born in Zambia and raised in Dorset, was also the first black person to become a cabinet minister in one of the UK’s devolved governments, and
Something happened today which, if it were any other country, would be seen to be remarkable: Vaughan Gething, the new First Minister of Wales, became the first black leader of any country in Europe. But having a non-white leader is not remarkable in British politics. The governments of London Scotland, Wales and the UK governments
In the midst of a new development in the never-ending motorhome saga, Humza Yousaf addressed a rather, er, sparse crowd at the SNP’s ‘national council’ event in Perth today. With a speech that was much longer than it should have been, Yousaf spent most of his time lashing out at the Conservatives. Quelle surprise. ‘We
A man who has the honour of being his country’s first leader from an ethnic background but who comes to office with the baggage of a questionable performance running the health service during the pandemic. It could be Humza Yousaf, but equally it could now be Vaughan Gething, who was elected as Labour leader in
The SNP finance saga continues to drag on – but today it’s taken a rather strange turn. Last year, a £110,000 motorhome was seized by police from outside Nicola Sturgeon’s mother-in-law’s house as part of Operation Branchform into the party’s finances. On the same day, Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell was arrested, while Sturgeon and the
Could Penny Mordaunt lead the Tories into the election? This is the talk this weekend after several papers splashed on a push by Conservative MPs on the right of the party to oust Sunak and replace him with his former leadership rival. The Daily Mail reports that these MPs met with supporters of Mordaunt this
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On this special edition of Coffee House Shots, Kate Andrews interviews broadcaster, and honorary president of the Reform Party, Nigel Farage. They discuss Lee Anderson’s defection to the Reform party, how Nigel won the Red Wall for Boris Johnson, and whether he will return to front line politics. This was taken from The Week in
Pity the poor political technologists, as Russia’s professionals in the dark arts of spin, propaganda, gerrymandering and outright ballot box stuffing are known. They are not only expected to produce the exact expected election result – that’s the easy bit, when you control the count – but they are meant to make it look as
France host England tonight in the final match of the 2024 Six Nations. ‘Le Crunch’, as this fixture has come to be known, is never for the faint-hearted but this evening’s atmosphere is likely to be especially febrile. The match is being played in Lyon, in the south-east of France, instead of the Stade de
Citizens’ assemblies will transform Britain. That’s the promise made by activists from groups like Extinction Rebellion. Labour has also mooted introducing the assemblies if it wins power, even if it did later backtrack on the plans. In Waltham Forest, north-east London, the revolution has already begun: a citizens’ assembly is underway there that will determine
Whatever else the arguments concerning the Gaza War, none is more wrong-headed than the suggestion that Gazans were living in such straitened circumstances that they had no choice but to ‘break out’ on 7 October. Palestinian solidarity protestors routinely describe Gaza as a ‘prison camp’. Even the Foreign Secretary David Cameron has previously used that
If you were asked to name the world’s greatest research centre in terms of discoveries per square yard, the answer wouldn’t be an Oxford or Cambridge lab. Nor would it be anywhere in America. Or China, for that matter. The correct answer would be a handsome Georgian townhouse in the heart of London. For it