All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
With opinion polls predicting an oncoming electoral shellacking for the Conservatives, it is unsurprising that Rishi Sunak is hoping to find extra voters wherever he can. CCHQ’s latest bet is in the two million or so Britons living overseas who have just had their lifetime voting rights restored. On 16 January, rules came into operation allowing
We can have mass migration or we can have affordable housing. But it’s hard to see how we can possibly have both. That’s the obvious implication of the revised long-term population projections released this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). According to the ONS’s projections, in the 15 years from 2021 to 2036,
10 min listen
After hours of late night negotiations, power sharing looks like it’s back on in Stormont – or is it? James Heale talks to Katy Balls and TalkTV’s Peter Cardwell about the latest political developments in Northern Ireland. Produced by Cindy Yu.
This week, a Conservative Prime Minister announced he was banning something – disposable vapes. The reaction to that ban – or rather, the lack of reaction – is a signpost to future UK health policy, which will lean towards interventionism in the years ahead. Companies making and selling food and drink should pay close attention.
Donald Trump should spare a thought for Imran Khan. If the former US president feels overrun by lawsuits, he could comfort himself with the thought that they are a mere bagatelle in comparison with those against Pakistan’s former prime minister. Since being deposed in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in 2022, Khan and his
The toll station on the A9 motorway near the French-Spanish border is closed with cones and guarded by the local gendarmes. A few dozen trucks are parked on the grass verges, waiting for the farmers’ barricades to open. The farmers themselves have gone, heading north to barricade Montpellier. The autoroute is utterly, weirdly silent. A thundering
Few phrases are more likely to get the blood of ministers going than the words ‘Urgent Question’. Today it was the turn of media minister Julia Lopez, who was summoned to the House to answer MPs’ queries about the sale of the Telegraph and The Spectator to RedBird IMI, an entity bankrolled by the United
It seems that talk of Tory treachery simply won’t go away. Less than 48 hours after Kemi Badenoch declared that colleagues planning to bring down Rishi Sunak are ‘not my friends’, the Guardian has today revealed that the Trade Secretary is a member of WhatsApp group titled ‘Evil Plotters’. Among the members of this group
Is power-sharing about to finally return to Northern Ireland? That’s the expectation in Westminster and Stormont after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) endorsed a new deal with the UK government. On Monday evening, the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson held a tense five-hour meeting with his party’s executive. In a sign of the high stakes
So, what was the point of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act? What is happening today and for the rest of this week was exactly what it was supposed to prevent: whole rail networks closing down on strike days. The law is in place and rail companies have the power to issue ‘work orders’ to staff
What sort of trouble is the Rwanda deportation legislation going to get into in the Lords? It passed its second reading last night, as expected, and peers also defeated an attempt by the Liberal Democrats to block the legislation entirely. But the debate gave us some idea of the problems the Safety of Rwanda Bill
Michael Gove has written a staunch defence of the government’s 14 years of ‘achievements’ for Conservative Home. ‘Do we really want to go back to square one?’ the Tory MP and ‘levelling-up secretary’ asks, reminding us of the dim, dark and distant days of the country after 13 years under Labour. If that was genuinely
It’s not yet February, and already we have a clear idea of what Joe Biden’s re-election will be all about: Donald Trump, abortion and, er, Taylor Swift. The New York Times reported yesterday that Team Biden-Harris 2024 has made recruiting Taylor Swift as one of its endorsers a top priority. This, inevitably, has triggered a
Is he out or not? After a night of claim, counter-claim, rumour and speculation, it appears that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has decided not to dismiss his commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny. Tension, however, clearly remains between the two – and this is bad news for Ukraine. Ukrainian news outlets were the first to begin claiming that
Angela Rayner has had better starts to the week. The Labour deputy leader appeared on Good Morning Britain today, ostensibly to talk about her party’s plans for housing and town centres. But if the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne MP thought she would get a soft-soap interview, host Richard Madeley quickly proved her wrong. Following her heckling by
It has been nearly two years since the last elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Sinn Féin, for the first time, emerged as the largest party, with 27 of the 90 seats, two ahead of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). But the assembly has only met four times since then. Business cannot proceed until a
Heavier cars will soon be hit with higher parking fees. Good. As an urban pedestrian and a car driver, I have two groups of enemies. The first are dark-clad cyclists and scooterists who weave invisibly around other traffic as they ignore their own expensively-made lanes. The other are the drivers of so-called sports utility vehicles
What a shame we are not still in the single market, seamlessly exporting our lamb and whisky so it can be enjoyed in the finest restaurants in Paris. Or rather so that it can be burned and poured over the A1 autoroute. French farmers have blockaded roads with tractors and haystacks, set lorries on fire
All is not well in the DUP. The once-mighty masters of Northern Irish politics last night convened a top-secret executive meeting to discuss a return to power-sharing at Stormont. But the event was spectacularly upstaged by a succession of leaks to loyalist activist Jamie Bryson, who proceeded to live-tweet the meeting. Somewhat embarrassingly, these updates
The drone attack on a US base in Jordan that killed three American troops and injured dozens risks bringing one more country into the orbit of the war between Israel and Hamas. US president Joe Biden has blamed ‘Tehran-backed militants’ operating in Syria and Iraq for the strike on Tower 22, a US base on Jordan’s border
Politics can produce some fickle friends – and none, it seems, are more fickle than the Honourable Member for Tottenham. Watching last night’s debate on Gaza in parliament, Mr S was surprised to watch David Lammy’s reaction to the intervention of his onetime leader. After Jeremy Corbyn rose to his feet, the Shadow Foreign Secretary
At £120,000 a year, George Freeman was in the top 3 per cent of earners as science minister – but he says that is why he stood down two months ago. His mortgage went up and his pay – £75,000 after the tax increases of his government – suddenly wasn’t enough. He had many reasons
Tory ministers are now well rehearsed in the latest slogan that Rishi Sunak wants to take into the election. Today’s Education Questions in the Commons underlined what it is: ‘Our plan is working, Labour would take us back to square one.’ Education Secretary Gillian Keegan took care to ram that into every answer she gave,
Things go from bad to worse for Laurence Fox. In October, he was sacked from his GB News gig; in December, the Reclaim leader shed his party’s sole MP. And today, the actor-turned-politician lost a High Court libel case with two people he called ‘paedophiles’ on social media. Former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and drag
Now the environmentalists are going after the Mona Lisa. Because of course they are. Just when you thought you couldn’t dislike these apocalyptic irritants anymore, now they’ve gone and pelted soup at another priceless artwork, the most famous artwork in the world no less, because they think their fever dreams about climate change are more important
What is it with the Labour party and female leaders? Much has been written about the left-wing party’s failure to give a woman the top job, given the fact that Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss have all done so for the Tories. But now, a new theory has been advanced as to why
As an English teacher and sixth form tutor, I spend a lot of my time at the moment celebrating and comforting students as they hear about their UCAS offers. I try to reassure them when they are disappointed – which many of them were last week in particular, when Cambridge offers came out – that
11 min listen
Rishi Sunak has outlined plans to ban disposable vapes, and is hoping to change vape packaging to make it less appealing to children. Why? James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.
Is the Sinn Fein star starting to wane? Support for the party has hit its lowest level for four years according to a poll for the influential Business Post newspaper. While Sinn Fein still remains the most popular party in the Republic, it has dropped seven points since October 2023. Sinn Fein can only be all things to all
The government thinks it has finally found a popular policy. Better still, it is a policy that it can implement, or at least legislate for. According to a press release from the Department of Health and Social Care, a ban on disposable vapes is supported by ‘nearly 70 per cent of parents, teachers, healthcare professionals
Three American soldiers on the Syria-Jordan border were killed by Iranian drones on Sunday. Since October, Iranian drones and missiles have injured nearly two hundred American troops. The pipe dream that was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the Iran deal – could not seem more distant. The equation at the heart of the
Last week the shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycook tabled an opportunistic amendment to the government’s Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. This would require the government to closely regulate all estate agents selling leasehold properties or properties carrying management or service charges (in essence flats, or houses on managed estates). There is a lot that is
We don’t hear much about Austrian politics in Britain, which is not perhaps surprising since the landlocked Central European republic of some nine million souls, is scarcely a major player on Europe’s chessboard. Nonetheless Austria, like Britain, will hold elections this year, and a populist party with Nazi roots looks certain to emerge with the
Nadine Dorries has never been shy about publicising her disdain of Rishi Sunak. Whether it’s criticising his £3,500 Prada suit or accusing the former Chancellor of sabotage, the former I’m a Celebrity… star could never be accused of being a card-carrying Sunakite. But Mr S was nevertheless surprised to hear who she thinks ought to
