All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Commons has gone into meltdown this evening over the Speaker’s handling of the Gaza ceasefire motion, with the Speaker expressing ‘regret’ for the way the debate ended up. SNP and Tory MPs stormed out at one point, and MPs voted on whether to close the chamber to the press and public as part of
The big issue at PMQs today was the motion calling for an end to hostilities in Gaza. In itself this is extraordinary, bordering on the outright barmy. The British mandate in Palestine expired in 1948 but many MPs seem to imagine that this troubled corner of the Middle East is part of their constituencies. The
Conservatives are currently reassuring themselves that a general election defeat is not inevitable because, as Nadine Dorries put it recently, ‘There is no love for Keir Starmer on the doorstep’. This line has been heard many times since the by-election defeats in Wellingborough and Kingswood last week. In the aftermath of those by-elections, the Conservatives
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Sir Keir Starmer can breathe a sigh of relief this afternoon, thanks to Lindsay Hoyle. The Speaker has selected Labour’s amendment on a Gaza ceasefire, which means that a likely mass rebellion from Labour MPs will be averted. SNP and Tory MPs are furious at Hoyle, and say that he has tried to rewrite the
The Labour party is not very good at electing prime ministers but it is very good indeed at electing House of Commons Speakers. Lindsay Hoyle is the fourth in a row to have been a Labour member, though it should be noted that John Bercow was nominally a Tory when he was installed and didn’t
Jeremy Hunt needed some good news this morning, when the monthly public sector finance update was released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Having promised meaningful tax cuts last month – and then rowed back expectations this month – the Chancellor was hoping for a notable surplus and reduction in borrowing to give himself a bit
Maxim Kuzminov would surely have known that defecting from the Russian military comes with risks. In August last year, the 28-year-old Russian captain seized control of a helicopter and flew it across the border to eastern Ukraine. Doing what Kuzminov did can go two ways. Some make it out alive, and have a secret life
Sir Keir Starmer can breathe a sigh of relief this afternoon. The Speaker has selected his party’s amendment on a Gaza ceasefire, after an hour of frenzied lobbying from the Labour Whips’ Office. Lindsay Hoyle told MPs that he has selected both the Labour and government amendments as this is an issue where they will
One person dominated Prime Minister’s Questions, and it wasn’t Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer. It was Kemi Badenoch, who appears to be going deeper into her battle with former Post Office chair Henry Staunton. Starmer decided to deepen the row further today, while Sunak notably didn’t make all that much effort to defend Badenoch beyond
The City of London would be hollowed out. Bankers would have to retrain as burger chefs. And Paris and Frankfurt would emerge as the twin centres of the European financial markets, leaving London as little more than a backwater. Of all the predictions made by some Remainers during Brexit, there was one that kept re-emerging:
The German economy is set to tip back into a technical recession in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Bundesbank. This means it will continue to shrink in the first three months of this year – after contracting last year and registering as the worst-performing major economy in the world. A technical recession
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Freddy speaks to philosopher Slavoj Zizek ahead of what we understand will be Julian Assange’s final court appeal against extradition back to the US. The WikiLeaks founder has been wanted by the US authorities after he leaked tens of thousands of highly sensitive documents. On the podcast they discuss the parallels between Assange and Navalny,
‘William: Fighting in Gaza must be brought to an end’, bellows the Daily Telegraph‘s front page today, next to an image of a distressed-looking Prince of Wales. Call me a Cromwellian, but what century are we in? I thought the days of British royals haughtily issuing moral instructions, least of all to foreigners, were behind
With Keir Starmer having rid the Labour party of its Corbynite doctrines, Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent would not be expected to feature much in the coming general election campaign. But will that change after the failed test firing of a Trident missile, for the second time in a row? The missile, which was launched from HMS
Hungary’s governing Fidesz party is in crisis over an issue it has staked its credibility on: the defence of the traditional family. One of the ministers who pioneered Viktor Orban’s family policy and served as president of Hungary, Katalin Novak, has been forced to resign over a paedophile scandal. Novak resigned on 10 February after
It’s fair to say today that Boris Johnson and Tucker Carlson don’t like each other much. After the invasion of Ukraine, Boris, the former journalist and Prime Minister, accused Carlson, the journalist often tipped to be a future president of the United States, of ‘intimidating’ Republicans who might otherwise help the West stand up to
In the wake of the news that Alexei Navalny died in the darkness and bitter cold of Russia’s remote Polar Wolf prison, a chill of despair has become palpable among some thinkers and activists. Some have even gone as far as to claim that any hope for a better Russia died with the opposition leader. But this
It’s been a terrible start to the year for Emmanuel Macron and his new government. Aside from the well-publicised farmers’ protest, there has also been industrial action by teachers, train workers and staff at the Eiffel Tower. Cases of violent crime are at a record high, and the drugs trade is flourishing as never before
A century ago today, Robert Mugabe was born. The man who would come to rule over Zimbabwe between 1980 and 2017 was a brutal and autocratic tyrant. Mugabe shattered his country’s economy, oversaw vicious human rights abuses and left public services, especially healthcare, in ruins. But while Britain would ultimately see Mugabe as an adversary,
The government has now tabled its own amendment to the SNP motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. This change to the text calls for ‘negotiations to agree an immediate humanitarian pause as the best way to stop the fighting’, and then ‘moves towards a permanent sustainable ceasefire’. It also says that a ceasefire requires
‘Change Labour, change Britain’ has been the internal mantra of the Starmer army since seizing the party leadership nearly four years ago. But while a 20-point lead suggests they’ve made considerable progress in that area, there are infrequent reminders of the not-so-distant Corbynite past. The Rochdale debacle proved to be an uncomfortable reminder of all
What could be the final act in the long-running drama of Julian Assange’s legal battles has opened at the High Court in London. The two-day hearing is considering the Wikileaks founder’s appeal for a review of his extradition to the United States, which was given the go-ahead two years ago and approved by the then-Home
James Cleverly has tonight sacked the independent borders inspector after he voiced concerns about ‘high-risk’ aircraft landing in Britain without security checks. David Neal, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, was due to leave his post on 21 March but has now been forced out a month early after publicly criticising the department. In
The Labour party has run into trouble in Scotland. It is planning to both raise and extend the windfall tax on the oil and gas sector, and industry chiefs aren’t happy. It’s an issue that is steadily gathering momentum and could prove damaging to the party’s chances north of the border. Last week, the Press
Turns out politics is harder than it looks. Having quit the civil service at the end of the last year, Sue Gray has received some glowing write-ups in her new capacity as chief of staff to Keir Starmer. But that appears to have been brought to a halt by her interview in yesterday’s Times in
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Today Keir Starmer has moved his party’s position on a ceasefire in Gaza as he seeks to quell what could the biggest rebellion of his leadership. MPs will vote on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza with Labour set to add its own amendment to the SNP motion tomorrow. For the first time, Labour is calling
The Prince of Wales’s statement on the Israel-Gaza conflict raises more questions than answers. William has announced that he is ‘deeply concerned about the terrible human cost of conflict in the Middle East since the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October’, before saying explicitly: ‘Too many have been killed.’ He then declares that ‘I, like
Keir Starmer has moved his party’s position on a ceasefire as he seeks to quell what could the biggest rebellion of his leadership. Tomorrow MPs will vote on an SNP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. When MPs voted on a similar motion in a similar vote three months ago, 56 Labour MPs
In a surprising move, the United States has put forward a draft for a UN Security Council resolution calling for a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The draft also opposes Israel’s planned operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. US president Joe Biden has stood firmly by his support for Israel’s right to
We’re not cutting interest rates because we think the recession may already be over and we’re not even sure we are in recession anyway. That was the gist of Governor of the Bank of England’s evidence to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee this morning. Bailey fell back on the traditional excuse of CEOs
If you want an illustration of one of the things that is wrong with the Metropolitan Police, you need only look at how some of the best known streets in central London were yet again handed over to protestors this past weekend – including allies and apologists of Hamas. This is the price which the
It never rains but it pours for our beleaguered Prime Minister. Less than a week after the Tories were defeated in both the Wellingborough and Kingswood by-elections, Rishi Sunak is now facing the loss of yet another Tory-held seat. Scott Benton this morning lost his appeal against his 35-day suspension from parliament, following a Times
With the Kremlin now claiming that it needs to hold on to the body of opposition leader Alexei Navalny for another fortnight for ‘tests’, there is little doubt in the West that Vladimir Putin’s regime was either directly or indirectly to blame. Inevitably, the talk is now of punishing it. Junior Foreign Office minister Leo
A spectre is haunting Westminster – the spectre of the citizens’ assembly. This unkillable bad idea is making the headlines again because of the suggestion that, when Labour comes to power, citizens’ assemblies could be used to develop new policy proposals to put before Parliament. Fittingly, given its essentially anti-political and anti-democratic nature, this idea