All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Rwanda Bill comes back to parliament next week which means a return of Westminster’s favourite parlour game: Tory blue-on-blue. The left of the party has had their say this week, with Matt Warman’s jibes on Tuesday and Damian Green’s warning that ‘the Prime Minister looked me in the eye and said that he doesn’t
The US and Britain really didn’t think they had a choice about bombing Yemen in retaliation for Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea – one of the world’s busiest waterways, carrying almost a sixth of global shipping. But the airstrikes overnight are unlikely to stop the attacks and in the short term will
The French found out on Thursday evening that, under their new prime minister, nothing will change in the way their country is run. Gabriel Attal, the Boy Wonder who at 34 is the youngest premier of the Fifth Republic, unveiled his new cabinet – and there was a distinct lack of freshness. The controversial Gerald Darmanin
Once, Sir Keir Starmer liked to claim that the Welsh Labour government was the ‘blueprint’ the UK. Yet now, like so much else, he has u-turned even on that, declining to repeat the promise when asked repeatedly three months ago. And perhaps that’s no surprise when one considers the record of Mark Drakeford’s ragtime regime
Humza Yousaf has just executed an embarrassing U-turn and effectively banned XL Bully dogs in line with England and Wales. This has inevitably unleashed a pack of bad canine puns about the SNP making a dog’s breakfast of devolution. We always thought Humza Yousaf was barking, now we know. Boom boom. This episode is another botched
About a month ago, a regional brigade of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the militia that undergirds the power in the Islamic Republic of Iran, held a political conference in the port city of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. The keynote speaker was a surprise for most attendees: Salim al-Montasser, an envoy of Yemen’s
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Last night the US and the UK launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen whose continued attacks are disrupting trade in the Red Sea. The decision to sanction military action has been broadly welcomed in Westminster, but some have urged the PM to hold a retrospective vote on airstrikes amid fears that the UK risks
As South Africa presented its case accusing Israel of genocide to the International Court of Justice, the presence of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in and around the Hague court gave a flavour of the calibre of those willing this case on. It was predictable that the South African government’s championing of this cause would
November is proving to have been a lucky month in Britain. Inflation slowed significantly: from 4.6 per cent on the year in October down to 3.9 per cent on the year in November (a bigger fall than anyone predicted). Not only that: this morning we learned from the Office for National Statistics that the economy
A month before the targeted killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, few would have expected the US government to eliminate him in a drone strike. Fast forward to this month, and the United States and its allies have launched a military operation to degrade and deter the Houthis. Last
On Saturday, I was in a public library, waiting for an old guy to finish with the Times. But he seemed to be reading every word of every section, and sort of peering at it frowningly in an annoying way. So I did something I hardly ever do: I picked up the Daily Mail. I had forgotten
The US and the UK have launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen whose continued attacks are disrupting trade in the Red Sea. Rishi Sunak convened his cabinet on Thursday night to discuss what action would be taken. Strikes were reported in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and the Houthi stronghold port of Hudaydah. Downing Street said
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James Heale speaks to Kate Andrews and Katy Balls about Rishi Sunak’s new strategy to focus more on the economy as the election year kicks off. Can Rishi Sunak convince the public that he is the best man for the job? And how much control does the government really have when it comes tackling the economy?
How has the NHS missed most of its key targets for the past seven years? Some parts of the UK-wide health services (Northern Ireland and Wales) have never met the four-hour time target for A&E, for instance, while others only managed it during lockdown (Scotland) when visits plummeted. Analysis of the NHS’s own figures by
They say it’s a difficult change of gear when you leave government. Still, it seems Zac Goldsmith has had no problem keeping his foot on the pedal since he resigned last year, after complaining about Rishi Sunak’s ‘apathy’ towards environmental issues. Today, the former environment minister and eco-champion was temporarily banned from driving after being
Is it really some kind of underhand racist smear for Labour to claim that Rishi Sunak ‘doesn’t get Britain’? This is the charge being laid by No. 10 staffers at the door of the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, who made the accusation during the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the year on Wednesday. Claire
Alexei Navalny had a brutal December. At the start of the month the Putin critic abruptly disappeared from his prison colony in Vladimir, east of Moscow. For 20 days no one knew of his whereabouts until his lawyers tracked him down to the ‘Polar Wolf’ colony of Kharp, deep within the Arctic Circle. Yesterday, he
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Freddy Gray speaks to Daniel McCarthy, editor of the conservative review Modern Age, about all things Donald Trump. Do his ongoing trials help or hinder his campaign? Do the Democrats want him to be the Republican candidate or not? And is there a bureaucratic ‘permanent power’ that Trump would overthrow if he succeeds? The Spectator
Take a bow Humza Yousaf. Just two months after his government opted out of a UK-mainland-wide ban on XL American bully dogs, SNP ministers have today caved in and admitted defeat. Yousaf threw in the towel today at First Ministers’ Questions, telling MSPs that – surprise, surprise – Holyrood will now ‘in essence replicate’ UK
When will inflation return to the target rate? According to its latest forecasts, the Bank of England isn’t expecting inflation to slow to 2 per cent until 2025. But could this happen much sooner? Several independent forecasters are growing in confidence that inflation could get down to 2 per cent this spring, rather than next
The language in the government and parliament over Israel has changed a lot this week. Ministers are no longer mounting the full throttle defence of Israel or offering regular reminders to the Commons of what happened on 7 October. Lord Cameron’s evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday was just one example of that: the
BlackRock’s UK chief investment strategist, Vivek Paul, has warned this week that pre-election promises of large tax cuts or spending increases could unsettle the bond markets again. There are clear echoes here of the turmoil that followed the Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng mini-Budget back in 2022. How worried should we be? These warnings should
Two suicide bombs killed nearly 100 people and wounded many more in the Iranian province of Kerman on 3 January, as Iranians gathered to commemorate the anniversary of the assassination of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani. It was the most devastating terrorist attack to hit Iran in many years. Iranians are questioning why Soleimani’s family
It sounds like a scene from a dystopian TV drama: in a country hotel west of Berlin, far-right politicians met neo-Nazi activists and sympathetic businesspeople to discuss a ‘masterplan’ for Germany that involves the forced deportations of millions from the country. But this is no fiction. According to reports in the German media, such a
France’s Emmanuel Macron, the Fifth Republic’s youngest president, has just appointed its youngest prime minister, 34-year-old Gabriel Attal. The former socialist turned 2017 Macronista campaigner has had a meteoric rise through government ranks to education minister only six months ago. Attal’s remarkable communication skills, ability to think on his feet and interpret what voters wish to hear
Even as the credits rolled on ITV’s Peston, the row between Tory MP Jake Berry and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop showed no sign of ending. The pair had a furious bust-up over the Post Office scandal, with Hislop accusing the Tories of failing to act sooner to help innocent postmasters whose lives were ruined.
Both leaders seemed pretty chipper at PMQs. With an election likely this year, Rishi Sunak has nothing to lose and Sir Keir Starmer has everything to gain. He opened with a dig at Sunak’s plan to ‘stop the boats’ which, he alleged, the PM had never truly believed in. Sir Keir lamented that ‘the Rwanda
A new year and a new chapter has begun in Ecuador, one that those living there perhaps rather wish hadn’t. The escape of a notorious drug lord on Sunday from one of the country’s prisons, and the storming of a live TV broadcast by armed men, reads like a cliched plotline for a narco drama.
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At PMQs today Rishi Sunak took the opportunity to announce that the government will be introducing legislation to ‘swiftly’ exonerate the victims of the Post Office scandal. Keir Starmer chose not to probe, instead grilling Rishi on his commitment to curbing migration. With the Safety of Rwanda Bill returning to the Commons next week, will
Lee Anderson kicked off today’s session of PMQs with a jibe at the Lib Dems’ leader’s expense. The Red Wall rottweiler rose from his seat to suggest that, in light of his failure to act on the Post Office scandal, the under-fire Ed Davey take his own advice on resignations from public office and ‘Clear
On his fourth visit to Israel this week since its war with Hamas started, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a message of strong support for the country, but also some criticism. He arrived in Israel yesterday having already been to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, UAE, Turkey and Greece. Next on his agenda are
I have a question. What’s more ‘dangerous’ and ‘disgusting’ – a footballer sounding off on social media or a government minister threatening to clamp down on speech that he personally considers to be ‘not acceptable’? For a government functionary to decree that some opinions are unacceptable, and therefore might have to be hushed, is the
Keir Starmer clearly judged that while the Post Office scandal is the hot topic today, voters will be thinking about other things come election time. And so he used the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the year to attack Rishi Sunak on the Rwanda policy, just as the Tory row over that kicks off again.