All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Think of the genocides that have taken place in the past. Picture the hardened faces of the perpetrators you’ve seen in photographs on historical documentaries. Now imagine a British Foreign secretary standing beside these perpetrators, shaking hands with them, gushing about how much he values their relationship. It seems unthinkable. As a Uyghur, I don’t
If you fret about a democratic deficit in the EU or even Britain, turn your mind for a moment to one European country with a very peculiar form of democracy indeed. In this country, divided into two parts which hardly deign to speak to each other, your right to vote, to be returned, and in
The Luis Rubiales scandal is being presented in Britain as ‘The kiss that started Spain’s MeToo movement’. But, in reality, the overseas coverage of the Spanish Football Federation’s president’s kiss – and his refusal to resign – tells us more about the UK and our own ignorance than it reveals about the country we visit
The intellectual infirmity that has laid low much of Europe’s left this century had been painfully exposed this week in France. On Monday, the country’s new minister of education, Gabriel Attal, announced that when pupils return to the classroom next week none will be permitted to wear the abaya, a conservative form of Islamic dress that
We are still fifteen months away from the 2024 U.S. presidential election, but much of the world is already busy trying to decipher the results. With a second Donald Trump presidency in the realm of possibility, governments around the world are holding strategy sessions and informal conversations about how such an event would change U.S. foreign policy, impact their
The metropolitan bohemian Withnail, played by Richard E Grant in the film Withnail & I, is so appalled by life away from inner London that he declares: ‘We’ve gone on holiday by mistake.’ Among the metropolitan bohemians who run the Tory party in the capital, the selection of Susan Hall as mayoral candidate was regarded
The Edinburgh Festival is finally over, but why was this year’s event so obsessed with dying? Death is the new Black, at least according to the artists at the fringe where our mortality has been eviscerated, diced, disembowelled, deconstructed and fed back in a torrent of death shows to an army of avid theatre goers
For the past week, the arrangements for Yevgeny Prigozhin’s funeral have been shrouded in secrecy. Now it has been confirmed that the leader of the mercenary Wagner group was buried today in St Petersburg – just under a week after he was killed in a plane crash outside Moscow. According to a statement released by
Michael Gove has announced today that the government will scrap EU-era pollution laws which are preventing homes being built. The move to liberalise the so-called ‘nutrient neutrality’ rules – which say that any new development can’t add additional nutrients into the environment – is designed to ease some of the bottlenecks around building and comes with
Economic growth is a taboo subject in Scottish politics. Throughout a succession of administrations, of all shades and stripes, the focus of government in Scotland has been almost wholly on social policy. To the extent economic policy has been widely considered, it is in the context of how yet more money can be squeezed from
Nearly three months into their counteroffensive, the Ukrainian army has finally found a way to breach the first line of Russian defence. Ukraine has moved through minefields, ‘dragon’s teeth’ defences and swarms of drones. They have retaken the village of Robotyne which lies on the highway to Tokmak, the next objective on the way to
15 min listen
Nadine Dorries’s seat in Mid Bedfordshire has a majority of 25,000. With the Boris Johnson ally now leaving Parliament, the seat is set to be a three-way race between the Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Who stands the best chance of challenging the Conservatives? Also on the podcast: Suella Braverman has instructed police to
Much has changed since the last time a British Foreign Secretary visited China. Back in 2018, when Jeremy Hunt met his Chinese counterpart, foreign minister Wang Yi, the world had never heard of Covid-19, Hong Kong remained mostly immune from interference from Beijing, and the truth about the mass internment camps in Xinjiang had only
Is there any amount of evidence that could convince the ‘public health’ lobby that one of their bright ideas didn’t work? What would it take for them to admit that they failed? It is now five years since the SNP introduced minimum unit pricing for alcohol. It was supposed to be the most effective policy
Oh dear. The latest figures for Scotland’s alcohol-related deaths are out and it’s not good news. Deaths registered in 2022 have risen by 2 per cent from 2021 to total 1,276 mortalities overall. Strikingly, Mr S notes that the rise in deaths is attributable to women, with 440 deaths tragically recorded last year. With alcohol-related deaths at
A faulty flight plan filed by a French airline is unofficially being blamed for the meltdown in our national air traffic control system on Monday. While Nats (National Air Traffic Services) has declined to comment, it should come as no comfort if it turns out to have been a cock-up rather than – as many initially feared
Could Sadiq Khan’s controversial Ulez scheme cost Labour the general election? Even before Ulez came into effect this morning, the policy has already proved costly for Khan’s party, having led to Labour failing to win the Uxbridge by-election in July. This morning, just hours after the scheme went live, Khan was asked whether more votes
I’ve been reading the cracking, crackling new biography Biddy Baxter: The Woman Who Made Blue Peter by Richard Marson (he’s a friend, but I wouldn’t sell you a pup). There is always fun to be had in the gap between the transmitted, necessarily anodyne, product of children’s TV and the real-life shenanigans backstage, and the story of
It was the last week of August 2013. I was Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The course of the Arab uprisings of 2011, which had been greeted with such naïve optimism at the time, had become bloody, not least in Syria. Only the previous week there had been a chemical weapons attack on opposition-controlled areas of Damascus in
Police must investigate every theft. This is the message from the Home Secretary as the government heralds an agreement from all 43 police forces in England and Wales to follow up on any evidence where there is a ‘reasonable line of enquiry’. In practice, that means the police should investigate low-level crimes such as stolen
17 min listen
Nadine Dorries resigned from Parliament over the weekend, writing in a letter to Rishi Sunak that the Conservatives have been ‘corrupted’, and accusing the Prime Minister of ‘opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy against one of his own MPs’. Is Dorries, at least in part, right? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson
I can’t believe we need to say this, but here goes: Motorists should not pull over to allow cyclists to overtake. I know it’s obvious, but the cycling elites have been agitating for this ridiculous rule-change, led by Jeremy Vine. In an interview yesterday, he upped the ante in his general campaign to turn the
In a curious way the decline of English rugby mirrors that of the Conservative party. Four years ago there was a spring in the step of both. England had trounced the All Blacks in the semi-final of the World Cup in Japan, and although they lost to South Africa in the final a week later
Who says Britain no longer produces quality telly? Mr S this weekend thoroughly enjoyed the sight of Nish Kumar – a man who identifies as a comedian – being put firmly in his place by TV presenter Lowri Turner on women’s rights. Invited on to Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 show, Kumar waxed lyrical on the
So. Farewell Then. Nadine Dorries. The departure of the bestselling author from parliament got Mr S wondering just which books her colleagues have been reading this past year. Fortunately, the Commons Library publishes a list of all works purchased and borrowed, allowing us to discover just what is on our honourable members’ minds… The latest
Here’s another great idea from the net zero establishment: only heat your home when it is warm and sunny outdoors. In its Sixth Carbon Budget paper, the government’s Climate Change Committee advises homeowners to turn their heating on in the afternoon, so that they can turn it off again during the evening when demand for
Few can deny that the arrival of 100,000 illegal migrants to Britain from France by small boat since 2018 is nothing short of a catastrophe. So what word would best describe the arrival in Italy by sea from North Africa of 100,000 illegal migrants already this year? So Meloni’s main focus is not on dealing with the
In the dog days of summer, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government are skating on thin ice once more. An August 18-23 national survey by Abacus Data of 2,189 adults revealed that 56 per cent of respondents believed he ‘should step down’ rather than run again for re-election. Only 27 per cent felt he
The Open University is a cherished British institution. The sociologist Michael Young, who went on to become a Labour peer, conceived this ‘university of the air’ as a force which would democratise university education, bringing learning to the masses via lectures broadcast by the BBC at the crack of dawn. One can only imagine
Britain is caught in the jaws of a dangerous dog. In the past two years, fatal dog attacks in the UK have increased dramatically. It used to be that around three people a year were killed by dogs. In 2022, that rose to ten people – including four children. Another five people have already been killed
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Are the Tories right to pick local candidates, over Westminster favourites, to be their next generation of MPs? Cindy Yu speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Heale.
It’s only been a day since Nadine Dorries announced her resignation as an MP – in a scathing letter released to the Mail on Sunday blasting Rishi Sunak’s premiership. But it seems that the former culture secretary still has plenty of ammunition left over. Dorries appeared on TalkTV this afternoon to explain why she felt
In 1992, Richard Nixon assessed the future of Russia in a remarkably prophetic interview. ‘Russia is at a crossroads’, said the former US President: It is often said the cold war is over and the West has won. But that is only half of the truth. Communism has been defeated but the ideas of freedom
In the shire counties of England, a dark force is rising. No, this isn’t a dreadful attempt at Tolkien fanfiction, but rather the challenging electoral predicament we Conservatives find ourselves in as we confront a new kind of opposition. And this time, the little furry-footed gardening folk are not on the side of the angels.
