All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
A-level results day is the most terrifying moment in anyone’s education. Poor GCSEs can be overlooked by a school that knows their pupils could do well in the sixth form. Degree classifications at university are so broad that one bad paper may well not matter. But A-Levels are brutal. Students who miss their university offer
When it comes to conservation, it seems that not all at the RSPB are singing from the same hymn sheet. Amir Khan was elected as the charity’s president last October, having found fame as the resident doctor on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. Amid media attention around the ‘Glorious Twelfth,’ Khan took to Twitter this week
12 min listen
As A-level students receive their exam results, Cindy Yu speaks to Isabel Hardman and Mary Curnock Cook who is the former chief executive of UCAS. In a bid to curb recent grade inflation, fewer of the top results have been handed out to students who were the first year group to sit through pandemic style
Two or three years ago, the Tory MP Jonathan Gullis was ridiculed for describing himself as ‘someone who grew up on Dad’s Army and Porridge and loves those traditional programmes of the past’, even though he was born in 1990. The suggestion was that if you weren’t old enough to vote when Tony Blair left
Why is the government so keen for Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, to visit Britain? Or, as the television comedian and interviewer Mrs Merton might have put it to Rishi Sunak: ‘So, what first attracted you to the stupendously wealthy Saudi leader?’ Bin Salman’s visit is expected to take place
Perfidious Albion is at it again. The Kremlin’s increasingly unhinged obsession with seeing a British hand behind its various upsets has now manifested itself in a claim that the UK is behind the establishment of a death squad operating in Africa. The claim, trumpeted across Russia’s state-run media, is that MI6 is behind a ‘punitive
As a British former foreign correspondent in Moscow and Washington, there are few subjects I turn to with more trepidation than spying, and specifically the Russian variety. On the one hand, there is the 007 factor – the glamour, the martinis, and the derring-do – which colours perceptions on both sides. On the other is the
Bradley Cooper is not anti-Semitic. If he was, he’d surely have let it slip by now; as Mel Gibson proved (‘The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world!’), it can be hard to hold such things in. And Cooper certainly wouldn’t be portraying a Jewish composer sensitively and affectionately on screen if
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is meant to implore us to ignore hearsay and folklore, and to follow the scientific evidence. So why is it now suddenly promoting the likes of herbal medicine, homeopathy and acupuncture? In a series of tweets this week, the WHO has launched a campaign to extol the virtues of what
At last, a target Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf should have no trouble meeting. Waiting lists? The attainment gap? Dualling the A9? Of course not. Humza Yousaf says his forthcoming government reset can be expected to ‘p**s people off’. When it comes to annoying people the First Minister is a veritable virtuoso. He has certainly irritated many in
It’s Scotland’s annual Gers shenanigans this week. If you don’t already know, Gers stands for ‘Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland’. It is an official Scottish government statistics report that provides an estimate of the total amount of government revenue raised in Scotland versus the total amount of public spending benefitting the country. The gap between
If there is a right-wing cultural aesthetic in America, it is low-brow resentment. The old liberal-conservative tradition prized truth, beauty and the ‘the best which has been thought and said’. This has been shunted aside by a hair-trigger populism drawn to any cultural expression that scandalises progressive tastes. If people with graduate degrees hate it,
5 min listen
Today we had the – seemingly – good news that the headline rate of inflation for July has come down to 6.8%. This is in line with Bank of England targets which suggest that Rishi could be set to meet his pledge to halve inflation. Is this cause for celebration in Number 10? Or should we
Back in the 1980s and ‘90s, Moira Knox was one of the biggest names on the Edinburgh Fringe. She was guaranteed acres of newspaper coverage and never had to update her routine. Knox, a Tory councillor in the Scottish capital, was a rumbling – but entirely approachable – outrage machine. A tabloid reporter looking for
Jordan Peterson has never been shy about dispensing advice. But has the court of the Canadian philosopher king now overreached itself? A copy of Peterson’s book ‘Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life’ sparked something of a Twitter storm yesterday, when critic James Marriott noted how a truncated form of his Times review has appeared
So, let me get this right: at the Edinburgh Fringe, comedians who make jokes about killing and raping women are welcome, but comedians who defend women’s rights are not? How else are we to explain the surreal situation where Frankie Boyle, notorious cracker of misogynistic gags, is having the red carpet rolled out for him at the
Bulgaria is a country that doesn’t often feature on Britain’s radar – beyond being a location for cheap package holidays and even cheaper wine. But the arrest of three Bulgarian citizens who have lived in Britain for a long time and are being charged with spying for Russia may change that. For the country bordering the
So, Britain has finally awarded itself the real-terms pay rise that the unions would say workers ‘deserve’. This morning’s inflation figures show that the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) is up 6.8 per cent in the year to July. Yesterday’s earnings figures showed that wages grew by 7.8 per cent. So, in other words, the UK
In November 2015 three men entered a jewellery shop in Tokyo’s upmarket Omotesando district, beat and injured a security guard, smashed a showcase and stole 100 million yen’s (£600,000) worth of goods. The suspects identified by the police fled to the UK, where, after the intercession of Interpol, they were arrested. Japan, unsurprisingly, wants them back. But
It’s an ITV drama just waiting to be filmed. The saga surrounding the family of the late Captain Sir Tom Moore has now taken a fresh twist, following a Newsnight investigation. The programme alleges that Moore’s daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, was paid thousands of pounds via her family company for appearances in connection with her late
Cast your minds back to the new millennium: Tony Blair was in power, Robbie Williams top of the chart. It was the year the Dome opened; so too did Portcullis House in Westminster. Back then, the £235 million parliamentary office was predicted to last two centuries when it opened, thanks to its supposed quality workmanship
Should we release packs of ravenous wolves into the English countryside? The answer is so obviously ‘of course not, are you insane?’ that I anticipated no disagreement when I scoffed at a pro-wolf Guardian article by George Monbiot last week. Monbiot has found common cause with wolves because he hates sheep-farming and wants to ‘rewild’ Britain. His latest article
Over mighty trade unions. Short-termist management that prioritises profits over investment. And an education system that doesn’t produce enough scientists or engineers. There have been many different versions of the ‘British disease’ over the years to explain the consistent under-performance of our economy compared to some of our main rivals. But right now there is
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Natasha Feroze speaks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman about today’s wage growth figures which have reached a 22-year high due to public sector pay. Are these an accurate reflection of the economy? Also on the podcast, Isabel Hardman takes a look at NHS week – each day the government has announced new measures to
In our age of mass attention deficit, the manifold legals trials against Donald Trump represent a big challenge. Maybe that’s the point. It’s hard to care when you can’t keep count. The whole objective of ‘lawfare’, as it is called, is to bully your enemy into submission through overwhelming paperwork. It might work. That doesn’t
The British government is reportedly ‘frustrated’ with France for its failure to stem the numbers of migrants making their way illegally across the Channel. What’s new? It’s a gripe going back years and the solution has always been the same: to throw more money to France in return for a solemn promise from Paris that
When it comes to the Johnson government, ministers weren’t always judged to have done things by the book. But Mr S has done some digging and it turns out that the former PM did his bit to restore one of the lesser-known No. 10 traditions. In 1931, Ramsay MacDonald began the practice of incumbent and
39 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Inez Stepman, a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute who was last on Americano to discuss the overturning of Roe vs Wade last year. As seen in the November midterms, could this be a winning issue for the Democrats who are gearing up for the general election?
Public sector pay growth has jumped 9.6 per cent, the fastest rate since current records began 22 years ago. Private sector wage growth, meanwhile, is slightly more modest at 7.9 per cent. The NHS bonus – a one-off payment of between £1,650 and £3,500 given in June – helped lift overall wages up by 8.2
There are few countries in the world more conscious of the fragility of democracy than Germany. After the horrors of Nazism, the country vowed never again and, in August 1948, a constitution was drafted for West Germany that was designed to build a stable democracy and defend it. 75 years later, the same legal framework
Steve Barclay is appalled. A source close to the health secretary has told the Mail that he is ‘appalled to hear some NHS managers are failing to respond’ to a directive that told them not to let Stonewall write their ‘inclusivity guidance’. But fear not! He ‘will be discussing with officials what further steps to
On this day, 25 years ago, not long after the ink had dried on the Good Friday Agreement, a car bomb exploded in the market town of Omagh in Country Tyrone, Northern Ireland. The bomb had been set in the town’s busy main shopping area by dissident republican terrorists styling themselves as the ‘Real IRA’.