All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Just when we thought we’d heard the last of Captain Tom’s family, the pandemic hero’s disgraced family have been at it again. Subjecting themselves to a grilling at the hands of Piers Morgan, Captain Tom’s family admitted they would still keep the £800,000 his books generated – despite the public outcry over their flashy spending.
The Hamas terror attack has triggered war in Gaza, a geopolitical crisis and now – from Sydney to New York City – outbursts of street-level anti-Semitism in the West. Unless it de-escalates quickly, it looks like a strategic turning point both for Palestinian nationalism and Israel. I covered the 2014 war both from inside Gaza and on
Israel is likely to need every one of the 300,000 soldiers it is amassing on the border with Gaza if, as now seems likely, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a full-scale invasion of the Palestinian enclave. The first signs of an imminent attack are so-called shaping operations – punitive strikes in a bid to test
For more than a year, English footballers took the knee in solidarity with a petty criminal who was murdered by a cop in Minneapolis. Yet after the racist slaughter of more than a thousand Israelis, the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Holocaust, England’s Football Association can’t even be bothered to light up the
In retaliation to over a thousand Israeli dead, the country’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has vowed to besiege Gaza. In a statement earlier this week, he said: ‘We are putting a complete siege on Gaza… No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed.’ Israel has been as good as its word, even stopping
I was proud when my son, then aged three, wore his kippa (Jewish skullcap) for the first time. We placed the kippa on his head and told him what it meant to be a Jew. ‘Mazel tov!’ we said as we hugged each other, prayed, and sung. We wondered hopefully what he might become –
Conference season 2023 is done and dusted, with punchy Wes Streeting having performed the final significant act yesterday via his speech depicting Labour as the great engine of NHS reform. How has it gone? Who has done best? Has it changed the political weather overall? Those who have attended all of it will have their
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This week Freddy speaks to Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, about America’s response to the developments in the Middle East. On the podcast they discuss the ‘squad’ (a section of Democrats who have been making pro-Palestinian noises), how America and Israel’s surveillance system allowed the attack to happen, and the importance of the
It’s finally happened. Our prisons are almost full. Last night the Times reported that ‘Lord Justice Edis, the senior presiding judge for England and Wales, has ordered that sentencing of convicted criminals who are currently on bail should be delayed from Monday’. Prisons in England and Wales are now unable to find cell space for
Oh dear. It seems that Humza Yousaf’s first conference as party leader has been spectacularly upstaged. Three days before the big SNP shindig in Aberdeen, one of Yousaf’s MPs in Westminster has decided to cross the floor to join, of all parties, the Conservatives in the House of Commons. Lisa Cameron – by common consent,
So, the doomsters have been proved wrong again – not least the Bank of England, which a year ago forecast recession throughout 2023. GDP figures released by the Office of National Statistics this morning show that the economy grew by 0.2 per cent in August, partially reversing a sharp contraction of 0.6 per cent in
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has his flaws as a politician but when it comes to the brutal attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists, his response has been clear, dignified and – given his family’s current circumstances – courageous. Yousaf has risen to the moment. The SNP leader’s parents-in-law, Elizabeth and Maged El-Nakla of Dundee,
Inevitably, some have tried to suggest the terrorist invasion of Israel was in some ways orchestrated by Moscow. ‘Russia is interested in igniting a war in the Middle East so that a new source of pain and suffering will weaken world unity,’ said Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in the aftermath of the attack. But if Russia
The name of Hamas’ deadly terrorist attack on Israel over the weekend, the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’, was deliberately chosen to galvanise support across the Muslim world. The group’s justification for the operation included desecration claims at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Several Palestinian uprisings (intifadas) have been given the Al-Aqsa nomenclature over the years, including in
16 min listen
Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said in a speech today that this NHS must ‘modernise or die’. But will a Labour government under Keir Starmer have the cash to really reform? Max Jeffery speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman.
It is understandable that Suella Braverman has swiftly written to chief constables demanding them to take a tough line on potentially anti-Semitic protests. She pointed out that while it was true that explicitly supporting Hamas, a proscribed terrorist body, was ipso facto a crime, the police could go much further in discouraging demonstrations of this kind.
Great news. Living in a damp home can help you live longer. Admittedly, I am not all that convinced, but it is no less valid a conclusion to draw from a paper in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health than the line that has been reported in the Guardian and elsewhere today: that living
Harvard university is at the centre of an unprecedented backlash after some of its students released an inflammatory statement claiming Israel was ‘entirely responsible’ for the Hamas attacks last weekend. There was widespread criticism of the statement, with Harvard alumni and distinguished public officials from across the political spectrum expressing their outrage. This was in stark
The last day of Labour conference can be a bit of a graveyard slot, given the leader’s speech has already happened. Not so this morning, which contained the two public services that the the party is keenest to talk about: education and the NHS. The NHS has long been a comfort blanket for the party
On Monday, while IDF troops were clearing the last Hamas terrorists from Israeli communities near the Gaza border, Benjamin Netanyahu promised that ‘we are going to change the Middle East’. Only two Israeli prime ministers have spoken like that before. One was Menachem Begin when he waged war on the PLO in Lebanon in 1982.
The phrase you overhear the most at Labour conference is: ‘this is a good one to come to’. Most delegates assume this is the last conference before a general election, and both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have made comments to that effect in their speeches. The latter said she hoped to be standing before
For Jews everywhere, there was an eery familiarity about the terrible violence unleashed on Israel during Saturday’s attack by Hamas. This was no simple act of terrorism. It was a pogrom. Pogroms were violent attacks against Jews living in the Russian empire in the 19th and early 20th century. They, much like the atrocity this
Few top-flight football matches these days kick off without an expression of solidarity with a cause or condolence. Along with the customary tributes to footballing legends or club stalwarts, just last week Premier League players took the knee, yet again, to show their opposition to racism. In recent weeks, we have had silences for the
Hamas’s heinous attack and the robust Israeli response serve as a useful reminder of well-known double standards on the activist left. In an echo of those US Republicans who are unable to see Ukraine’s defence against Russian aggression with any moral clarity – framing it instead as a ‘territorial dispute’ – some commentators have been
Keir Starmer’s chances of becoming the UK’s next prime minister seem to be improving by the day. From a huge win in the Rutherglen by-election to a ‘buoyant’ atmosphere at Labour’s party conference in Liverpool, the party of the opposition is on the up. The Tories and the SNP, meanwhile, continue to be distracted by chaotic
It might have been an inside job. The saboteur who threw a handful of glitter over Sir Keir Starmer at the start of his speech turned the Labour leader into a hero for a few seconds. The assailant was frogmarched away while protesting in a very expensive accent. ‘True democracy is citizen-led’ he brayed, using
14 min listen
Keir Starmer’s leadership speech today in Liverpool didn’t get off to the best start after a protestor ran onto the stage and dumped glitter all over him. But after dusting himself down and rolling up his sleeves, the leader of the opposition set about addressing the question that many prospective voters have wanted answering: If
The stage invasion at the start of Keir Starmer’s speech was a total failure for the protestor who carried it out, and a huge success for the Labour leader. It wasn’t clear what he was shouting about as he dumped a load of glitter over Starmer and was then carried out of the hall. Starmer,
It is something of an understatement to say that there has been no shortage of shocking posts on social media in recent days. Up there has been the footage of the mobs chanting ‘gas the Jews’ outside Sydney Opera House and those flying the Hamas flag in London. But one above all stood out. Step
Oh dear, Keir Starmer’s speech didn’t get off to the best start at Labour conference. As he began to open his speech, a heckler, in a massive lapse of security, was able to get on stage and throw glitter over the Labour leader. The protestor – who was shouting platitudes like ‘true democracy is citizen led’
I have a question about the events of the past few days: where is Antifa? Where are those self-styled anti-fascists who love to rage against anything that is even vaguely reminiscent of the 1930s? Jews in Israel have been rounded up and murdered. Disgusting anti-Semites are on the streets of Sydney screaming, ‘Gas the Jews!
The political class in France have rounded on Jean-Luc Mélenchon for his failure to condemn Hamas’s attack against Israel. The far-left firebrand, a Gallic Jeremy Corbyn, reacted to Saturday’s massacre of Israeli civilians by Islamist terrorists with a tweet: ‘All the violence unleashed against Israel and Gaza proves only one thing: violence only produces and
The biggest hinderance for the Conservatives is that they have nothing to offer young voters. The Labour party, however, just might. It seems that Keir Starmer will announce in his conference speech a plan to return to the idea of post-war new town corporations, which were able to compulsory-purchase land at agricultural value. It could – just
London is, at last, beaming Israeli flags onto its most recognisable buildings. This is an improvement on how some of the city’s residents have been marking the mass murder of Jews but beyond that it’s empty symbolism, as these flag projections always are. They’ve become the most visible – and often the most substantive –