All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The timing could hardly have been better. Other Labour leaders and shadow chancellors have had to make do with endorsements from the drummer in a 90s Britpop band, or a runner up for the Booker Prize. Rachel Reeves, however, rounded off her speech to the Labour party conference today with no one other than the
Rachel Reeves’s speech at Labour party conference was an attempt to show how the party’s economic strategy differs from the Tories. Oddly, the shadow chancellor decided to do this by cherry-picking the showstoppers from both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s highlight reels. Reeves’s accusations were numerous, though predominantly levelled at Truss and her disastrous 49-day
Listening to Rachel Reeves’s speech at Labour party conference one could be forgiven for thinking Liz Truss is still in 10 Downing Street. The shadow chancellor referenced the former prime minister more times than Rishi Sunak as she used her moment on the conference stage in Liverpool to try to depict Labour as the less
Big Brother is back – again. The show was axed by Channel 5 in 2018 but ITV has dragged it out of the grave. Watching the show’s opening episode last night made me wonder whether we’re trapped forever in a time loop with the big TV shows of the early noughties – Strictly, I’m A
The SNP wasn’t the only loser last week when Labour triumphed in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election with a 20 per cent swing – the Scottish Conservatives also had reason to feel short-changed. Their vote collapse was so dire that Tory candidate Thomas Kerr only won 3.9 per cent and lost his £500 deposit.
Israelis are livid. Their fury is directed not only at Hamas for massacring over 700 people, wounding thousands and abducting at least 130 including women and children, but also at the Israeli government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) for failing to prevent this terrorist invasion. How did Israeli security forces
With Labour ahead in the polls by around 15 points, and the party seemingly on course to win a general election next year, you would think it would be all sunshine and smiles at the Labour conference, held in Liverpool. It appears though that some of the party are less than happy with the current
‘Victim blaming’ is one of the sins that is most deplored by the social justice movement. When it comes to the Jews, however, different rules seem to apply, at least when it comes to rape, murder and mutilation. The events of the past few days could not have been more clear-cut. This was an unprovoked
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It’s the first day of Labour party conference and whilst the mood is buoyant the story that has dominated the weekend is of course the Hamas attack on Israel. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has refused to condemn the attack, will he be a thorn in Keir Starmer’s side this week? And will Starmer finally
Oh dear. Jeremy Corbyn is at it again. The onetime Labour leader is currently contemplating the end of his political career at the next election, since losing the party whip three years ago. And he will have done little to endear himself to the Starmer army these past 24 hours. First he posted a statement
‘The hardest day Israelis have ever experienced in their lifetimes’ The Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has declared Israel is at war, after Hamas launched attacks on an unprecedented scale. It is the biggest escalation in the conflict since the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago, and Israel has already launched retaliatory strikes in
Hamas has achieved something that no Arab army has done since the 1948 war: captured several Israeli localities and held them for hours. Yet the magnitude of this initial success, in which they took Israel by complete surprise having lulled its famed intelligence services into false complacency, may prove a double-edged sword. Yes, they have
Tragedies are often the moment when statesmen are at their best. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen from the response to yesterday’s attacks by Hamas on Israel, they can also show politicians at their worst. Below are five of the more insensitive, tone-deaf and even downright offensive reactions to the tragedy that is unfolding in the Middle
Keir Starmer began his big conference interview with the BBC talking about the story that has dominated the weekend – the Hamas attack on Israel. With Israel’s Ministry of Health suggesting at least 300 Israelis have been killed so far and the death toll of Palestinians rising, the Labour leader described the rocket fire and
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Cindy Yu is joined by immigration minister Robert Jenrick, Fraser Nelson and Kate Andrews to discuss the Rwanda plan and whether it can truly stop the boats.
Israelis awoke to sirens on Saturday. They began after six in the morning on the border of Gaza as Hamas began to fire thousands of rockets at Israeli towns and cities. By eight o’clock the rocket fire had reached Jerusalem. By the evening the full extent of the massive attack had become clear. Over 5,000
While preparing to head out to synagogue to join the dancing and celebration for the Simchat Torah festival, the rocket sirens started sounding. As we grabbed the kids and ran to our safe room (all new Israeli houses are built with one), I assumed there must have been some incident overnight, some Israeli escalation to
The word ‘actress’ used to be interchangeable with ‘prostitute’ and though it’s a good thing that this little misunderstanding was cleared up, it’s a pity that ‘living saint’ has been substituted for hooker. Modern actresses are variously ‘activists’ and ‘humanitarians’ – or whingeing nepo-babies mistaking themselves for the first two. But they are rarely ‘broads’
It’s not surprising that much mainstream French journalism is complacent, incurious and stenographic. The elite French media is lavishly subsidised and the torrent of handouts makes tenuous any claim that mainstream French journalism is independent. The most compromised are the broadcasters. Indeed there’s little pretence that they offer more than token auditing of the government. Three
The R word strikes terror into the hearts of ministers and their diary managers alike but spare a thought for the poor people organising events at this year’s Labour party conference after last month’s Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. I am in admiration of the creative energy of the fringe organisers who are desperately trying to hang
When the Soviet system fell in my native Estonia I was 17 years old. I’d spent the entirety of those years mastering the main rule for surviving the USSR: you needed two separate identities. One was for home and those you trusted, the other for public places: we knew that in front of outsiders or
Why the attack? Why now? What pretext? For Muslims like me, who have been following the Israel-Arab peace talks with hope and expectation, the atrocity does have a monstrous logic: Hamas wants war. Hezbollah wants war. But in recent months and years we have seen peace talks between Israel and the Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi
Leftists love to fantasise about how heroic they’d have been when Jews were being rounded up in the 1930s. ‘I’d have said something’, they insist. Well, Jews are being rounded up again. They’re being kidnapped, humiliated, paraded through the streets, slaughtered. And leftists are definitely saying something. They’re saying: ‘Good’. These are war crimes. They
Some 5,000 rockets have rained down on Israeli civilians in an attack co-ordinated from land, sea and air by Gaza-based Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Gunmen have stormed the south of Israel, taking control of a number of towns. The attack seems to have taken Israeli intelligence completely by surprise: the death toll – 300
As the scale and barbarity of the Hamas terrorist assault on Israel begins to unfold, to no-one’s surprise Iran has leant its formal support to the insurgents. While thousands of rockets rain down on Israeli civilians and and Iran’s proxies pull men women and children out of their homes — murdering them in the streets
As Labour travels to Liverpool this weekend, one issue which will attract attention is the extent to which Sir Keir Starmer spells out his vision on constitutional reform, if the party wins a majority at the next election. The Blair administration introduced a variety of ambitious constitutional innovations in its first term, including devolution, Lords
To Green conference, where the party is thrashing out its policy platform ahead of next year’s general election. All too often in British politics, the smaller parties are distracted and held back by internal rows and feuds. So Mr S was intrigued to hear how the Greens would walk the delicate line between broadening the
In the early hours of this morning, Israelis had a flashback to the surprise attack of the Yom Kippur War that started almost 50 years ago to the day, in October 1973. Hamas says it has launched 5,000 missiles deep into Israeli territory. The missiles were used to mask a much more elaborate attack that
Oh dear. It seems that Layla Moran has done it again. As Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman, she has chiefly served to undermine her party’s carefully calibrated equivocations on tactical voting and rejoining the EU. But today the Oxford West MP has outdone herself with her response to the unfolding horrors in the Middle East,
Seven years after the Brexit vote, Katy Balls is joined for a fringe panel from the Conservative Party Conference to discuss if voting to leave the EU was worth it, where the wins are and if opportunities are being missed. Katy Balls in conversation with John Redwood MP, Theresa Villiers MP, Camilla Cavendish, Charles Grant and
It’s day two of the Green party conference today in Brighton. There’s an air of expectation at this year’s jamboree as first-time attendees mingle with veteran eco-activists, clutching their pro-Palestine leaflets and tupperware lunchboxes. Mr S is a regular on the political conference circuit but even he didn’t expect the shindig to chime with his
I will not be attending the silent disco that is soon to be held in Canterbury Cathedral. I will not witness ‘some of the UK’s best 90s DJs playing all your favourite tunes in the stunning, illuminated surroundings of Canterbury Cathedral’. I will not be among ‘100s of like-minded 90s fans singing their hearts out whilst
What is Labour’s offer for Nigel Farage? Yes, you read that right. Of course, Keir Starmer’s party detests almost everything the former Ukip leader stands for, including Brexit and immigration control. That almost goes without saying. But we are well into the phase of the political cycle when grubbing for votes is far more crucial