All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Transgender Thought Police are impossible to please. The sooner Amanda Abbington realises, the better. The star of Sherlock and Mr Selfridge is the latest woman to end up in the dock for voicing an opinion they deem to be unacceptable. After the BBC announced that Abbington was the first celebrity contestant confirmed for Strictly
Good old Sir Humphrey. Tories, Labour, Lib Dems – whoever is in power, he always seems to win. In recent years, there appears to have been a veritable explosion in the number of leaks in Whitehall and, with them, the inevitable Cabinet Office inquiries. In July 2022, one was launched by Cabinet Secretary Simon Case
‘Whoever wins in September, the party will be stuck. Even in power it remains incapable of generating and delivering credible policies, incapable of using its resources to tackle the challenges ahead. In an uncertain world it struggles to decide what it wants to do, and struggles to implement the few ideas it has. The party
First the good news – the fall in living standards may be coming to an end, with wages starting to run ahead of inflation. Now the bad news: it is as much because wages are rising than inflation is falling – which suggests that high inflation is beginning to become embedded in workers’ expectations. Capital
Despite it being the SNP’s main political goal, Scotland came no closer to becoming an independent state during Nicola Sturgeon’s long tenure as First Minister. Still, for Sturgeon, the SNP being in charge had at least one perk – it allowed her to cosplay as a world leader on the global stage. Who could forget the jet
One of the big questions in Washington and across the country as Joe Biden’s very public decline has accelerated is: who’s actually running the show at the White House? There have been various answers, including former White House chief of staff Ron Klain and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice; even Kamala Harris’s husband Doug
12 min listen
Bibby Stockholm, the government’s first migrant barge opened this morning. Intended to house up to 500 migrants, will this plan to cut the costs of putting migrants up in hotels work? Also on the podcast, Natasha Feroze speaks to Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls about the Liz Truss honours list – who are the contenders?
It’s not every day a supporter of Scottish independence is in the running for a peerage, least of all from a Tory government. So no doubt the SNP will be congratulating Mark Littlewood, who could soon be Lord Littlewood thanks to Liz Truss’s resignation honours. The outgoing director of the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA)
Can Matt Hancock sink any lower? Considering that only last year he lost the whip for abandoning his constituents to appear on I’m a Celebrity, and before that had his lockdown-busting affair exposed to the world, you would probably think not. Even so, the former Health Secretary has managed to once again plumb new depths,
August always means an anxious wait for results days, but this year pupils will be feeling particularly apprehensive. England’s exams regulator, Ofqual, has said that national results will be lower than last year’s and are expected to be similar to those before Covid. Some reports estimate that around 50,000 A-level students will therefore miss out on getting the A*
North of the border, the long-anticipated by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West has finally been confirmed. This constituency is classic SNP-Labour swing territory, and though an SNP-held seat until recently, polls have shown that Labour support in Scotland is on the rise. The by-election will put these predictions to the test: can Labour’s candidate Michael
Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the RMT, has never felt truly English. In conversation with Iain Dale at the Edinburgh festival, he reveals that his parents moved here from Ireland during the war and settled in the Ladbroke Grove area of London where they raised him and his four siblings. His father was ‘an
As part of a slew of measures to freeze illegal immigrants out of the economy, the Tories have announced tougher penalties for landlords who let out properties to those with no right to be in the country. This extension of the hostile environment could, however, simply worsen the lives of legitimate renters in an era
Although Western support to Ukraine’s defence effort continues unabated, the honeymoon between Kyiv and even its staunchest allies is decidedly over. In a recent interview, President Zelensky’s advisor Mykhailo Podolyak, said that Ukraine sees Poland as its close friend ‘until the end of the war.’ Then, he added, ‘competition between the countries will begin.’ The quote,
Alex Salmond is hosting a show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this week. It’s called ‘The Ayes Have It’ and features special guests such as old mucker David Davis, trusty lieutenant Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and former Commons sparring partner John Bercow. SNP notables Kate Forbes and Fergus Ewing are popping up and there will be a
Small companies will face massive fines for not checking the papers of everyone they hire. Landlords will be put out of business for renting rooms to anyone without permission to be in the UK. With its Rwanda policy stalled, and with the numbers of illegal immigrants still at record highs, the government has a big
There is nothing new under the sun. The idea of opening an asylum processing centre on the British overseas territory of Ascension Island has been knocking around for 20 years, but reports in today’s papers suggest it is suddenly all the rage again. Ministers are scrambling to find a ‘plan B’ in case the Supreme
Since the election date for next year’s London mayoral election was announced, Sadiq Khan has been putting on a show of confidence that his re-election is in the bag with his supporters pointing to polling that suggests Labour enjoy a 40-point lead in the capital. However, the Ulez expansion – which Keir Starmer blamed on
Another month, another resignation honours list. It was a row over Boris Johnson’s peerages that led to Rishi Sunak facing multiple by-elections last month – with one still to follow, should Nadine Dorries ever get round to quitting. But when it comes to Liz Truss’s honours list, the row is not so much about the vetting
Have high house prices succeeded where decades of government efforts at regional development have failed? That is, have they managed to redistribute economic development around the country? According to the estate agent Hamptons, nearly one in three buyers looking to move out of London in the first six months of this year was a first
Ulez currently may be Westminster’s favourite talking point, but sharper MPs and ministers are more concerned about the emissions from the front of your car than the back: data, lots and lots of it. Buried in the electronic control unit of every new electric car is a cellular internet of things module (CIM). The CIM
The 19-year extended prison sentence handed out to Putin opponent Alexei Navalny on Friday may seem, to many, meaningless and the stuff of Kremlin fantasy. Putin himself is unlikely to be with us in 2042, and his regime will be history long before that. Nor do we know whether his successor will issue an amnesty
‘By the light of the torches, we saw the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah’s ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside,
When it comes to disclosing the true cost of the war in Ukraine for Russia, the Kremlin has rarely, if ever, chosen to be honest. But occasionally, things slip out. Last Wednesday, Mikhail Teplinsky, commander-in-chief of the Russian Airborne Forces, congratulated his troops on the anniversary of the division’s founding. He said how proud he
So, the figures are in. The total weekly audience for BBC Radio 2 has dropped by a million in the last three months. Those are the three months, significantly, since the somewhat rushed and awkward departure of its biggest draw, the immaculate and imperturbable Ken Bruce. Radio 4 has likewise managed to lose 1.3 million
The revelation that an Iranian official in charge of Islamic values has been caught on video having sex with another man will have come as no surprise to much of the Iranian population. The hypocrisy of the ruling class has long been a topic of discussion among Iranians Few care about the individual’s sexual preferences but
Having previously been known simply as ‘that footy pundit off the telly’, over the past year Gary Neville seems to have been trying to manoeuvre his way into politics. The former Man Utd captain signed up as a Labour member, conducted a cringeworthy Q&A with Keir Starmer at last year’s party conference, and has consistently
Taylor Swift mania has hit Los Angeles this weekend as the best-selling songstress takes her sold out Eras tour to the Sunny State. It means local residents are on high alert that there is a chance they cross paths with Swift. So spare a thought for the young woman who headed to an early morning
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Rishi Sunak is apparently looking to expand the teaching of chess in schools, and to install chess sets in public parks, and will unveil the policy alongside a giant chessboard in the No. 10 garden. What is the Prime Minister thinking? And what does it say about Sunak’s idea of education? Cindy Yu speaks to
The first by-election in Scotland since the SNP’s change of leadership is a huge test for First Minister Humza Yousaf. If the nationalists lose the seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, made vacant when constituents recalled their MP Margaret Ferrier after she broke Covid rules, Yousaf will face difficult questions about his party’s direction of
Going by the number of state and Communist party plans to ‘boost consumption’ over the summer, it appears that Beijing is rattled about the Chinese economy. It is right to be worried. Deep-seated and systemic issues that predate Covid are tearing away at China’s fabled dynamism. These include excessive debt, low productivity, a flawed real
‘Ku Klux Klan Brandenburg’ was emblazoned across the black T-shirt on a guy in line behind me at the Total petrol station in Peitz, 90 minutes south of Berlin. I considered asking why he liked the KKK but thought better of it after noting his girth and the grimace he gave me. Popularity of the