All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
This may come to be remembered as the year where the global warming debate became serious. Until now, there has been a shrill quality to the discussion with emotive language used in place of reason. Yes, there’s a serious problem facing the planet – but to what extent would the proposed solutions address this problem?
Labour frontbencher David Lammy was today confronted by a furious voter on his LBC show about the Ulez extension. It’s been causing a row over the past week, since the Tories unexpectedly held onto Uxbridge and South Ruislip in last week’s by-election. The caller said: To be honest with you, I’ve had my wife in
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The High Court has ruled that Sadiq Khan can expand the Ultra Low Emission Zone, after five Tory councils challenged the proposed policy. Will Keir Starmer be happy that a Labour mayor has won the day? Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.
Every country that imposed a lockdown during the pandemic accepted that there would be an economic price to pay. But governments hoped that, on this measure, their own nation would fare better than others. The objective here was simple: don’t be the ugliest country of the bunch. Now, with some distance between those lockdowns and
Must politics stay separate from sport? Ukrainian fencer Olha Kharlan has been disqualified from the World Fencing Championships in Milan after declining to shake hands with her Russian opponent having won the match yesterday. As it concluded, both athletes removed their masks and Anna Smirnova (who competed under a neutral flag) extended her hand. Kharlan responded by
Cillian Murphy is a blue-eyed Irishman with cheekbones you could slice salt beef on but, sorry David Baddiel, as far as I’m concerned he makes a great Oppenheimer. Baddiel has once again opened the argument over ‘Jewface’ – non-Jewish actors playing Jewish characters – as Christopher Nolan’s epic takes cinemas by storm. He questions whether
These are busy times for the police watchdog. It’s just started an investigation into serious allegations of misconduct against Devon and Cornwall’s Chief Constable, Will Kerr, who’s been suspended. An inquiry has been announced into missed opportunities to root out the serial rapist, former Metropolitan Police officer David Carrick. And this week came an investigation
Expanding London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) may be a bad policy, a regressive tax which will impact on people of modest means while leaving the not-very-much-less-polluting cars of the wealthy untouched. But that doesn’t mean the High Court is wrong to reject the case brought by Conservative councils against the scheme. On the contrary,
Iran’s so-called morality police, loathed and feared in equal measure, are back patrolling the streets of the country. They temporarily disappeared from view in the wake of the widespread public protests over the death last September of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman. She was arrested and beaten, and subsequently died in police custody. Her
The SNP Scottish government has rolled out its latest paper on independence, this time focused on citizenship. Like others in the series (this is the fifth paper on secession in twelve months) it offers nothing new, goes big on fantasising about a future that won’t happen, and is completely removed from the day-to-day needs of
It might come as some small comfort to Nigel Farage to discover that it’s not just those on his side of the Brexit debate who have fallen victim to potential ‘debanking’. The former Brexit leader may now have an unlikely ally in Gina Miller, the anti-Brexit campaigner and his arch enemy during the referendum years.
Burgundy passports, dual citizenship and rejoining the EU were a few of the items at the top of Humza Yousaf’s fifth independence paper, published earlier today. The First Minister’s latest independence document in the ‘Building a New Scotland’ series outlines the Scottish government’s proposals for citizenship in an ‘open, inclusive’ and independent Scotland. Holding a
Scottish nationalists can sometimes be heard to say the United Kingdom is not a normal country. As evidence, they point to the unelected head of state, absence of a codified constitution and what they see as the dominance of one nation over other, smaller nations within the state. This analysis only underscores the very cultural
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has declared that ‘the era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived’. As if that were not enough, Guterres declared that ‘the air is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable’. Something is raging out of control but it isn’t the temperature: last week’s famous ‘heat domes’ have
In the end, the only real surprise was that it took so long. The chief executive of NatWest, Dame Alison Rose, had already been forced to step down after it became clear she had leaked confidential information about Nigel Farage’s personal financial affairs to the BBC. The board has been under sustained pressure all week.
Troublemaking isn’t confined these days to the SNP’s Westminster group. It seems that nationalists north of the border have got the bug for insurrection too. Fergus Ewing, SNP MSP for Inverness and Nairn, has revealed that there is a ‘toxic atmosphere amongst the SNP group in Holyrood’ and that he doesn’t think the Nats stand a
Two down, one to go. Following the humiliating midnight departure of NatWest chief Alison Rose, Peter Flavel is the next banking boss to fall on his sword. Flavel, the chief executive of Coutts since 2016, this lunchtime announced his immediate departure from the luxury bank as it grapples with the fall out of the Nigel
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney had a brilliant way with words, so you would almost certainly want his thoughts on the passing of the Irish singer Sinead O’Connor, who died this week. Perhaps that’s why the Guardian decided to quote the poet paying tribute in their obituary for the singer yesterday. The paper wrote, ‘Seamus
Do Harry and Meghan need rescuing from their Montecito mansion? Being part of the royal family and living among California’s elite makes for a rarefied existence. But it appears that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex lack all access to the newspapers, films, television shows or websites that could provide clues about life beyond the
Almost sixteen years after he lost office and his own parliamentary seat, former Australian Liberal prime minister John Howard is still an influential political figure. Idolised by the right and demonised by the left, when Howard speaks, Australians still take notice. When Howard spoke to the Australian newspaper to mark his 84th birthday this week,
Congress could never be accused of working well at the best of times. But yesterday Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, appeared to be the literal embodiment of political gridlock when he froze mid-sentence during a news conference. The 81-year-old abruptly stopped speaking during the weekly Republican leadership media session before being led away by
Watching Israel tear itself apart this week has been like seeing your best friend embarrass himself at a party. The world has looked on while the Netanyahu government, in hock to a small cabal of religious chauvinists, pushed through the first stage of its judicial reform agenda, sparking the biggest street protests the country has
Since 2011, the SNP has undergone a meteoric rise from underdog to Scotland’s natural party of government. It’s a transformation I helped design, through innovating the digital strategy of the party. However eight years of Nicola Sturgeon’s rule has fostered an era of indolence and self-deception over policy and independence. As Humza Yousaf embarks on
There are still those, like Matt Hancock, who think that lockdowns were an unalloyed good – who, indeed, believe that in a future pandemic we must lock down harder and faster. But for the rest of us, the appalling toll of Covid lockdowns continues to become apparent. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) reveals today that
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice. Sadly, in the British media it will be forgotten that Great Britain and its Commonwealth forces, roughly some 104,000 troops in total, were America’s junior partner in the United Nations force that took on the defence of South Korea. The United Nations’ call to arms
A team of South Korean scientists has pre-printed a paper asserting that they have achieved superconductivity at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. The paper has led to widespread speculation that this is the most significant physics discovery in decades, with huge implications for energy, medical technology and computing. Even Jordan Peterson is asking if room-temperature
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Natasha Feroze speaks to Kate Andrews and Fraser Nelson about the sudden decision for the NatWest boss Alison Rose to hand in her resignation. Prompted by the Nigel Farage Coutts bank account scandal, the bank’s CEO faced mounting pressure to resign after late last night No.10 said they had serious concerns over the bank’s actions.
Lord Botham – chair of Durham County Cricket Club and a life peer appointed by Boris Johnson in 2020 – has challenged the findings of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) report, which highlighted cricket’s elitism and class-based inequalities, as well as widespread discrimination in terms of ethnicity and gender. Admitting that he had only read ‘bits’
Silence is not a common feature in the North Korean regime’s playbook, and this year is no exception. Only this past week, North Korea’s flurry of ballistic missile launches has been complemented by a cornucopia of threats from senior officials – including Kim Yo-jong, the sharp-tongued sister of Kim Jong-un – who have upped the
After claiming that Labour is on the same side as criminal people-trafficking gangs, Rishi Sunak clearly owes a rival party leader an apology. The person he should be saying sorry to is not Keir Starmer but Boris Johnson. When Johnson struck a low blow against Starmer for having failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile while DPP,
Nigel Farage blasted Nick Robinson for his ‘condescending tone’ during a fiery interview on the Today programme. The BBC host asked the former Ukip leader whether he was planning a political comeback following his run-in with Coutts bank. But Farage lashed out at Robinson, telling him he was ‘sick to death’ of his line of
Geoffroy Lejeune knows how Nigel Farage feels. Like the former Ukip leader turned TV host, Lejeune’s ‘values’ have made him persona non grata among France’s progressive elite. The 34-year-old journalist was last month appointed editor-in-chief of Journal du Dimanche (JDD), France’s only dedicated Sunday newspaper with a circulation of 140,000. Newspaper staff were outraged. They