All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
TikTok is perpetuating significant harm to the welfare and wellbeing of young children. This week, it was announced by the UK’s data protection authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), that they were handing down a £12.7 million fine to TikTok for significant breaches of data protection law. It is one of the largest fines to
Humza Yousaf’s government will be defined by two legacies, Nicola Sturgeon’s and his own as health secretary. The Sturgeon legacy can only be understood by looking at the distance between the previous first minister’s rhetoric and her record. Sturgeon was always heavy on mission statements but light on delivery. During the leadership election, Yousaf initially
On 29 August 1942, as German tanks reached the Volga river near Stalingrad, Josef Stalin consulted his most senior General, Georgy Zhukov about his strategy. Despite his impoverished background, Zhukov was intelligent, demanding and strong-willed. The general persuaded Stalin to delay counter-attacking the Nazis for a week to allow time for supplies and artillery to
The misogynist mob strikes again. Its target this time was the American swimmer Riley Gaines. What was her offence? What did this young woman do to attract the attention — and the jeers and insults and threats — of the woke witchfinder-generals? She said men should not compete in women’s sports. Obscene. Fetch the ducking
The SNP’s week goes from bad to worse. The party’s long-term auditing firm has resigned, according to reports today. Accountants Johnston Carmichael, which has worked with the party for over a decade, said that the decision followed a review of its client portfolio. The firm is understood to have resigned before the arrest of Nicola
At least there was no six metre-long table in Beijing separating Emmanuel Macron from Xi Jinping. But their meeting was about as fruitless as the French president’s socially distanced chat with Xi’s ‘best friend’ Vladimir Putin in Moscow last year, shortly before the Russian leader sent his tanks into Ukraine. Macron’s visit to China was
36 min listen
Galen Druke, host of the FiveThirtyEight podcast, joins Freddy Gray on this episode to talk about what to take away from Chicago’s election this week, how well the Biden team is handling the progressive wing of the Democratic party, and whether the Democrats would prefer to face up against Ron or Don as the Republican
The implosion of the Scottish National Party has led Scottish Labour to dream again of one day returning to what it assumes is its birth right: the berth at the top of Scottish politics. Many of the banalities and buzzwords in Labour’s most recent manifesto make Humza Yousaf’s blandishments about a ‘wellbeing economy’ sound deep
All politics is local, as the old saying goes. It is, of course, an exaggeration. But it contains easily enough truth to merit keeping in mind if you are, say, a government approaching the last year of its mandate and anxiously seeking a path to a new one. One lesson contained within the phrase is
A few years ago, I posted this riddle on Twitter: What’s easier to roll than an Easter egg? Answer: Donald Trump. Now, I can add: What’s easier to roll than Donald Trump? Answer: Republican voters. Democrats are playing Republicans like a fiddle. The left’s sole objective is to make Trump the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee.
Oh dear. It seems that Labour have been caught trying to be too clever by half with their latest anti-Tory attack ad. The Starmer army proudly put out a hard-hitting graphic last night, which read: ‘Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t’ alongside a smiling photo of the
24 min listen
Donald Trump was in court where he pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying records. To discuss, Freddy Gray is joined by Alan Dershowitz, the American lawyer, and Charles Lipson, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago.
Crimea matters to Russians – whether they adore or abhor Vladimir Putin – in a way none of the other claimed or occupied Ukrainian territories do, and as such the peninsula’s fate will probably be central to any eventual resolution of the current war. That some Ukrainian sources are now talking about a military reconquest
Not content with putting trans rapists in women’s prisons the Scottish government is now accused of keeping heterosexual rapists out of prison altogether. A furious row has broken out after 21-year-old Sean Hogg was given a community payback sentence by a Scottish judge after being found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl in a country park
Since the middle of March in France, 1,247 Gendarmes, police and fire fighters have been injured in the line of duty. There have been over 2,500 deliberate acts of arson and around 350 buildings have been vandalised in some shape or form. Forty-seven of those gendarmes were injured on Saturday March 25 when they were
It was an overcast Sunday morning in January 1983 and two IRA gunmen were waiting outside Belfast’s St Brigid’s church. After attending mass, judge William Doyle was settling into the driver’s seat of his green Mercedes. He was hoping to escape the congregation throng when two Provisional IRA killers, wearing duffel coats with their hoods
Have cracks started to show in Germany’s traffic light government? Less than 18 months after chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SDP) formed a coalition with the Green and Federal Democratic (FDP) parties, collaboration and harmony have been replaced by division – not least when it comes to the push for net zero. Scholz summoned
For all his praising of Nicola Sturgeon’s governance and Peter Murrell as an ‘election winner’, it now looks as though continuity candidate Humza Yousaf is cutting ties with the SNP establishment. Questioned on the raid of his predecessor’s house and the party’s Edinburgh headquarters, Yousaf has, for the first time, dared to criticise his former
11 min listen
Rishi Sunak’s personal poll ratings are on the up, by why don’t the public love Keir Starmer? We talk through the latest polling. And Mark Spencer, now the farming minister, has been cleared by an investigation into whether he made Islamophobic investigations to fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani. Is the row over? Max Jeffery is
Sir Laurie Magnus, Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser, has delivered his long-awaited report into Mark Spencer’s alleged Islamophobic comments. Spencer, the farming minister, faced claims from fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani that he had told her that her dismissal as a minister in 2020 was partly due to concerns about her ‘Muslimness’. But Sir Laurie has
Tradition dictates married couples receive gifts made of leather on the third anniversary of their union. Labour leader Keir Starmer – whose party enjoys a sustained 15-20 per cent poll lead over the Conservatives – has marked his third anniversary in office this week by receiving an old-fashioned leathering in the press. ‘His party remains
Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, faced a media grilling this morning as he championed his plans to clean up the force. It comes a fortnight after Louise Casey’s damning report into the Met, which branded it ‘institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic’. A YouGov poll out today shows that public confidence in the
It was a bright blue-skied July day in 1861, so the Washington elite decided to have a picnic and take in a battle. They brought sandwiches and opera glasses to admire the scene of Union recruits, who had signed up for 90-day enlistments, march by in their unblemished uniforms to put the rebels down. But
Elon Musk, the Twitter owner, is in his own words a ‘free speech absolutist’. He promised to combat censorship and allow a broader range of voices on the social media platform as part of his pitch for acquiring the company last October. It is, then, hard to square his free speech bombast with recent events in
What should be done about Ukraine’s grain exports? Ongoing controversy in Poland over the country’s imports into the EU, which currently face zero tariffs, gives a flavour of the fights to come if Ukraine becomes a fully-fledged member of the bloc. It also presents an opportunity to start a much-overdue conversation about the EU’s worst,
On 4 April the Royal Household revealed the design for invitations to the Coronation, the work of heraldic artist Andrew Jamieson. While the design is a riot of flora and garden fauna, heraldic and otherwise, one feature of the invitation has above all invited comment – the presence of an anthropomorphic green ‘foliate head’, wearing
With police surrounding the home of Nicola Sturgeon, and the arrest of her husband yesterday, the people of Scotland need answers – and fast. For once, Humza Yousaf was only telling it like it is. ‘This has been a difficult day for the party,’ he said, after the former Chief Executive of the SNP, Peter
16 min listen
Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell, has been arrested today in connection with an investigation into the SNP’s finances. James Heale talks to Fraser Nelson and Conservative Home editor Paul Goodman on the episode. They also discuss Trump’s arrest and ask whether Suella Braverman might need a new seat. Produced by Cindy Yu.
Disinformation is on the rise, and Britain’s spies are on the back foot. Our intelligence leaders warn about election meddling, and our enemies are trying to undermine public trust in our national institutions. The United Kingdom needs to use covert means to disrupt anti-British activities at their source. That’s what Harold Macmillan said in the
2024 scheme is now live, click here The Spectator’s no-CV internship scheme is now open. We don’t care how old you are, where (or even if) you went to university, whether you’re a refugee or a baronet. All that matters in journalism is whether you can do it: do you have good, original ideas, and
Slowly but surely striking public sector workers have agreed to sit down at the negotiating table with the government and hammer out pay deals for themselves. But there is one sector that might prove more of a headache than others for Rishi Sunak to deal with: teachers. In September, the National Education Union (NEU) will
Two thousand among the great and the good from around the world will soon receive a letter from King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The invitation to the coronation on 6 May, which has been unveiled today, is not what people might have expected. Elizabeth II’s coronation invitation was formal, and, even by the standards
Whenever Brexit is discussed these days, you will nearly always find a splenetic or exultant Remainer asking, often in a weirdly high pitched voicetone: where are the Brexit Benefits then? Can you name any? Mm? Just one? Where is the £350 million for the NHS? And to be fair to these people, since the Brexit vote, obvious, tangible, yay-look-at-this Brexit Benefits have