All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s Humza Yousaf’s 100th day in office today. So what better way to mark this milestone than with a fresh clash with Westminster? A policy paper put out by the Scottish government this morning calls for the decriminalisation of all drugs for personal use. Drugs are a reserved matter but Holyrood ministers want that changed
Are house prices falling? The Halifax house price index, published today, is finally showing a significant year on year fall: average prices are 2.6 per cent down in the 12 months to June. This is the biggest annual fall shown by the index in 12 years. But it is still hard to depict what is happening
It’s one year today since Boris Johnson resigned as prime minister, following mass resignations in the ministerial ranks. At the time Johnson hinted he would return, but 12 months later he is no longer an MP. Meanwhile the Tories have fallen further back in the polls. The last YouGov poll taken before Johnson resigned had
15 min listen
It is one year since Boris Johnson announced his resignation as prime minister. That day, Labour held an 11 point lead in the polls but new YouGov polling today indicates that gap has widened to 25 points. Is there any hope the Tories can turn it around? What if Boris had stayed? James Heale speaks to
Keir Starmer clearly does not abide by the principle ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. On the contrary, with this week’s announcement of Labour’s plans to overhaul England’s education sector, Starmer has proven that even in the rare instance of something working well, Labour can be relied upon to make it worse. Come the
When corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was toppled in 2014, his private estate at Mezhyhirya turned out to contain an ostrich farm, chandeliers worth thousands and and a two-kilo gold loaf of bread. When Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s St Petersburg estate was raided, investigators found cash, guns – and a bizarre collection of wigs.
The Foreign Office is making a big mistake in failing to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a terrorist group. The 100,000 strong organisation, the most powerful wing of Iran’s security apparatus, was established after the 1979 Islamic revolution. For decades it has been at the heart of Iranian support for global terrorism on
As Tory MP Johnny Mercer found out last night, any politician who chooses to go on BBC’s Question Time is brave soul indeed. Following an evening of bullish debate, one member of the audience decided to take the veterans minister to task after Mercer complained about people voicing their anger on social media. Pulling him
Perhaps Humza Yousaf’s greatest achievement in his first 100 days as First Minister is that he has survived them. Since succeeding Nicola Sturgeon in March, Yousaf has stumbled from crisis to crisis. His leadership has played out like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone where, long ago, the lead character got the message that they
Today Humza Yousaf’s 100 days as First Minister, yet not even that has gone right: the nationalist leader has been upstaged by the departure of Mhairi Black earlier this week. The SNP Westminster group’s deputy leader announced she would not be standing for re-election on Tuesday, claiming that the culture of Westminster politics is too
Ding, ding, ding! That sound you can hear is two monumental egos colliding in a bit of vintage Labour politicking. In the red corner is Keir Starmer, the party leader and chameleon extraordinaire – a man with more positions than the Karma Sutra. And, er, also in the red corner is Sadiq Khan, London Mayor
So Jolyon Maugham loses again. The crusading barrister is now almost as famous for losing cases as he is for battering to death a defenceless fox. And he hasn’t disappointed with his latest legal shenanigans. The appeal against the LGB Alliance’s charitable status, which was spearheaded by troubled trans charity Mermaids and backed by Maugham’s
Keir Starmer has come up with a good policy for once. He is promising to offer a Scottish-style right to roam across England, which would open up vastly more tracts of land for public recreation. The right to roam granted by the Blair government 20 years ago applies only to moorland, which is rare in the
It’s more bad news for the government today. The High Court has this afternoon ordered ministers to release Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages and notebooks to the Covid inquiry. Judges said there were no grounds to block inquiry chairwoman Baroness Hallett’s order to hand over the material. It will mean inquiry officials will have access
If you just ignore the opinion polls, Humza Yousaf’s first 100 days as First Minister have been an unqualified disaster. Yousaf eked across the finishing line after an internal election drenched in ruthless skullduggery and bitter factionalism. In the aftermath, he alienated and exiled his party rivals and turned the SNP backbenches from a North Korean military
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A year on from allegations that Chris Pincher groped two young men at the Carlton Club (allegations that ultimately triggered the downfall of Boris Johnson), Parliament’s standards watchdog has now found that Pincher brought the House into disrepute and recommended an eight-week suspension. On the podcast, Isabel Hardman says that this makes a by-election in
Cultural issues, or ‘Woke Wars’, have surfaced to inflame an already tense general election held in the scorching temperatures of a Spanish summer. Spain’s third largest party – the hard-right populist Vox – is fuelling a backlash among Spaniards against town halls flying LBGT flags. Vox has insisted that the symbol of the LGBT movement be
Hold a major sporting, political or national event these days and chances are you’re going to be disrupted by a gaggle of greenies. Today’s unlucky victim was Sir Keir Starmer, giving the latest of his much-hyped ‘five missions’ speeches. As the London lawyer droned away, a pair of eco-zealots unfurled a flag behind him, protesting
This morning’s news that the LGB Alliance has won its case to retain its charitable status is a victory and a relief for everyone who wants to live in a free and progressive society. That status was challenged by Mermaids and Jolyon Maugham’s so-called Good Law Project. Their argument seemed to be that it was
Keir Starmer is giving another speech on one of his five missions (remember them?) today. The Labour leader has a lower bar to meet with his five pledges than Rishi Sunak. While the Prime Minister has to achieve things like halving inflation by the end of the year, the Labour leader just has to stick
The report into Chris Pincher is out and it makes for damning reading. An eight-week suspension is recommended for the Tamworth MP following allegations he groped two people at the Carlton Club last summer. This means that a by-election is now highly likely. A 10 per cent threshold of petitioners is necessary to trigger a
Chris Pincher should be suspended as an MP for eight weeks following allegations he groped two people at the Carlton Club last summer, Parliament’s standards watchdog has recommended. The Standards Committee report into the Tamworth MP – who was a Tory MP – found that Pincher ‘groped [two people]…and that this was unwanted, inappropriate, and
It wasn’t president Macron who brought six days of rioting in France to an end, nor the brave bands of mothers who called for calm in some of the inner-city estates. It wasn’t even the presence of 45,000 police and gendarmes on the streets that persuaded the rioters, arsonists, vandals and looters to stand down. Instead,
With inflation rampant, growth stagnant, government disintegrating, and nothing working – so I’d read, all due to Brexit, naturally – it was a wonder to fly into Heathrow, breeze through customs, and smartly get to a smoothly-functioning, clean and new London hotel via train and tube. What had happened to the strike-bound Britain that Poland
There’s no better city for the history buff than Berlin. Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler’s armies have marched through. Albert Einstein taught in the city. Karl Marx studied there. Lenin journeyed across the city on his way to change Russia – and the world. The Brothers Grimm dreamed up their stories there. Mankind’s worst genocide was
It’s 75 years today since the NHS was founded. So what better way for Westminster’s elite to mark the occasion than by knocking back a glass or four at The Spectator’s summer shindig? Last year’s event coincided with Boris Johnson’s resignation and the subsequent leadership contest. Tonight saw something of a reunion for the two
Mick Lynch, the tough-talking general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), is on the warpath again. This time, it’s the train companies who are once again the object of his ire, over plans to close 1,000 ticket offices. Lynch says this proposal amounts to a ‘savage attack on railway
All is not well among the SNP’s Westminster group and this time, it’s not Mhairi Black causing them trouble. Leader Stephen Flynn has today suspended Salmond ally Angus MacNeil from the party after a public bust up with the Chief Whip Brendan O’Hara. Tension has been brewing between MacNeil and O’Hara for a while but
Today is the 75th anniversary of the National Health Service. There is very little to celebrate. Waiting lists are at record highs: 7.4 million waiting in England, and counting. Practically every international comparison ranks the NHS as mediocre to poor on outcomes. Well-above average funding is being funnelled into the health service, yet it doesn’t
Joe Biden cannot be trusted to protect the American people’s freedom of speech. He needs to be restrained, by law, from interfering with people’s First Amendment right to express themselves as they see fit. That is the implication of an extraordinary preliminary injunction slapped on the Biden administration this week by a federal judge. The injunction was
Taking my son for a walk yesterday, we passed HMP Dartmoor, where I served as a prison governor. Unknown to us, a dramatic and serious incident was unfolding just behind its austere walls. A prisoner had taken an officer hostage in the establishment’s segregation unit. I understand that the officer was overpowered while letting the
The birthday of our sacred NHS was celebrated at PMQs. Appropriately enough there was a lengthy waiting-list of MPs ready to pay insincere tribute to the medics who care for the sick once they’ve finished painting rainbows on their faces and rehearsing dance-moves in the corridors. Rishi Sunak ducked the session altogether. He was at