All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The thought of laying eyes on the wreck of Titanic has tantalised the world since the ship’s rediscovery in 1985. Now the five people aboard the submersible Titan, currently lost in the Atlantic, will almost undoubtedly end up paying the ultimate price for their desire to see the sunken liner on the ocean floor. Superpowers spend billions, largely
The Nazi occupation of Greece decimated its finances, left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and all but destroyed the country’s ancient Jewish communities. Some Greeks, including the country’s former president Prokopis Pavlopoulos, think Germany should pay reparations. At the feet of the Parthenon last week, a cache of lawyers met to discuss the pressing
Threadneedle Street will have all the economic limelight this week as the Bank of England sets interest rates tomorrow. With this morning’s grim inflation update, a rate rise looks all but certain. But this morning, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released an update on Rishi Sunak’s third pledge: to get debt falling. The figures
Inflation figures out this morning make for grim reading: the headline rate didn’t budge, sticking at 8.7 per cent on the year in May. Far worse, core inflation (which excludes food and energy) rose once again, to 7.1 per cent on the year in May, up from 6.8 per cent in April. This latest update from the
Even with Nicola Sturgeon politically hors de combat, Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf has made it clear he intends to forge ahead with her plans to hold a second independence referendum. The Scottish government has produced its blueprint for the future constitution that could flow from such an independence vote. Any voter contemplating taking up Humza’s offer and voting
Just as a stopped clock shows the correct time twice a day, so president Joe Biden, amidst the plethora of gaffes that regularly issues from his lips, occasionally utters the plain and unvarnished truth. So it was at a Democratic fundraiser in California yesterday when Biden called China’s president Xi Jinping ‘a dictator’. Explaining why
Scottish government minister, Lorna Slater, has managed to survive a vote of no confidence tabled by Conservative MSP Liam Kerr. The circular economy minister, and co-leader of the Scottish Greens, has faced heavy criticism for her handling of Scotland’s controversial deposit return scheme in recent months. To make matters worse, hours before politicians voted on
Penny Mordaunt might be the media darling since wielding the Coronation sword but it wasn’t always this way. The Leader of the House has had a fair few run-ins with the Four Estate in recent years, including last summer’s leadership election. So it was with great enthusiasm that Mr S attended tonight’s Parliamentary Press Gallery
As Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is once again in court, facing charges that could extend his time in prison by 30 or more years, he is showing that he is not giving up his uneven but unyielding challenge to the Putin regime. When Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021 after recovering from a
Has there ever been a more brutally effective piece of social satire than the South Park episode that mocked Harry and Meghan? Since it aired in mid-February, the Duchess of Sussex, previously a seemingly ubiquitous and unstoppable cultural phenomenon, has effectively withdrawn from public life. She’s made just one formal appearance – at an awards show, which
Coming soon to the Edinburgh Fringe: Evita without the self-awareness. Nicola Sturgeon trialled her one woman show today with an impromptu press conference at Holyrood, following her shock arrest less than a fortnight ago. Bravely, the former First Minister gave the performance of a lifetime, sticking to her Dalek-like insistence on her innocence while, er,
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In last night’s vote on the Privileges Committee’s report into whether Boris Johnson misled parliament, just six MPs backed the former prime minister. What’s the reaction in Westminster today? Also on the podcast, after shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves rowed back on Labour’s £28bn green projects pledge, why are both parties in such a mess on
Is Mark Zuckerberg losing his touch? Having just thrown tens of billions at his weird virtual-reality ‘metaverse’, only to see it flop with users, the Meta CEO and co-founder of Facebook appears to be spying another questionable new venture. It’s reportedly called Threads, a cloying techspeak name for what is essentially a rip-off of Twitter.
Jeremy Hunt was bombarded by MPs worried about the ‘mortgage timebomb’ when he took Treasury questions in the Commons today. Everyone on all sides was concerned, and offering their own ideas of what to do and who to blame. One problem for the Chancellor is that ‘everyone’ includes members of his own party, many of
Britain is ‘ready to provide assistance’ to the rescuers searching for Titan, the submarine which lost contact while on an exploratory visit to the Titanic, a spokesman for Rishi Sunak said this afternoon. The rescuers are facing a race against time as the craft runs out of oxygen. The expedition left for the site of the
To Dean’s Yard, for the second best party of the summer season. The Tory establishment assembled last night for ConservativeHome’s annual bash, hosted in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. It was this august event which kicked off last year’s summer madness: a point not lost on this year’s star speaker. James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary,
Is anyone actually watching the Oscars anymore? Until ‘The Incident’ between Messrs Smith and Rock last year the direction of travel was clear. Between 2014 and 2020 the televised Academy Awards lost almost half their viewers, the number falling from 43 to 23 million. This year, in March, they were at 18 million with punters
Keir Starmer has vowed to create a ‘squaddies tsar’ if he wins the election. This ‘Armed Forces Commissioner’ would represent the military and their families and sit outside the military chain of command. But it’s here that the problems start. The Labour leader says this issue is personal to him because his uncle served aboard
Emmanuel Macron never does anything by chance, so why did he allow himself to be filmed downing a beer in one on Saturday night? The clip, which has gone viral, has angered puritanical progressives. Green MP Sandrine Rousseau has branded Macron’s behaviour ‘toxic masculinity’. The president of the French Republic slaked his thirst just before
After Spotify sacked/let go/‘mutually agreed to part ways’ with, in the words of one of its executives, those ‘f-ing grifters’ Harry and Meghan, there have much discussion about where it all went wrong for the podcasting pair. The general consensus is that the Sussexes may have overestimated public interest in anything they have to say
MPs have just voted 354 to 7 in favour of the Privileges Committee report’s finding that Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament over partygate, and that he should be banned from having a former members’ pass. At some points in this evening’s lengthy debate, it appeared that there wasn’t going to be a vote, and even
It was rare to find anyone willing to stand up and defend Boris Johnson in parliament this afternoon. But cometh the hour, cometh the Mogg as the Honourable Member for the eighteenth century arose to deliver his best defence of his former boss. Jacob Rees-Mogg described it as a ‘deliberate attempt to take the most
Have you opened a letter recently from your energy supplier and gasped at how much of your monthly budget is now going on electricity and gas? Are you living in constant pain or discomfort because you need an operation, but under the Scottish NHS you’ll have to wait years for treatment? Or do you live
The launch of the Labour party’s new green energy mission did not go to plan. The party had promised to ferry journalists to the venue in a hydrogen-powered bus, only for this to be quickly replaced with a diesel alternative on the day. To make matters worse, the bus driver then got lost on route,
Is partygate all in the past? That’s what Rishi Sunak is hoping. He sent Penny Mordaunt to the Commons this afternoon to back the Privileges Committee report into Boris Johnson, while saying the vote on sanctions for Johnson himself ‘is a matter for individual members’. The chamber had far more opposition MPs in it than
They come not to praise Caesar but to bury him. Watching today’s debate on the Privileges Committee report into Boris Johnson, Mr S was struck by how many critics of the former PM were there to administer the last rites. Harriet Harman and Thangam Debbonaire were there for Labour; on the Tory benches David Davis,
The number of abortions taking place in Ireland is more than 8,000 a year, up from the memorable figure of 6,666 abortions in the first year after the law legalising abortion came into force in January 2019. It’s all rather a far cry from the situation that abortion campaigners talked about during the referendum campaign,
Today, MPs will get the chance to debate and vote on the Privileges Committee report on Boris Johnson. This will not be whipped by the government, allowing Tory MPs to vote how they wish. So far more than a dozen of Johnson’s supporters in parliament have expressed public criticism of the report but some stop
Members of the Scottish Labour party may be forgiven for feelings of jubilation following publication of a new poll. Sir Keir Starmer arrived in Leith near Edinburgh this morning to be met by comrades cheered by the suggestion their party is on course to defeat the SNP at a general election for the first time since
Everyone giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry has their own corner to defend. And every ex-prime minister has a part of their premiership that they spend the rest of their life talking about and trying to justify. For David Cameron, it was his public spending cuts. Experts blame them for the health service being in
When Antony Blinken got on the plane to Beijing two days ago, the US Secretary of State didn’t even know if he’d be meeting with Xi Jinping. Blinken’s visit was originally planned for February before the US withdrew, at the last minute, after a Chinese spy balloon was spotted over Montana. Beijing has always insisted there was nothing untoward about
Any hope Rishi Sunak had to use Boris Johnson’s resignation to turn the page on partygate is dwindling fast. The Prime Minister is likely to miss the debate on the Privileges Committee report this afternoon and the hope in government is that a vote isn’t even called. But even if ministers get their wish, the