All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
David Warburton surprised nobody in Westminster by standing down on Saturday, fourteen months after losing the Tory whip. For more than a year it’s been clear that a by-election was looming in Somerton and Frome. Yet you wouldn’t know it judging from the quality of the local Lib Dem candidate there, Sarah Dyke. She has
11 min listen
James Heale speaks to Isabel Hardman and Kate Andrews as the Bank of England announced it has hiked interest rates to 5 per cent. Faced with inflation, a looming mortgage crisis and personal debt, Rishi Sunak said today he is ‘100 per cent on it’. But can he turn things around? Produced by Natasha Feroze.
Nothing has changed– that was the message Rishi Sunak sought to convey this afternoon, following the Bank of England’s interest rate hike. Speaking to journalists at one of his ‘PM Connect’ events in Kent, Sunak repeatedly emphasised his determination to battle inflation. ‘Rooting out inflation is not easy, requires difficult decisions, and it doesn’t happen
Oh dear. Gary Neville is at it again.The left-wing right-back has waded into the latest trend in British football: superannuated superstars ending their playing days in Saudi Arabia. Neville – a man who has never met a camera he didn’t like – is calling on the Premier League to stop the transfer of players to
The Monetary Policy Committee has voted seven to two to take interest rates to 5 per cent, a 0.5 point increase. Its thirteenth rise in a row takes rates to their highest level in 15 years, and is being described as a ‘shock’ increase, brought in as a response to the rise in core inflation on the
It doesn’t take much to get you censored these days. You don’t even need to be that controversial. Believing in biological sex is usually enough. Gender-critical feminists have not only been sacked from jobs and cancelled on campus, but also arrested and dragged through the courts. Sticking up for free speech these days often means
Seventy-five years ago today perhaps the most famous ship in British history arrived at this island. A new nation was born, and with it, a new founding myth. The story begins in the last few weeks of the second world war, when British troops advancing on Kiel in the very north of Germany captured a
On taking office, Joe Biden promised a new approach to foreign policy based on prioritising democratic values and human rights. The US president spoke of ‘the battle between democracy and autocracy’ as the defining struggle of the time, effectively dividing the world into two clear and opposing camps. Now Biden is having to eat his
Is Labour really going to reform the House of Lords? The party has ended up in a bit of a pickle over abolishing a chamber that it also wants to stuff with its own peers. The party’s spokesman yesterday told journalists that there was still a plan to create a Labour majority in the Lords
In his Spectator review of Avi Shlaim’s memoir Three Worlds, Justin Marozzi refers to the author’s claims about the 1950-51 terrorist bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad: ‘Shlaim’s bombshell is to uncover what he terms “undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks”, which helped terminate the millennial presence of Jews in Babylon’. Marozzi calls these claims ‘controversial’ but he doesn’t delve into
Millions of potential voters in marginal constituencies face punishing rises in their mortgage repayments over the coming months and years. The government is in disarray on the issue and is largely to blame for the mess. Labour has spied an opportunity to hammer the Conservatives: it is talking about a ‘Tory mortgage penalty’ and shadow
Trawling through his emails, Mr S was struck by one that leapt out by dint of its sheer audacity. Extinction Rebellion, those great unwashed types, are now openly bragging about their access to Labour government ministers in Wales. In one such recent update from their political engagement team, they wrote to supporters to crow that
Shall we play a game of pick the real criminal? Come on, it will be fun. On the one hand, we have a 77-year-old man, a former president and a billionaire, whose Gollum-like greed caused him to hoard various boxes of classified documents which he should have returned to the proper authorities. He, or his
This article is not about me. It’s about a woman in her late eighties called Ethel who goes to my local church; she came to this country in the Windrush era, which began 75 years ago today when 500 passengers arrived at Tilbury in Essex on 22 June, 1948. But this paragraph is about me.
Civilisation’s last line of defence runs through the Élysée Palace. Emmanuel Macron has been lambasted by his opponents for necking a beer with Toulouse rugby players to celebrate their victory over La Rochelle in the Top 14 final. The video of le Président chugging down the offending brew has got mustard up the noses of
Sir Keir Starmer had two goals at PMQs. He wanted to convince us that life is dreadful and it’s all Rishi Sunak’s fault. And he showcased a new phrase that he’d like us to spout whenever interest rates are mentioned: ‘Tory mortgage penalty.’ He used it several times which suggests that he authored it himself.
A lot has happened in the last fortnight of Scottish politics, most notably the arrest of Nicola Sturgeon. This development has not passed voters by. Though support for Scottish independence remains steady, the reputation of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has taken a substantial knock. Meanwhile, the threat posed by Labour to the SNP’s dominance
The Supreme Court is hearing a case today that, if successful, could mean the end of new fossil fuel projects in the UK on climate grounds. The justices will decide whether to reverse approval for oil extraction at Horse Hill based on downstream emissions from the use of the oil. Whatever the outcome, this case is
Tax rises would bring debts under control. The Bank of England would bring inflation back down again. The government would steadily win back the confidence of the financial markets, repair relations with the EU, remove some of the obstacles to growth and, once all that was in place, try and cut a minor tax or
It’s not news that we live in a New Medieval age of Magical Thinking, when the Enlightenment is seen as the start of hate-speech, feelings must always overrule facts and ‘transubstantiation’ has taken on a whole new meaning. Men can become women simply by wishing it so, the BBC instructs its staff that there are 150 genders
39 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Joel Kotkin who is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. On the podcast, they discuss the collapse of Silicon Valley. With mass layoffs in the tech sector and a post-pandemic real estate downturn, Kotkin argues the Valley is entering a period of long-term decline
Rishi Sunak had a much better Prime Minister’s Questions than he might have expected, given the worrying economic news this morning. The Prime Minister sometimes turns up with too much, over-caffeinated energy. Sometimes he tries to defend his government with attacks on Labour that don’t sound as though he came up with them himself. But
10 min listen
Natasha Feroze speaks to Kate Andrews and Katy Balls about today’s inflation figures, stuck at 8.7 per cent despite predictions it would fall. As a flagship policy of Rishi Sunak’s to half inflation, what options does the Prime Minister have?
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