All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Claims of financial skulduggery abound, Nicola Sturgeon is politically hors de combat and Humza Yousaf is quickly rebranding the SNP as a party not only of shatteringly incompetent government but also of lost causes, political irrelevance and sheer kookiness. Thinking Scots who don’t fancy the Tories might be forgiven for contemplating a switch of loyalties
George Osborne has taken a break from his myriad jobs to give his thoughts on health policy. Orange juice should be taxed, and smoking banned, according to the ex-Chancellor. Doing so had been ‘too controversial’ while he was in government; those ‘anti-nanny state Conservatives’ who oppose it are ‘not worth listening to. Leaving aside the
Will the Bank of England raise interest rates again? We’ll know for sure next Thursday, when we get the Monetary Policy Committee’s next announcement on the base rate, but today’s decision from the Federal Reserve to hike rates again makes it more likely that the Bank will follow suit. The Fed has announced another interest rate
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In today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Keir Starmer accused the Prime Minister and his party of having ‘killed the dream of homeownership’. With news this week that Rishi Sunak is considering reintroducing ‘Help to Buy’ while Michael Gove is sued for blocking a new housing development in Kent, does Starmer actually have a point? Katy Balls
Just in the nick of time, the SNP have at long last – after cold calling almost every auditing firm in the country – found some new accountants. The small Manchester-based firm, AMS Accountants Group, must be hungry for a challenge: the Westminster group’s accounts need auditing in just over three weeks, while the Holyrood
A few weeks ago the Dutch parliament announced that euthanasia will be licensed for children between the ages of one and 12, for cases involving ‘such a serious illness or disorder that death is inevitable, and the death of these children is expected in the foreseeable future’. The coverage of this latest development was eerily
Powerful stuff from Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs. He tackled Rishi Sunak on his favourite battleground – statistics. He began by pinning the PM down on a very specific question. How many mortgage-holders have to pay more each month because the Tories ‘crashed the economy last autumn’? Rishi didn’t know. Sir Keir gave him the
Over the coming days we will see the Metropolitan Police at its very best. As the world descends on London for the coronation of King Charles, the force will execute a plan that has been decades in the making. As the past year has shown, there are few tasks the Met excels at more than protecting
When will sporting governing bodies see the reality that we all know to be true – that male bodies have an advantage over female bodies? Granted, many organisations have seen the light and taken action, but others remain in some sort of cloud cuckoo land where transwomen – biological males – are allowed to compete against
The right needs to calm down about Sinn Fein. It needs to chill out about the fact that the party’s vice-president, Michelle O’Neill, will be attending the coronation of King Charles. It needs to relax about that selfie featuring Sinn Fein’s former president, Gerry Adams, gurning next to Joe Biden during his jaunt in Ireland.
The campaign by furious activists to destroy Edinburgh’s reputation as a great crucible of critical thinking continues apace. The home of the Enlightenment is under sustained attack. Students and – shame on them – staff at Edinburgh University have, for a second time, blocked the screening of the film Adult Human Female on campus. To
And just like that, the local elections have rolled around once again. On Thursday 4 May, 230 councils will be going to the polls: over 8,000 seats are up for grabs in England, including 3,365 currently held by Tories and 2,131 by Labour councillors. It will be Rishi Sunak’s first big test, with both parties viewing
The Russian government has claimed that ‘two unmanned aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin. As a result of timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems, the vehicles were put out of action.’ There were, it continues, ‘no victims and material damage’, although it is considering
The decline of the UK stock market has finally reached the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It has proposed to deregulate it in order to attract more companies to list in London rather than do as, for example, UK-based chip-maker ARM is doing and choosing to list in New York (it was once a UK-listed company
Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer were both present for Prime Minister’s Questions, but the session was largely Why You Should Vote For This Party In The Local Elections Tomorrow. Backbenchers on both sides used the half hour to air their grievances with local councils led by their rivals, or praise the important work of authorities
These days it’s hard to turn your telly and not find a politician gurning back at you. But while once MPs both past and present were wheeled out only as guests – hapless prey before a fearless interviewer – now they’re more likely to be running the show. A veritable smorgasbord of Tory MPs currently
Former Chancellor George Osborne has become the latest British politician to call for a smoking ban. The architect of the sugar tax wants the UK to follow the lead of New Zealand, which will prohibit anyone born after 2008 from purchasing cigarettes. ‘You basically phase it out. Of course you’re going to have lots of
Another feminist getting no-platformed in Scotland is hardly news. Poets, writers, students, academics, comedians and, of course, film-makers have become inured to being cancelled north of the border if they stray from the dogma that trans women are women. Normally this kind of thing happens in the shadows, without publicity. People just find, like the poet Jenny Lindsay, that
As he basks in the warm glow of respect, and even affection, surrounding his coronation this weekend, King Charles should recall the story of his distant cousin and near namesake ex-king Juan Carlos of Spain as a warning of how speedily a popular monarch can go from hero to zero. The ties between Spain’s Royal
Terror threats from Islamist and far-right terrorists are depressingly familiar to Brits, but other faiths are not immune from the plague of extremists who might seek to harm others. A recent report by Colin Bloom, the government’s faith engagement advisor, touched on lesser-known ideologies like ‘Buddhist nationalism’ and ‘Hindu nationalism’. It also raised concerns about
Two months after leaving government, Sue Gray is still causing headaches for ministers. The partygate inquisitor is back in the news following her refusal to cooperate with a Cabinet Office probe into her shock defection to the Starmtroopers as Sir Keir’s chief of staff. Unwilling to answer questions to an official government inquiry? What would the
My first instinct was to check the date: was it actually April 1st on Monday? On realising there was no mistake the second reaction was one of wonderment that anyone still takes the United Nations seriously. The once respected organisation held its Universal Periodic Review in Geneva on Monday, and France didn’t fare well.
The decision by the NHS Staff Council to accept the government’s pay offer is not the end of the stand-off between ministers and some healthcare workers, obviously. But it does mark a step away from the general hostility over pay that has marked the autumn and winter months. Unite and the Royal College of Nursing
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The Cabinet Office has published its written statement into the resignation of Sue Gray, stating that it has given a ‘confidential assessment’ to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) about whether she broke civil service rules in taking up a job from Keir Starmer while still a senior civil servant. On the episode, Cindy
Is that it? After keeping half of SW1 on tenterhooks all day, it seems that Keir Starmer’s favourite gamekeeper-turned-poacher has done it again. Fifteen months ago, it was the partygate inquiry; today it’s the probe into Sue Gray’s spectacular defection to Labour. After much speculation, the government has today published a written statement about the
Parliament’s ban on the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok cannot come soon enough. But it’s not just cyber security we need to worry about. Our social media happy MPs clearly need saving from themselves. Matt Hancock might be the parliamentary champion of toe-curling film clips but other MPs are bidding to out-cringe him. Labour’s Stella Creasy
Designs for a tower block in Ealing just for women – the first in Britain – have been given the thumbs up by planners. On the surface of it, the scheme, proposed by the Women’s Pioneer Housing association, which was founded in the 1920s by women’s rights campaigners, sounds rather good. It offers a permanent, refuge-style living
We might have thought Trussonomics was dead and buried for a generation after its author’s short-lived premiership last autumn. But all of a sudden it has a high-profile, if slightly unexpected, convert: Sir Keir Starmer. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Starmer was sounding a lot like Kwasi Kwarteng last
Oh dear. It seems that the always-online Observer writer Carole Cadwalladr has come unstuck in her never-ending war against Aaron Banks. Back in February, the Brexit-backing businessman won a partially-successful appeal of an earlier libel ruling from June 2022 over her TedTalk claims that he had a ‘covert relationship with Russia.’ The Leave.EU donor initially
The Scottish National party’s implosion brings good news for the Scottish Conservatives. At the Tories’ party conference in Glasgow, delegates had a spring in their step about their party’s rising chances. Poll results show that the Unionist parties are seeing their support gradually increase, while the SNP’s grip on power looks to be weakening, Meanwhile,
Are BP’s profits of $5 billion in the first quarter of this year really the ‘unearned, unexpected windfalls of war’, as Ed Miliband asserted this morning? The idea that any oil company’s profits are unearned must come as news to the geologists and engineers who are employed in the tricky business of exploring and drilling for oil.
There’s been an interesting discussion about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s addition to the coronation service, but has anyone actually tried to parse it? It goes as follows: ‘Your Majesty, the Church established by law, whose settlement you will swear to maintain, is committed to the true profession of the Gospel, and, in so doing, will
In British politics the first order effect of any report into a past furore is always about how it impacts current party leaders. So the various early inquiries related to the invasion of Iraq, for example, were not really about honestly learning from mistakes, but about the extent of the damage they would inflict upon
The prime minister of New Zealand, Chris Hipkins, has said he wants his country to end constitutional ties with Britain and become a republic. Speaking just days before he attends the coronation of King Charles, Hipkins said: ‘Ideally, in time, New Zealand will become a fully independent country, will stand on our own two feet