All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
According to Moscow, Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive has begun, and has begun badly for Kyiv. Of course, we need to treat the Russian account with all necessary scepticism, but the evidence is that the droney, phony war stage of this campaign season is ending and the real fighting is beginning. The unverified Russian claim is that
I’d kind of hoped, until recently, that Phillip Schofield would not trouble my consciousness in any big way again. I had vague memories of his grinning, chipmunk-like face getting up to antics with Gordon the Gopher in the 1990s. I noticed when he was in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, because that was all over the
These days our sex scandals seem like another symbol of Britain’s national decline. They are diminished, petty and tawdry, certainly compared to the grand affair that took its name from its main actor: John Profumo. Sixty years ago today, on 5 June 1963, Profumo rose in the House of Commons to admit that he had lied
Oh dear. The long-running feud between Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham has blown up again this weekend, this time over a row about the decision to block a sitting mayor from standing for a new role in the North East. Jamie Driscoll, the serving North of Tyne mayor, revealed on Friday that he has been
The Cabinet Office is trying to weaponise the law against a former prime minister. They have threatened to withdraw funding for his legal fees during the Covid inquiry. Government lawyers wrote to Johnson: The funding offer will cease to be available to you if you knowingly seek to frustrate or undermine, either through your own
John Edmunds was, with Neil Ferguson, one of the main advocates of lockdown but has been remarkably silent about how this theory held up against the results. But he does, still, pop up to attack those who were sceptical of his old advice. Chief amongst them was Rishi Sunak, his target today. The Observer discloses that
It is difficult, given what Silicon Valley has become, to convey exactly what it was like in the 1970s and ‘80s. It was a remarkable centre of technology, but also the embodiment of the spirit of capitalism at its very best, as epitomised by garage start-ups like Apple. Greed, of course, is always a human
You may have noticed over the last decade a steady increase in the promiscuous use of the word ‘trauma’. A word that once referred exclusively to grievous injuries of body and mind (gun-shot wounds, PTSD, that sort of thing) can now describe virtually anything. Psychotherapists and clinical psychologists are the main super-spreaders of this hyperbolic
As the war in Ukraine spilled into Russian territory, with shelling in the Russian city of Belgorod, President Vladimir Putin was busy explaining that he ‘sleeps like a normal person’ during an online meeting with families to honour Children’s day. That Putin mentioned his healthy sleeping pattern, without discussing the ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Belgorod – where
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James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Lord Stewart Jackson, regional chairman of the Conservative Democratic Organisation. On the podcast they discuss Labour and the Conservative’s candidates selection process and the politics behind it.
France, Sweden, Italy, Finland and now Spain. The demise of the left in western Europe continues apace and yet their only solution is to seethe about fascists in a make believe world of their own. Nine months after Giorgia Meloni was elected Prime Minister – remember the hysterical warnings about her being Mussolini in
The women’s football World Cup will kick off in under 50 days’ time in Australia and New Zealand, and England is among the favourites to lift the trophy. But who will get to see it? Broadcast deals have yet to be signed, seemingly because bids from several European countries are unacceptably, some would say insultingly,
‘Why are you broadcasting what you’re broadcasting? There’s bigger things to worry about.’ In that respect at least, ‘Mizzy’ – the 18 year-old TikTok prankster Bacari-Bronze O’Garro – was doubtless speaking for much of Newsnight’s audience. He had been invited onto the flagship current affairs programme to discuss the BBC’s exclusive interview with the social
‘The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.’ Those are the words of Sir Robert Peel, widely regarded as the founder of modern policing. In 1829, as home secretary, he established the Metropolitan Police in London, the first full-time professional force. It’s estimated that 83 per cent of calls into
The Daily Telegraph, where I worked for a decade, has launched a campaign for the abolition of inheritance tax (IHT). It’s backed by at least 50 Conservative MPs, including one former prime minister, Liz Truss. That campaign, and its likely impact, reveal some noteworthy things about British politics, media and society. This observation won’t surprise
Russia fired more than 576 missiles and drones against Ukraine last month; Kyiv was shelled two days in three. Ukrainian air defence works smoothly, shooting down nearly 90 per cent of missiles – but even a successful intercept can lead to debris, causing death. This happened yesterday, in a case that is causing a national
14 min listen
The Cabinet Office has officially triggered a judicial review against the Covid Inquiry – but is this a misstep, if eventually they will lose their legal case against it? On the episode, James Heale talks to Katy Balls and the Institute for Government’s Catherine Haddon. Produced by Cindy Yu.
Huzzah! The momentous day has arrived at last: finally Britain can reap the Brexit benefits and enjoy some delicious free-trade Tim Tams. For today is the day the UK’s trade deal with Australia comes into force. Unfortunately it seems that not all our friends down under aren’t, er, quite so sold on the mutual benefits
NHS Scotland has been hit with more bad news as new figures reveal that 18,390 patients died last year while stuck on NHS waiting lists. The numbers come just days after Public Health Scotland found that the equivalent of one in seven Scots are languishing on NHS wait lists. The latest stats show that Scotland’s
Oh dear. It seems our beloved national broadcaster has slipped up again. Flicking through the channels last night, Mr S was perplexed to see Newsnight interviewing notorious TikTok ‘star’ Mizzy. His ‘fame’ comes various ‘pranks’ he commits on the video-sharing app, such as entering people’s homes without their consent, stealing a pensioner’s dog, jumping on
Towards the end of the first century AD, the Emperor Domitian rebranded the month of October as ‘Domitianus’. It will have troubled him that Julius Caesar and Augustus already had their own months, and this was a neat way to affirm his godlike status. Fast forward two millennia, and the high priests of the new
Another week, another extravagant claim for climatic doom goes unchallenged. Speaking on the Today programme on Wednesday morning, Dale Vince – the founder of Electrocity and donor to both Don’t Stop Oil and the Labour party – asserted: ‘40,000 people across Europe died from excess heat last summer. That’s part of the climate crisis. People
Should ‘misgendering’ someone be a disciplinary offence? One Oxford college seems to think so. Yesterday, Regent’s Park College posted a ‘Trans Inclusion Statement’, burnishing its existing bullying and harassment policy. On a long list of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ that might warrant punishment is ‘consistently using incorrect titles, pronouns or names to refer to a trans person’
Liz Truss’ fallen star has been rising again of late (at least a few degrees above the horizon) as gilt yields return to the heights they reached during her brief premiership. Together with sluggish GDP figures this has led many to wonder whether she was not right, after all, to make growth the absolute priority
It’s no secret that I’m not a personal fan of former president Donald Trump – but through the years I feel I’ve been mostly fair to him, his presidency, his accomplishments and his failures. Something, though, dawned on me during his friendly Fox town hall with Sean Hannity on Thursday night, which wasn’t really a town hall,
Most people who have been following the controversy over Kathleen Stock’s speech at the Oxford Union, and who have been observing this debate that combines transgender rights, the rights of women and free speech, might be tempted to conclude that the dispute has its origins in a sole ideology. That is, the transgender ideology which
Thursday evening saw the extraordinary sight of a government suing a highly respected retired judge from our Court of Appeal, who also now sits in the House of Lords. Perhaps a sheepish admission that this is Trumpian behaviour lay in the government refusing to use her name; instead calling her ‘The Chair of the UK
French President Emmanuel Macron tends to rock the boat whenever he opens his mouth, saying hard truths that many of his European colleagues, both at the state level and in the European Union’s gargantuan bureaucracy, would rather be left unsaid. Examples are legion: his insistence in 2019 that Nato was going ‘brain-dead’; his proclamation in June
President Biden continues to project strength ahead of the 2024 election — by tumbling on stage at the US Air Force Academy Graduation. The 80-year-old commander-in-chief fell today while handing out diplomas to graduating cadets in Colorado. Rest assured, he was quickly helped up and escorted off stage by three Air Force officials. The White
The Cabinet Office has tonight launched a last-ditch legal effort to avoid handing over Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApps to the official Covid public inquiry. Officials released a strongly-worded statement confirming the department has requested a judicial review of the inquiry’s demands for material, having missed the revised 4 p.m deadline to pass on Johnson’s messages. Baroness Hallett,
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Natasha Feroze speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Heale about Geraint Davies, a Labour MP who has been suspended from the party amid allegations of sexual harassment. Another Pestminster scandal to add to the list, how many more could be out there? Also on the podcast, as Rishi Sunak meets European leaders in Moldova to
24 min listen
Andrew Neil, The Spectator‘s chairman and super fan of the HBO show, Succession, joins this episode to talk to Freddy about where the show overlapped with the real life media empire of Rupert Murdoch, who has his own problems of succession to think about. This conversation was originally filmed as an episode of ‘The View from 22’