All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Boris Johnson has today published his long-awaited ‘partygate’ defence, ahead of his appearance before the Privileges Committee tomorrow afternoon. In the 52-page submission, Johnson accepts that he did mislead the House of Commons when he said that ‘the rules and guidance had been followed at all times’ during Covid. But he insists he made his
Does UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres really have any hope of persuading rich countries to commit to achieving net zero by 2040? This was a target he declared was vital as he launched the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Sixth Assessment Report yesterday. He will have his work cut out. The trouble is that
To what extent have the public finances really been brought under control? This morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics reveals that public sector net borrowing reached £16.7 billion in February. This is more than double the figure from February 2022 of £7.1 billion, and also well above the consensus estimate of around £11 billion.
It hardly seems like the most propitious time for Xi Jinping to be visiting Moscow. There’s an international arrest warrant out for his host Vladimir Putin for war crimes, and the man Xi has described as his ‘best friend’ spent the weekend inspecting land he’s snatched from Ukraine – in gross violation of the principles
The 45th president of the United States of America — and the leading Republican contender to win back the White House in 2024 — may or may not be arrested today or tomorrow. According to his former-lawyer-turned-legal-nemesis Michael Cohen, Donald Trump should escape the indignity of handcuffs but could well be ‘fingerprinted, swabbed [and] mugshotted.’
For the past 12 months, the Metropolitan Police has been in the organisational equivalent of a body scanner. Every vital organ of this 194-year-old beast has been examined in detail by Baroness Louise Casey and her review team enabling them to understand the Met in a way that no one has done before. The results,
Today Louise Casey has published her report into the Metropolitan police – and it makes for damning reading. The review was commissioned in the aftermath of the rape, kidnap and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Met PC Wayne Couzens in March 2021. Baroness Casey was appointed by the Met to lead an independent probe
The government of Emmanuel Macron won a vote of no confidence in the National Assembly on Monday by a mere nine votes. The cross-party no-confidence motion, tabled by a Centrist coalition fell just short of the 287 votes it needed to bring down the government. To succeed the no-confidence motion required the support of the
Vladimir Putin has his story, and he’s sticking to it: the destruction of three of the four Gazprom-owned Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September 2022 was the work of the American government. Speaking to reporters in Siberia last week, Putin insisted that the Nord Stream attacks had been carried out on a ‘state level’ and
Nicola Sturgeon’s valedictory address to the RSA was her ‘And now we turn to the liars…’ speech. The outgoing SNP leader’s remarks were nominally about inequality and climate change but she was really there to talk about the distorting impact of social media on democratic politics. Given her departure was possibly hastened by the pushback
Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine has united the West. Nato has been strengthened and there has been much support for the sanctions against the Kremlin and its supporters. Public opinion in the UK is firmly behind the Ukrainian people in their suffering, even if many remain wary of direct military entanglement. For the countries bordering
For more than a decade, bitcoin bores have been banging on about cryptocurrency as the future of money. The emergence and spectacular growth of digital currencies, according to these evangelists, prove that the financial system upon which we all depend is broken. Bitcoin was after all created in 2009, after the great meltdown of 2008,
You may have been forgiven for thinking that the only story in town up here in Scotland is the election of the leader of the SNP, and Scotland’s next First Minister. However, for a day at least, some of the headlines have been stolen by a man who became almost as well-known to Scots as
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Ahead of the vote on Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the DUP has said he will not back the key parts of the Windsor Framework. How much could this become a problem for Rishi Sunak? Also on Wednesday, what are the possible outcomes of Boris Johnson’s probe into Partygate? Natasha Feroze,
It wasn’t so long ago that the Conservatives won a landslide on Boris Johnson’s pledge not to put up income tax, national insurance or VAT. But four years on, and after 13 years in office, it seems the Tories have lost their hard-won reputation for low taxes. Mr S has done some polling and last
There was bad news for Rishi Sunak this lunchtime as Sir Jeffrey Donaldson confirmed that he and the seven other DUP MPs will vote on Wednesday against the Windsor Framework. Few in government were expecting the party to vote for the deal but some harboured hopes that the party might abstain or register a more
China’s president Xi Jinping has arrived in Russia for the start of a three day state visit. The aim of the trip, according to the Chinese, is to strengthen relations between the two countries in a world threatened by ‘acts of hegemony, despotism and bullying’. Xi and Putin will meet in person this afternoon, before holding bilateral talks
It seems to be all going to pot for the SNP. The party’s chief executive and its top spinner are heading for the exit as the ongoing shambles of a leadership race continues to claim more scalps than a Scorsese flick. And it seems the pressure is getting to some of the SNP’s grandees, judging
Jeremy Bentham, thou shouldst be alive and doing a ton through the Mickleham Bends at this hour. Bentham’s great contribution to carceral theory, as most readers will know, was the panopticon. He imagined a prison where the cells were arranged in a rotunda so a guard in the middle could watch every prisoner without having to clop round
In modern society, we live with a conundrum: there’s no need to endure physical discomfort of any kind, but unless you embrace it via exercise, it comes for you in the form of chronic illness. Good exercise can be very painful, however. In the case of the sport of cycling, agonisingly and unnecessarily so. Put
With neither the Conservatives nor the Labour party keen to talk publicly at least about softening Brexit, is there a gap in the market for an unashamedly pro-EU party? This is – once again – the hope of the Liberal Democrats. Speaking in York on Sunday at their first in-person party conference since the pandemic,
If the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS was supposed to calm markets, it is not looking that way this morning. Markets are sharply down in Asia, and the FTSE fell by 1.5 per cent on opening this morning. Banks were the biggest fallers, losing up to 7 per cent of their value. There
Rishi Sunak has received plaudits from MPs, foreign leaders and the media over the Windsor Framework. Yet the deal has not been voted on. This will change this week with MPs asked to vote on Wednesday on the Prime Minister’s renegotiation of the Northern Ireland protocol. So far the mood music has been broadly good
By all accounts, Jacqueline Gold, the executive chair of Ann Summers who has died aged 62, was a devoted family woman. This may come as a surprise to those who associate ‘the queen of sex’ purely with ‘willy warmers’ and frilly knickers. Business-minded Gold managed to transform what had been a male-dominated, backstreet cottage industry into a glossy,
Allow me to introduce you to a fun game you can play in your own parlour. You take it in turns for someone to shout out the title of a pre-21st century literary classic. The other player responds by giving the blurb of a 21st century television adaptation. It might go, for example; ‘Middlemarch!’ ’ A searing,
Another Sunday, another banking takeover swiftly arranged before markets open on Monday morning. This time Credit Suisse has agreed to be bought by fellow Swiss bank UBS for 0.5 Swiss Francs a share – less than a third of its closing price on Friday and less than a tenth of what the bank was worth a
Has a full-scale banking crisis been avoided? UBS has announced a takeover of rival Credit Suisse for just over $3 billion – half of its valuation on Friday and a tenth of its valuation just two years ago. The deal, timed to conclude before the Asian markets opened, is intended to stop any domino effect
In her eight and a half years at Bute House, Nicola Sturgeon has never been one to show much in the way of grace towards ministers down in London. There were the Brexit debates, where she endlessly sought to undermine those involved in negotiations with Brussels. There were the Covid crises, where she sought to
‘I know that what I have revealed, while increasing public knowledge, will raise other questions that I have not been able to answer,’ Sir John Saunders said, in issuing his final report into the Manchester Arena bombing. ‘I did ask the questions, I did get answers, but for the reasons I have given I have
Oliver Dowden – the unions have a decent deal now, ‘let’s move forward’ The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Dowden faced up to the media this morning to speak on a number of issues, beginning with the NHS strikes. Dowden claimed the government had always been willing to engage with the unions, but
How will it look, for the health of American democracy, if the former President Donald Trump is put in handcuffs next week over charges that he paid ‘hush-hush money’ to the porn star Stormy Daniels? The man himself seems to be bracing for legal persecution over what he calls ‘The Stormy Horseface Daniels Extortion Plot.’
Ninety years ago this week, the acting chief of the Munich Police Department held a press conference. The new man had been busy. On assuming office a few days earlier, the chief had tried to get to grips with what he saw as acute political unrest in the city by authorising a wave of mass
Boris Johnson was reselected on Thursday night as the Conservative candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency. Yet the future of his parliamentary career could be decided this week when he appears before the Privileges Committee. The former prime minister is facing a Commons inquiry into whether he knowingly misled parliament over partygate, the alleged
