All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The first SNP leadership hustings was neatly summed up by the first question asked: ‘What will the candidates do to counter the misinformation, lies and antipathy aimed at our party on a daily basis by journalists based in Scotland?’ There was no mistaking that this was an SNP event. No political party likes the news
More revealing Matt Hancock messages dropped late last night as the Telegraph released another tranche of the former health secretary’s WhatsApps. Here are some of the stand-out lines on day two of the lockdown files: Matt Hancock said that then education secretary Gavin Williamson (who was ‘going absolutely gangbusters’ to keep schools open) was risking a ‘policy
Ding, ding, ding! It’s day two of the revelations from the Telegraph’s lockdown files and today’s chosen battlefield is the school playground. The paper splashes on claims that Matt Hancock as Health Secretary fought a ‘rearguard action’ to shut down the nation’s schools against the efforts of Sir Gavin Williamson, who held the Education brief
It’s not a great time to be a friend of Matt Hancock, knowing that any moment the Telegraph might splash the contents of your private WhatsApp conversations. Still, good old Jim Bethell – a veteran of the Ministry of Sound and the Department of Health – was wheeled out to defend him tonight. And in
Wanted: a chief of staff for Sir Keir. Steerpike was first to break the news last year that the Labour leader was on the hunt for a top civil servant to become his head honcho. And today Sky has a delicious report that suggests he has found his man – or woman in this case.
14 min listen
In the first of The Spectator’s special Coffee House Scots series, Michael Simmons speaks to Isabel Hardman, Katy Balls and Stephen Daisley about the SNP leadership race. Given that the main motivation uniting the SNP is the ambition for an independent Scotland, how do the candidates differ ideologically?
A bad day for daffodils. Hundreds of these little golden trombones were cut down this morning so that our MPs could display their bogus affection for Wales. Honestly, sporting a daff on St David’s Day is like clapping for the NHS – a badge of insincerity. The issue of the moment, the Windsor Framework, barely
12 min listen
The Daily Telegraph has splashed on over 100,000 WhatsApp messages to and from Matt Hancock during his time as Health Secretary. Altogether they show the internal workings of the government and how key lockdown decisions were made during that time. On the podcast, James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson, who has been working with
There is rarely a good time or place to explain to a patient that they have an untreatable cancer. Three a.m. in a side room of a busy emergency department is certainly not it. But for this patient, whose life would be radically changed, and eventually cut short, by her diagnosis, the misery was compounded
The Telegraph has a hell of a scoop with its lockdown files, aka Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps. It’s a major public interest story. We see with increasing clarity now how our government flapped and flailed and obfuscated as ministers and senior officials desperately tried to figure out the deadliness of Covid and what to do about
Rishi Sunak bowled up to Prime Minister’s Questions in an excellent mood, clearly still on a high from his Windsor Framework. The PM was greeted by a huge cheer from Tory backbenchers on arrival, but then had six eclectic and not-particularly-effective questions from Keir Starmer to wade through. The most important of those questions came
When Covid first hit the headlines in early 2020, I remember asking myself a question: who’s the health secretary again? And then I remembered: Oh God. Matt Hancock is, you may have noticed, back in the news. The disgraced ex-health secretary doesn’t ever seem to be out of it for very long. But even prior
For those of us who were cynical about the government’s pandemic response as it was unfolding in real time – as I was – the Daily Telegraph’s ‘lockdown files’ confirm our worst suspicions. Judging from the revelations in the 100,000+ WhatsApp messages from Matt Hancock’s phone that Isabel Oakeshott has handed to the newspaper, the
With the coronation a mere two months away, the ‘will they, won’t they’ speculation about the presence of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at the ceremony has taken on a new twist. If they come to London, they will not have anywhere to stay: officially, at least. It has been revealed that Frogmore Cottage,
There is much excitement among western Europe’s chattering classes after Elly Schlein was elected the new leader of Italy’s left-wing Democratic party. It is the first time that a woman has led the Italian left. The Guardian quoted the 37-year-old as saying her party will now be ‘a problem’ for Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s conservative PM.
Vladimir Putin has sold his Ukrainian war to the Russian people by trying to find the sweet spot between existential threat and reassuring distance: the Russian president portrays the conflict as a struggle to preserve the nation from a hostile West and its Ukrainian proxy, but one fought safely outside its borders. Increasingly, Kyiv seems
For a while now, I’ve been buried deep in a vault in the Daily Telegraph going through the Matt Hancock files. Like the MPs expenses expose, it is a project that was carried out in secrecy and with astonishing thoroughness and resources. Several journalists, including some of the newspaper’s very best, have been working non-stop on this
The Telegraph’s splash of leaked WhatsApp messages about Matt Hancock and care home testing is a devastating reminder of the cost of those early decisions taken in Covid. The plight of care homes in lockdown is one of the worst aspects of the pandemic. The sheer scale of the deaths among this vulnerable population and
It’s not just the spectre of Brexit that is haunting Westminster. Overnight the Telegraph has released a smorgasbord of stories based on a cache of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps during the Covid pandemic. Some 100,000 messages were handed to the newspaper by the co-author of his diaries Isabel Oakeshott. Below are some of the stand out
Westminster is a place of consensus, orthodoxy and prevailing wisdom. At any given moment, there is the Narrative, the story that everyone – or close to everyone – believes, or pretends to. The Narrative can ignore objective facts, but also change quickly when finally confronted with realities too big to overlook. I reckon the last
Is the Windsor Framework a get-out-of-jail card for Scottish nationalists? The excitement expressed in SNP circles at Rishi Sunak’s Protocol breakthrough yesterday was palpable. For if remaining in the EU single market while staying in the UK is good for Northern Ireland, surely this could be the case too for an independent Scotland? Isn’t this
Kate Forbes has finally managed to shake off questions about equal marriage. The SNP leadership contender has been busy instead talking about Scotland’s crumbling health service – and how she’d fix it. It’s looking like Forbes, if successful, will scrap the Sturgeon-Yousaf National Care Service, back an independent inquiry into Scotland’s healthcare system and enter
Rishi Sunak’s ‘deal’ on the Northern Ireland Protocol is finally out. My first impression is that it is no ‘deal’ at all: the version of the text published by the government is a document with no legal effect that is possible to enforce. It’s a wish list of vague commitments. The document is patronising in places: it
Is even the BBC starting to accept reality on questions of sex and gender? The Corporation has often been woker than woke, not least thanks to militant internal staff groups seemingly ready to persecute colleagues who don’t adhere to doctrine on trans matters. But the case of the Scottish double rapist Isla Bryson/Adam Graham has loosened
Only once have I been asked if I would like to be photographed with my head sticking out of a giant bleeding vagina, but the memory has stuck with me. It was at a book festival in Gothenburg and I was there to promote a Swedish translation of my book, Women Versus Feminism. Despite the
Those cunning geniuses at SNP HQ have done it again. Fed up with Forbes, Yousaf and Regan committing news at every turn, the spin doctors at Gordon Lamb House have come up with an ingenious plan to stop their candidates’ gaffes, attacks and infighting being reported. Their solution? Ban the journalists. Brilliant! This latest wheeze
Michael Gove gave a speech at the thinktank Onward for the launch of its Future of Conservatism project today. Here is the text of his speech in full: The essence of Tory modernisation is to be true to the core principle of Conservatism – to deal with the world as it is, not as we
The recent self-defenestration of Nicola Sturgeon led to a rash of columns listing her dazzling lack of actual achievements, many of which added the caveat that she was the consummate, in fact the most successful, politician of her generation. These statements seemed somewhat contradictory at first glance. But then the reader remembered – oh, yeah,
Over the weekend it was reported that hospitals are implementing a ban on the gas and air used by women giving birth over concerns it could be harmful to NHS employees. A survey of 20,900 women by the NHS regulator recently found 63 per cent said they had been unable to get a member of
A rich irony today on the BBC. Jacqui Smith, the former Home Secretary, popped up on Politics Live to talk about the important of civility in public life. She is the chair of trustees for the Jo Cox Foundation, which has today launched a civility commission to crack down on abuse in public life. It
Alister Jack may be about to take another stand against reckless policy-making at Holyrood. According to reports, the Scottish Secretary may deny the Scottish government’s deposit return scheme (DRS) a trading exemption under the UK Internal Market Act (UKIMA). The DRS will see 20p added to every single-use packaged drink sold in Scotland, with consumers able
The reaction to Rishi Sunak’s Protocol changes has so far been at the upper end of expectations in No. 10. It gets a thumbs up from the Fleet Street papers – including the still-influential Daily Mail which has tended to splash positive stories about Boris Johnson. It has received warm words from a raft of
32 min listen
In response to Seymour Hersh’s recent appearance on Americano, Freddy speaks with open-source intelligence analyst Oliver Alexander, who unpacks his argument against Hersh’s claims about the U.S. blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline.
