All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There is always a tipping point in Twitterstorms. A moment at which the digital hysteria over something somebody said becomes far more offensive, and far more dangerous, than what that person said. You can feel when it happens, when the shift takes place, when it is the behaviour of the howling mob that becomes the
Today’s High Court ruling that the government’s plan to send irregular migrants to Rwanda on a one-way ticket is lawful will be greeted with huge relief in ministerial circles. It gives Rishi Sunak a fighting chance of being able to demonstrate progress in tackling the Channel boats issue by the time of the next general
The government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is lawful. That’s according to a ruling from the High Court this morning following a legal challenge against the scheme. The Home Office victory comes in response to the application from aid groups and asylum seekers to stop the government enacting its deportation agreement with the
Not for the first time, it was Jeremy Clarkson’s fault. The weekend news, which began with a forensic dissection of the fallout from the six unrelenting hours of the Netflix series Harry and Meghan, was soon dominated by Clarkson’s extraordinary column in the Sun, in which he wrote of the Duchess of Sussex: ‘I hate
Children’s writing has been having a bit of a moment over the past couple of weeks, after a conversation on social media between children’s authors gathered into a sort of cri de coeur about the public neglect of their craft. Children’s books, they said, are barely covered in newspaper review pages or on the radio these
One can only feel for Kylian Mbappé. If scoring a hat-trick in a World Cup final but ending up on the losing side wasn’t enough, the Frenchman then had to endure a public display of affection from Emmanuel Macron. Understandably, given that Mbappé and his teammates were still numb with the misery of losing the penalty shootout to
H and M – no, the other brand – are causing trouble again. ‘Sussexes send out Happy Woke-mas card to friends’, griped the Mail on Sunday. Their crime? Wishing friends a ‘Joyful Holiday Season’ rather than a more traditional Merry Christmas. Given recent controversies, this might seem like a minor offence. But count your blessings.
In the hierarchy of excuses for tipping Britain into a month of blackouts, ‘the Met Office didn’t say winter would be cold’ must surely rank among the most abject possible. And yet this seems to be the story the government is running with; faced with the possibility of having to implement rolling power cuts, Conservatives
The World Cup is drawing towards its close today and one benefit means we will get to hear less from Gary Neville, the left-wing right-back who has never met a camera he didn’t like. You would think perhaps that a man like Neville – a multi-millionaire working for the Qatari state broadcaster – might be
In recent years, the SNP haven’t always covered themselves in glory in Westminster. Whether it’s silly stunts in the chamber or the botched complaint against the-then Chief Whip, Scotland’s party of government always seems to be at the centre of some various embarrassment. Still, one nat has managed to impress on both sides of the
Oliver Dowden: public sector pay rises would cost ‘£1,000 per household’ This morning, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Dowden asked the unions representing nurses and ambulance workers to call off their planned strikes in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg. Dowden, whose role sees him in charge of co-ordinating the government’s response to
One hundred years ago this December, delegations from the core nations of the East Slavs, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus signed the ‘Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’. They had with them representatives of the ‘Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republic’ artificially constructed by the Communists who had just won a horrifically
With the prospect of Messi closing out his glorious career with the ultimate prize it’s likely most neutral fans will be rooting for Argentina in today’s World Cup final. The only place where that might not be true – apart from Brazil – is England, where there may even be an unlikely revival of the
The use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is hardly a festive subject. But given that in recent conversations with President Macron, Vladimir Putin has referenced Hiroshima as a precedent that he could use to justify the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it seems a timely moment to evaluate the subject. And this
If you were Putin, what would you do? Predicting your adversary’s future moves requires putting yourself in his shoes. As Russia’s misadventure in Ukraine nears its first grim anniversary, we should ask ourselves how Putin sees the world, indeed – how we would see the world and what policy we would pursue if faced with
Time was, the Christmas shopping season used to last a week or two. Now it drags on for months. Never mind wage inflation – what about present inflation? The whole thing is like a gigantic poker game, where the stakes are raised remorselessly every year. How did Christmas mutate into this orgy of rampant consumerism?
It’s less than a week since the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO) launched and already organisers are optimistic about its success. The new group was born out of the Conservative Post’s ‘Boris ballot’ movement in October to restore the former Prime Minister to office via a petition which claimed to boast more than 10,000 Conservative members.
‘Shadowbanning’, ‘visibility filtering’, ‘de-amplification’ – the Twitter Files released since Elon Musk took over have given us a new and sinister language of digital censorship. I am no fan of Musk’s capricious self-promotion. His vanity appals me and his vindictive attacks on former Twitter employees are gross. However, I credit him with telling us more about the inner
To the Carlton Club, where Mr S found himself on Thursday evening at the seventh Margaret Thatcher Centre lecture. A smorgasbord of stars turned out in black tie to honour the late Prime Minister, with Lord Frost delivering the keynote address to the enthusiastic applause of the dozens of assembled Tories including Priti Patel. But
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Freddy Gray and Jacob Heilbrunn reflect on an eventful year, looking back at the response to the invasion of Ukraine, the American economy and the makeup of the new Congress. Plus, will Joe Biden or Donald Trump be making a return to the White House? And will Jacob be buying a Trump NFT..?
Rishi Sunak’s fighting talk as he launched the latest Tory crackdown on illegal Channel migrants this week, with the dramatic words ‘Enough is enough’, ignores the question on many people’s lips: why doesn’t Britain send Channel migrants back to France? That, after all, is precisely what the French have been doing for years with migrants who cross into France from
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Katy Balls, Isabel Hardman and James Heale review the political maelstrom that was 2022, a year with more Prime Ministers than some decades have managed.
The news – reported in the FT Weekend – that former Prime Minister David Cameron is to teach a three-week course in politics next month at the New York Abu Dhabi University is quite something. For Cameron’s political career ended in spectacular failure – and he has hardly covered himself in glory since. A review of
It’s been a pretty bad week for the women of Scotland. As Nicola Sturgeon doubles down on the pending legislation that would permit men to self-identify as women – legislation that around two thirds of voters are opposed to – the feminist NGO, For Women Scotland, lost a legal case against the Scottish government over its definition
Mick Lynch told Mishal Husain this week that it is about time she started showing partiality to Britain’s working people. Leave aside the assertion that the BBC should break its impartiality guidelines to please Mick Lynch, is he really representing the working classes? Unless you count as ‘working class’ everyone who does any paid work,
Imagine you’ve paid good money to see a French farce – and halfway through, it turns into a Greek tragedy. Do you ask for your money back, or think ‘Well, it’s not what I expected, but I’ll give it a go anyway’? I previously wrote of Meghan Markle’s Netflix outing ‘If she can provide “content” on this
When I arrived in Washington, DC in 2006 to learn about US politics, someone told me that in America, there are two main parties: the party of power and the party of stupid. The latter denoted, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Republican party. And so it continues to prove. The failure of the much-hyped red wave to
Two self delusions have sustained the SNP through the past couple of decades of devolution. The first is the perennial grievance that deteriorating public services are the result of Westminster austerity. The second is that Scotland’s social problems can be solved through redistribution – by taxing the rich. Both have now collapsed in the face
You’re reading this because quite a long time ago now, I was a student at Edinburgh University. As well as doing a bit of academic work, I fell into journalism editing the university newspaper. It’s called the Student and it’s pretty old. Founded in 1887 – by people including Robert Louis Stevenson – it’s probably
9 min listen
The nurses’ strike is well underway and there seems to be no sign of an agreement over pay any time soon. The government seems to be receiving fiercer criticism from within the Conservative party than from across the aisle, as former Conservative party chairman (and Truss and Johnson ally) Jake Berry turns into the rebel-in-chief.
December is usually a busy month for Vladimir Putin, but not this year. In the run-up to Christmas, Russia’s president typically holds his annual press conference. But this time the event has been cancelled. Putin’s annual presidential address to the Russian federal assembly – that was pushed back from the summer – has also been
Could flu really kill 30,000 people in Britain this year as our immune systems, rendered naïve after two years of lockdowns and other anti-Covid measures, are over-ridden by the virus? That suggestion has been reported in places this morning. There has certainly been a sharp increase in people reporting flu symptoms over the past couple