All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Ding, ding, ding! In the blue corner, it’s Joy Morrissey, government whip and the Tory member for Beaconsfield. And, er, in the other blue corner, it’s Simon Clarke, fellow Conservative MP and representative for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland. The cause of today’s metaphorical bout? Planning and the thorny issue of where to build much-needed
Éric Zemmour is an old-style reactionary France-first politician, a little in the mould of the interwar Charles Maurras. Though unceremoniously blindsided by Marine Le Pen in the 2022 Présidentielles, he should not be written off yet. But this week Zemmour suffered a setback: the European Court of Human Rights rejected his appeal over a conviction
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Today tens of thousands of ambulance workers are on strike over a pay dispute. The government is calling on people to stay safe, avoid doing anything dangerous and only call 999 if essential. With patient safety at risk, where is public opinion? Also on the podcast, after the high court ruled the government’s controversial Rwanda
Where would we be without Jeremy Clarkson? The motor-mouth petrol-head is the unlikely saviour of Twitter addicts this Christmas, giving ever-online politicos the change to proclaim their utter disgust at his now-removed Sun column about Meghan Markle. Clarkson has now apologised for saying how he’d like to see the Duchess of Sussex being paraded through
A trailer was released this week for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new Netflix documentary series, Live to Lead, which is inspired by Nelson Mandela. The seven-part series will discuss social and climate change, and feature interviews with world leaders. Harry and Meghan are billed as executive producers and are likely to make an
Thousands of ambulance staff across England and Wales have walked out today in a dispute largely concerning pay rises. Members of the Unison, Unite and GMB unions will not be responding to emergency callouts unless they’re of the highest ‘category one’ calls, which cover immediately life-threatening conditions such as cardiac arrest. In most areas, ambulance
‘Tis the season to be jolly, unless you live in Britain. An Ipsos poll last week suggested there is widespread pessimism in the UK about the year ahead. Six out of ten Brits expect food shortages in 2023, 57 per cent believe it unlikely their personal finances will improve, and two-thirds fear a general strike.
Are the wokest couple in all the West losing their star power? The first-half of the Sussexes’ new ‘explosive’ documentary attracted less than a million viewers in the 332-million strong USA, with one critic remarking ‘If I were Netflix, I’d want my money back.’ Meghan’s planned animated series Pearl has already been binned. And now
One of the fundamental flaws in the Scottish devolution settlement set up by Labour and radically expanded by the Tories is the ability for policy divergence in Scotland to impact on the rest of the UK. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill, on the cusp of being passed by the Scottish parliament, might prove an object
I’m not defending Harry and Meghan. But I think they deserve some credit, for they have put the British character under the spotlight as never before in our times. Of course, it’s mainly Meghan who has done this. Through being boldly herself, she has raised the question of who we are. How are we different
For more than 20 years the West ignored China’s militarisation of the South China Sea. Until, that is, it was too late. Now, after being artificially expanded and built out with sand, the islands of this crucial maritime space are dotted with Chinese missile systems and runways. The region’s smaller nations, who also lay claim to
‘Nothing has changed’ – the words of Theresa May could have been tattooed on Rishi Sunak’s forehead this afternoon. Appearing before the liaison committee for the first time, the new Prime Minister sought to convey an impression of authority. He deliberately tried to downplay issues of potential conflict like a second independence referendum and rigidly
Journalists and editors make decisions every day about what stories to report and what to skip. That’s not just because there isn’t enough time, or enough staff, to report on everything. They also prioritise what they, or their publication, believe is most important, or interesting, to their readers. This is especially true for publications with
Exactly a year ago today, the cabinet met to decide whether or not to lock down to tackle Omicron. At the time, published Sage documents had outlined a range of 600 to 6,000 daily deaths unless more action was taken. Recalling the anniversary, I had an interesting exchange with Graham Medley, who chaired the SPI-M
The winter of discontent continues as nurses across England, Wales and Northern Ireland embark on a second day of strike action, with the threat of more to follow in the new year if an agreement can’t be found on pay. Adding to the government’s problems, tomorrow ambulance workers are set to walk out. While it’s
Yesterday, a political committee set up in order to condemn Donald Trump condemned Donald Trump. It would have been truly jaw-dropping if the congressional January 6th committee (which consisted of seven Democrats and two Republicans, all of whom thought Trump was guilty as hell) had decided to say that Donald Trump had not criminally abetted
It ended, as many things do these days, with a poll. Apparently on a whim, Elon Musk, while attending the World Cup final in Qatar on 18 December, tweeted: ‘Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.’ Seventeen-and-a-half million people voted, and nearly sixty per cent
The Scottish parliament will today consider final amendments to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. The Bill, a key priority of Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP-Green government, will update the Gender Recognition Act 2004, the legislation governing the acquisition of a gender recognition certificate (GRC). Once a person obtains a GRC, ‘the law will recognise them as having all the
With the January 6 Committee’s recommendation to the Justice Department last night to prosecute Donald Trump on four counts of insurrection, obstruction and conspiracy, he has gone from predator to prey. Like Jay Gatsby, who believed in the ‘orgastic future that recedes before us year by year’, he has never doubted in his abilities to
The government has a plan for dealing with the wave of walkouts affecting nurses, paramedics, Border Force staff and a swathe of public sector workers: send in the soldiers. Unfortunately though the idea has hit a snag: the army is not impressed. The head of the armed forces himself, Admiral Sir Tony Radakan, chief of
Parenting – and indeed any talk of family life – has long been taboo in government. Nothing highlighted this more starkly than the civil service’s practice of referring to parents and children as ‘service users’. This has recently been the subject of a report by the Children’s Commissioner for England, who has urged Whitehall to
It’s six days until the King’s Speech but tonight it was Keir Starmer’s to give it a go. The Labour leader hosted the great and the good of the lobby tonight at a Christmas knees-up to celebrate the end of term and multiple Prime Ministers. Starmer regaled HM press corps with his musings on events.
Shinzo Abe, Japan’s murdered former prime minister, would this week be especially proud of his country. At long last, and after years of protests and strife during Abe’s time in power, Japan has announced a reversal of its uncompromising post-war pacifism. Japan, its current prime minister Fumio Kishida has said, will now begin to rearm. What
It is a measure of the unexpected success of the Qatar World Cup that it could be hailed as the best, by Fifa President Gianni Infantino, and the boast was not entirely laughable. This World Cup had its share of longueurs but had plenty of excitement and ended on such a high note that conspiracists
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
