All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Lviv, Ukraine At the Lychakiv cemetery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv the bodies keep the score. Within its confines the more than 300,000 graves offer a tangled insight into the labyrinthine history of this eastern European city that even now goes by four different names. There are Polish generals, mathematicians and philosophers; Ukrainian
A fortnight before the signing of the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday 1998, 25 years ago tomorrow, two republican terrorists were waiting at the back of a supermarket in Armagh city, Northern Ireland, for Cyril Stewart. Mr Stewart was a former police reservist, medically retired the previous year after a heart attack. He was well
In the wake of draconian laws against ‘LGBT Propaganda’ introduced in Russia at the end of last year – namely, speaking with anything but flagrant condemnation about LGBT matters in public – Russia’s politicians seem to have sunk to a new low: feminism could soon be reclassified as an ‘extremist’ activity. A draft law setting
Joseph Stalin knew better than Vladimir Putin. After world war two, as the Cold War began, the Soviet dictator took the view that it was more trouble than it was worth to invade Finland again, as he had done with humiliating setbacks in the Winter War of 1939-1940. Too many parents or grandparents of those
Andrew John is a ‘radical’, not a politician – or so he claims. The Archbishop of Wales stated his mission when he was elected to the post barely two years ago after a swift and overwhelming majority among the Church in Wales’s electoral college. John is low-key, humble and mild mannered in person, but is
Did you realise that one in every 67 Muslims is transgender? That adults with no educational qualifications are almost twice as likely to identify as transgender as university graduates? That the London boroughs of Brent and Newham are home to higher proportions of transgender people than Brighton and Oxford? These are some of the astonishing
In 2019 Labour lost its fourth election in a row and suffered its worst defeat since 1935. The party was crushed, not just electorally but emotionally. In 2015, it had parted ways with Ed Miliband and fallen for Jeremy Corbyn, like a wounded lover rushing from one dysfunctional relationship into an even worse one. For
More keeps pouring out about the Scottish National party’s culture of secrecy. As revealed by the Times today, deputy leader Keith Brown suggested in 2021, four months after the police investigation into party finances – Operation Branchform – had commenced, that the SNP should produce a monthly summary of income and expenditure. Two key figures,
Test cricket should be in its prime. England is the most aggressive team in history, India and Australia are uncommonly good, and New Zealand has just played two of the most exciting matches of all time. Yet from Marylebone to Melbourne to Mumbai, administrators are sabotaging cricket’s finest form. Every cricket lover knows that the charm
France is confronted by a serious social crisis, morphing into a grave political crisis, which could become a regime crisis. To be fair, political instability did not begin with Emmanuel Macron. It has been growing since 2000 when the presidential mandate was cut from seven to five years, rendering it coterminous with parliamentary elections and reducing
The Church of England is in for an explosive summer. In February, Synod decided to allow the blessing of gay couples, and hinted that it will lift the ban on actively gay clergy. Conservative evangelicals have warned the bishops that if they really go ahead with this they will create a split that dwarfs the
Day three of the row over Labour’s backfiring ‘law and order’ advert. The Keirleaders in party HQ have clearly decided that attack is the best form of attack and have been busy creating another graphic, switching their focus from ‘dangerous child abusers’ to ‘dangerous gunmen.’ Labour’s latest post cites figures which show that since 2010
TikTok is perpetuating significant harm to the welfare and wellbeing of young children. This week, it was announced by the UK’s data protection authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), that they were handing down a £12.7 million fine to TikTok for significant breaches of data protection law. It is one of the largest fines to
Humza Yousaf’s government will be defined by two legacies, Nicola Sturgeon’s and his own as health secretary. The Sturgeon legacy can only be understood by looking at the distance between the previous first minister’s rhetoric and her record. Sturgeon was always heavy on mission statements but light on delivery. During the leadership election, Yousaf initially
On 29 August 1942, as German tanks reached the Volga river near Stalingrad, Josef Stalin consulted his most senior General, Georgy Zhukov about his strategy. Despite his impoverished background, Zhukov was intelligent, demanding and strong-willed. The general persuaded Stalin to delay counter-attacking the Nazis for a week to allow time for supplies and artillery to
The misogynist mob strikes again. Its target this time was the American swimmer Riley Gaines. What was her offence? What did this young woman do to attract the attention — and the jeers and insults and threats — of the woke witchfinder-generals? She said men should not compete in women’s sports. Obscene. Fetch the ducking
The SNP’s week goes from bad to worse. The party’s long-term auditing firm has resigned, according to reports today. Accountants Johnston Carmichael, which has worked with the party for over a decade, said that the decision followed a review of its client portfolio. The firm is understood to have resigned before the arrest of Nicola
At least there was no six metre-long table in Beijing separating Emmanuel Macron from Xi Jinping. But their meeting was about as fruitless as the French president’s socially distanced chat with Xi’s ‘best friend’ Vladimir Putin in Moscow last year, shortly before the Russian leader sent his tanks into Ukraine. Macron’s visit to China was
36 min listen
Galen Druke, host of the FiveThirtyEight podcast, joins Freddy Gray on this episode to talk about what to take away from Chicago’s election this week, how well the Biden team is handling the progressive wing of the Democratic party, and whether the Democrats would prefer to face up against Ron or Don as the Republican
The implosion of the Scottish National Party has led Scottish Labour to dream again of one day returning to what it assumes is its birth right: the berth at the top of Scottish politics. Many of the banalities and buzzwords in Labour’s most recent manifesto make Humza Yousaf’s blandishments about a ‘wellbeing economy’ sound deep
All politics is local, as the old saying goes. It is, of course, an exaggeration. But it contains easily enough truth to merit keeping in mind if you are, say, a government approaching the last year of its mandate and anxiously seeking a path to a new one. One lesson contained within the phrase is
A few years ago, I posted this riddle on Twitter: What’s easier to roll than an Easter egg? Answer: Donald Trump. Now, I can add: What’s easier to roll than Donald Trump? Answer: Republican voters. Democrats are playing Republicans like a fiddle. The left’s sole objective is to make Trump the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee.
Oh dear. It seems that Labour have been caught trying to be too clever by half with their latest anti-Tory attack ad. The Starmer army proudly put out a hard-hitting graphic last night, which read: ‘Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t’ alongside a smiling photo of the
24 min listen
Donald Trump was in court where he pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying records. To discuss, Freddy Gray is joined by Alan Dershowitz, the American lawyer, and Charles Lipson, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago.
Crimea matters to Russians – whether they adore or abhor Vladimir Putin – in a way none of the other claimed or occupied Ukrainian territories do, and as such the peninsula’s fate will probably be central to any eventual resolution of the current war. That some Ukrainian sources are now talking about a military reconquest
Not content with putting trans rapists in women’s prisons the Scottish government is now accused of keeping heterosexual rapists out of prison altogether. A furious row has broken out after 21-year-old Sean Hogg was given a community payback sentence by a Scottish judge after being found guilty of raping a 13-year-old girl in a country park
Since the middle of March in France, 1,247 Gendarmes, police and fire fighters have been injured in the line of duty. There have been over 2,500 deliberate acts of arson and around 350 buildings have been vandalised in some shape or form. Forty-seven of those gendarmes were injured on Saturday March 25 when they were
It was an overcast Sunday morning in January 1983 and two IRA gunmen were waiting outside Belfast’s St Brigid’s church. After attending mass, judge William Doyle was settling into the driver’s seat of his green Mercedes. He was hoping to escape the congregation throng when two Provisional IRA killers, wearing duffel coats with their hoods
Have cracks started to show in Germany’s traffic light government? Less than 18 months after chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic party (SDP) formed a coalition with the Green and Federal Democratic (FDP) parties, collaboration and harmony have been replaced by division – not least when it comes to the push for net zero. Scholz summoned
For all his praising of Nicola Sturgeon’s governance and Peter Murrell as an ‘election winner’, it now looks as though continuity candidate Humza Yousaf is cutting ties with the SNP establishment. Questioned on the raid of his predecessor’s house and the party’s Edinburgh headquarters, Yousaf has, for the first time, dared to criticise his former
11 min listen
Rishi Sunak’s personal poll ratings are on the up, by why don’t the public love Keir Starmer? We talk through the latest polling. And Mark Spencer, now the farming minister, has been cleared by an investigation into whether he made Islamophobic investigations to fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani. Is the row over? Max Jeffery is
Sir Laurie Magnus, Rishi Sunak’s ethics adviser, has delivered his long-awaited report into Mark Spencer’s alleged Islamophobic comments. Spencer, the farming minister, faced claims from fellow Tory MP Nus Ghani that he had told her that her dismissal as a minister in 2020 was partly due to concerns about her ‘Muslimness’. But Sir Laurie has