All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
As of today, nine children have died in the UK after falling ill with Strep A. Now, more children under ten have lost their lives from severe infection caused by invasive Strep A (sometimes abbreviated to iGAS) than did from Covid in the first three months of the pandemic in 2020. In most cases, Group
8 min listen
The government has backed down in the face of the planning rebellion, watering down their targets for housebuilding. At the same time, another revolt is brewing over permissions to build onshore wind. Is Rishi Sunak facing a more unruly Tory coalition than his predecessors, and does he have a grip on the party? Katy Balls
Gordon Brown needs a hobby. Golf, perhaps, or jazzercise. Anything but meddling in the constitution. He means well but his answer is always the same: make things worse but in a way that sounds really clever to Westminster types. To a hammer everything is a nail and to Gordon Brown there isn’t a problem in
On the day he unveiled Gordon Brown’s 153-page report into renewing Britain’s democracy Keir Starmer showed his steely side and helped us better understand the evolving character of ‘Starmerism’. Up till now, when asked what they think about the Labour leader, many voters, after scratching their heads, have said something like: ‘boring’, ‘dull’ and ‘bland’.
Rail strikes on a couple of days when no trains would be running anyway might not seem the biggest inconvenience facing the British public at the moment, yet the announcement of yet another walkout from the evening of 24 December to the morning of 27 December will have implications for many services: this is the
Farewell and thanks for the mammaries, Michelle Mone. The lingerie tycoon has today announced that she will be seeking a leave of absence from the House of Lords with immediate effect. It means she will not attend sittings of the House, vote on any proceedings nor be able to claim any allowance. At 51, she
Only Gordon Brown could come up with a 40-point plan for constitutional renewal. ‘Less is more’ is not a principle with which the former Prime Minister is familiar. When his UK constitutional commission was launched in 2020 we were promised a ‘radical alternative to nationalism’ and a ‘constitutional revolution’ to remake Britain along federal lines. What has
The ‘Twitter files’ Elon Musk released to two journalists have produced a cloud of confusion. So far, we have not seen the files themselves, only what one journalist, Matt Taibbi, has reported about them. The main findings reinforce what we have known all along: Twitter’s former management strongly favoured Democrats and used its powerful platform
Twelve months ago Britain rebelled against Covid hysteria. As Boris Johnson and his Sage modelling committee prepared to lockdown the country for Christmas, they lost control of the narrative. First 100 Tory backbenchers MPs voted against the PM’s vaccine passport scheme, and a few days later Lord Frost resigned as Brexit Minister. In his
If a visitor to my house suggested they had been abused and verbally attacked when they came to tea, I probably wouldn’t be in a particular hurry to invite them round again for nibbles. If that person had subsequently caused a very public stink and embarrassed and humiliated a valued family friend of extremely long
There have been strange goings on in Scotland. A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court clarified that the Scottish parliament does not have the power to unilaterally call a second independence referendum. The ruling was never going to have gone down well with the SNP, but has the Supreme Court’s slap down sent the nationalist
Quick, nurse, pass the sick bag! The wokest couple in all the West is at it again. Harry and Meghan have today released another trailer ahead of their Netflix series, before its release on Thursday. The streaming giant is keen to recuperate the many millions it spent on hiring the dilettante duo back in the
This morning’s economic update from the Confederation of British Industry doesn’t make for cheery reading – but it could be worse. The organisation forecasts that the combination of high prices and low business investment will see the UK in recession throughout next year. Having previously predicted a 1 per cent rise in GDP next year,
12 min listen
Today former prime minister Gordon Brown has released a review which includes recommendations to overhaul the constitution and replace the House of Lords. Could Labour push through reform? Also on the podcast, after Kier Starmer said that he doesn’t see Jeremy Corbyn standing at the next election, has Starmer finally silenced the far left faction
There are reasons why Labour wants to talk about constitutional reform despite all the other challenges facing the country. First, there is no financial cost to it. At the moment, Labour is severely hemmed in by the fact that it doesn’t want to make new spending commitments as it knows the Tories will immediately ask
Finally the Tory government appears to have realised that its serial mishandling of the Channel boats issue is the top cause of the voter disaffection that is killing its re-election prospects. Rishi Sunak’s administration now understands that the position he has set out so far – saying there is no ‘silver bullet’ to solve the
Poor Andy Burnham. This time last year the Mayor of Manchester was riding high in the Labour leadership stakes, having cruised to re-election with a whopping 67 per cent of the vote, as Sir Keir Starmer struggled to cut through in Westminster. Now the fortunes are reversed: Starmer is 20 points ahead in the polls,
It’s Labour’s turn to take centre stage today as Keir Starmer attempts to seize the agenda with the launch of his party’s constitutional review. The report – A New Britain – is written by Gordon Brown and has been over two years in the making, with the former prime minister set to present it alongside
The EU’s import embargo of Russian oil – which comes into force today – plus a price cap on non-EU seaborne exports is intended to hit Russia without damaging the West. It sounds too good to be true, and it probably is. First, there’s the price cap level itself. Originally, the EU had wanted to
Jeremy Corbyn has been an MP for 40 years, but Keir Starmer has confirmed Corbyn’s time in the Labour party has come to an end. Starmer was asked three times on the Today programme whether Corbyn – who was kicked out in 2020 over his response to the equalities watchdog’s report into antisemitism in the
Fighting has continued against the Taliban in Afghanistan while the world has not been watching. The commander of the main opposition force, Ahmad Massoud, began with 643 fighters after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, and now claims to have a force of 5,000 across six provinces in a belt in the northeast of
‘Standing in my kitchen in Suffolk after a quiet New Year’s Eve, I scanned my newspaper for clues as to what might be lurking around the corner.’ So run the opening words of yesterday’s first extract of Matt Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against Covid. 1 January. New Year’s Day. And
Oh dear. It seems that the curse of Izzard has struck again. The stand-up comedian and staunch Labour member has something of an unenviable track record when it comes to personal endorsements, having backed the euro, Ken Livingstone in 2008, Gordon Brown in 2010, ‘Yes2AV’ in 2011, Ed Miliband and then Andy Burnham in 2015,
Life is good in the Labour party right now – which is perhaps why it’s no surprise that a few old faces could be making a comeback. In the late nineties and early noughties, a crop of talented young New Labour advisors were dubbed ‘the golden generation’. Much like their footballing equivalents in the England
The NHS is facing its own winter of discontent: A&E waiting times are surging, GP availability is plunging and a strike is brewing. The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), says Britain is facing a ‘de facto general strike’: from nurses to ambulance drivers to doctors – even in emergency departments and cancer centres – as they
The Rosetta Stone is said to be the most visited object in the British Museum. By and large the most popular, most beautiful or most impressive objects are found at the top of the shopping list of those who want to send objects back to their place of origin. Yet here is a piece of
Nadhim Zahawi: We may deploy the military to ‘minimise disruption’ over Christmas Conservative party chairman Nadhim Zahawi was in the hot seat this morning. He spoke to Sophy Ridge about strike action over the coming weeks, urging unions not to disrupt people’s Christmases. With industrial action not just limited to the railway network, but spreading
Tony Blair recently described the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s zero-Covid policy as ‘completely irrational’. He is completely wrong. Within the context of the CCP’s interests, it makes sense. ‘Completely political’ would have been nearer the mark, but not a bull’s eye. When Covid first appeared, the CCP got it right. Lockdowns and restrictions meant the
What have the following got in common? David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Liz Truss, Nicola Sturgeon, Matt Hancock, Sadiq Khan, Angela Rayner, Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt, Professor Neil Ferguson, Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard and Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the Chief of the Defence Staff. The answer is that they were
At the end of the second world war, George Orwell went to an event organised by PEN, a campaign dedicated to defending freedom of expression. He walked into a scene we encounter everywhere in 2022. The meeting was meant to celebrate the tercentenary of John Milton’s Areopagitica, one of the earliest and still one of the
This week marks the 81st anniversary of the Japanese attack on the US fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which launched the start of the Pacific War and turned what had hitherto been a European war into a world conflict. The air attack by 353 Japanese warplanes on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor was
Russia has launched five waves of missile strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructures since 10 October. These strikes have damaged or destroyed almost half of Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure and made blackouts a way of life across Ukraine and neighboring Moldova. Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has aptly accused Russia of ‘weaponising winter’ against Ukraine and Ukrainian
The popular historian Ben Macintyre is a fortunate fellow. No sooner has the BBC’s acclaimed adaptation of his account of the SAS’s wartime birth Rogue Heroes wrapped up, than on 8 December ITV launches an equally lavish drama series, A Spy Among Friends based on another of his bestsellers – the story of Soviet super