All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Rishi Sunak is resurfacing today after the Christmas break and amidst the NHS meltdown to talk about maths. The Prime Minister’s new year speech contains an announcement that has provoked a visceral personal reaction in many of the mildly innumerate inhabitants of the Westminster village. It’s the sort of response that will underline to the
They say you can’t keep a good man down. Geordie Greig, one of the finest networkers in British journalism, has returned to Fleet Street after a brief 13-month hiatus away. The Old Etonian was axed as the Daily Mail editor in a power struggle in November 2021 and since then he’s kept a low profile,
Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis declared as he was sworn in for a second time yesterday that, under his reign, Florida ‘will never surrender to the woke mob’. Meanwhile, woke or not, a different mob was disrupting the proceedings in Washington, D.C. at the nation’s Capitol. The same lawmakers who plotted to disrupt Joe Biden’s inauguration
The greatest danger presented by the rail strikes – for the Government, that is – has passed. The trade unions, chief among them the RMT, fronted by the alternately reasonable and hectoring Mick Lynch, threw everything they could at ministers in the run-up to the holidays. It did not work. Much the same applies, to a
It’s not been the best few years for Sino-British relations, what with Huawei, Hong Kong and the whole Covid thing. So it was no surprise when, last month, Tower Hamlets council voted to block China’s new ‘super-embassy,’ with councillors citing security fears and the concerns of local residents. The borough of Tower Hamlets is more
As is increasingly common, government policy was leaked to the Times this week by a ‘senior government source’. The source stated that the government’s plan to remove Retained EU Law (REUL) from the British statute book by the end of the year must now be put off for another four years (meaning ten years after the Brexit
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Millions of Britons will forever shun trains because of the ongoing strikes, a government sources told the Times today. Are the strikes proving as effective as unions hoped? James Heale speaks to Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Max Jeffery.
Beijing’s roads are busy once more. Though zero Covid had ended in December, cities across China emptied out again over the past month as the virus swept through the population. Many stayed home to avoid getting infected or, more likely, to recover from infection. One government model estimated that a fifth of the Chinese population
It is not for me, a non-Catholic, to say whether the late Pope, Benedict XVI, served his Church well. But as a British (Anglican) Christian, I feel entitled to comment on any high-profile theologian, even him. For he had considerable influence beyond his Church, including emboldening neoconservative Anglicans in a stronger critique of liberal tradition.
The promotional clip trailing Prince Harry’s upcoming interview – which has kicked off the publicity trail for his forthcoming memoir Spare – made for sobering viewing. This is a man who actually seemed smarter as a young squaddie than he now does as an adult father of two. Back then, dressing up as a Nazi could be
One of the functions of the honours system is to articulate our principles and priorities. Amid the cringe cronyism and inexplicable baubles for even more inexplicable mainstays of public life (Sir Chris Bryant, Lord preserve us), there are the nods to good people doing good work, whether in their community, the charity sector, industry, research or
With five continuous days of rail strikes this week, it’s beginning to look like we’re reaching an endgame. Someone, or something, has got to give. And it must be becoming gradually clear to the RMT’s Mick Lynch – and the other unions involved – that they won’t necessarily be the ones left standing at the end. They
It’s a new year but Lord Cruddas is not giving up an old causes. The onetime milkman turned billionaire led the campaign last summer to put Boris Johnson back on the ballot after the latter was forced out of No. 10. After that failed, Cruddas suggested he would stop funding the Conservatives unless it rewrote
Amid New Year celebrations, and a tide of high-profile obituaries, you might have missed something small and far away, but nonetheless significant. The opposition in Venezuela has dissolved its government-in-pretence. By 72 votes to 29, the country’s national assembly voted its parallel government out of existence. Juan Guaidó can no longer say that he is Venezuela’s legitimate president-in-waiting. Venezuela
They say time can be a great healer. And, in the case of Leo Varadkar, it seems that even the most festering of wounds can be fixed by a brief stint away from the premiership. Varadkar, who became Taoiseach again in December, was one of the great antagonists in the Brexit battles during his first
Donald Trump just made his first significant political error of the 2024 nomination battle, and it’s a doozy. After being asked about the abortion issue, Trump took to Truth Social to post the following: ‘It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms. I was 233-20! It was the “abortion
A new year, a new grudge. Or, at least, a new expression of an old one, which is pretty much all that we’ve heard from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex over the past few years. Yet after the interminable six hours of score-settling that Netflix punished us with last month in the form of
University vice-chancellors will find some uncomfortable reading in their New Year in-tray today. Last month the chairman of accountancy giant PwC pointed out that more and more middle-class teenagers are walking away from old-style university studies and embracing degree apprenticeships and other forms of on-the-job learning. Already the number of those taking up degree apprenticeship
‘A mother hen watching all her chicks, a sassy old lady full of tricks’. Mrs Brown’s Boys recently returned to BBC One for yet more festive specials. Astonishingly the last actual full series of non-seasonal episodes was transmitted ten years ago, though a new one is imminent. This Christmas’s were, reassuringly, exactly the same as
The best thing that can be said about global economic growth prospects for 2023 is that no-one is expecting very much. On that basis, hopefully, things can only get better. Over the weekend, International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Kristalina Georgieva said that she expects a third of the globe to be in recession, including
And you thought we’d seen the last of them in 2022. The new year kicks off with some old score-settling: for next week will see the publication of Prince Harry’s pithily-titled memoir Spare (or Going Spare, quips one royal insider). As the title suggests, the book is expected to focus on the fraternal frictions between
With Labour twenty points ahead of the Conservatives and leading in most policy areas – including, crucially, the ability to best manage the economy – the next election seems to be Keir Starmer’s to lose. Divided and distraught Conservative MPs appear to have accepted their fate. Indeed, some supporters of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss
Anyone who thinks the NHS isn’t in a state of collapse hasn’t been paying attention. This is the 75th year of the health service, and it is arguably its worst. Emergency doctors are now warning that A&E delays are ‘killing up to 500 people a week’. They say as many as 500 people could be
It was Benedict XVI’s election as Pope, his speeches and his writings that prompted my conversion, and it was his words at Bellahouston Park during his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom that first made me seriously consider my vocation. Without Pope Benedict XVI I would not have become a priest. His passing is for
With a new year comes the New Year’s Honours and I’m struck to see an MBE given to Pouria Hadjibagheri. He’s the technical lead of a civil service team whose drive and creativity led to the Coronavirus data hub. It was a breakthrough in the democratisation of public data. He and his team saw to it that
In a quiet suburb of Moscow, a twenty-minute metro ride from the Kremlin, is the Soviet Union’s answer to Disneyland. Between a budget supermarket and a teacher training college is the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, known to locals by its Russian-language acronym, VDNKh. The ‘Kh’ is said like you are clearing your throat.
New year, old politicians. Yesterday’s men will loom large in the politics of 2023. British politics has a nostalgia problem, often to the benefit of our over-large population of former prime ministers. They may have disappointed in office, but the urge to rose-tint our memories means failure is no bar to a lucrative or influential
Like many with an interest in national security, I’ve spent this week closely following the news that there has been yet another delay to the release of the long-anticipated review into the government’s counter-extremism programme, Prevent. But unlike many of my colleagues, these issues feel more intimate and closer to home for me, given my
I hate the fact that I felt a major sense of relief when I saw the news that the World Boxing Council (WBC) has rejected calls from trans-activists to allow male bodied people to compete against females. Rather, they are recommending that a special transgender category is set up, and further, that only male born people can
Even in their most difficult moments, there’s an aura of invincibility about the Conservative party. It is, after all, one of the oldest political parties in the world, if not the oldest – depending on whether you count back to the founding of the party’s current iteration in 1834, or the Tory party’s origins in
Pope Benedict is dead; now only Pope Francis remains in the Vatican. And the Catholic Church is diminished by his passing, at least in a here-and-now sense. He was controversial for those who wanted the church to identify with the values of the age, and was cordially detested by liberal Catholics – I know of
Following an unusually quiet December for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin has emerged to deliver his traditional New Year’s Eve address. The first since his invasion of Ukraine ten months ago, many across Russia’s eleven time zones will today be glued to TV screens and internet live-streams at five minutes to midnight to hear what
Four Chancellors, three Prime Ministers, two monarchs – one hell of a year. We said that it would be difficult to top the Covid craziness of 2021: we were wrong. Partygate, Pinchergate, porngate, beergate, queuegate – the greatest hits kept on coming as Boris Johnson was washed away in a sea of sleaze and scandal.
Anyone travelling from China to the UK will now be asked to present evidence of a negative Covid-19 test before they are allowed to enter the country. But what will this achieve and is this measure even necessary? It’s often argued that these sorts of restrictions don’t work, and this is a reason the UK
