All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
One of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s few big ideas for boosting growth was to persuade pension funds to invest more of their assets in Britain. But hold on. Today, we learned that Scottish Widows, one of the biggest funds, is dramatically reducing its exposure to this country – and it is quite right to do so.
Over the last decade Iran has built up an impressive arsenal of kamikaze drones which can slam into targets more than 2,000 km away. Iran thought that in war it would be able to use these drones for massed attacks, and when Israel attacked Iran in the early hours of June 13, Tehran duly responded
This morning’s sirens shattered the early calm across much of Israel. Quiet anticipation had already been building, as signs pointed to a long anticipated American entry into the conflict, but no one yet knows when, or if, it will truly come. It had been a relatively quiet night; after a brief stint in the bomb
An imam at the Grand Mosque of Massy, just outside Paris, has threatened to issue a fatwa against former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, head of Macron’s party Renaissance, for his proposal to ban the hijab for girls under 15. In a video that has gone viral in France, the imam declared that Attal is ‘pushing
In a prison cell in the middle of Myanmar (Burma), isolated from other prisoners, sits an elderly woman who marks her 80th birthday today. She is serving a 27-year sentence. Yet she is no ordinary 80-year-old. Today, she should be approaching the end of her second term as de facto head of her country’s government,
Would a Reform government lift the ban on fracking? ‘Abso-bloody-lutely,’ is Nigel Farage’s answer. Fracking and nuclear will form the core of Reform’s push for British energy self-sufficiency – a drive that will see the Net Zero target junked if the party wins power. The Reform leader made his remarks at ‘Net Zero: The New
In October 2023, the mullahs of the Islamic Republic could look within Iran’s borders, and beyond, and be content with the worlds they had created. After all, they had weathered the storm of the Women, Life, Freedom protests by terrorising their own people, and could rest assured in the strength of their proxy networks, feared
A small but not insignificant morsel of data on the state of education after 18 years of the SNP running Scotland. New figures show the gap between the poorest and wealthiest school leavers has widened to a five-year high. In the least deprived areas, just 3 per cent of school leavers fail to go to
As you might have noticed from the crowds weeping in the streets and the appearance of sackcloth, ashes and rent, er, garments: Sir Keir Starmer wasn’t at Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon. Instead we got Big Ange – who absolutely, definitely, doesn’t want the job for herself. She’d come dressed in a fetching double-breasted blazer and
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Westminster waits with bated breath to discover whether Donald Trump will ally with Israel in striking Iranian nuclear sites. The President called for ‘UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!’ from Tehran overnight. The day to day of domestic politics appears diminished by comparison with the ever-looming threat of an escalated conflict… But the show must go on: today’s PMQs
The announcement, when it came, was a strangely botched one. The official Ascot carriage list had stated at 12 p.m. that the Prince and Princess of Wales would be riding in the second carriage in the royal procession, accompanied by their friends Mr and Mrs Justin Rose. It was already known that Prince William would
One of the first casualties of the Covid pandemic was the millennial left’s defining project of a Universal Basic Income. Once it became clear just how expensive it is for the state to pay people not to work, as in Rishi Sunak’s lockdown income guarantee, this quasi-socialist project died a well-deserved death. But not everyone
Kemi Badenoch will have been irritated to miss today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, given it denied her the opportunity to accuse Labour of delaying the inevitable on a national inquiry into grooming gangs. Sadly for those watching, the fact that today’s session was a battle of the deputies did not mean that the rest of us
The BBC have visited the French coast to see for themselves that Nigel Farage (and Coffee House) aren’t making it up: there is indeed a migrant crisis on the beaches close to Calais and has been for years. Britain certainly won’t receive much in the way of help from the pro-migrant Emmanuel Macron, despite what
Today marks the 100th day of the Birmingham bin strikes. The City of a Thousand Trades has been subjected to more than three months of refuse piling high on its streets while reports of ‘cat-sized rats’ feeding on the neglected rubbish have struck fear into Brum’s residents. Now Mr S can reveal what is known
As Donald Trump hastily dashed home from the G7 meeting in Canada to deal with the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel, Prime Minister Keir Starmer went to speak to reporters. The G7 resolution on Iran, he said, ‘was about de-escalation’. ‘The thrust of the statement is in accordance with what I was saying on
On Friday, the Commons will vote on the third reading of the assisted dying bill. Most MPs expect it to pass by a narrower margin than the majority of 55 MPs last time. There has been a shift in momentum throughout the bill’s passage through parliament, with at least a dozen more names now voting
Britain’s grooming gangs scandal has dominated the news this week, after the publication of Baroness Casey’s review on Monday. Now data from the Ministry of Justice has emerged showing that over a quarter of sex assaults on women – that have been successfully prosecuted in the UK – were committed by foreign nationals. It’s quite
Iran’s crumbling regime is fighting a war to the death on two fronts. The first and foremost is the conflict with Israel. It is safe to say that the Israelis – so far at least – are winning comfortably. The other conflict is the fight the mullahs are waging against their own people. The outcome of that
As if the saga of HS2 could not get any worse, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander will reportedly announce today that, actually, the railway line will not be open by its latest proposed date of 2033, and that 2035 is now more realistic. But I wouldn’t book your ticket just yet. Some analysts believe the line
The rate of inflation remained flat at 3.4 per cent in May – still well above the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Bizarrely, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in their figures released this morning, claims this is down from 3.5 per cent the month before, even though just a couple of weeks
Well, it’s hello to prenatal infanticide now that Tonia Antoniazzi’s amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill has passed the Commons after all of two hours’ debate with 379 MPs voting in favour. Can we get our heads round what that means? Nothing a woman does in relation to her own pregnancy can make her
It’s understandable that the focus of coverage of Israel’s strikes on Iran, and the Iranian regime’s response, has been entirely on the potential regional consequences of Israel’s mission to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. But although this may seem more like a version of Neville Chamberlain’s infamous ‘quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom
For many years, liberals refused to talk about the grooming gangs scandal. The systematic sexual abuse and rape of hundreds, possibly thousands, of vulnerable children by offenders from ethnic minorities was a story that too many people were happy to ignore. There was an effective prohibition on discussing it in left and liberal circles. Grooming
MPs have voted to make the biggest change to abortion laws in 50 years this evening, backing the decriminalising of abortion for women at any point in their pregnancy. An amendment to the crime and policing bill was passed by 379 ayes to 137 noes after MPs were given a free vote on the issue
Sir Keir Starmer was doing an interview with Beth Rigby in the lush mountain landscape of Canada. Hardly a man who evokes the sweeping grandeur of nature, seeing the Prime Minister surrounded by mountains and pines was odd. It looked a little like someone had mistakenly cast a chartered accountant in the Sound of Music.
To Cardiff, where a former Conservative politician has pleaded guilty to harassing their ex-wife. Katie Wallis, formerly Jamie Wallis who represented Bridgend from 2019-2024, today admitted to sending unwanted messages both over the phone and via voice note and will be sentenced next month. Wallis had been in a relationship with ex-wife Rebecca Lovell for
Rachel Reeves may finally have seen sense. A report in this morning’s Financial Times suggests she is ‘exploring’ performing a 180 on the changes to inheritance tax rules which meant non doms would have to pay the death tax on their global assets – even on wealth earned before they came to the UK. As I explained in
It is a big week for big Commons moments. On Monday, we had the long-awaited announcement of an inquiry into grooming gangs; today it is the battle of the abortion amendments. This afternoon Lindsay Hoyle will choose whether to call Tonia Antoniazzi or Stella Creasy’s amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill. Antoniazzi’s measure would
Kemi Badenoch said that ‘survivors and their families’ have been ‘ignored for far too long’ as she appeared alongside those affected by the grooming gangs’ scandal. ‘What this morning is about is not the politics, but giving…(victims) a platform to say what they want to see from a national inquiry,’ the Tory leader said at
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Yesterday Yvette Cooper announced a national inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal after the Casey Review found that a disproportionate number of Asian men were responsible and that governments and authorities had failed to step in over fears of racism. Anxious to press Labour on their U-turn – memorably, Starmer accused the Tories of ‘jumping
Amongst a swirl of pronouncements from Tel Aviv, Washington and Tehran – and against the dramatic backdrop of an Iranian TV presenter’s rather tired fire and fury being interrupted by the sound of bombs – Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that Israel is close to “victory.” Yet despite Ayatollah Khamenei being hidden in a bunker, experiencing regular panic
‘When history is written as it ought to be written’, said the great Trinidadian Marxist CLR James, ‘it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity’. On no historical calamity is this truer than the rape-gang scandal. When future scribes look back at this violent tear