All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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The Queen’s coffin has been taken from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall. Mourners will pay their respects for the next four days before the funeral on Monday. Also on the podcast, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson discuss the latest news in the Ukraine conflict.
What better way to mark the death of the monarch than via some good old royal disinformation? Twitter users have been in a strop today about Prince Andrew, the black sheep of the Windsor mob. Apparently, his brother, King Charles, has taken it up on himself to appoint the Duke of York as a ‘Counsellor
Just how much of a grip does Vladimir Putin have on the situation currently unfolding in Ukraine? Over the weekend, the Ukrainian Army made a series of rapid advances, reportedly regaining control of as much as 3,000 square kilometres of formerly Russian-controlled territory. According to one Ukrainian commander, the counter-offensive had Russian soldiers fleeing for
Ukraine is racing to establish control over the newly-liberated Kharkiv region. The country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky paid a surprise visit to the city of Izyum, until recently a strategic point for Russia’s occupation reinforcements (photos here). ‘We are moving in only one direction – forward and towards victory’, he said after the Ukrainian flag was raised in
‘So it is come at last, the distinguished thing!’ exclaimed Henry James on his deathbed. Such a thought is reflected in funerals – always more powerful than a memorial service or ‘celebration’ – because the person’s body is present. When it comes at last to Elizabeth II on Monday, it will be the most distinguished
President Xi Jinping hasn’t stepped outside his country since the pandemic began. For almost three years, China’s elderly leaders have been swaddled inside Beijing; journalists granted an audience with Xi have told me that they had to go through days of hotel quarantine before the meeting. Today Xi returns to the global stage. His first
What is going on in America? A celebrity eccentric known as ‘the Pillow guy’, his real name is Mike Lindell, claimed yesterday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized his mobile telephone. Lindell, a former crack addict turned successful entrepreneur who is now a major supporter of the Trump movement, says he was returning from
There’s a sad mood of mourning in Westminster at present so thank God for Matt Hancock’s ongoing efforts to become relevant again. The Casanova of the Commons has tried every trick in the book to mount a cabinet comeback since losing office in disgrace some 14 months ago. He’s signed a book deal, joined the
Whacking up the price of black ties given the extra demand. Running advertising campaigns for cut price comfort food to get the nation through a painful few days. Or putting your zero hours workers on call for the whole of Monday just in case they are needed, while rushing out a quick line of over-priced
This morning’s surprise update from the Office for National Statistics shows headline inflation at 9.9 per cent on the year to August, down slightly from 10.1 per cent in July. While consumer inflation remains at a 40-year high, the drop from double digits back into single digits has the optimists whispering: might inflation have peaked?
Brazil’s football strip is one of the most recognisable garments in sport, perhaps the most potent symbol of Brazil’s sizeable soft power. People who can’t name the country’s capital or president are familiar with the players who made the yellow jersey famous. Names such as Pelé, Sócrates, Ronaldo and Marta are known and loved the world
Eric Zemmour is back. The bogeyman of French politics spent the summer licking his wounds after his far-right Reconquest party was wiped out in June’s parliamentary elections, but on Sunday he addressed several thousand supporters at a rally in the south of France. It is, hopes Zemmour, an opportunity to relaunch his political career and
As republican protestors seek to disrupt the handing on of the title of head of state from one royal to another, we should appreciate that it is an obsolete system in the modern world. Not the monarchy, of course: it only takes one look at the mass outpouring of grief for the late Queen and the
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King Charles arrived in Belfast where he was met by the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris. The King has pledged to follow the ‘shining example’ set by his mother during her life of public service. Tonight, the Queen’s body will be moved from Edinburgh to Buckingham Palace where her body will lie-in-state
One implication of the Russian gas shut-off is that Norway has now become the EU’s largest single supplier of natural gas. According to the country’s energy ministry, they are expected to export 122 billion cubic metres of gas south to the EU over the course of 2022. This compares with the 155 billion cubic metres
Oil prices have been falling steeply, reducing prices at the pumps. Wheat prices have dropped as supplies from Ukraine start to hit the world market again. And supply chains are steadily getting back to normal as trade routes recover from the pandemic, with shipping costs back down to their level at the start of the
It’s a grim old time in Westminster at the moment. The Queen is dead, prices are up, inflation is rampant and a winter of discontent beckons. But, from the Big Apple itself, a ray of light at last. For the New York Times, the world’s worst newspaper best known for Brit-bashing Anglophobia, is embroiled in
In this week of mourning, much of the news which would normally get covered has sunk without trace. Even so, this morning’s news of a drop in unemployment has managed to catch the eye. The unemployment rate has fallen by 0.2 to 3.6 per cent – below where it was at the beginning of the
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Monday that her government will not be pursuing any moves toward changing New Zealand to a republic following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Ardern admitted she thought New Zealand would eventually become a republic, and it would probably happen within her lifetime, but that there were
Overnight, it seems as if a new war might have broken out in Europe. Armenian authorities claim that at least 49 soldiers have been killed in fighting with Azerbaijan close to their disputed border. A new conflict would be a tragedy and a waste. But it would also signal something else: the collapse of Russia’s global
What should Liz Truss do about Scotland? To ask the question is to illuminate its limitations. Scotland is no more Truss’s to manage than it was her predecessor’s plaything. Truss may call herself a ‘child of the Union’ but a few years in a Paisley primary school are not enough to justify such a claim
There was much anger and sadness in Whitehall last week at the sacking of the Treasury’s top civil servant Sir Tom Scholar by Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng on his first day in office. But one person who won’t be shedding tears for the departing Permanent Secretary is Lord Agnew, who served as a minister in Scholar’s
The death of the Queen has led to a host of peculiar postponements. Perhaps the strangest was the announcement that the launch of ‘Bowie On The Blockchain’, a sale of NFT artworks inspired by the deceased pop star, has been delayed ‘out of respect for the people of the UK and Queen Elizabeth II’. It’s
Trevor Sinclair is in trouble again. The former England footballer, who is now a pundit for TalkSport, has been taken off air for saying ‘black and brown’ people should not mourn the Queen’s death. ‘Racism was outlawed in England in the 60’s and it’s been allowed to thrive so why should black and brown mourn!!,’ he
Over the past few days, the Ukrainians have upended assumptions about the war with Russia. They have shown it was wrong to predict that the conflict was inevitably going to turn into a war of attrition. They have advanced at speed, reclaiming, according to reports, 1,000 square miles of territory in a week. It’s not clear
Preparations for Her Majesty’s Lying-in-State in Westminster Hall are continuing and all is not well in the Houses of Parliament. After yesterday’s news that MPs’ staff are unhappy at their exclusion from those given priority access to pay their last respects, now Mr S can tell his readers that at least two other fresh rows
On the evening of Sunday 11 September, a general alert was announced in nearly all the regions of Ukraine. A mass launch of precision missiles by the Russian Black and Caspian Sea fleets had just been detected. This is not the first occasion in this war on which such an attack has happened. The difference
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This morning, surrounded by the lead, oak and stone of Westminster Hall, King Charles III addressed parliament. Lindsay Hoyle, speaker of the Commons, introduced him, and said that he knew the new King would ‘bear those responsibilities which fall to you’. King Charles said that he was resolved to follow his mother’s ‘selfless duty’. Katy
North Korea would like you to know that it has nuclear weapons. It has put rather a lot of effort in recent weeks into making you aware. And if you haven’t thought much about North Korea’s nuclear programme in the last few days, it means its propaganda effort has failed. Here is what North Korea’s
Why, asked a French mayor at the weekend, has he been ordered to fly his town’s flag at half-mast for the Queen until the day of her funeral? In expressing his indignation at Macron’s presidential decree, Patrick Proisy, the mayor of Faches-Thumesnil, a suburb of Lille, pointed out that Mikhail Gorbachev was accorded no such
No one should ever be arrested for what they think or say. It is remarkable – and depressing – that this still needs to be said in the 21st century. But it seems it does. Over the weekend we witnessed an alarming, almost medieval act of censorship. A woman was dragged away by cops for
Comparing the Russian and American royal coverage of the last few days, you’d never guess which was on the UK’s side. Whereas Vladimir Putin has praised the late Queen and Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda called her ‘the last living titan of the 20th century,’ some of the transatlantic broadcasters appeared to greet the death of the sovereign as
One of Liz Truss’s suggestions on the leadership campaign trail was that her economic agenda could avoid recession. But one of the (many) gambles attached to these comments was what had already happened to the economy before she entered No. 10. This morning we got some more insight about how the economy fared over the