All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
A peculiar row has broken out in Kyiv over the role of one of Zelensky’s best-known advisers. Oleksiy Arestovych is a familiar figure in Ukraine due to his (now-lapsed) work as a spokesman and developed a profile abroad, described as a ‘sex symbol’ by no less a source than the Economist. But when it comes to
Where does the Labour party stand on the rail strikes? It is a question government ministers have spent much of their time demanding an answer to, rather than, as critics might suggest, trying to find a compromise that would avoid further strikes. It is, in any case, a rhetorical question: the Conservative party some time
As Boris Johnson tries to limit pay rises to bring down inflation, ministers have no explanation for why planned rises in the state pension and benefits would be less inflationary than increasing teachers’ and nurses’ pay. The government is attempting to limit public sector pay to 3 per cent, while allowing pensions and benefits to rise to around
Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer both came to Prime Minister’s Questions today wanting to talk about the rail strikes. The Tory leader was keen to pin the blame on Labour, pointing out that 25 MPs from that party joined RMT picket lines yesterday. Starmer meanwhile thinks, as I explained here, that he can be bullish on
In his search for gossip, Mr S has few qualms about perusing other august publications for inspiration. So it was in that spirit that his eye alighted on a story in a recent edition of Private Eye which noted that ‘food bank clients in Liverpool’ were left ‘not impressed’ after 90 city councillors recently tucked
The RMT union boss Mick Lynch is currently dominating TV screens and social media, making mincemeat out of politicians and broadcast interviewers alike. Hapless Tory MPs that attempted to recite pre-rehearsed cliches and dodgy statistics have been gunned down by the mature, considered and, yes, gruffly charming manner of Lynch. In a previous life, I
It was a ‘destroyer of society’, a ‘tax on ordinary people’s savings’ and a threat to social order. You don’t have to spend very long browsing the history books to find thumping quotes from Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher denouncing rising prices as an evil that had to be defeated. And today? Even with prices
There’s a word for countries in which you might get collared by the police because someone took offence to your jokes. And it isn’t a nice one. It’s the sort of thing you read about going on in Erdogan’s Turkey or Putin’s Russia. But it is also the sort of thing that now happens in
Inflation rose to 9.1 per cent on the year in May, taking the UK’s consumer price index to a 40-year-high. Optimists are noting the slowdown in pace, rising by 0.1 per cent between April and May. But I suspect we are in the eye of the storm. This price spiral is nowhere close to over,
Poor Rishi Sunak. The Chancellor was once the golden boy of British politics: the free-spending, Insta-loving, charm-oozing toast of the Wetherspoons’ bartenders. But now Sunak has lost his shine after a disastrous three week period in which his Spring Statement was lambasted, his ratings went into free fall and he ended up being fined by
You can’t blame Boris Johnson for jetting off to Kyiv last week for another meet-and-greet session with Volodymyr Zelensky. He got a warmer reception from the Ukrainian President than he would have in Doncaster, the town he snubbed in order to grandstand on the international stage. Johnson was scheduled to have made an appearance at
The EU will formally add Ukraine to its list of candidate countries this Friday. But if you look carefully beneath the pomp, you will see this is much less of a big deal than Brussels would have you believe. For one thing, the gesture is symbolic. The list of official EU candidates is a bit
Gary Lineker is the BBC’s top earner: he was paid £1.36m last year. The popularity of Match of the Day, the programme he hosts, is often given as the reason for that astronomical pay cheque. Yet the reality is that most fans tune in to watch the goals, not to hear Lineker’s presentation. Lineker, however,
Is the government’s approach to strikes and public sector pay too blunt? Today Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak took the opportunity of the Cabinet meeting to underline ‘the importance of fiscal discipline’. The Chancellor told the meeting that ‘the government had responsibility to not take any action that would feed into inflationary pressures or reduce
Londoners have today been cursing the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) trade union for the misery that its 24-hour walkout has inflicted across the capital. The strike is about a dispute with Network Rail and Transport for London (TfL) over pay, jobs and working conditions, with the RMT asking for a pay rise of seven
In Westminster these days, WhatsApp and Twitter are decidedly old school. Now the current craze is TikTok where MPs compete to gain followings through video clips. Zarah Sultana, the Coventry Corbynista, has the most TikTok supporters but the irresistible online app also has fans in at least two different Cabinet ministers’ households. Not all in
A Chinese health app, developed to enforce the Communist party’s draconian Covid-19 restrictions, is being repurposed to tighten political control on dissidents and others deemed to be troublemakers. Only the very young and very old are exempt from the compulsory National Health Code System. The ‘traffic light app’, as it has been dubbed, assigns Chinese
When Russian troops started ‘military exercises’ on Ukraine’s borders, those of us living in Kyiv had grounds to worry. Putin operates by bluff, disinformation and false flags. He blows smoke, but sometimes his troops march through that smoke. That’s why we ought to pay attention to reports on Russian state media that there are to
The single headline across the front page of the centre-left daily Libération said it all: ‘La Gifle’. But much more than a slap in the face, Emmanuel Macron has taken a heavyweight sock in the jaw. With only 245 seats for his ‘Ensemble!’ grouping, the French president is a country mile from having a parliamentary
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The first day of strike action has begun with large parts of the country’s railways, as well as London’s underground lines, shut down. But where workers are trying to put pressure on the government and Network Rail over higher pay, it seems like the Labour party is in more trouble. Disagreement over the party’s position
Sir Keir Starmer has ended up in a very Starmer-esque pickle over the rail strikes this week. Yesterday he instructed Labour frontbenchers not to join picket lines, and said at the weekend that the strikes should not go ahead, having stayed rather quiet on the matter until then. This has annoyed many of his MPs,
In politics, a leader sometimes needs to be ruthless and mean, patiently soak up the public opprobrium directed his way and wait until most people see that his stance was correct and necessary. When it comes to the state of the economy, and the pressures of inflation in particular, this is where we have got to.
It’s a tribute to the geniuses within Downing Street that they’ve managed to take a three-month-old story about a four-year-old incident and make it one of the most-discussed issues in British politics. The story is, of course, a report by the Times that Boris Johnson tried to appoint his then-lover Carrie Symonds as his chief-of-staff
It’s day one of the RMT’s planned strike action after last-minute talks between train operators and Network Rail failed. The union has been demanding a pay rise of at least 7 per cent in the face of inflation – as well as opposing planned redundancies. The dispute is just a taste of things to come from
Here we go again. On Monday, Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Prime Minister, announced that he would bring a bill to dissolve the Knesset and trigger yet another election. After a seemingly endless procession of elections, Bennett’s rainbow coalition was a brief respite from constant campaigning that exhausted the populace and bankrupted the political parties. Comprising factions
Today, the RMT will succeed where the Luddites failed. For 24 hours, they will unwind the most impressive part of the Industrial Revolution, stripping Britain of trains. They will repeat the feat on Thursday and Saturday. The government, meanwhile, will wring its hands, complain about the losses faced by workers and businesses, and do very
Whether it’s crumbling rooftiles, weekly fire alarms being activated or bacteria in the water supplies, the creaking Palace of Westminster is all too often a perfect state-of-the-nation parable. Everyone agrees that the place needs fixing: the question is, should MPs move out to allow restoration projects to happen unencumbered? It’s currently costing an extra £2
This morning, the UK woke up to the largest rail strike in thirty years. As many as 50,000 workers are striking, with just one in five trains running across the country. Commuters have been told to work from home or travel by other means while stations are deserted. This scenario is one that Brits will
Are wages about to spiral out of control? Boris Johnson certainly thinks there’s a risk. Last week he warned that the economy was ‘steering into the wind’ and that the UK could be entering a 1970s-style malaise. With inflation shooting up to 9 per cent – and expected to go higher still – rail workers
The cost-of-living crisis might be gripping the country but there was no sign of that at the Tories’ summer party last night. Held in the sumptuous setting of Kensington’s Victoria & Albert Museum, the party put aside its various troubles for one night at least – not least claims about a potential conflict of interest for
Last week, Boris Johnson’s ethics advisor – a role that must sit alongside Vlad the Impaler’s anger management therapist in the annals of doomed job descriptions – resigned. Downing Street so far hasn’t commented on whether Lord Geidt will be replaced, with a spokesman saying only that Johnson will ‘take time’ to consider the decision.
It seems that Scotland isn’t the only thing failed by the SNP. Britain’s greatest grievance-merchants are (rightly) being hauled over the coals today for their treatment of Patrick Grady’s male victim, after Ian Blackford told a room of MPs last Tuesday that the disgraced sex pest had their ‘absolute full support.’ One of those who
Anyone still talking about ‘two sides in the transgender debate’ needs to look at the footage from Bristol yesterday. Actually, there was no debate. What happened was one group of people (mainly men) intimidating a second group of people (mainly women). The video is terrifying. If you couldn’t catch what was said through their masks, here