All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Another glorious day for our great democracy. Chris Pincher’s resignation has unleashed a deluge of anger, despair and frustration in the Tory WhatsApp groups today. One backbencher texted Mr S to remark darkly of Dowden and Pincher that ‘at least they’re freeing up jobs for the reshuffle.’ Another asks ‘How on earth was he put
The Tories are in crisis, standards are in peril. So who do you turn to for ethical advice? Step forward Neil Parish, the tractor-loving, porn-perusing former MP for Tiverton. Parish, whose constituency is now, er, represented by a Liberal Democrat thanks to his resignation, was asked for his views this afternoon on Christopher Pincher. Barely
Tony Blair was the headline act at his day-long talking-shop in London yesterday. The crowds attending the Future of Britain Conference had to sit through hours of speeches and panel discussions before the old groover himself popped up at 4pm for a 30-minute chat with Jon Sopel. ‘I’m so grateful to everyone for hanging about
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Last night Chris Pincher resigned from his role in the government – after ‘drinking far too much’ and ’embarrassing himself’. Witnesses reportedly saw the deputy chief whip ‘groping’ men at the Carlton Club in London. Also on the podcast, today is the 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China. Can the government
The Chris Pincher situation is much worse for the government than the Neil Parish one was. Parish was a backbencher, Pincher was – until his resignation – the deputy chief whip and had played a key role in the shadow whipping operation which shored up Boris Johnson at the start of the year. Given the nature of
As inflation rips into living standards, everyone is feeling the pinch and many are looking for help. Some people are asking for more from the state. That really means help from their fellow taxpayers, because sooner or later, that’s where public money comes from. We all have our own views about which groups merit that
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Freddy Gray speaks to the author F.H. Buckley, who outlines the case made in his latest book Progressive Conservatism: How Republicans Will Become America’s Natural Governing Party.
Preparations for a ‘referendum’ have begun in Kherson Oblast, the Russian-occupied region north of Crimea, according to Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration and one of Moscow’s puppet governors. ‘Kherson Oblast will never return to an environment of Nazism, debauchery, and cynicism,’ he said. A date for the referendum has not yet been announced,
Boris Johnson has never been afraid of expressing himself but he might well have regretted his verbosity yesterday when he had a rather awkward encounter at the Nato summit in Madrid. As Johnson sat at the summit table, a tall figure loomed over him and gripped the Prime Minister’s back. Johnson turned around to be
It’s been an eventful week for celebrity justice, especially of the entirely predictable kind. First, Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years for recruiting and trafficking young girls. Now, the musician and paedophile R. Kelly has received a 30-year prison sentence for sexually abusing girls, boys and women. He was convicted of the offence last
Chris Pincher remains a Tory MP this morning, but how long will that be the case? The Conservative deputy chief whip resigned from the government last night, following allegations that he groped two men at a private members’ club on Wednesday evening. In a letter to Boris Johnson, Pincher said he ‘drank far too much’ and ’embarrassed myself and
A few weeks after Putin’s war against Ukraine began on 24 February, an infamous article was published in RIA Novosti, a leading Russian state mouthpiece. Written by Timofey Sergeytsev, it was entitled ‘What Russia should do with Ukraine’ and was full of ideas. These included ‘ideological repression’ and ‘strict censorship’ for their neighbour country, not
There is a cartoon doing the rounds this week that shows two women having a drink. One says to the other ‘My dream is to travel back in time’. Her friend replies ‘Just book a ticket to the USA’. No doubt the cartoonist had in mind the topical issues of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe
Royal Ascot has come and gone: 300,000 racegoers, men in top hats and tails, women in chic outfits and beautiful, or bizarre, millinery, gathered for the highlight of the racing calendar. But beneath the pageantry, all is not well in the world of horse racing. The sport’s leadership is in disarray. Day-to-day racecourse attendance is
Oh dear. It looks like Pestminster 2.0 is rumbling on. On Thursday, Chris Pincher, the deputy chief whip quit after allegations were reported in the Sun. The newspaper reports that the MP, first elected for Tamworth in 2010, has written to Boris Johnson, claiming that: ‘Last night I drank far too much. I’ve embarrassed myself and
Sir Keir Starmer is very keen these days to prove that Labour can be trusted on defence and foreign policy. Tweets, statements, Union Jacks galore: nothing is too over the top in the party’s efforts to distance itself from its recent Corbynista past. So Mr S was intrigued to see what one of his backbenchers
The disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced yesterday to 20 years for crimes relating to sex trafficking. After three weeks of silence, Maxwell finally spoke, saying she was ‘sorry’ for the ‘pain’ her victims experienced. She told the court that she hoped her ‘conviction’ and ‘incarceration’ would bring ‘closure.’ There was one particular line that
After days of missile strikes, Ukrainian forces have forced Russia off Snake Island in the Black Sea. ‘The enemy hastily evacuated the remnants of the garrison in two speedboats and left the island’, according to the Ukrainian Operational South Command. Russia’s defence ministry appeared to concede defeat, saying that ‘Russian forces have completed the assigned
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After an eight-day world tour, Boris Johnson is back on British soil to face Tory MPs for the first time since the two by-election defeats. Meanwhile, the privileges committee begins with Harriet Harman as its chair. Critics have suggested this inquiry into whether the Prime Minister misled parliament over partygate risks becoming a ‘kangaroo court’.
In what I supposed we should see as a sign of progress, the government has decided not to destroy its own school reforms, by revoking the first 18 clauses of the recently-published Schools Bill. I disclosed two weeks ago in the Daily Telegraph that many ex-ministers were up in arms at what they saw as
Liz Truss has been in Madrid this week, talking tough on Taiwan. In the face of continued Chinese aggression, Truss is keen to support the island republic, such as by boosting arms sales there. Yet when pressed this morning on LBC, Truss struggled to add more detail, suggesting that ‘the defence that Taiwan need is
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and his four deputies submitted themselves to a public grilling last Tuesday. The State of London debate was chaired by James O’Brien and broadcast live on LBC. ‘I will endeavour to speak as little as possible,’ quipped the garrulous radio host who maintained his line of larky, locker-room banter
So we come to the end of Pride month. We’re all now familiar with the rituals: the rainbow flag plastered across everything from sandwiches to mouthwash, the vapid statements of obeisance from big businesses and institutions. 2022 has seen a bumper crop of these. Rainbow bullets displayed on Twitter by the US Marines. Central London
Most of the time I have an easy time of it on social media, with tweeters being nice about my colourful attire, liking my cooking hacks or flowers. But this week I had a dose of toxic hate. My son, the MP Danny Kruger, was unwise enough to join a debate in the Commons, saying he didn’t
No one should be too perturbed by Nicola Sturgeon’s latest referendum pronouncements. There will not be a referendum next year. The thought of the First Minister flying to London to start secession negotiations after gaining a majority of votes in Scotland at the next general election is Pythonesque in its absurdity. At some point this
What with Covid, Ukraine and the levelling-up agenda, fiscal probity is somewhat old-fashioned now in Westminster. So it’s unsurprising then that the billion-pound boondoggle of HS2 carries on winding its way through the political process, despite mounting costs and time delays. Having dragged on for more than a dozen years, the, er, high-speed rail project
It is a great and ancient right of all freeborn Englishmen, stretching back far beyond the reaches of our recorded history. From Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution, it has been woven into each of the defining constitutional moments of the British story, a principle bled and died for on the battlefields of Europe. It
As if the Church of England didn’t have enough to worry about with leaky roofs, empty churches and lack of money to pay priests, it now has the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice, or ACRJ. Appointed a year ago, this group of twelve of the great and good, under ex-Labour Cabinet minister Paul Boateng, has
Oh dear. We all remember Captain Tom, KBE, beloved national icon and centenarian philanthropist. In the depths of Covid, the second world war veteran raised Britain’s spirits with his 100 laps of his back garden to raise oodles of cash for the NHS. But now the charity set up in Moore’s memory could be in
The UK’s economy grew by 0.8 per cent between January and March this year, according to this morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics. This means real GDP is now just 0.7 per cent above its pre-pandemic levels. On the face of it, it’s fairly grim news. The spectacular growth originally forecast for this year, making up
Let me start by saying that this is not a defence of Ghislaine Maxwell, the part-time girlfriend, part-time sexual fixer for the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. How could it be? The New York judge that sentenced her to 20 years in prison earlier this week said that she played a ‘pivotal’ role in supplying girls for Epstein
Boris Johnson divides Britons in a way few other politicians manage. To his dwindling group of supporters, he is the hero who Got Brexit Done; to his detractors, he is a villain, edging the country towards a dark place. He is, according to Alastair Campbell, Britain’s ‘accidental fascist’. But if you stand back from the