All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Don’t bring a bottle. Your chances of finding a party in full swing down those chilly corridors are close to zero. At most, you might hear the sound of a distant flute playing a courante by Lully. As Sir Howard Davies puts it in this insider’s view, which manages to be both authoritative and quite
Oh dear. It seems that starting an unprovoked war is not the best way to inspire foreign investment in your country. For 25 years, the Kremlin has touted the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) as Russia’s equivalent of the World Economic Forum, using the summit to try to attract the forces of capital. But
Is it a fatal handicap for a politician to be dull? Since he became Labour leader two years ago, there has been a growing feeling that Sir Keir Starmer not only lacks the magical ‘X Factor’ that makes for political success, but is in proud possession of its polar opposite – what might be called
Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, what’s goin’ on ‘ere, then? Boris Johnson might have shrugged off partygate but Sir Keir Starmer is not so lucky. The investigation by Durham police into whether the Labour leader and his deputy broke lockdown restrictions in April 2021 is still ongoing, with no end date yet announced. Sir Keir has pledged to quit if
The last-minute halting of the first flight to Rwanda is humiliating for Boris Johnson’s government. An urgent interim measure from the European Court of Human Rights prompted a domino effect of domestic court orders that ended with the plane returning to base without passengers. The ECtHR’s order came down to three factors. First, that evidence from
Stock markets are crashing. Bond yields are soaring. And the cryptos are evaporating. There is so much going on in the financial markets right now it would be hard to miss the most significant event. The eurozone crisis, which almost broke apart the single currency back in 2011 and 2012, is back. And this time
‘The Hungar Shames’ screamed the Sun after England suffered a mortifying 0-4 defeat to the not so mighty Magyars last night. The game was England’s worst home defeat since 1928. England now face the humiliating prospect of relegation from Tier B of the Nations League where they may join the likes of Armenia, Montenegro, and Albania.
Is the UK on course to leave the European Convention on Human Rights? This is what some Tory MPs are pushing for after judges in Strasbourg blocked, at the last minute, the first deportation flight scheduled to take asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. After unsuccessful bids in the UK courts, a judgement from
Last night, a Boeing 767 that was supposed to fly 130 asylum seekers to Rwanda returned to Spain without a single passenger on board. Throughout the day, the number of people planned for that flight had been whittled down by multiple legal challenges. Then, minutes before take-off, the European Court of Human Rights made an
Yesterday’s Times carried a report that will only add to Sir Keir Starmer’s troubles. It quoted several members of the shadow ministerial team suggesting that Starmer is dull and unimpressive.That will only sharpen the perception, held by quite a few Westminster people, that the Labour leader isn’t doing as well as he should be, given
There will not be a legally binding referendum on Scottish independence next year. It’s important to bear this in mind when chewing over Nicola Sturgeon’s latest pronouncement. The SNP leader held a press conference on Tuesday morning to publish a paper on independence in advance of a plebiscite Sturgeon says will be held in 2023.
In one sense Nicola Sturgeon’s new independence campaign launched today – which assumes there will be a second referendum within the next 18 months – does not signal anything new. Sturgeon did not unveil any new legislation. Nor did she submit a formal request for the UK government to allow a referendum to take place.
Priti Patel’s first go at deporting migrants to Rwanda is turning before our eyes into one of those answers from the TV quiz show Pointless – when you see the on-screen counter drop remorselessly towards zero. At the time of writing, the counter for the number of migrants to be flown out to Rwanda is
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There’s a spectre haunting Westminster: the spectre of Steve Bray. Steerpike envies those readers unfamiliar with the loud-mouthed protester, who has spent much of the past four years making life miserable for those who work in the House of Commons. Bray, known to many as ‘Stop Brexit’ man, spends a lot of his time disrupting
The British constitution is best understood as a dinner party. Imagine the key institutions of national life personified and sat around a table debating the issues of the day. True, as you and I picture this scene it is now a little late in the evening, the surroundings are worn and some hitherto unheard voices
On Saturday immigration enforcement officers went to Peckham to pick up a man suspected of overstaying his visa. When they arrived, a crowd of protesters turned up to stop the ‘immigration raid’, blocking the van from departing. When the police turned up, they also found their way blocked. Eventually, they gave up. The arrested man
11 min listen
The government is fighting on two fronts today. Firstly defending is Rwandan immigration plan from a unified front of Bishops as the first flight is set to take off tonight. Secondly, the Northern Ireland protocol bill which was announced yesterday afternoon faces scrutiny on many fronts. Katy Balls talks with Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.
First the good news: the Office for National Statistics figures released today show that pay is rising at its fastest rate in two decades, with regular pay up by 4.2 per cent in the three months for February to April compared with a year earlier. Now the bad news: such is inflation that, in real
The economic lesson of the week is that headlines are often deceiving. Yesterday’s GDP update for the month of April showed a 0.3 percent contraction – but that was largely due to the rollback of state-funded programmes designed to tackle Covid-19. Now today’s employment updates show the headline employment rate up – to 75.6 per
It’s a stressful time in government. Inflation, strikes, Northern Ireland – it’s all a bit 1970s, but without the decent tunes. Central to Boris Johnson’s hopes of re-election is the levelling-up agenda: a task entrusted to the ever-effective Michael Gove, the Tory equivalent to Pulp Fiction’s Winston Wolf. Managing all of Gove’s responsibilities – which
The economy is tanking, the public services are in peril. So what do you do if you’re Nicola Sturgeon? Promise another independence referendum! That’s right, the queen of the nats is out on tour again, dusting off all the great classics to keep her fanatical fan base happy. The First Minister will today publish the
At the heart of the crisis over the Protocol is its failure to deliver on its own stated aims. To understand this crisis, it is necessary to know some key aspects of the Protocol’s genesis and history. Exactly a month after Theresa May triggered Article 50, the European Commission was instructed by the member states
12 min listen
The Foreign Secretary has outlined fresh legislation to change the post-Brexit trade agreement with the EU today – allowing ministers to override parts of the Northern Ireland protocol. Whilst the government insists that this is not a breach of international law, critics remain unconvinced. ‘I had one member of government say to me this bill
Arron Banks, the pugnacious Brexiteer, has lost his claim for defamation against Carole Cadwalladr, the darling of the Brexit-loathing bourgeoisie. Banks brought the action in relation to two public utterances made by Ms Cadwalladr. First, her TED talk of 2019, in which she said: ‘And I’m not even going to go into the lies that Arron
The UK government has now published both the text of the Northern Ireland Protocol bill and a summary of its legal arguments. The main plank of the government’s case for why it isn’t breaching international law rests on the doctrine of necessity. The government document states that ‘the term ‘necessity’ is used in international law
The UK is about to publish a bill that will override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol. We are doing this unilaterally – the EU doesn’t want us to do it, but we’re going to do it anyway. Surely that means we’re about to breach international law? It’s worth quickly going over why this is
By and large, the Platinum Jubilee celebrations were a success. Barring the odd moment of inexplicable poor taste, it was a well-choreographed blend of pageantry, ceremony and fun, and the deservedly viral clip of Paddington taking tea with the Queen seemed to epitomise a spirit of generosity and togetherness. Yet Her Majesty might be forgiven,
Conservatives in Wales are jumpy. Seeing Boris’s name as poisonous on the doorstep, a number of them have suggested disaffiliating from the national party and forming their own Welsh Conservatives as the party of the right west of Offa’s Dyke. Some in the central party in London are, perhaps unsurprisingly, aghast: one unnamed Tory MP has
Today’s economic growth figures serve as a reminder that it’s important to be specific about what’s actually being measured. Headline GDP numbers show a contraction of 0.3 per cent in April: worse than what was expected (the forecast consensus was a fall of roughly 0.1 per cent), suggesting a fall in economic activity and output,
One of the more significant results from the first round of the French parliamentary elections on Sunday was in the Corrèze. There, in the rural south of the country, Sandrine Deveaud of the Nouvelle union populaire écologiste et sociale (Nupes) came top with 25.4 per cent of the vote. This is the left-wing alliance assembled by
If Boris Johnson was elected on a single slogan, it was ‘Get Brexit done’. He then claimed it was done at the end of 2019 in the terms for leaving the EU he agreed. Not so. Today legislation will be introduced by the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to unilaterally overhaul a central pillar of the