All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s polling day today and voters will be giving their verdicts on Boris Johnson’s leadership. It’s the PM’s first test post-Partygate so what better time to reflect on the man in charge when that whole saga blew up? Dan Rosenfield was one of four men to serve as Johnson’s effective chief of staff in No.
The US Federal Reserve yesterday announced its biggest interest rate rise in 22 years. Today, the Bank of England follows suit, raising rates at the fastest pace for a quarter of a century. But the biggest question remains: how successful will these hikes be at tackling inflation? The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee has voted six
Is Bill Gates shorting Tesla? He certainly didn’t deny it in an interview with the Today programme. The suggestion is that he has upset Elon Musk, who has complained that he couldn’t take Gates’s philanthropy on climate change issues seriously if he was betting against the share price of the world’s biggest electric car-maker. But
‘Hungary’s stance on oil and gas sanctions on Russia remains unchanged,’ Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltán Kovacs said on Monday. ‘We do not support them.’ Cue panic in Brussels as European Union ministers discussed a potential embargo on Russian oil imports, plans for which were presented to the European Parliament on Wednesday morning. Claims swirled that
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Freddy Gray talks to Inez Stepman, of the Independent Women’s Forum, about the leaked Supreme Court draft decision which could see to the historic Roe vs Wade judgement overturned.
It’s polling day across the United Kingdom. Elections are being held for all London borough councils and every local authority in Wales and Scotland. Most seats in England were last up for election in 2018 and in Scotland and Wales in 2017. Elsewhere in Northern Ireland, there are assembly elections, with Sinn Féin poised to become the largest
First it was the Greens, then the Communists and on Wednesday Jean-Luc Mélenchon bagged the big one, the Socialist party. In announcing an ‘agreement in principle’ between his La France Insoumise (LFI) and the Socialists, Mélenchon became the most powerful figure on the French left and, according to the electorate, the principal adversary of Emmanuel
If they weren’t insufficiently weary of politicians, the French will be invited to vote all over again for the Assemblée Nationale, the nation’s parliament, on 12 and 19 June. Citizen lassitude notwithstanding, the election may produce a louder, if not assuredly more effective, opposition to the prolongated reign of the second Sun King, the newly
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A new poll from ComRes has shown Scottish Labour taking second place in tomorrow’s local elections, overtaking the Scottish Conservatives. On the podcast, James Forsyth explains the torrid flip-flop that Douglas Ross, leader of the Scottish Tories, has made over partygate, first calling for Boris Johnson to resign before rowing back (‘He thought that the
The Russian bear might be back but the Chinese dragon waits in the wings. Moscow’s spectacularly mismanaged invasion of Ukraine might have diverted Western attention away from Beijing but the CCP clearly poses a much greater long-term threat to the West than Putin’s kleptocratic regime. With that in mind, Mr S was intrigued to see
Friday morning’s headlines can pretty much already be written: Conservatives suffer heavy losses in local elections; a humbled Boris Johnson addresses the nation saying that lessons have been learned; backbench MPs resume plotting, trying to decide whether to move now or in a few months’ time. Former Tory voters will be feeling pleased with themselves
The attack on Dave Chappelle last night was chilling. Sure, Chappelle wasn’t hurt. His attacker, having encountered the ire of Chappelle’s quick-witted security team, seems to have come off a lot worse. But the fact that controversial comics are now being physically accosted is deeply concerning. It suggests that the new intolerance, the widespread distaste for
‘Ulster stands at the crossroads,’ Northern Ireland’s prime minister Terence O’Neill famously declared in 1968 as the Troubles began to take hold. A crossroads moment is once again looming into view. If current polling is to be believed, Sinn Fein will be returned as the largest party following Thursday’s assembly election. Such a victory would pose an existential problem for Northern
JD Vance, the poor boy turned US Marine turned best-selling author turned venture capitalist turned politician, won the Senate Republican Primary in Ohio last night. In his victory speech, Vance, who Donald Trump endorsed, said: ‘They wanted to write a story that this campaign would be the death of Donald Trump’s America First agenda ….
This week’s local elections have mostly been framed as a contest between two options: first, whether the Tories will be given a punishment beating by the electorate over recent scandals; or, second, whether Labour will underperform, giving a second thought to whether or not they can win big again. But there is a third dynamic concerning how the
The leak of a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has sparked a furious reaction in Britain. Yet for all the backlash in British political circles, the reality is that the proposed shake-up of abortion laws in the United States doesn’t really matter here. Our nominally conservative-leaning parliament just voted to make abortion easier, and the
Mermaids is one of Britain’s most controversial trans charities, yet its overarching aim is hard to fault. The organisation says it wants ‘to create a world where gender diverse children and young people can be themselves and thrive’. To that end, its goal is ‘to relieve the mental and emotional stress’ of transgender kids. Unfortunately that
As the Prime Minister pointed out this morning, looming recession and soaring inflation are not uniquely British problems – though right now the UK economy is slowing faster than many of our rich country competitors. In the US for example, the IMF’s former chief economist Ken Rogoff has warned just today that the Federal Reserve’s
In the final weeks before the 2014 Scottish referendum, the last independent Clydeside shipbuilder went bust. The SNP was boasting about ‘one of the world’s wealthiest nations’ going it alone, so when it went pop something had to be done. A millionaire adviser to Alex Salmond was lined up to buy it on the understanding
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Campaigning in the local elections is entering its final few days. But what are the expectations for the Tories and Labour and can they be met? Both leaders Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer have already put their foot in it to some degree, with the Labour leader getting rather too defensive about his lockdown mid-work
There are two possible responses to the sound and fury currently emanating from Washington and from the American media after a leak indicated that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade in the next couple of months. For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Justice Samuel Alito’s 96-page draft judgment points to ‘the greatest restriction of rights in
What’s going to happen to British volunteers captured while fighting Russian forces? According to Ukrainian analysts, there is intelligence to suggest that Russia is planning to parade them through Red Square. You read that correctly: Putin is planning to march 500 captured soldiers in the annual 9 May victory parades. Wasn’t this kind of thing always going to
Judge Samuel Alito was incontrovertibly right about one thing in his leaked, draft ruling on Roe v. Wade: ‘Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views.’ Well yes. So we’ve seen with the reaction to the leak – which really is unprecedented. We are reminded that the original Roe v.
Labour had planned to continue its offensive on partygate and the cost of living during this week’s local elections. In recent weeks, that tactic has been yielding results: Boris Johnson has come under pressure for receiving a fixed penalty notice for attending an event in Downing Street involving birthday cake. Now it’s Keir Starmer who is facing
In their post-royal careers, Harry and Meghan have learned two lessons in quick succession: firstly, that membership of the royal family opens the door to media deals less well-connected celebrities could only dream about. Secondly, they have learned that even royal fame will not, ultimately, help one of the biggest media organisations in the world
Awarding themselves the unearned prize for moral superiority and assuming that the electorate will do so too is a crippling fault of the modern Labour party. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has just outed himself as a severe sufferer of the syndrome via the wounded tone he has taken over being questioned about the events
As household budgets face their worst squeeze for decades, one wonders whether the public health establishment feels any remorse for their role in driving up the cost of living. The kinds of taxes – on food, alcohol, tobacco, and soft drinks – that nanny statists have dedicated entire careers toward delivering are proven to have taken a
Just 48 hours out from polling day and in Tory circles the expectations are that the local election results will be OK in some places and disastrous in others; there are predictions of ‘carnage in Surrey and Oxfordshire’. ‘Things are particularly bad in Scotland, bad in London, not great in the South West, but in
Abortion is a nuclear bomb of an issue, planted at the core of American liberalism. And it just went off. That’s why police in Washington, DC have put up barriers around the Supreme Court, following the extraordinary leak of a draft opinion that could overturn Roe v. Wade. Everybody now expects protests outside the court and
The leak of a Supreme Court Justice’s draft opinion that would overturn the constitutional right to an abortion has reignited perhaps the most divisive American cultural issue of the last 50 years. Justice Samuel Alito has laid out the case for reversing Roe v Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that enshrined the right of American women to
Schadenfreude is a funny thing. Once it was Labour laughing at Boris Johnson dodging questions about food and drink: now it’s their turn to face them too. Sir Keir Starmer had a somewhat excruciating appearance on this morning’s Today programme when he was asked repeatedly about his attendance at a work event in April 2021,
There are tears aplenty across America this morning as millions awake to the news that the Supreme Court is set to overturn Roe v Wade. The initial majority draft was leaked overnight, suggesting that the country’s highest court will strike down the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationwide. With Republican legislatures passing restrictive measures across America, the