All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Victory Day celebrations on 9 May have been, under Vladimir Putin, through a dramatic mutation. In my childhood, in the late eighties and early nineties, it was, apart from the New Year, by far the best holiday of the year. You normally spent it outside, in excellent May weather with lilac blooming all over and
Oh dear. It seems that Boris Johnson’s passionate electioneering doesn’t extend to, er, knowing where he actually is. The Prime Minister has been out and about on the campaign trail, touring the country to drum up support for his party’s flagging fortunes, three days before voters cast their verdict on his government’s recent woes. Posting
When we talk about ‘under-served communities’, we typically think in terms of an absent or neglectful state. Yet one of the most under-served groups of all is one for whom the state is never absent: prisoners. Justice secretary Dominic Raab is in the headlines after he sent prison and probation staff a style guide instructing
The debacle over Scotland’s census will not, it seems, have a happy ending. Nearly a quarter of households (some 604,000) are yet to complete their return, and had been facing £1,000 fines from today. It could have been a prosecution of unprecedented scale, but the deadline has been extended to the end of May. Sir Tom
The biggest long-term threat to the Conservatives is neither partygate nor even the cost of living crisis – but declining rates of home ownership. As Mrs Thatcher understood, when people are able to afford their own home, they become more conservative in outlook. They put down roots in their local area and they gain a
For a week and a half no migrants at all crossed the Channel in dinghies. A theory began to take hold that the mere prospect of migrants being transferred on to Rwanda – a plan unveiled by Home Secretary Priti Patel in mid-April – was already acting as an overwhelming deterrent to people in camps
In Britain it was the Tories who tore themselves apart over Europe, but in France it is the left for whom Brussels has long been a battleground. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the de facto leader of the French left following his impressive performance in last month’s presidential election, is an unabashed Eurosceptic, as are most in his
It really is quite easy to click on internet pornography by accident. There’s a persuasive argument that the whole of the modern world, as shaped by the internet, is an accidental by-product of the insatiable global market for new, easier, cheaper, faster and more private ways of looking at bare boobies. The clean and useful
Milestones are always a time for reflection. So the 25th anniversary of New Labour’s election triumph this weekend has prompted an outpouring of dewy-eyed reminiscences from commentators of a certain vintage about how great it all was. Cool Britannia, the minimum wage, PFI deals and the Millennium Dome. Truly, a golden age: things really could only get better. To
Is there anything more extraordinary than dining in New York City? Whether you’re sitting down for the Michelin star experience of a lifetime at Le Bernardin or squeezing in at the counter of Vanessa’s Dumpling House on the Lower East Side ($1 a pop), the New York restaurant combines atmosphere with quality food in a
Privatisation isn’t the only issue currently worrying Channel 4 bosses. The network’s eponymous news programme has been facing questions for months about its alleged use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) amid mounting concern that they could be used to silence staff in equal pay, discrimination, harassment and victimisation cases. Campaigners, MPs and whistleblowers are among the dozens of high-profile
In Barnsley it’s a pork pie, in Ireland it’s a beer jug and in parts of the North, we now know the word ‘growler’ can mean something else entirely. Thanks to Angela Rayner, I have learned a vulgar term for female genitalia, and something much more useful – that after 20 years of dealing with
Large parts of the UK vote in local council elections on Thursday. In Westminster, however, the focus is on the so-called ‘pestminster’ scandal after the revelation that as many as 56 MPs are under investigation for some form of sexual misconduct. The case that has most recently sparked headlines is that of the Conservative MP Neil Parish,
‘Secret election pact to stitch up Boris’ roars the front page of today’s Mail on Sunday. Ahead of Thursday’s local elections, Oliver Dowden, the Conservative party’s chairman, has written an angry letter to Sir Keir Starmer. He claims Labour is standing down candidates ‘in swathes of the country’ where Lib Dem support is strong to avoid splitting
He sits alone at a huge glossy desk like a James Bond baddie in his lair. The viewer expects Daniel Craig to burst in and demand the nuclear codes at gunpoint. This is Piers Morgan in Uncensored, his new flagship show for Talk TV which launched last Monday. The week began with a storm of
The state would be prioritised over everything else. Taxes would be constantly, if stealthily, raised. Spending would be reclassified as investment, and shifted off the balance sheet wherever possible. And macro stability would be out-sourced to the Bank of England, while the Treasury would take total control of domestic policy. A quarter of a century
Johnny Depp, a Hollywood star whose career currently consists of a perfume advert, is suing his ex-wife Amber Heard, a Hollywood actress who didn’t star in anything before she met him, for defamation. He says that she destroyed his career by telling the world he’s a wife-beater – and he wants $50 million in compensation.
Napoleon is said to have placed a high value on lucky generals, though no one has succeeded in identifying the source of the quote. Then again, he would hardly have been in favour of unlucky ones. Luck is equally important in politics. For ten years, Margaret Thatcher had it, and exploited it ruthlessly. Her successor,
A female suicide bomber killed three Chinese teachers and a local driver at Karachi University in Pakistan this week. The separatist militant group, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), claimed responsibility for the attack which targeted a Chinese language centre at the university. The Confucius Institute, the BLA said in a statement, was a ‘symbol of
Xi Jinping has made his choice. He is sticking with his ‘best friend’ Vladimir Putin, and no end of Russian atrocities or wishful thinking in the west is going to alter that. Their axis of autocracy presents a far-reaching challenge to western democracies, which the UK in particular is struggling to come to terms with.
Last night, Mr Steerpike was on his way back to Glasgow Central station from a game between Ayr United and Partick Thistle, sipping a hot water and lemon. He would have liked something stronger, only the Scottish government — which took control of Scotland’s railway services on April 1 — has extended the Covid-era ban
Neil Parish, the MP for Tiverton and Honiton, is set to quit the Commons. After he was this week accused of watching porn in the chamber, Parish swiftly had the whip withdrawn and referred himself to Parliament’s complaints process. But he initially claimed he would stay in the job and continue to represent his constituency until
Edinburgh Napier University claims to be one of the largest providers of nursing and midwifery education in Scotland. It now seems they are expanding their remit to the care and treatment of pregnant males. This is Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland after all, where the SNP government passed legislation that redefined ‘woman’ to include those who have
34 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to the journalist James Pogue about his latest piece for Vanity Fair magazine, in which he details the key figures and thinking behind the ‘new right’. Pogue is the contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and author of ‘Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West’.
In the week ending 15 April, there were 644 deaths registered in England and Wales involving Covid-19 as the underlying cause. In total, there were 9,919 deaths registered. Or, to put it in terms that a Covid hysteric might understand, enough people to fill 24 jumbo jets. You don’t hear much about the 9,275 deaths
20 min listen
A big congratulations to Linda Nelson who has just become a British citizen. Fraser details the long and taxing journey it took for his wife to reach this point in his Telegraph column this week and asks why as an immigrant nation do we make becoming British so challenging for new arrivals? On the podcast,
The Biden team is following in Barack Obama’s footsteps by launching a Disinformation Governance Board. And the current administration is even one-upping the former president by employing the Department of Homeland Security to combat what it calls ‘misinformation’. Obama created a website in 2011 called ‘Attack Watch’ to counter what his 2012 campaign would label
There is an endlessly repeated witticism by the poet Anatole France that ‘the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’ What France certainly did not foresee is that an entire country – and an ostentatiously progressive one
The young woman’s screams were drowned out by the sound of drums. No older than her teens, she had been drugged and raped before being tied down and strangled by four men, while repeatedly stabbed by the older woman in charge. This was the scene in perhaps the most famous accounts of life among the
It seems to many of us that British society is falling apart and that this – even more than our present economic difficulties – is the biggest problem politics has to deal with. This falling apart is not by accident, but by the design of a new cult of leftism that seeks to divide people
19 min listen
Labour has admitted that deputy leader Angela Rayner, was also at an event where Keir Starmer was pictured drinking a beer. Could the pair be fined? Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Kate Andrews
