All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
As the French Presidentielle hots up for the final vote on Sunday week, both Macron and Le Pen are fighting bitterly for the support of the erstwhile supporters of the left-winger Mélenchon who came a very respectable third in last Sunday’s poll. From the great and the good, who detest Le Pen, there is a
There are many unanswered questions about the government’s new policy of compelled expulsion to Rwanda of uninvited asylum claimants. Here are just a few. 1) What is the estimated cost per expelled refugee? None of the briefings give a clue. In its absence, how can the policy be assessed for its value for money, compared
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This week the government has announced a pilot scheme meant to address the increasing number of asylum seekers dangerously crossing the English Channel. While some have criticised this plan as expensive and immoral it could prove to be popular among large swathes of Conservative voters. Cindy Yu talks with Isabel Hardman and Katy Balls about
Is the Prime Minister’s plan to divert some asylum seekers to Rwanda racist? Is it inhumane? Is it a dead cat to distract from his fixed-penalty notice for breaching Covid rules? These are the questions fixating the political-media-activist class today and while they are not necessarily unimportant, they neglect a question that might be of
It’s only been two weeks since the Ockenden report on the maternity scandal at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust came out. That report criticised – among many other things – a focus on ‘normal birth’ and a low Caesarean section rate which had harmed some of the mothers and babies in the cases
The Tory task at the next election is enormous. No party in the democratic age has ever won a fifth consecutive term in office and bruising battles over Brexit and Covid mean the Conservatives will have a tough ask next time out. Boris Johnson’s team still have two years left in office but inside No. 10 minds
The government’s announcement today that it wants to send a number of those who cross the Channel in small boats to Rwanda will be subject to challenge in both the Lords and the courts. It is hard to see how the policy gets through the upper house, where the Tories do not have a majority.
If you want to see what explosive growth looks like then I invite you to eschew all the old Covid charts and instead make your own graph plotting the number of Channel-hopping migrants year on year. In 2018 there were 299, in 2019 there were 1,843, in 2020 there were 8,466 and in 2021 there
The Islamist terrorist Ali Harbi Ali will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the murder of Sir David Amess MP. But as he fades from public view, will his risk also disappear? That’s a headache our beleaguered prison service will now have for decades to come. The signs are not promising. Harbi
How best to move attention away from the Prime Minister receiving a fine over partygate? An eye-catching government announcement to fly asylum seekers 4,500 miles to Rwanda. This is what Boris Johnson is due to announce in a speech this morning as part of a government crackdown on unauthorised migrants. Fines aside, this has been
The issue of Channel migrant crossings has been rumbling on for several years. But now, hundreds of small boats and thousands of asylum-seekers later, the Home Office claims to have the solution at last: send them to Rwanda. Home Secretary Priti Patel is in the African nation to sign a deal for a £120 million trial
In the past six weeks, Finland and Sweden’s security policies have changed more than they have over the past six decades. In much of what they do, the two countries come as a couple and were militarily neutral during the Cold War – but their defence cooperation has only deepened since Russia’s invasion of Crimea in
Who governs Britain? It’s a dangerous question, as Ted Heath learned half a century ago. But while he was concerned with untrammelled unions, ministers today must contend with another unelected cadre calling the shots. The difference is that now, like in so many horror movies, the calls are coming from inside the house. The Telegraph
If you want a glimpse of how toxic the UK’s race debate has become, take a look at the treatment of Tony Sewell. Sewell has devoted much of his working life to improving the lives of ethnic-minority Brits. The charity he chairs, Generating Genius, has been helping some of the most deprived young people get
It’s been a pretty awful week for Rishi Sunak. In the space of seven days, his wife was revealed to be a non-domiciled resident, average wages fell by the highest sum since 2013, he admitted having a US Green Card until last year and UK GDP grew by just 0.1 per cent. Oh, and there was
This is an edited version of Lord Wolfson’s resignation letter, following the Met’s decision to fine Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak over Downing Street parties which broke Covid restrictions in 2020. Dear Prime Minister, Everyone in a state, and indeed the state itself, is subject to the law It was a great honour to be
We have just had the first ministerial resignation over partygate. David Wolfson, the justice minister in the Lords, has quit over the matter saying that he doesn’t believe that continuing to serve is inconsistent with his ‘ministerial and professional obligation to uphold the rule of law’. Wolfson, who was a highly successful QC before becoming
Ali Harbi Ali has been given a whole life sentence. But perhaps this is too steep an introduction. Perhaps, like me, you’re beginning to lose track of the various perpetrators of Islamist terror in Britain as the news blurs into a constant revolving track of incidents, arriving to a sense of outrage deadened by repeated
At last, the longest running West End drama since The Mousetrap has come to a close. Dark horse candidate Chris Mason was this afternoon named as the BBC’s new political editor to take over from Laura Kuenssberg after a rollercoaster recruitment ride lasting nearly four months. Mason had originally ruled himself out of the running, saying
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After the news of the fixed penalty notices, Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie Johnson and Rishi Sunak paid their fines and issued a public apology. For Boris, the reaction has been surprisingly positive compared to the beginning of the year. The majority of cabinet ministers have come out in support of the Prime Minister, but
If Boris Johnson has a superpower, it is the ability to make others pay the price for his wrongdoing. Today the whipping boy is Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, though it must be said Ross walked clear-eyed into the path of the scourge. That’s another of the Prime Minister’s skills: he can convince people that
No. 10 was an endless series of parties. The Chancellor was more interested in socializing than sorting out the economy. And the Prime Minister was imposing rules on everyone else that he cavalierly ignored himself. It remains to be seen whether Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak can survive the fines handed out for breaking the lockdown
According to the Metropolitan police, Boris Johnson broke his own lockdown rules during the Covid crisis and, according to almost everybody else, he repeatedly lied to the Commons and the nation to cover it up. This is presumably why 57 per cent of people surveyed in one snap poll think he should resign as prime
Like the Greek titan Cronos devouring his own children, Vladimir Putin seems determined to turn against those he was once closest to – out of fear, anger and hubris. In the process, he is only further weakening his regime. The former deputy head of the infamous Federal Security Service (FSB), colonel general Sergei Beseda, has
Oh, those rotten Tories. You’ve got a PM being fined for parties, a Home Secretary making a mess of our borders and a Culture Secretary who can’t even spell the name of the Channel 4 star she’s berating. Sleaze is rife, inflation is back: it’s like the nineties without the hope. What could be worse? Well, there’s always
When Volodymyr Zelensky told the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier yesterday that he did not want to see him in Kyiv, it hit his delegation like a slap in the face. The political class in Berlin still underestimates the depths of mistrust caused by Germany’s Russia policy. Whether trust with Eastern Europe can be rebuilt will depend on
Boris Johnson made a big error, alright. But it wasn’t walking into a room where his wife had prepared him a surprise birthday cake. It was in overriding his liberal instincts and imposing highly prescriptive lockdown rules in the first place. If, in March 2020, he had stood up to advisers and said that no,
The cry of ‘aux barricades’ is reverberating around France as the country’s political elite rush to form a Republican Front. There is diversity in the ranks of those lining up to prevent Marine Le Pen reaching the Élysée. Communists, Capitalists and past presidents and prime ministers have mobilised for Emmanuel Macron ahead of the second
‘So you’ve got one, right, Chris?’ Lev Lvovich leaned in closer, and his beery breath was warm and damp on my face. ‘It’s all OK,’ he reassured me with a slur. ‘We’re friends. You can tell me!’ It was the middle of the evening, already long dark, and Lev and I were playing a drunken
Boris Johnson has had a surprisingly positive 24 hours since receiving a police fine. While not exactly positive, today’s front pages are far from a nightmare selection. A number of Tory-leaning papers call for a sense of perspective with the Daily Mail asking of the PM’s critics ‘don’t they know there’s a war on?’. On hearing
Confusion is infecting Shanghai. The authorities are dithering over a promised easing of severe lockdown rules in the face of record cases of Covid-19 and widespread anger over their cack-handed way they have handled the crisis. The city has become a test for China’s faltering zero-Covid strategy, with nervous Communist party leaders sending mixed signals
Unaccustomed as political scientists are to florid language, they have nevertheless come up with the ‘theory of the dyke’, to explain the continuing success of the nationalist and identitarian Rassemblement National. A dyke can hold back the flood for so long, but once water has overflowed there is no getting it back. When in 2002
‘I was very busy. The party was crap. I’m sorry you’re angry. Now leave me alone.’ That was the gist of Boris’s statement about being fined for attending an event in Downing Street to celebrate his birthday. A flustered-looking Prime Minister delivered the Partygate Declaration in a small, wood-panelled room with a nicely-lit painting behind
