All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There are few good things to say about the public conversation around transgender issues, which all too often shows us — all of us — at our worst. But it also offers up a seemingly endless series of case studies illustrating wider problems with the way contemporary culture and institutions deal with difficult ideas. The
The first PMQs of the year gave us a preview of the political debate we’ll be having for the next few months. Labour went after the government on inflation. Angela Rayner asked Boris Johnson why he had dismissed fears over it as unfounded back in October: Johnson denied he had said it — which is an
England’s wretched performance in the Ashes – which saw the side lose three tests and so the series to Australia last week – has been more abject than even the most inspired pessimist could have imagined. No sane observer expected England to win against Australia, but to lose the five match series little more than
Oh dear. It was just two weeks ago that Mr S remarked on Nicola Sturgeon’s unfortunate habit of sneering at journalists who criticised her Covid policies – only to then quietly backtrack days later, without apology or remorse. And now another U-turn can be added to the growing list, after the First Minister today announced
I’m not sure I should be writing this piece, given I am not Jewish. Are Gentiles like me allowed to comment on matters relating to the Jewish community? It’s hard to know these days, in this increasingly rigid era of identity politics, when apparently we must all ‘stay in our lane’; when anyone who veers
President Emmanuel Macron’s declaration that he intends to ‘emmerder’ – which loosely translates, excuse my English, as ‘piss off’ – the non-vaccinated has been widely reported this morning as the mother of all political gaffes. Macron declared, in an interview with Le Parisien, France’s best-selling newspaper: In a democracy, the worst enemy is lies and
For once, yesterday’s Downing Street press conference included a worthwhile question, and not of the ‘why aren’t you locking us down?’ variety. In fact, it had nothing to do with Covid at all. Harry Cole of the Sun asked why, given that the Prime Minister had once cited the ability to remove VAT from fuel
After what her husband put her through, it’s no surprise that Martha Hancock might not be the biggest fan of Boris Johnson’s government. The soon-to-be ex-wife of the disgraced former health secretary had to suffer days of snooping snappers and sensationalist speculation in June after news of her husband’s affair broke. The ordeal wasn’t exactly helped by
Keir Starmer is not a lucky politician. He has again been forced into self isolation after testing positive for Covid, which means he misses the first PMQs of the year. This is the Labour leader’s sixth period of self-isolation. So, instead it will be Rayner versus Johnson at PMQs at the later time of 3
A plague of apes has spread across social media. Wherever you look, blank simian faces stare back at you. Their features? Sickening. Their prices? Equally so. The apes have brought in more than $1 billion (£750 million) in sales. Eminem, Mark Cuban and Shaquille O’Neal are just some of the famous names who own an
The new year has not started well for Emmanuel Macron. It began badly when some bright spark in the Elysée thought it would be a good idea to mark France’s six-month presidency of the European Union by unfurling the bloc’s blue and gold flag under the Arc de Triomphe. Millions of French were not amused
This week marks two years since Iranian terror mastermind Major General Qassem Soleimani was torn apart by a Reaper drone missile in Baghdad, on the orders of Donald Trump. The Iranian regime has marked the anniversary with a flurry of antagonism throughout the region. On Monday, a coalition base outside Iraq’s main airport was attacked by
The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell is in Ukraine today. His mission? To show solidarity with Kiev in the face of Russian aggression. But the visit is too little too late. Former Soviet states, such as Ukraine, have grown used to the lofty rhetoric and empty gestures of their EU. The reality is that
Boris Johnson latest Covid press conference was slightly confusing. The Prime Minister spent nearly an hour saying nothing particularly new. He warned that there was ‘considerable pressure’ on the NHS at the moment and unveiled daily priority lateral flow testing for 100,000 essential workers so that key services, including healthcare, don’t seize up due to
The Prime Minister is attempting to lessen the threat posed by Omicron to essential services by requiring around 100,000 workers in specified industries to take daily Covid tests. In order to keep the lights on, maintain the supply of food and keep aeroplanes flying, these workers will have to test five days a week — so that
Tesla’s sleek, if expensive, electric cars are leading the battle against climate change. Its batteries are moving renewable energy into the mainstream, while its founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, likes to present himself as a free-thinking radical. It is hard to think of a company more right on than Tesla — well, okay, perhaps
Raise your glass to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who hypocritically escaped record Covid cases in her home state of New York to drink cocktails and attend a drag brunch in free Florida. It’s not uncommon for a politician’s vacation to become the subject of national criticism, but in response, AOC has managed to deploy the worst
If campaign messaging is too subtle then the chances are that the electorate won’t even notice it, so in his first speech of 2022 Keir Starmer kept things very simple. Standing in front of not one Union flag, but two, an immaculately turned-out Labour leader in notably perky form told an audience in Birmingham today:
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Keir Starmer arrived in Birmingham today to deliver his agenda-setting speech, outlining Labour’s vision for the future. The opposition leader had to tread the delicate path between offering a substantial, policy-based agenda whilst holding his cards close to his chest. ‘One of the challenges of opposition in the midterm is, they come up with new
Twelve months after a comprehensive trade deal was signed with the EU, where are we now? How has the UK performed? Even arch Remainer Andrew Adonis admitted last year that ‘the UK government clearly did a better job than the EU in procuring vaccine supplies and putting in place urgent industrial production’. Yet so far
Ministers have been keen to bang the ‘back to the office’ drum for much of the past year. But not all in the civil service have been so keen to embrace that message, with Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union, being a staunch defender of mandarins who work from home. Walking down by the
As Angela Merkel prepares to write her autobiography, ‘explaining her key decisions in her own words’, her successor has his hands full dealing with the decisions she did not make. Germany’s new chancellor Olaf Scholz has taken captaincy of a ship on a course to nowhere in particular. He is beginning to find out just
Keir Starmer begins 2022 looking like the best-placed Labour leader since the distant days of Tony Blair. That at least is what many opinion polls currently suggest. During December, the party moved into a sustained lead over the Conservatives, making Starmer more highly rated as a leader than Boris Johnson. But much of this has been
‘A stain on our soul’. That was how Gordon Brown, in his latest missive on the subject, described the failure of the west to ensure that the whole world is vaccinated. In a previous attack on western policy — at the end of November, just as Omicron was emerging — he wrote of “hoarding” and ‘vaccine
My late grandfather, the editor and columnist John Junor, nurtured fondly throughout his career the conviction that nobody could be sued for asking a question. It was in this spirit that he approached in his weekly column the story of a schoolteacher who had been acquitted for the third time in his career of sexually
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The government has delayed making any announcements about further Covid restrictions in the face of Omicron for weeks. But with more data coming in every day about this new variant, seemingly showing it leads to a lot less hospitalisations than previous waves, will there even be any new measures at all? ‘The science and the
‘Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.’ Well it seems the tech bosses over at German giant Siemens have, unwittingly or not, neglected that iron rule of history, judging by the comments this week of its CEO Roland Busch on China. For over in Germany, the Green Party are a sounder bunch
The political and economic new year is all about surging Covid and a surging cost of living. The list of what families in particular will contend with in the coming weeks is enough to induce tears of exasperation. Take schools for starters. Staff absences, largely caused by coronavirus, were 8 per cent at the end
Harry Potter returned to Hogwarts this weekend for a 20th anniversary special. He was joined in the Gryffindor common room by Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, but not – controversially – the woman who created it all. JK Rowling’s conception of Hogwarts, a school of witchcraft and wizardry, has become an institution. The books have
‘History-making’ is an all too often overused term when it comes to the Premier League. But yesterday was indeed something of a red letter day in English football. For Liverpool’s away game at Chelsea marked the first time fans could watch from standing areas for nearly 30 years, since the Taylor Report in the aftermath of the
Boris Johnson is hoping that his MPs have calmed down over the Christmas break and that this term will be slightly less turbulent than the autumn. There is not, though, much evidence that this will be the case. Worries about the cost of living, ongoing Covid problems and the unwinding of various Tory party rows
Oh dear. There seems to be something of an ongoing campaign against JK Rowling at the moment. The Harry Potter writer has dared to continue speaking out about her views on sex and gender in recent months, earning the ire of the Twitter mob in the process. Despite incidents – like her credit being downsized to being barely
The present best-case scenario is that Omicron peaks early in the new year and then falls just as fast as it did in South Africa. Given how much is still unknown about the variant, it’s impossible to plot any trajectory with confidence far less read a trend into a few days of data over the
One of the West’s great foreign policy failures of 2021 was the Iran nuclear negotiations, which remained bitterly unresolved as the clock passed midnight. Having spoken to a number of diplomatic sources on different sides in recent weeks, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the process has been woefully inept. Not only has