All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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Today P&O ferries announced to 800 staff that they were being made redundant with immediate effect as security mounted to ferries to escort the staff off the premises. The company said the staff will be served with “enhanced” severance packages, calling it a “necessary decision” to protect its remaining 2,200 staff. Was this fair when
With just 24 days to go before the first round of French presidential voting, the political landscape has become borderline surreal, a dream state of self-induced hallucinations. The war in Ukraine has utterly overshadowed the vote. Any resemblance to an actual democratic contest might now be regarded as coincidental. If the current polls are right, Macron will enter
The Bank of England has voted to hike interest rates to 0.75 per cent, the third successive rise, which puts rates back to their pre-pandemic levels. Historically, we’re still at ultra low levels, but the rise is anything but insignificant. After the Federal Reserve made its first move to lift interest rates by 0.25 per
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, alongside fellow prisoner Anoosheh Ashoori, has attracted enormous amounts of praise and joy at a time when the news has felt like a relentless stream of misery. How could you feel anything other than joy at the release of a young mother after six years away from her child? These freed Britons have endured
While the world is watching Ukraine, there is another former Soviet republic that has quietly undergone regime change. Turkmenistan’s 65-year-old former president, known, in the manner of a comic book superhero, as ‘The Protector’, stepped down in February. With Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s departure, the Mejlis Assembly duly called for elections on 12 March. As regime changes go
As the western world tightens sanctions on Russia, India is opting for a different strategy: sitting on the fence. ‘We are on the side of peace,’ India’s prime minister Narendra Modi insists. In reality, this means keeping shtum when it comes to condemning Putin’s aggression and abstaining at the United Nations General Assembly on a resolution criticising
Putin, of course, can never be wrong. Hence the desperate struggle, familiar to other personalised authoritarianisms, to find suitable scapegoats, because if the monarch is infallible, then anything that goes badly must be someone else’s fault, whether because they misled the boss or simply failed to follow orders. What is especially alarming is when the
‘They are lying to you here,’ declared the placard held aloft by the journalist who stormed the set of one of Russia’s most popular news channels this week. Marina Ovsyannikova also recorded a video saying she was ashamed to work for what she called a Kremlin propaganda network. So what are Russians really being told about Putin’s war
War and virtue don’t mix well, especially when it comes to the dirty business of energy supplies. As soon as the Ukraine situation turned nasty the UK government quietly did a turn on winding down North Sea gas, and may possibly do the same on fracking. And, having sworn off Russian hydrocarbons, Boris is now
If war in Ukraine is to end any time soon, the relationship between Moscow and Beijing will prove crucial. A relatively benign scenario is that China might become increasingly frustrated by the protracted war, and by the obvious incompetence and spectacular inhumanity of Putin’s military offensive. It would be rational for president Xi Jinping to
There was a rare display of unity in the Commons chamber this afternoon when Liz Truss gave a statement on the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. While Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner went on the attack at PMQs, asking whether Johnson’s comments when he was Foreign Secretary had made things worse, there was a far more
Boris Johnson is out in Saudi Arabia, urging Mohammed bin Salman to turn on the oil taps again. But the Prime Minister isn’t the only politician who’s been able to sample the delights of the Middle East this year. No less than nine of his parliamentary colleagues jetted out to the region last month, running up a
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After 6 years in jail in Iran, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been released and will return home to her husband and their seven-year-old daughter. The UK has paid a debt of £400 million as part of this negotiation which has been an ongoing diplomatic dispute between Britain and the Iranian government. Who were the key players
Is Boris a Russian agent? That bizarre question occupied most of PMQs where Dominic Raab deputised for the PM while he travels abroad. The issue was raised by Angela Rayner, standing in for Keir Starmer. She said Boris’s friend, Evgeny Lebedev, had been granted a peerage despite warnings from the security services. ‘What she suggests
In light of Russia’s abhorrent invasion of Ukraine, certain corners of the internet have become obsessed – yet again – with Russia’s supposed involvement in the 2016 Brexit referendum. The connections are always left necessarily tenuous: there is very little in the way of logical reasoning that could really connect the two. Plenty of pro-Brexit figures have been
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Freddy talks to Anatoly Karlin, author of the Powerful Takes Substack. Speaking from Moscow, Anatoly discloses the extent of support for anti-war protests in Russia and the role of the US in inciting nationalism in Ukraine.
So now you have to undergo a political purity test to play at Wimbledon? Judging from the pressure being put on Daniil Medvedev, that seems to be the case. Medvedev might have to publicly denounce Vladimir Putin in order to enjoy the privilege of competing at Wimbledon this year. As a headline in the Times
When Angela Rayner faces Boris Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions, it is obvious that both sides rather enjoy the exchanges. When she’s up against Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, as she was today, it feels like more of a grudge match. The session naturally centred around Ukraine, but as is Rayner’s habit, it was more
Something is rotten in the state of Scotland. No, not the creaking CalMac ferry fleet but rather the health of free speech in the birthplace of the Enlightenment. The warning signs have been there for years now, what with the Hate Crime Act, the Scottish government’s efforts to evade Holyrood scrutiny and the SNP’s own intolerance for
Bashing fee-paying schools is a popular sport – and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is as good an excuse as any to engage in it. Labour MP Ian Mearns has called for schools to lose their charitable status if they take fees from oligarchs linked to the Putin regime. Meanwhile, Tory MP Nickie Aiken has said
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been released from custody in Iran, according to Iranian government officials. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the 43-year-old British-Iranian woman, was detained in Iran over five years ago when she was accused of plotting to overthrow the Tehran government. Her case became even more high profile when Boris Johnson was criticised for making a misleading statement during
It would be ridiculous to claim that Boris Johnson’s visit to Saudi Arabia is not morally problematic. He is going to a country which held a mass execution for 81 people this weekend – a record number – and to visit a man who US intelligence blames for the brutal murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Yet,
Chris Bryant has been keen to make the most of the Ukraine crisis, demanding greater sanctions on Putin’s cronies at every turn. The Labour MP scored an early hit when he used parliamentary privilege to reveal that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich was identified by the Home Office in 2019 as having links to the Russian state as well
Among the many weapons being used by the Ukrainian military to inflict losses on the Russian invasion forces, several have risen to prominence in the country and on social media. Alongside ‘St Javelin’ and the ‘Ghost of Kiev’ which have mythologised the eponymous anti-tank missile and the Ukrainian air force’s Mig-29 fighters, the Bayraktar TB-2
Residents fleeing the Kiev suburb of Bucha reported Chechens machine-gunning cars, even those with the word ‘children’ written in their windscreens. The arrival of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who claims to lead a force of 10,000 of his countrymen, will have unnerved Ukrainian volunteers defending their city. When the Chechens intervened in eastern Ukraine in
Nigel Huddleston is Under-Secretary of State for Sport, Tourism, Heritage and Civil Society, hardly the biggest job in government. Yet he seems a little inebriated on what little authority he has – at least if his latest remarks to the Department for the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee are anything to go by. Huddleston
Since David Frost quit the government in December over its political direction, he has not said that much about the future of UK-EU affairs. But in the Churchill lecture at the University of Zurich tonight, he sets out a potential new basis for relations. His tone is warm and marks a deliberate attempt to move
Omicron has broken through China’s Covid wall. On Tuesday, the country saw a record-high of more than 5,000 cases, the highest number since the original Wuhan outbreak. To Brits (and most people around the world), that might sound like a laughably small number – but, as you might expect, China’s zero Covid machine has jumped
As England axes the last of its Covid regulations, Nicola Sturgeon is extending Scotland’s – saying that mask wearing in shops, on buses, trains and taxis will be continued ‘for a further short period’. You can see why. Cases are surging and Scottish hospitals have more Covid patients than at any point during the winter.
Last night’s spat between the Foreign Office and the Treasury was hardly reassuring for Unionists. If you missed it, a Treasury amendment proposed a change to customs regulations where ‘UK’ was replaced with ‘Great Britain’. What’s so bad about that, you might ask. The answer is that it would have codified the carving-out of Northern
Aside from deterring a few tourists, and people filming fantasy epics, closing down New Zealand during the Covid pandemic didn’t make much difference to the global economy. Neither, come to think of it, did Mark Drakeford’s determination to keep Wales free from Covid-19, and even Australia’s dedication to closing itself down didn’t matter that much
It was just 12 weeks ago that a sleaze scandal threatened to rock the Commons to its core. Owen Paterson’s efforts to overturn the findings of a probe into his lobbying activities triggered weeks of revelations, controversy and bad headlines about MPs’ outside earnings and second jobs. But three months on, are things going back