All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There’s no point denying it, Labour is doing a bit better these days. Its poll rating is averaging a 39, which is back where it was this time last year after a long dip down into the low thirties that coincided with Boris Johnson’s ‘vaccine bounce’. These days it is the Tories languishing on an
If you only watch one thing on TV this Christmas, make it The Witcher (Netflix). It’s by turns funny, exciting, scary, moving, dark, exhilarating; the special effects and battle sequences and fantastical walled cities are convincing; the casting and acting are pleasing; the storylines are a perfect balance between the intimate and the epic. I’m
After the pandemic, is energy the next European crisis? Gas prices have hit new records, reaching $180 per barrel in the Netherlands, representing a fivefold increase over the past six months. This is driven by news that Russia has diverged gas flows from its main European pipeline to one that is going east via Poland.
Parliament has packed up for the holidays, with MPs and peers spending their final days in SW1 desperately dodging the omnipresent Omicron variant. But Mr S was intrigued to see an interesting intervention in the Lords on the day that recess was declared. Crossbench peer Baroness Finlay popped up to grill Foreign Office minister Lord Ahmad about
We’re closing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles in 2021. Here’s number nine: Lara Prendergast writing in August about the possible link between the vaccines and periods. It’s fashionable to talk about periods. Books on the subject, with glossy red and pink covers, are bestsellers. They have sassy titles like Period Power: A Manifesto
The Omicron variant is upon us, which means the return of the Scottish First Minister’s news conferences. These can be testy affairs, as Michael Blackley, the Scottish Daily Mail‘s political editor, found out at a recent one. Blackley had the temerity to politely question the Scottish government’s support for the hospitality sector, asking if Sturgeon
Nicola Sturgeon is continuing her crusade against the Scottish press. Just yesterday, Mr S was pointing out the First Minister’s habit of criticising journalists who question her Covid policies, only for her government to then abruptly U-turn a few days later. Shortly after the article was published, Sturgeon took to Twitter to boast about her latest ‘media-free volunteering session’
Public health officials in Britain and South Africa were on different planets for about a fortnight. While those in South Africa kept presenting data suggesting that Omicron caused less severe disease than earlier variants, scientists in Britain continued to claim it was too early to say. Scenarios published by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
The shenanigans at Northcliffe House have given Mr S much to write about in recent months. Whether it’s Geordie Greig’s sudden fall from grace, Ted Verity’s promotion or Lord Rothermere’s designs on DMGT, it appears that the Daily Mail creates as much drama as it reports. Unfortunately it seems that the shock return of Paul Dacre last
On Monday, Covid restrictions were rejected after the cabinet debated the issue robustly for the first time since the pandemic started. The Prime Minister said he’d revisit the decision, so the debate is very much still ongoing. But it wasn’t just ministers meeting that day. Sage assembled its experts as well, with over 70 scientists
Nationalism, grievance politics and a refusal to accept results which don’t go your way are not the only things Nicola Sturgeon has in common with Donald Trump. For Scotland’s First Minister has launched something of a war on the press in recent weeks, repeatedly rubbishing reporters and outlets which dare to question her handling of Covid. Unfortunately
Will comedy become the latest victim of ‘cancel culture’? Dame Maureen Lipman fears as much. ‘Cancel culture, this cancelling, this punishment, it’s everywhere,’ she told the BBC yesterday. She says that the world of comedy is in danger of being ‘wiped out’ because comedians are scared that audiences will take offence, and that they self-censor
It’s always difficult to know what to get a politics-mad relative at Christmas. Another Private Eye annual perhaps? Tickets to see Matt Forde’s stand-up tour? A Blu Ray box set of The Thick Of It? Or yet another ‘hilarious’ satirically themed book like ‘Five on Brexit Island‘ or ‘The Illustrated Tweets of Donald Trump.‘ Fortunately for those
We’re closing 2021 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 10: Julie Bindel’s piece from March on the Green party’s muddle over trans rights: At the Green party spring conference this weekend, a motion which sought to introduce a party policy on women’s sex-based rights was defeated. A whopping 289 delegates (out
Almost three years ago, I spoke on the phone to a man called Harry Miller. A Lincolnshire businessman, he’d just been interviewed by the police because someone had complained about things he’d written, on Twitter, about sex and gender and transgenderism. He was angry, and rightly so. After all, he’d broken no law, and even
With the release of the fourth Matrix film this Christmas, the idea behind the original movie is once again being talked about. The notion that the ‘real world’ is a computer-generated simulation was considered pure science fiction when the original film was released in 1999, but philosophers have long argued that there are good arguments
After growing calls from retail and hospitality for financial support to weather the ‘unofficial lockdown’ plaguing these industries, the Treasury today has responded. After a week of conversations with business leaders, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a £1 billion support package this afternoon, which includes one-off grants worth up to £6,000 for hospitality and leisure
Did a senior Chinese politician rape one of the country’s leading tennis stars? That certainly seemed to be the allegation from Peng Shuai, the former women’s world doubles champion. In a social media post in November, she wrote about her three-year affair with former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli: ‘You took me into your bedroom, wanting to
In late November, scientists in South Africa and Botswana identified a new variant of the virus that causes Covid. This variant — later named Omicron — was spreading rapidly throughout South Africa, particularly in Gauteng, its most populous province. As well as reporting these concerning epidemiological facts, South African scientists worked quickly to identify Omicron’s
As the year draws to a close, it’s worth reflecting on which of our national institutions came out of 2021 in the worst shape. There’s the Foreign Office of course, whose failure to anticipate or prepare for the fall of Kabul was so brutally exposed by its top mandarin’s testimony earlier this month. There’s the Church
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Boris Johnson chaired a Cabinet meeting yesterday to discuss the imposition of new Covid restrictions over Christmas. After three hours, the Prime Minister emerged to announce that no new restrictions had been decided on. These meetings are usually called for the Cabinet to rubber-stamp a decision made by Boris and his advisers, so what’s changed?
As government considers whether to lock us down once again, should it put economic support for businesses affected back on the table? The combination of Plan B and Boris Johnson’s insistence that we modify our social behaviour has led to empty cinemas, ghost trains, cancelled gigs and ‘postponed’ Christmas parties. Just as the economy was
Monday’s Cabinet meeting held over Zoom was a fraught affair by the sounds of it. Michael Gove and Sajid Javid were reportedly the leading voices calling for more restrictions on household mixing and on the hospitality sector, while the likes of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss argued that the data did not warrant such a
Not many people here in Westminster have a good word to say about the Theresa May years. But down in tiny San Marino, all that appears to be very different. For the landlocked republic recently chose to lavish two of its most prestigious honours on May and her Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, with both flying there in
Oh dear. It appears that Boris Johnson’s love-in with the great British public appears to have well and truly concluded. Let’s hope that in the wake of ‘Partygate’, Omicron and various scandals, our under-fire Prime Minister didn’t turn on the darts last night for some much-needed respite. For there, on primetime television, the crowd at
Two years ago this week I wrote a piece for Coffee House entitled ‘Corbyn may be a goner but his ideology is as strong as ever’. The thrust of my argument was that gloating over the demise of Magic Grandpa and his Momentum mob was premature, and what we call woke culture was ‘no passing
If two years away had left me in need of a reminder that home can be a peculiar place, waking this morning to the sound of air raid sirens would have done the job. Other places left with such equipment would probably not decide that they could fulfil the dual purposes of summoning volunteer firefighters
When Boris Johnson held a cabinet call on Monday afternoon, the expectation was that an announcement on new restrictions would be imminent. But the meeting dragged on for three hours and the Prime Minister emerged afterwards announcing that nothing has changed. The situation is ‘extremely difficult’ and arguments both for and against restrictions are ‘finely balanced’ so
Court decisions don’t often call for three cheers, but today’s Court of Appeal determination in the Harry Miller case is an exception. Essentially the judges have told the police to rewrite the rules on recording what they see as hate incidents. However technical this looks, this is actually an enormous blow in favour of the
Man makes Covid predictions and God laughs. Yet with the stakes this high in Britain, every bit of real-world data is useful. That’s why South Africa is so important: it’s a country with a well-digitised healthcare sector that we have to thank for sequencing the Omicron variant, and has been first to experience the impact. That’s
I arrived in Colombo the morning after the attack and went straight to the morgue to identify some of the 269 victims. The concrete building, with its pretty wooden roof, had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of Christian dead. Several bodies lay on the floor of the entrance, some only partially covered up. One