All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
These days, it’s rare to find an MP who is consistent in his politics. So Mr S was delighted to discover on a trip to the archives that there is an exception to this usual rule. Rupert Lowe has served as the no-nonsense Honourable Member for Great Yarmouth since July 2024. Prior to his election
Donald Trump really knows how to wind up his political opponents. That has to be the only rational explanation behind his decision to share on social media a video – apparently AI-generated – of what a US-owned Gaza Strip could look like in the future. It is 35 seconds of unadulterated visual idiocy, veering from
As a former member of a euthanasia review board in the Netherlands, I have closely followed the debate surrounding Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill. In 2001, and with 15 years of experience with makeshift regulations behind us, the Netherlands became the first country to introduce a euthanasia law. In support of this law, I worked
To the Commons, where Prime Minister’s Questions has this afternoon taken place. Sir Keir Starmer was asked a ranged of questions, from energy to aid to the economy. But while the Labour PM appeared to enjoy his to and fro with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, on the Chagos Islands he was a little more cagey…
So the moral rot at the BBC appears to run even deeper than we thought. The storm over its Gaza documentary just got a whole lot worse. As if it wasn’t bad enough that this Israel-mauling hour of TV was fronted by the son of a leading member of Hamas, now we discover that the
US President Donald Trump has announced that Ukraine is ready to sign a deal that gives US investors a share in the country’s mineral riches. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, who two days ago vowed not to sign any deal that his countrymen would be paying for ‘for ten generations’ is due in Washington on Friday
It is getting rather repetitive writing that Kemi Badenoch had an uncomfortable Prime Minister’s Questions, so how about this: today’s PMQs showed that Keir Starmer does not regard the Conservative leader as any kind of political threat. He openly ridiculed her in his answers – perhaps too openly to appear statesmanlike. The question that invited
It was inevitable that the announced cut to Britain’s international aid budget would cause a stir. The curtailment earlier this month of the USAID programme provoked outrage among progressive voices worldwide, despite the fact that scheme funded some dubious causes. Why, then, would our compassionate classes react any different? Yesterday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer explained
Keir Starmer has sought to get into Donald Trump’s good books by boosting defence expenditure – and doing it in a very Maga way: slashing the UK aid budget to pay for it. That has no doubt caught the eye of the US president, as has the Prime Minister’s promise to put British boots on
Well, well, well. It turns out that an international judge who ruled against Britain on the Chagos Islands has also, er, called for the UK to pay over £18 trillion in slavery reparations. Patrick Robinson is a Jamaican judge who has previously served on the International Court of Justice – and was one of the
To Donald Trump. The US president has shared a rather interesting video on his Truth Social platform, depicting an AI-generated Palestine with the caption: ‘Gaza 2025… What’s next?’.
Has Donald Trump’s heavy-handed negotiation style scored a win, or have the Ukrainians managed to wrench a victory of sorts from the jaws of defeat? Although the details are still unclear, Kyiv and Washington are confirming that a deal on mineral rights has been agreed, and that Volodymyr Zelensky will be on his way to
Fed up with Rachel Reeves’s tax rises, with the calls for wealth and mansion taxes, and the loss of non-dom status? For $5 million (£3.95 million), there is now a very easy escape route. President Trump has just announced a ‘golden visa scheme’, allowing investors an easy path to American citizenship. That is aimed at
In 2023, I had coffee with the celebrated Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov, on Yaroslaviv Val Street in the ancient heart of Kyiv. The modern city is built over the ruins of the rampart built by Yaroslav the Wise, the eleventh-century Grand Prince of Kyiv, to keep out invaders. Now, on the third anniversary of the
For a country that is notorious for its lack of connection to the outside world, North Korea is one of the world experts in cyberwarfare. Only this week, North Korean hackers managed to steal $1.5 billion from the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, in what is the largest cryptocurrency hack on record. The fact that the stolen
Ten years ago the idea of a British prime minister announcing a cut in foreign aid to 0.3 per cent of GDP would have been unthinkable. David Cameron’s Tories had exempted the Department for International Development from austerity, repeatedly declaring that it would be wrong to balance the books on the backs of the world’s
Energy bills may be going up and the economy may be flatlining, but not for long. Thankfully, the government’s Climate Change Committee has the answer. In a press release introducing the committee’s Seventh Carbon Budget, published this morning, interim chair Piers Forster declares: ‘The committee is delighted to be able to present a good news
Last December the European Commission published its ‘priorities’ for the next five years. All the bases were covered, from defence to sustainable prosperity to social fairness. And of course, the most important priority of all, democracy. ‘Europe’s future in a fractured world will depend on having a strong democracy and on defending the values that give
The day after the bodies of Ariel and Kfir Bibas were returned to Israel, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) holds a protest outside Westminster Magistrates Court on the Marylebone Road. I am here for the hearing of Ben Jamal, director of the PSC. He is charged with failing to comply with a police request that
Old soldiers never die, in the words of the barrack ballad, but increasingly they do not fade away either. With an unusually intense public focus on defence issues thanks to the insistence of Donald Trump that Europe up its military spending pronto, platoons of former senior officers are now popping out of the woodwork to
The SNP may be outperforming Scottish Labour in the polls, but the party of government still faces tough questions on its record as it approaches the 2026 Holyrood election. Today’s education attainment figures won’t help the nationalists’ argument that they deserve another chance in power – as the stats show the attainment gap between Scotland’s
Emmanuel Macron’s lightning visit to the White House was a tour de force of French diplomatic energy, skill and bravado. Whether Macron has managed to convince Donald Trump of the need to involve Kyiv and Europe in US-Russian negotiations on the war in Ukraine will become clear in the next fortnight. But what it demonstrated forcefully was
The prime minister has told the House of Commons that defence spending will rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027. The UK already spends 2.3 per cent, so this works out as an increase of £13.4 billion a year. It will largely be funded by substantial cuts to the international aid budget. It is
Politics is a matter of timing – and Keir Starmer perfected today. Barely two hours after Kemi Badenoch’s big foreign affairs speech, the Prime Minister has stolen the headlines off her in a textbook example of the difference between fruitless opposition and the possibilities of government. While the Tory leader could only muse on the
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Kemi Badenoch has today given a major speech outlining the Conservatives’ commitment to ‘realism’ in their foreign policy. She said, ‘You cannot help others if you cannot help yourself’, and that the sovereignty and strength of Britain matters ‘above all’. She also pressed Keir Starmer to push defence spending north of the 2.5 per cent
It will be an unacceptable intrusion on our sovereignty. And it will pave the way for American domination of the internet. Ministers will no doubt be appalled by the suggestion by President Trump that he will impose tariffs on the UK if we don’t rip all the tech legislation that he doesn’t like, especially if
Uh oh. Sir Keir Starmer made a big statement in the Commons today on raising defence spending – but before the Prime Minister could get started, his party faced a rather big telling off from the Speaker about following the ministerial code. As Lindsay Hoyle explained to parliamentarians, texts of ministerial statements should be provided
To the Commons, where Sir Keir Starmer has just made a rather big announcement on the issue of defence. The Prime Minister took to the Chamber today to announce to parliamentarians that Labour will raise Britain’s defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 – with a commitment to hit 3 per cent
If you’ve recently been to the cinema or turned on your streaming platform of choice, no doubt you’ll have been offered ‘new’ stories that are fundamentally familiar. From Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, to Dune: Part Two, and now Bridget Jones 4 – the film industry is being driven by franchises and sequels. Of the top 10 highest-grossing films released
Average gas and electricity bills will rise by £111 a year in April after the regulator Ofgem announced an increase to the energy price cap. The 6.4 per cent hike means the average dual-fuel household bill will hit £1,849 annually. The rise is more than anticipated, with analysts at Cornwall Insight predicting that bills would
Kemi Badenoch set out her world view in a speech this morning at Policy Exchange. As protesting tractors blared their horns outside, inside the room the Tory leader was sounding the alarm for the post-Cold War order. The UK, she warned, faces a ‘bitter reckoning’ unless it wakes up to the fact that ‘it is
Among the big, bad oil companies in borstal for environmental offenses, BP has long been the relatively benign one, the class pet. Remember how former chief executive Lord Browne two decades ago promised to take the company ‘Beyond Petroleum’ to a golden future of clean energy? In 2004, in a forerunner of the ESG indices
Back to Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill, which continues to undergo scrutiny as it makes its passage through parliament. This morning, the bill committee gathered to further discuss the legislation – and, in yet another baffling move, MPs voted by almost two to one against an amendment that would have required a patient to be
