All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Conservative Party Chair and Minister without Portfolio, Oliver Dowden, made headlines on Tuesday after a speech at the Washington-based Conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation. In his speech Dowden lambasted woke ideology, berated cancel culture and even argued that these concepts constitute a new brand of modern Maoism. Despite this sabre rattling, it is clear
Another day and another wait to see what, if anything, will happen in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin still has thousands of soldiers on the Russian border, there’s accusation of cyber-attacks on Kiev’s banks and defence ministry while Moscow media has been ridiculing the West over yesterday’s ‘day of no invasion.’ So, as Westminster works itself into a frenzy, Mr
In a submission for the hotly contested prize for fatuous belligerence over Ukraine, Ben Wallace, UK secretary of state for defence, has spoken of a ‘whiff of Munich’ regarding negotiations to end the crisis. It may only be a matter of time before he, or some fellow tub-thumper, reaches into the historical locker and pulls
On Wednesday, in a decision that ought to get a good deal more attention than it will, our Supreme Court said that it was unacceptable that the press should be allowed to tell us that someone is being investigated by the police. It confirmed that someone in that position, an international businessman being investigated over
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Joe Biden has set out his intentions to impose sanctions against Russia should Putin decide to launch an invasion against Ukraine. Are European countries that economically rely on Russia prepared for the inevitable costs that will come with these sanctions? ‘There is no way you could have a set of sanctions on Russia without thinking
Storm clouds looming over the EU’s ‘rule of law’ dispute turned a shade darker on Wednesday. The European Court of Justice rejected challenges from Hungary and Poland against a controversial budget mechanism linking adherence to democracy and EU funding. In an indication of the significance of the ruling for the bloc’s future, the verdict was the first
Why does Vladimir Putin need Russia Today and Sputnik News when the western media are doing such a great job on his behalf? Throughout his two decades in power, Putin has yearned for international respect. Failing that, he’ll settle for fear. And what more satisfying outcome could there be for a serial sabre-rattler like Putin
In his famous thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat was both dead and alive in potential, until its box was opened to find out. Likewise, it seems the much-heralded war in Ukraine is at once imminent and unthinkable, and we don’t know which. The date and indeed time of a massive invasion of Ukraine asserted with such
OK, I finally watched Netflix’s Don’t Look Up. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it — especially before its effective subtitle for us thickos, THIS IS A METAPHOR FOR CLIMATE CHANGE, YOU F-ING MORONS. Otherwise, the film might have playfully dramatised the more general phenom of fiddling with celebrity bodices while Rome burns. The comet at which I’m
When Sir Tony Brenton writes a letter to the Times, as he frequently does, it always says at the bottom that he was British ambassador to Moscow. The uninformed reader could be forgiven for thinking the sub-editors have got it back to front and he was actually the Russian ambassador to London. Sir Tony’s message in
So that’s that then. After years of claims and counter-claims, Prince Andrew has settled with Virginia Giuffre for an eight-figure sum thought to be in the region of £12 million. This, for a woman he said he had never met. Hmm. The humiliation for the disgraced royal isn’t over yet though: self-promoting Corbynista Rachel Maskell,
When German chancellor Olaf Scholz met Russian president Vladimir Putin yesterday, the visuals said it all. As he had done with Emmanuel Macron, Putin kept his visitor at arm’s length, or rather at five metres’ length. Sitting at opposite ends of the Kremlin’s infamous long table, the two men were as physically far away from
Valentine’s day might have passed but the spirit of Kamasutra is still alive in one party at least. The many positions of the SNP’s finest on post-Scexit pensions has greatly amused Mr S in recent weeks, with Ian Blackford in particular appearing to be something of a tartan Tantric. First, the Westminster leader claimed that ‘absolutely
P.J. O’Rourke was the finest conservative satirist of his generation and therefore the finest of any political persuasion. Satire, an impertinent and mean-spirited attack on authority, is generally and perhaps even inherently a left-wing genre but O’Rourke came into his own in the wake of the 1960s, when the counterculture tried to overthrow authority but
Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Moscow last week was reminiscent of a trip made by Charles de Gaulle to the Russian capital in November 1944. Neither man left much of an impression on their host. Macron, after six hours of talks with Vladimir Putin, failed to persuade the Russian president to de-escalate the situation on the
Oil will shoot up to $130 a barrel. The prices of natural gas will double in a few hours, tipping a few more energy companies into bankruptcy. The tech stocks will crash, currency traders will panic, and the bond markets will crater. If Russian tanks do start to roll across the Ukrainian border this week
In some ways, the news is a disappointment. Prince Andrew’s decision to settle the civil case filed against him by Virginia Giuffre has likely deprived the public of weeks of damaging revelations. After much lawyer-led bravado about how the Duke of York was going to fight the scandalous and defamatory claims against him, he has
The presumption of many MPs — and maybe many of you — is that the Met is bound to issue a fixed penalty notice to the Prime Minister for attending parties in Downing Street, because the half dozen ‘events’ he attended look, swim and quack like a party, and therefore must have been a breach
Happy register of interests’ day! Commons sleazebusters marked Valentines’ day yesterday by quietly releasing an updated list of MPs and what they’ve been declaring. There’s plenty of fun stuff there: Carlton plotter Will Wragg got a handy £5,000 donation from his gentleman’s club of choice while both Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and Labour MP Grahame
It was the hot tub that did it. Photos of Canadian convoy supporters relaxing in a hot tub on a downtown Ottawa street last weekend were splashed all over the news. Now Justin Trudeau is mad and he’s gone and invoked war measures, known as the Emergencies Act. He wants that hot tub off the
There seems to be a degree of confusion that surrounds some court cases these days. Sadly this has proven true of the latest case by the Good Law Project, which has challenged the hiring of Dido Harding as chair of Test and Trace in the courts. This afternoon the High Court released its judgment on
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Two issues dominate the news this week. While Putin is recalling some troops back to their barracks, the situation in Ukraine is far from over. Meanwhile at home, we are in a cost of living crisis that could continue for years to come. What will the government do to resolve this crisis? All to be
Who runs the NHS? With a £136 billion budget for NHS England and NHS Improvement eating up 17.5 per cent of tax revenue, there should be a clear answer to this. But ministers were left wondering when the time came to announce what the health service would achieve with its extra £12 billion from the
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In February 1995, Jacques Chirac was at 12 per cent in the polls. Two months later he was president. Two months is precisely the time remaining before the first round of voting in the 2022 presidential election. At the moment, President Macron’s advantage looks unassailable: the Economist’s tracker puts his chances of being re-elected at
This week marks two years since Rishi Sunak was thrust from relative obscurity into the political spotlight as Chancellor of the Exchequer. After less than a month in post, he delivered his first Budget. Weeks later, Britain was in lockdown. How has the ‘Covid Chancellor’ fared in the intervening period? When he was splashing taxpayer
War, what is it good for? So asked The Temptations about Vietnam. But now a maverick independent peer appears to be answering that question quite seriously. As Westminster works itself into a frenzy over possible conflict with Russia, Lord Truscott – a non-affiliated member of the Upper House – has used the subject to ask the British government for
It was Valentine’s day yesterday in Westminster and while Steerpike did a round-up of MPs’ messages to their partners, there was one romantic dispatch he appears to have missed. Step forward Felicity Cornelius-Mercer, better known as the other half of Johnny, the veterans-obsessed Tory MP for Plymouth Moor View. Felicity’s Twitter game has been raising
On Sunday night, France’s ‘liberty convoy’ filled a supermarket carpark outside Lille, after leaving Paris. A video on the group’s Telegram account showed hundreds of assembled vehicles, a sea of lights and French flags, with shouts coming from all directions. The cars had arrived earlier in the evening with crowds of locals lining the road,
Is the Metropolitan Police fit for purpose? The question haunts the minds of many Londoners, particularly women, despite the resignation of Cressida Dick. But it haunts one community in particular: ultra-orthodox Jews. The Met’s list of recent failures is almost as long as it is shameful. Sarah Everard, killed by an officer who kidnapped her
There has been a subtle change of tone from Joe Biden and Boris Johnson about the likelihood of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has gone from ‘highly likely’ to ‘there may be a diplomatic solution’ — or from ‘almost all hope lost’ to ‘chink of hope’. So from where does that hope emanate? Largely, I am
As the Foreign Secretary warns an invasion of Ukraine by Russia could be ‘imminent’, Boris Johnson has been spending the day on a ‘Levelling Up’ tour in a bid to get his premiership back on track. The stops include both the North of England and Scotland. For the latter part, the Prime Minister today visited Rosyth Dockyard where
The west is still in the dark on what Vladimir Putin will do next. The Russian military build-up on the Ukrainian border continues but in televised meetings with Sergey Lavrov, his foreign minister, Putin was told that there is a case for ‘continuing and intensifying’ diplomatic discussions with the West. For Putin — who smarts