All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
You know you’ve arrived when professors start thinking about how to look after you during a major emergency. As a vegan, I was thrilled to read in the Times this week that Professor Tim Lang, a professor of food policy, has told the government that us meat-dodgers must be catered for in any ‘food apocalypse’. Speaking at
In recent years, governments looking for good news on growth have sounded increasingly desperate, like a doctor looking for signs of an improvement in a terminally ill patient. In the first quarter of this year Britain’s economy grew by 0.7 per cent, slightly higher than expected – a fact seized upon by this already beleaguered government.
There’s not much that’s green in Larkhall, Scotland. So staunchly Protestant unionist is the ex-mining town in South Lanarkshire that it has scrubbed itself of anything associated with Irish Catholicism. The local Subway franchise has grey panelling on its front, and local pharmacies have opted for blue signage. The 15,000-strong area has one football team:
Another day, another bit of bad press for the Labour party. Attorney General Lord Hermer sparked outrage when he compared political threats to leave the ECHR to the Nazis during a speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank on Thursday – and has since acknowledged, rather begrudgingly, that his ‘choice of
Another day, another sign of the British state’s acceptance of criminality. This time it’s the news that almost half of people caught in possession of Class A drugs avoid criminal sanction, with the police either issuing a ‘community resolution’, which does not create a criminal record, or avoid any action at all ‘in the public interest’. This
‘The policymakers that live in London and stuff, they don’t really care about a small town like Rochdale. I just feel as though, for many years it’s been one of those forgotten things, we live under the shadow of Manchester.’ This quote, from a teaching assistant in his 30s with young children, is from a
Lord Hermer KC has done it again. Delivering RUSI’s annual security lecture this week, the Attorney General set out to ‘depolarise’ the debate about international law, before promptly comparing those who are open to withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) with Carl Schmitt, the notorious German jurist who joined the Nazi party
Faced with a cost-of-living crisis, rising delinquency, failing public services, and riots in the suburbs, the French government has finally sprung into action – it’s banning smoking outdoors. Not entirely, of course, just in places where children might be. The new rules, coming into force in July, prohibit lighting up in any space ‘frequented by
Why can’t academics write properly? Why can’t they express themselves in language that normal people can understand? These are questions that have echoed through the ages, and ones that still resonate today – so much so that even academics are starting to ask them. In an address to the Hay Festival this week, Professor Kehinde
Is it getting harder for Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić to maintain his balancing act between Moscow and the West? Why else, after all, would Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) suddenly revive a year-old story about covert arms supplies to Ukraine? Back in June of last year, the Financial Times splashed the story that Serbia had
As if the Attorney General hadn’t proven his ability for conjuring up negative headlines enough, Lord Hermer took it upon himself on Thursday to compare political threats to leave the ECHR to the Nazis. Speaking to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank, Hermer earnestly told his audience: ‘The claim that international law
To understand what’s really going on with the latest British Medical Association strike threat – it is currently balloting 50,000 doctors over a putative six-month strike in support of a 29 per cent pay claim for ‘resident’ (formerly called junior) doctors – it’s instructive to look at what happened to Liverpool City Council in the
Rachel Reeves announced that a trade deal with the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) – in other words, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states – was imminent last week. It was then leaked that, even though the deal was with unashamed petrostates with no time for net zero and, in some cases, a distinctly doubtful record
16 min listen
Lots to discuss today: Robert Jenrick takes on TfL, a Nazi jibe from the attorney general and allegations of shoplifting made against our own Michael Simmons. But we start with Keir Starmer’s big speech yesterday, where the theme was ‘get Nigel’, after polling from More in Common showed that framing the election as a two-horse
It is an axiom of political debate that once you compare your opponents to Hitler’s Nazis you have definitely lost the argument. That golden rule seems to have escaped the notice of the Attorney General Lord Hermer, who, in a speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank did just that. Hermer,
Keir Starmer has already folded on the winter fuel payment, promising a partial reversal of the policy by reinstating it for pensioners in receipt of pension credit. How much longer before the proposed £4.8 billion cuts to welfare benefits go the same way? This morning, the Health Foundation think tank has issued a pronouncement that
Whatever happened to that £22bn black hole, eh? As yet more pay rises are dolled out to workers across the country this month, Mr S has been scouring the government’s transparency data to take a closer look at just how many times ministers have met with union barons. The conclusion? Quite a lot. In fact, in just six
Amid talk of a summer reshuffle, I recently asked a senior member of the Labour party if he thought the Attorney-General was likely for the chop. He paused and reflected. ‘No’, he eventually replied. ‘But he’s going the right way about it.’ Similar sentiments will no doubt be expressed in Downing Street today as they
Last week marked the anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing – the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil since the 7/7 London bombings. Twenty-two people were murdered, most of them children and teenagers, at a pop concert targeted with deliberate cruelty. Among them was Saffie-Rose Roussos, just eight years old – the youngest known victim of terrorism
Soil samples from Fukushima, the prefecture where Japan’s Dai-Ichi Nuclear reactor exploded in 2011 sending plumes of radioactive material into the sky, will be transported to the garden of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to serve as flower beds. Far from horticultural, the real purpose is to reassure the Japanese people that Fukushima is now safe
In 2021, after the barbaric Islamist murder of Sir David Amess MP, the response of Britain’s political class was as baffling as it was shameful: it decided to ramp up censorship of the internet. Somehow, MPs’ vital personal safety came to be equated with the nebulous concept of ‘safety’ online, along with the protection of
Here we go again. The Scottish parliament risks embarking on yet another exercise in legislative virtue signalling: the Labour MSP Monica Lennon’s emotively titled Ecocide Bill. The Scottish government is reportedly looking favourably on this legislation, which would make destroying the environment a criminal offence punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Does this
This week Dominic Cummings said the Tories may have ‘crossed the event horizon’. He was trying to find a tech bro way of saying the game is up: they’re finished as an electoral force and it’s only Labour, Reform and the Lib Dems still in play. But might the Tories have one last chance? If
There are many justifiable criticisms of how the Tories ran candidate selection for the last election. On the day that Rishi Sunak headed to the Palace, scores of nominees were still to be chosen, prompting a mad scramble to find 160 candidates in 12 days. Some seats faced accusations of ‘stitch-ups’, including Basildon and Billericay, where
36 min listen
From the decline of meritocracy to the rise of anti-Western ideology, author Heather Mac Donald joins Freddy Gray to discuss race, merit, and victim hierarchy. Why is the West so desperate to self-cancel? And is now a moment of reckoning considering we’re five years on from the BLM protests?
To Liverpool, where former Royal Marine Paul Doyle has been charged over the car crash that injured almost 80 people on Monday. Police announced they had taken a 53-year-old white British man into custody within hours of the attack and this afternoon, officers announced at a presser that Doyle had been charged with two counts
On Tuesday, Nigel Farage challenged Keir Starmer to a head-to-head debate. More specifically, the Reform leader wants to take on the Prime Minister in a northern working men’s club. Obviously, that is not going to happen. The PM might have declared in his speech today that ‘the choice at the moment is between the choice
Robert Jenrick tweeted a 60 second video this morning, showing him confronting suspected fare dodgers at Stratford London Underground station. He watches people reportedly forcing their way through the barriers while TfL staff seemingly do nothing to stop them. Jenrick then follows the suspected freeloaders down escalators, challenging them on why they haven’t paid. They’re not
They say that if you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life. But these days the capital’s commuters seem to certainly be tiring of the state of the public transport system. The ever-online Robert Jenrick has today released a new video, highlighting the impotence with which fare-dodgers can flagrantly get away without paying. And Mr
Is the Kremlin on the verge of shifting its red lines on Ukraine? As Russian troops on the ground line up to launch a new summer offensive and more missiles rain down on Kyiv than any point since the beginning of the invasion, Putin’s diplomats are reportedly preparing to step back from some of their
Elon Musk understands astrophysics, yet he seems unable to grasp the strange laws of gravity which govern Washington politics. Last night, the world’s richest man confirmed what everybody in Washington already knew: his time as a ‘special employee’ in the White House is over and he’s leaving his formal role as head of the Department
Andrew Lawrence has some claim to being Britain’s most-cancelled comedian. For more than a decade now, the 37-year-old stand-up has been losing himself work, friends and representation due to his wilfully offensive style of comedy / commentary. In a 2014 Facebook post, he took aim at BBC panel shows on which ‘aging, balding, fat men,