All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
You’d have thought certain Tory grandees would be chastened after the past fortnight. But while most Conservatives on the green benches now admit the decision to try to overrule the standards committee’s recommendations on Owen Paterson was a mistake, it seems that one diehard remains unbowed. Step forward Sir Christopher Chope, the veteran MP for Christchurch, and no stranger
Back when the West was still pretending to fight the ‘war on terror’, Martin Amis made an observation about the enemy’s tactics: Suicide-mass murder is more than terrorism: it is horrorism. It is a maximum malevolence. The suicide-mass murderer asks his prospective victims to contemplate their fellow human being with a completely new order of
Democracy is in crisis, faith in institutions is at an all-time low. The public’s trust in our leaders has collapsed; cynicism is all around. Which pillar of integrity can save us from the morass and rescue our crumbling polity? Step forward erstwhile aristo Prince Harry, the hereditary hedonist reborn as a fearless fighter of fake news.
Number 10 will have been relieved that the weekend did not bring new stories about Conservative MPs raking in lots of money from second jobs. There were still sleaze angles in the Sunday papers, including regarding the Prime Minister’s own dealings, but the air seems to be going out of the story a little. The
The City was meant to be hollowed out. Shortages would cripple the economy. And major multinationals would move their headquarters, listings, and all the wealth those create, to somewhere safely inside the EU’s Single Market. Some hardcore supporters of the UK remaining inside the EU made lots of predictions about the consequences of the decision
A ruling by the Court of Appeal last week has further enshrined the notion that women can consent to their own death if the man responsible puts forward a defence that she died during ‘rough sex gone wrong’. In February this year, Sophie Moss, an extremely vulnerable woman suffering from a range of mental and
What’s happening in Liverpool? This morning police declared the detonation of a device in a taxi outside a large women’s hospital, and subsequent arrests of four people in the city, as a ‘terrorist incident’. It has just been announced that our terror threat level has been raised from ‘substantial’ to ‘severe’ meaning another attack is
For centrists of a certain age, few names are more likely to tug the heartstrings than Emmanuel Macron and Michel Barnier. In the halcyon days of 2017, the two Frenchman seemed the epitome of all that was chic, calm and above all rational: the former a fresh-faced Élysée outsider who made moderation great again; the latter
The Home Secretary Priti Patel has just announced that the terror threat level has been raised to ‘severe’ meaning that another attack is now considered ‘highly likely’. The move comes after yesterday’s explosion in Liverpool was declared to be a ‘terrorist incident’. Speaking after a Cobra meeting, Patel confirmed that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre had raised
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COP26 is now over, but was it a flop? Even Alok Sharma, the President of COP26, apologised on the last day for ‘the way this process has unfolded’, as he teared up when announcing the final agreement to phase down, rather than phase out, coal. On this episode, Cindy Yu talks to Fraser Nelson and
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended that Covid booster jabs be offered to people in their forties, after they became available to the over-fifties earlier this year. But, as recently as August, the World Health Organisation opposed booster jabs. It said in a statement: ‘In the context of ongoing global vaccine supply constraints,
Oh dear. It appears the Rejoiner movement has gone a bit People’s Front of Judea. Andrew Adonis, the rampant Remainiac, has today been rapped by the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards over an undeclared directorship he failed to disclose on his Register of Interests. But who was the sharp-eyed snitch who tipped off the watchdog?
Far from being a ‘storm in a teacup’ – in the famous last words of George Eustice – the Westminster sleaze scandal shows no sign of abating. As day 13 rolls around, Cabinet members Jacob Rees-Mogg and Grant Shapps are respectively facing questions about £6 million of undeclared loans and, er, spending taxpayers’ money on lobbyists fighting
A sparrow falls. The death of Wilbur Smith at the weekend deprives the world of one of the great luminaries of popular fiction of the second half of the last century. He joins Jameses Michener and Clavell, Hammond Innes and Harold Robbins in the great 1970s dad bookshelf in the sky. Kids of today will
Britain has been subjected to another terror attack, just as the nation fell silent for yesterday’s annual Remembrance Sunday memorial. An explosion occurred in a taxi outside the Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Sunday morning, killing the passenger and leaving the driver in hospital. Police have now confirmed that the incident is being treated as a terror
And so COP26 ended, not so much with a bang, but rather a whimper. Alok Sharma’s tears aside, there was a muted feel to the unveiling of Saturday’s Glasgow protocol, at which countries agreed merely to ‘phase down’ rather than ‘phase out’ coal. That sense of anticlimax was only enhanced by yet more strike action at
COP26 eneded last night after two weeks of intense haggling. A pact was approved in principle, but a last minute change by India and China drew most of the attention. The final wording now refers to a ‘phase down’ of coal, rather than a ‘phase out’, as many climate activists had hoped. Alok Sharma, the
With Biden sliding to 38 per cent approval in the polls, it’s finally time for everyone to stop calling him ‘the new FDR’. That preposterous moniker was always misplaced. Biden’s ambition for ‘transforming’ the country has never extended beyond removing Donald Trump from the White House, inserting his patronage picks into important jobs and, most
Vladimir Putin’s message was as clear — and familiar — as his method. The Kremlin has begun another major build-up of troops along Ukraine’s border. The reason? Retaliation: last month, president Volodimir Zelenskiy flew to Washington to renew his plea that Ukraine be allowed to join Nato. The massive show of force — the second this year —
For a brief period during last month’s Czech election campaign it seemed like the country was heading toward a Czexit referendum. Prime Minister Andrej Babis was desperately looking for a coalition partner and the Eurosceptic Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party had insisted on a referendum as part of any deal. In the end, the
The sound of footsteps on cobbled streets in the dead of night was a familiar sound in Margate during the autumn of 1920. The Reverend David Railton MC, the newly installed vicar of the town, frequently walked the streets unable to sleep, his mind ravaged by the memory of what he had witnessed during the
‘The end of coal is in sight’ declared Alok Sharma, president of this year’s climate summit, to delegates in Glasgow attending COP26. Sharma was heralding the fact that more than 40 countries had agreed at the conference to phase coal out in the coming decades. But (and it is a very big but) along with
Well that’s the end of COP26. After a fortnight of selfies, speeches, pledges and promises, the eco-jamboree has tonight wrapped up, with Western nations expressing their ‘profound disappointment’ after China and India secured a last minute watering-down of the commitments on coal. British negotiators wanted a ‘phase out’ of unabated coal; instead the two Asian
Parliament is in the mire with sleaze aplenty. Whether it’s double jobs for six figures or foreign jaunts sparking domestics: MPs have been hitting the headlines this week for their various indiscretions, undeclared or otherwise. With politics in peril and cynicism all around, which champion of integrity can step forth to remind us of politicians at their
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Freddy Gray talks to Michael Wolff about his latest book ‘Too Famous’, and looks back at how the quest for fame has affected politics over the last two decades.
It was hard not to laugh, coldly, at the statement from western members of the UN Security Council that condemned Belarus for engineering the migrant crisis on its border with Poland. Following Thursday’s emergency UN Security Council meeting, western members published a joint statement, accusing Belarus of putting migrants’ lives in danger ‘for political purposes’.
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Since the cabinet met on Thursday to map out their levelling up agenda, we take another look at what this ambiguous slogan really means and how important it is for a Tory majority in the next election. Can we compare the UK levelling up to other places? Gove recently referenced 15th century Florence. But what
Rishi Sunak thinks Boris Johnson goofed badly when he conspired to upend Commons standards procedures. And he agrees with his red wall colleagues that this appeared to place the government on the side of a privileged elite. That is certainly the standard interpretation of his comment this week that the government needed to do better –
As a first year university student from a disadvantaged background, I know all too well the constant struggle students can face to make ends meet. Before starting my studies at Durham, I worked three jobs to keep food in my mouth and clothes on my back while in full-time education. Living in group homes and
Lisa Littman, a doctor and researcher, recently surveyed ‘detransitioners’ — people who thought they were transgender then changed their minds. The majority, 55 per cent, ‘felt that they did not receive an adequate evaluation from a doctor or mental health professional before starting transition.’ Sadly, it seems, their identity issues were more complicated than simply
‘Speaking her truth’ has been one of Meghan Markle’s USPs – and what an absolute disaster it’s been, leading inevitably to the low point she has now reached this week, after she apologised to the Court of Appeal for ‘forgetting’ information about the Finding Freedom biography. For there are not different truths for different people;
Tory nerves about the effect of the sleaze scandal will only be increased by a poll out in today’s Daily Mail showing Labour ahead by six points. This is a big turnaround from the last ComRes poll which had the Tories three points ahead. It is the biggest lead Labour has had since Keir Starmer became
