All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Viktor Orbán first came to prominence when in 1989 he declared on live TV that Hungary must put an end to the ‘Russian occupation’. On the first day of February this year, he held his thirteenth meeting with Vladimir Putin. What’s changed? Like much of his generation, Orbán initially believed that the fall of communism
In the last week, I’ve been crisscrossing the United States, meeting with politicians and their advisers ahead of this year’s congressional elections. Almost everyone has asked me about the ongoing Boris Johnson saga. Their most common refrain is surprise: how can the simple act of attending a party prompt a prime minister’s ever-more-likely political demise?
Did lockdowns save lives? We will never have a definitive answer to this vital question because it was impossible to conduct controlled experiments — we don’t have two identical countries, one where lockdown was imposed and one where it wasn’t. Nor is it easy to compare similar countries, for the simple reason that every country
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While Westminster politicians and journalists alike continue to predict exactly how many letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson have been officially filed. Michael Gove’s levelling up white paper has finally arrived. A bizarre document that references many ancient cites and how they ‘levelled up’, but does it propose any tangible solutions on how to
It’s not been a great few months for Matt Hancock. Every time the Casanova of the Commons tries to make a comeback, nothing seems to go his way. First, HarperCollins dismissed speculation that they would be publishing his self-justificatory book; then he faced mockery for his turtleneck outfit at the Capital Jingle Bell Ball. Even
After months of delays, the government’s levelling up white paper is finally out. Boris Johnson has viewed this document as one of the things that will help him kickstart his premiership after months of negative headlines over partygate. However, MPs remain jumpy as letters of no confidence continue to trickle in. As for the document itself,
Calm returned to the bridge. Big Dog looked comfortable in the chamber as Sir Keir Starmer quizzed him at PMQs. It started with an exchange of fireworks. Sir Keir made a statement about Boris’s suggestion that he failed to bring Jimmy Savile to justice when he was director of public prosecutions. He called this slur
Today’s PMQs suggests that some of the immediate heat has gone the partygate crisis, if only temporarily. Sir Keir Starmer did not make all his questions about parties, instead widening out his attacks to Conservative tax policy. The faces of most of his backbenchers froze as he doubled down, saying that Starmer had apologised for
Of all the jobs in Westminster journalism, BBC political editor is thought to be the hardest. Laura Kuenssberg will shortly be quitting the role after nearly seven years in post but it seems the corporation is having a hard time finding a successor. First, favourite Vicki Young, Kuenssberg’s deputy, ruled herself out of the running. And then, last
In a little village on the Spanish Meseta, I once asked an old lady about the next village some three or four miles away. She shook her head as if considering a hopeless case and said, ‘Oh, the people there are very different.’ To me, those villages seemed like two peas in a pod. But
Regional agencies pumping money into research and development. Targets for education and healthcare. Another layer of meddling local government, and possibly a new bus route or two. The government plans for ‘levelling up’ unveiled today are a mixture of 1960s statism, which could have been taken straight from Harold Wilson’s government, mixed up with some
Since the publication of Sue Gray’s update on partygate a trickle of letters of no confidence have been sent to the 1922 chairman Graham Brady. Two of the senders have gone public – Tobias Elwood and Peter Aldous – while Charles Walker has said he would ‘applaud’ Boris Johnson if he resigned of his own
‘Germany has succeeded in levelling up where we have not,’ Boris Johnson claimed back in July last year, when talk of pork pie putsches lay far off in the future. But as the government unveils its levelling up plans today, the promise of a German-style investment package is unlikely to materialise. And that’s probably a
The letters are mounting up and colleagues are on manoeuvres. So what better way for Boris Johnson to heal the tensions within his divided parliamentary party than by hosting a jolly-old away day? For this morning all Tory MPs have been invited by their Chief Whip Mark Spencer to attend such a gathering in Blackpool
They always return to the scene of the crime. Less than a fortnight after the alleged ‘pork pie’ plotters met to discuss Boris Johnson’s future at the Carlton Club, several of their number gathered there again last night. But this time it was revelry, not regicide, on the agenda as a smorgasbord of backbench talent
Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the defence select committee, has this morning announced that he is sending a letter to the 1922 chairman calling for a no confidence vote in Boris Johnson. In a way this is not a surprise: Johnson cut Ellwood from the government when he became Prime Minister and the two are temperamentally
Tories occasionally like to pretend that they are not wasting their talents and lives defending a bottom-feeding demagogue. They lecture critics who damn Boris Johnson as a British Trump and tell us we have him all wrong. Fraser Nelson, my own editor here, once argued that, far from being a sponger and fraud, the Prime
Boris Johnson doesn’t even like parties, by all accounts. He prefers to be left alone with women. Yet parties are killing him. His premiership seems horribly stuck in the news huis clos that is partygate: every time he thinks he’s out, those rule-breaking sessions in Downing Street pull him back in. His various stratagems aren’t working.
For weeks now, much of Westminster has been in full hue and cry of Boris Johnson over partygate. While some of the PM’s critics have legitimate grievances; others frankly, do not. Mr S has rarely seen a scandal spawn so much cant, humbug and windbaggery, as life-long opponents of the PM queue up to issue yet
Captain Tom Moore captured the nation’s hearts during the pandemic. The World War II officer completed 100 lengths of his garden at the age of 99 to raise money for NHS-related charities, attracting more than £30 million in donations and being knighted by the Queen. When he died last February, aged 100, the fond tributes
I’m boycotting Spotify. I am doing this for the same reason as I don’t have a Netflix subscription: I refuse to subsidise the efforts by Harry and Meghan to monetise their royal fame. If either company terminates its relationship with the couple I will consider using its services, but for the moment I will stick
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While Boris Johnson’s performance in the Common’s yesterday was seen broadly as tone deaf – thanks to comments about Jimmy Savile and drug-taking on the Labour front bench – he was given a chance to redeem himself at a private meeting with his party yesterday evening. ‘One of my favourite questions was when one 2019
Conservative sympathisers, Conservative voters and Conservative parliamentarians have a simple choice to make this week. Do they stand by a Prime Minister who besmirches his office and whose moral credibility diminishes a little more each day he remains, squatting, in Downing Street? Or do they, instead, accept the obvious reality that Johnson is not fit
The Holocaust wasn’t about race because Jews are white. This is the through-the-looking-glass position in which progressive America now finds itself, via Whoopi Goldberg. This week, the Sister Act star used her weekly programme The View – which is watched by millions of Americans – to educate the public about the Nazi extermination of Jews.
A Christian priest was shot dead by gunmen in Pakistan’s Peshawar town on Sunday. Pastor William Siraj was gunned down as he headed home from mass with two fellow priests, one of whom, Naeem Patrick, was also wounded. While no one has officially claimed responsibility for the attack, the killing – carried out by two men
One of the stranger moments of yesterday’s drama in the House of Commons, following the release of the Sue Gray ‘update’, was Boris Johnson’s decision to summon the ghost of Jimmy Savile to defend himself against the partygate allegations. After being lectured by the Labour leader about his alleged lockdown dos, the PM hit back
As the partygate furore rages on, Boris Johnson is retreating towards familiar territory: Brexit. A policy blitz is underway this week and the issue that guided him to power in 2019 has come first, with the announcement of a new Brexit Freedoms Bill. It will be brought forward to mark the two-year anniversary since we
Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has lost its third chair in nine years. Jörg Meuthen is the latest to have succumbed to an internal power struggle over the party’s direction. His departure last week ends any illusions about the AfD eventually becoming a viable option in German politics. Like his predecessors Bernd Lucke and
Those Tory MPs who want to oust Boris Johnson are not a single group. They come from all wings of the party and all intakes and would not agree on who should succeed him. This means there is no single view among them about the best way to proceed. But one of the most influential
It is a peculiarity of how France has responded to the Covid pandemic that the unvaccinated, or those who have had only two jabs, are regarded as a greater threat to national security than Islamic extremists. The Covid passport, which came into effect last week, won overwhelming backing in parliament and in the senate, despite
The first wave of truckers in the Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa on Friday, having travelled across Canada to protest the vaccine mandates and to fight Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tyrannical Covid restrictions. While the rest of the world has begun to admit that we simply need to learn to live with Covid, like any
Monday nights are rarely the booziest in Parliament but yesterday proved to be an exception. For Boris Johnson was up before the 1922 committee in the Attlee Suite — an ‘oddly appropriate setting,’ as one right-winger muttered to Mr S darkly. Highlights included veteran Telegraph columnist Chris Hope nearly being diverted into the room last night after security
The enforced resignation of Owen Paterson in November certainly had its consequences. Boris Johnson’s efforts to help the North Shropshire MP triggered a sleaze scandal, a Labour lead that the party is still yet to relinquish and the loss of a constituency which had been Tory for more than a century. But, two months on, how hard
After Tory MPs spent the afternoon laying into Boris Johnson over Sue Gray’s summary of her report, the Prime Minister finds himself in a much more fragile position than when he started the day. Tonight he addressed Tory MPs at a meeting of the 1922 committee. Given Johnson’s Commons appearance rattled MPs rather than improving
