All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Chelyabinsk is one of the most polluted places in the world. On 29 September 1957, an explosion ripped through the nearby Mayak nuclear plant — which processed plutonium for the Soviet Union’s atomic bombs — casting a cloud of highly radioactive debris across the central Russian region. Despite communist officials keeping the disaster tightly under
This week, the Council of Europe was forced to pull an advertising campaign promoting the hijab following a backlash from the French. As part of a campaign to promote respect for Muslim women, the European body released a number of campaign posters, one of which read ‘Beauty is in diversity as freedom is in hijab’.
Mermaids is arguably the most influential charity focusing on transgender rights in the UK. It claims to have been supporting transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse children, young people, and their families since 1995, and has been at the forefront of key policy changes affecting transgender people in this country. Today, however, the charity is distinctly evangelistic.
Every year, China plants trees over an area the size of Ireland. The country may be the biggest polluter on Earth, but its reforestation efforts are enough to make Saint Greta look twice. In the last decade, the ‘Great Green Wall’ project has cost more than £73 billion, and the country aims to expand its
It is the first duty of governments to keep their citizens safe, protecting them from harm. This means constantly being vigilant. We have to keep a close eye on our adversaries and competitors and their capabilities, whether they are states, organisations or individuals. But vigilance is not enough on its own – imagination is also
Eric Zemmour, the right-wing journalist and self-declared populist, is at a crossroads. Will he or won’t he declare himself a presidential candidate? Few doubt he will declare. Timing is an issue. Some in his camp think he should delay declaring as long as possible. But executing an effective launch will be more important than its
There is less than one hour remaining on the sale, and the current highest bid is 4 WETH / $18,000. Those interested in making a bid can click here. Last month we ran an article about digital art and non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) and since then we’ve had readers asking: what about The Spectator’s Brexit butterfly? In
Well there we are then. Claudia Webbe, the MP for Leicester East, has this afternoon been sentenced to a suspended 10-week jail sentence and 200 hours’ community service for threatening to throw acid at a friend of her boyfriend and send naked pictures of the victim to her family. Webbe, who was convicted of harassment last month,
Owen Paterson has resigned as an MP. In a dramatic turn of events, Paterson has in the past 24 hours gone from being spared suspension over a breach of the lobbying rules to facing a fresh vote that many Tories thought he could lose. On hearing the news of the U-turn, Paterson issued a statement saying that
What are the long-term political implications of the government’s clown show over Owen Paterson? My guess is that voters won’t pay too much attention, but MPs certainly will. And that could matter at least as much. Start with the public. Do voters feel angry that their Prime Minister doesn’t play by the rules — written and
China’s #MeToo movement has taken a step closer to the centre of power in Beijing, after sexual abuse allegations by a top Chinese tennis star were made against a man who until recently was one of Xi Jinping’s closest henchman at the pinnacle of Communist party rule. The tennis star, Peng Shuai, made the allegations
It’s day four of COP26 and while the big names have already departed, the speeches carry on. This morning some 190 countries and organisations announced their ‘clear commitments’ to phase out coal power. The new ‘Global coal to clean power transition statement‘ requires signatory states to end all investment in new coal power generation domestically and internationally
He isn’t Canadian. He doesn’t dominate the Davos circuit with platitudes about climate change. And he isn’t constantly warning that the British economy will turn into a cross between Ethiopia and Argentina now that we have left the European Union. In many ways, the current Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey is an
It’s been a dizzying 24 hours for Angela Richardson, who was last night sacked as a junior ministerial aide to Michael Gove, only to get the job back this morning. The reason for this whirlwind? Richardson broke the Tory whip last night by abstaining on the government’s plan to tear up the standards committee regime
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The Owen Paterson story continues today with the government u-turning quicker than expected. This came after realising that allowing Tory MPs to mark their own homework by scrapping the standards committee might cause more outrage than they first thought. Leaving them now in a situation described by James Forsyth as, ‘an infinitely worse position for
If we don’t cut carbon emissions, your mother will be raped. This is the deranged prediction of Roger Hallam, the weird-beard co-founder of Extinction Rebellion. Eco-doomsters used to say the ice caps would melt and polar bears would perish unless we all went green. Now they’re upping the ante. Now they’re prophesising gang rape, murder
Less than 24 hours after Tory MPs were ordered to vote to spare Owen Paterson, the government has U-turned. The former minister had been given a one month suspension from the House of Commons by the standards committee over a breach of lobbying rules. No. 10 tried to block his suspension, instead setting up a new committee
Oh dear. It appears that the UK’s little-loved eco-warriors have managed to cover themselves in glory yet again. Insulate Britain – the protest group surely working as double agents for Big Oil – have today decided to block off Parliament Square, causing yet more misery and frustration among commuters at rush hour. Insulate Britain’s sole demand
As world leaders depart from the COP26 summit in Glasgow, a row is brewing in the House of Commons on ‘Tory sleaze’. After the parliamentary commissioner for standards Kathryn Stone found that former cabinet minister Owen Paterson had seriously breached the rules on lobbying, the standards committee recommended that Paterson should be suspended from parliament
A new Commons report is out today and it does not make for happy reading. The Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) system of procurement is ‘broken’ with billions of taxpayers’ money wasted, according to a cross party committee of MPs. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) judges that out of the MoD’s 20 largest projects, 13 were running
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The row over Owen Paterson has come to a head today as the amendment to lift his suspension – tabled by fellow Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom and backed by the government – has upset many sides. Labour and the SNP are going in hard on accusations of Tory sleaze, with a real possibility of this
MPs have voted in favour of overhauling their own watchdog after its decision to ban a senior Tory backbencher from the House of Commons. The committee on standards found that former minister Owen Paterson had breached lobbying rules and recommended he be suspended from the House for 30 days. However, the government backed an amendment to
It’s some time since Steerpike last checked on the Scottish Greens, the minor party in Holyrood’s little-loved coalition government. The indy-loving eco-warriors celebrated their best results in May’s parliamentary elections before quickly resuming their favoured role as SNP enablers-in-chief, taking up ministerial roles as their price to keep Nicola Sturgeon in Bute House. A not-so magnificent seven
Jeremy Hunt asked an entirely reasonable question of the Prime Minister today in the Commons — and got an entirely unreasonable answer. Hunt raised an amendment he is tabling which would require Health Education England to produce regular forecasts for the numbers of doctors and nurses that the UK needs to train. This is quite
Angela Rayner is formidable. Until today, that adjective never suited Labour’s deputy leader. She can be combative, authentic, eye-catching and crowd-pleasing — and quite annoying. Clearly she’s as tough as a vintage Land Rover. But at PMQs, she added statesmanship to her roster of qualities. The session was sparsely attended. The press are in Glasgow
The COP26 summit is unlikely to be an outright flop. There has been no shortage of drama, with speakers seeming to compete with each other to see who could use the most histrionic language. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to compare the attending leaders to Nazi appeasers. He later apologised.
I’m on my way to Glasgow for COP26. It’s the first time I have been abroad since before Covid. Conveniently enough I had already decided to visit the UK for other reasons and that gives me a chance to travel to Edinburgh by train (there’s no accommodation available in Glasgow). I will be able to
It sums up Keir Starmer’s political luck, or lack thereof, that he was at home with Covid today rather than at PMQs. The Owen Paterson row is an open goal for an opposition leader. The government has decided to whip Tory MPs to vote for an attempt to change the standards ruling. Starmer wasn’t there to exploit
Mumbai India is the last major global polluter to set a date to go carbon neutral. In a surprise announcement on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told COP26 that his country will hit this target by 2070. That doesn’t mean India is going to start cutting emissions any time soon. India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party,
Nothing more surely demonstrates the Conservative party’s grip on power than its apparent determination that Tory MPs should be able to breach long-agreed, long-respected, House of Commons standards on what constitutes fit and proper behaviour for an MP. The parliamentary party’s decision to save Owen Paterson from the consequences of his own behaviour is itself
In Glasgow the green games are well underway, with a roll call of world leaders reading from the COPacabana hymn sheet to a genuflecting press corps. British premier Boris Johnson claims it’s ‘one minute to midnight,’ Prince Charles believes ‘time has literally run out’ while UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres argues ‘we are digging our own graves.’ Cheery stuff. And
When a Republican wins in a reliably Democratic state, it’s big news. That’s exactly what happened in Virginia, where newcomer Glenn Youngkin defeated former governor Terry McAuliffe. The Republican won even though McAuliffe had a well-oiled political machine and high name recognition, and was campaigning in a state Joe Biden won by ten points only
