All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Overnight three federal judges on the United States Court of International Trade ruled that Donald Trump’s worldwide tariffs are unlawful and blocked them from going into effect. A group of businesses had taken the President’s administration to court, successfully arguing that the tariffs announced on ‘Liberation Day’ were beyond the powers of the presidency. The
While I am delighted to hear that Poppy Eliza Josephine Johnson, the fourth child of Boris and Carrie Johnson, arrived safely on Saturday, I’d be lying if I said that a small part of me didn’t die on seeing Carrie Johnson’s latest Instagram photos of the last days of her pregnancy. The cinematic shots of
Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership is remembered fondly by few in British politics. But one group who certainly never miss a chance to mention it are Labour MPs sent out on broadcast duty. Having successful used the ex-PM as a two-word stick to hammer the Tories, now Keir Starmer is trying to use the same trick
To shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick. The onetime Tory leadership contender has taken to Twitter to make a dig at Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan over TfL’s fee-dodgers. ‘Sadiq Khan is driving a proud city into the ground,’ Jenrick wrote furiously. ‘Lawbreaking is out of control. He’s not acting. So I did.’ What follows is
It just happened to be my birthday. A Friday lunchtime at the start of November. Broad daylight. I had left Oval tube station and was about to turn onto my road. But as I strolled along the pavement, airpods in, replying to happy birthday messages on WhatsApp, the inevitable happened. Snatch. My phone was lifted
No one seriously expected Emma Raducanu to beat Iga Swiatek in her second round match at the French Open. Swiatek, a four-time champion in Paris, is nicknamed the ‘Queen of Clay’, having won 37 of her 39 matches at Roland Garros. Even so, few will have anticipated the scale of the drubbing that took place.
Nobody wants to buy his cars anymore. He has been too distracted to pay any attention to his companies, and his fortune has been shredded. As Elon Musk brings his short spell in government to an official close today, and gets back to the day job, his many political opponents will take a malicious pleasure
There’s a street in Leicester where nearly half the residents don’t speak English to a decent level. Ben Leo of GB News recently went there to explore what that meant in practice. True to the statistics, almost nobody could speak English well enough to have a conversation, from a middle-aged Portuguese man to the Indian
On the night of 26 May, Kyiv came under another large-scale Russian drone and missile attack, with explosions and machine gun fire rattling the city. I lay on the floor of my narrow hallway, listening to the furious cacophony outside the window. Two thin walls stood between me and the war, hardly an invitation to
Thomas Kerr made headlines when he – as The Spectator exclusively revealed – defected from the Conservatives to Nigel Farage’s Reform in January. Kerr was seen as a rising star in the Scottish Conservative party and was selected in 2023 to contest the Rutherglen and Hamilton West Westminster by-election after the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier was
An 18-month investigation into allegations of rape against former Justice Minister Crispin Blunt has now been dropped. In October 2023, the-then Tory MP was arrested by Surrey Police, prompting the removal of the party whip. He confirmed he was the subject of the probe at the time following reports of a Conservative parliamentarian being arrested. Blunt was
To NHS Fife, which is once again making headlines for all the wrong reasons. The Scottish health board has been slammed by the country’s information tsar for failing to publish its spend on an ongoing employment tribunal brought against it by nurse Sandie Peggie. Whatever happened to transparency, eh? After nurse Peggie questioned a transgender
Egad! Uproar in clubland. The reason? Nigel Farage. Yes, it seems that the veteran Brexiteer is still capable of causing a fuss among t’great and t’good – even when he is pledging to, er, lift the two child benefit cap. The Reform UK leader gave a big speech on Tuesday in Whitehall, talking about his
It is beginning to feel a bit like 1998 all over again. That was the year of the first countryside march when it – supposedly – rose up in anger at the Blair government over its plan to abolish hunting, introduce the right to roam and build some houses for people to live in. Landowning
23 min listen
Dissatisfaction with the established political parties is driving a ‘tartan bounce’ in Scotland for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Far from being an English phenomenon, Reform is polling favourably with Scottish voters. There will be a by-election next week for the Scottish Parliament seat of Hamilton, in what will be Reform’s first big test inside the
I managed to sit through most of Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius the other night. I endured luvvies and minor academics and even Cherie Blair, all wide-eyed at the brilliance of their heroine. She was inevitably presented as edgy and funny and brave and ground-breaking and mould-breaking and ball-breaking and oozing girl power. One of
During the last Conservative government, it was common to hear the refrain that the prime minister of the day was waging a ‘war on nature’. As someone who played a role in advising a string of environment ministers, I always thought that to be somewhat hyperbolic. I always admire the passion of campaigners, and I share with
Donald Trump did not get to where he is today by taking no for an answer. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, could scarcely have been clearer when he visited the White House earlier this month that the President’s notion of Canada becoming America’s 51st state was not even being entertained. ‘Canada is not
Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, is being lined up for one of the world’s most powerful humanitarian jobs: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. With Emmanuel Macron’s backing, she hopes to swap the Hôtel de Ville in Paris for Geneva, taking charge of a $10 billion global operation that defines who counts as stateless,
“I’ll never insult or belittle someone who votes Reform,” Mike Tapp, the Labour MP for Dover and Deal, tells me. “We need to deliver.” It’s a message Labour is increasingly keen to project – but Tapp sound like he really means it. Where others Labour MPs prevaricate on immigration, Tapp supports “return hubs” (for failed
21 min listen
Labour’s spending review is expected on the 11th of June, when we will find out which government departments face cuts and which costs have been ringfenced. This can set the tone for politics for months to come as it gives a clue to which priorities matter most – especially in times of fiscal restraint – and
The National Health Service is struggling under increasing patient demand to provide quick appointments, A&E support or hospital beds – yet its managers have still found the time to issue a memo to staff struggling to cope with, er, the Supreme Court’s trans ruling. As if its staff didn’t have more pressing problems to deal
Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, has called for the possession of cannabis to be decriminalised, because he believes that the police disproportionately target black Londoners when policing drug possession. This announcement by Khan is in response to a report by the ‘London Drugs Commission’ (LDC), a body set-up by City Hall, chaired by Tony Blair’s old
To the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who is now calling on forces to routinely release information on suspects’ ethnicities – even if it ’emboldens’ racists. In the wake of a recent attack in Liverpool, Sir Mark Rowley has urged police to be ‘realistic’ about handling information surrounding a crime and has made the case for earlier
I like King Charles. I visited him at Windsor Castle recently as Mrs Miller picked up a gong. The castle has been beautifully restored. It is full of treasures, looted from the Empire. There were no refreshments, only a porcelain water bowl for the guide dog of one of the honourees. The King was charming,
Animal rights campaigners are up in arms because Disney+ is able to use a legal loophole to broadcast a scene of a rat being forcibly immersed in liquid. The RSPCA has slammed Disney for showing a controversial scene from the 1989 thriller The Abyss where a live rat is deliberately submerged in fluorocarbon liquid. The
The sentencing reforms announced by Labour last week were primarily an attempt to address a capacity crisis. This is something we need to be clear on, however much David Gauke’s report is embellished by talking points borrowed from the progressive criminal justice commentariat. Eliminating short sentences of twelve months or less is not about community
If the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar is sincere in wishing to deprive Nigel Farage of the ‘oxygen of publicity’, he’s got a funny way of going about it. In a vituperative interview on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland today, he gave the Reform leader another blast of oxygen by offering a public debate on the eve
Another day, another bad poll for Sir Keir Starmer’s party. Now YouGov has revealed that Labour has recorded its lowest poll rating since before the 2019 general election, with just over a fifth of Brits saying they would vote for the reds tomorrow, while Nigel Farage’s Reform UK sees its largest lead to date on
That should teach it a lesson. The utility giant Thames Water has today been hit with a massive £122.7 million fine for failing to deal with sewage properly, and for paying out excessive dividends. No doubt the regulator Ofwat thinks that will focus the minds of the company’s management and force it to sharpen up
Who would have guessed that caving into union militancy and paying a whacking above-inflation pay rise, with no strings attached, would lead to even bigger pay demands? In one of its first acts after coming to power last July the Starmer government awarded junior doctors a 22 per cent pay rise, which they accepted and
France will increase its surveillance of all critical infrastructure after saboteurs wrecked two electricity sub-stations in Nice and Cannes last weekend. The arsonists deprived nearly 200,000 homes on the Cote d’Azur of electricity, disrupted traffic lights, interrupted the Cannes film festival, shut down cash distributors and brought Nice airport to a temporary standstill. Addressing parliament
Germany’s new interior minister, Alexander Dobrint of the Christian Social Union (CSU), has made quite a stir with his proposals to end family reunification and ‘turbo citizenship’, which allowed people to become citizens after as little as three years in Germany. However, as usual in Germany, under the outrage is a more prosaic reality. Only
It’s time for Marine Le Pen to quit and spend more time with her Bengal cats. More importantly, it’s time for the third of French voters who support her to face the reality that her programme is incoherent and unachievable. Her election to the presidency in 2027 would be a disaster for France and a