All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
What if William Howe, the dithering British commander, hadn’t let the American army escape in the Battle of Long Island in 1776? What if he had nipped the whole damn thing in the bud? In that case, as dual Canadian-American citizen Adam Gopnik complains in the New Yorker, ‘We Could Have Been Canada’. That’s not
As day four of Labour conference begins here in Brighton, Mr S has been touring the conference centre and World Transformed festival to see how Keir Starmer’s party is preparing for government. It’s the first time the party has had an in-person jamboree for two years and thus far the occasion has lived up to expectations. Whether
It’s been a tough few days for Keir Starmer. Unloved by his party’s activists and outmaneuvered by his union barons, his conference season has had more rows than Hollyoaks. Still, the under-fire leader will no doubt be delighted to discover one Labour member is still happy to uncritically sing his praises – new recruit John
As unhinged Labour conference motions go, the party’s anti-Aukus resolution will likely capture the headlines. The text describes the new defence pact between Australia, the UK and the US as a ‘dangerous move that will undermine world peace’. Sir Keir Starmer is on record backing the alliance but the Labour leader can at least take
Andy McDonald has resigned from Labour’s shadow cabinet after Keir Starmer refused to back raising the Minimum Wage to £15 an hour. In his resignation letter, he writes: ‘Yesterday, your office instructed me to go into a meeting to argue against a National Minimum Wage of £15 an hour and against Statutory Sick Pay at
-7 min listen
With images of long queues at the petrol station dominating social media this weekend, not due to lack of petrol but lack of drivers, the Labour party conference continues in Brighton. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves made more of an impact with her speech than some others, but Labour’s real problem at this conference seems to
Pharmaceutical companies might think it a bit rich being asked to waive the patents on their Covid vaccines by Harry and Meghan, a couple who have rejected the concept of public service in an attempt to monetise their royal status. But let’s overlook the charge of hypocrisy and ask whether there really is any substance
Labour avidly disagrees with the Tories’ plan to fill budget gaps by hiking National Insurance. So what would they do differently? This was one of the many tasks Rachel Reeves had today as the shadow chancellor delivered her speech at Labour party conference. Reeves not only had to set out an alternative tax-and-spend policy but also
It’s day three of Labour conference and proceedings are in full swing. Whether it’s one of Andy Burnham’s 11 fringe events or yet another interminable motion in the conference hall, the rooms of Brighton have been packed to the rafters with Labour’s long-suffering members. Clearly Covid spreads in teaching settings but has the grace to
The brutal murder of primary school teacher Sabina Nessa in Kidbrooke, South London this month has prompted more anger about female safety on British streets. It’s reminiscent of the aftermath of the horrible case of Sarah Everard, another instance of a killer targeting a female victim – seemingly out of the blue – in a
It’s not a good look, aged 61, to be hiding behind your mother. The ninth in line to the throne joined the Queen at Balmoral, making it difficult for papers to be served in the Virginia Giuffre civil case. The Aberdeenshire estate may cover 50,000 acres, but it hasn’t provided refuge — a state of
Who is the busiest politician at Labour conference? One could be forgiven for assuming it would be Keir Starmer. But Andy Burnham is giving the Labour leader a run for his money. The mayor for Greater Manchester is down to speak at 11 fringe events in total – after missing out on a slot on the
The German election result means that a three party coalition will almost certainly be needed to form a government. Olaf Scholz, the SPD leader, has made clear just now that he is going to try and form a coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats. Whoever succeeds her will take time to build up
What does the Labour party stand for? That’s the big question that Keir Starmer needs to answer this week, and so far it’s proving rather more difficult to answer than you might imagine. Its frontbenchers are mostly working on policies that won’t be announced this week, so they are resorting to talking about the party’s
Not long ago I was a regular Tinder user. Having heard that gingers were romantically incompatible, I decided to mix work and pleasure and put this controversial claim to the test. I set up a sort of interview-date with a nice young lady called Laura, a former international gymnast who was working as a waitress,
The results of the German election have shifted somewhat since last night’s exit poll. What we know for sure is that a red-red-green coalition — between the centre-left SPD, far-left Die Linke and the Greens — is short of a majority, which is contrary to what every single opinion poll projected in the last few
Much like Brighton’s weather, Labour’s conference started brightly but has now become a much more gloomy affair. As ‘scumgate’ rumbles on, cranks scrap in public while frontbenchers take subtle pot shots at one another. Still, despite all the bleakness and infighting, Mr S is delighted to bring news of one ray of light amid the
Long-suffering commuters have had further misery this month, thanks to the shenanigans of eco-warriors Insulate Britain. The group are an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion and have today blocked the M25 for a sixth time – despite a High Court injunction warning that they face jail if they carried on disrupting traffic on the UK’s busiest motorway. Members
Andrew Marr’s question was simple and straightforward, ‘[Is] someone who thinks that only women have a cervix welcome in the Labour party?’ As a party member who still clings to science and reason, I willed Keir Starmer to give a simple and straightforward answer. Instead, he blustered: Well, Andrew, we need to have a mature,
Sunday at Labour conference was a trying affair. Beset by questions about whether Tory voters were ‘scum’ or not, many leading left-wing politicians sought out the fleshpots of Brighton to drown their sorrows. And where better to do that then at Dawn Butler’s legendary Jamaica night, held this year in the gratifyingly sticky confines of
Even before the embargo was lifted on Keir Starmer’s much-trailed and super-long Fabian pamphlet, The Road Ahead, commentators and critics were already putting the boot in. By writing his 12,000 words or so, all the Labour leader had seemingly achieved was the creation of a consensus, one stretching from the Spectator to the Guardian, that
Keir Starmer this evening managed to scrape through his reforms to how Labour elects its leader. The victory follows a very passionate debate at the party’s conference over the policy, which will raise the qualifying threshold of support from MPs in leadership elections from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. It also drops registered supporters,
Angela Rayner may not be a fan of Tory ‘scum’ – but it seems the deputy Labour leader doesn’t speak for all her party. Tonight at the Labour to Win rally, frontbench colleagues of the ambitious Rayner amounted a desperate rearguard offence to assure floating voters that they weren’t all that hostile to awful Conservative
The German elections have turned out to be an unexpected nail-biter. Since the exit polls were released earlier this evening the result has been too close to call. Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU and their coalition partners, the SPD, are both predicted to have received 25 per cent of the vote each, which means it will remain
Don’t you wish Angela Rayner would come off the fence, just once in a while, and tell us what she really thinks? In a meeting of delegates to the Labour Conference, the heiress presumptive to the Labour leadership is reported to have said of the governing party: ‘We cannot get any worse than a bunch
10 min listen
Angela Rayner said the government were ‘homophobic, racist, misogynistic… scum’ at a Labour party conference event this weekend. Responding to the remarks on the Andrew Marr Show, Keir Starmer said he and Angela ‘take different approaches’, and that it is ‘not language that I would use’. How serious is the fracture in Labour’s leadership? Katy
It’s a hard time for Labour cranks. With Keir Starmer (belatedly) trying to rid his party of his more eccentric elements, many have found themselves barred from the movement they joined under Jeremy Corbyn. A number of them today pitched up today at The World Transformed (TWT) in Brighton – a rival socialist shindig just a
Who are Keir Starmer’s big thinkers? Every political leader has them: folk who provoke them and offer a type of politics and policy that they can pick and choose from. Ed Miliband had ‘salons’ with key thinkers who he respected, David Cameron had Steve Hilton, and Tony Blair had a whole suite of colleagues working
Angela Rayner: The cabinet are ‘scum’ If the Labour party was hoping to make the headlines this morning, they were in luck. The party’s conference is underway in Brighton, and it had been expected that much of the focus would be on Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts to reform the way the party elects its leader.
Keir Starmer appeared on the Andrew Marr Show in Brighton this morning to kick off Labour party conference. Faced with a revolt on the left of his party over his proposed rule changes and an overnight row over his deputy Angela Rayner’s latest Tory scum comments, the Labour leader tried to turn the focus back to
The chair of this year’s Labour Party conference, Margaret Beckett opened proceedings yesterday emphasising the importance of civility. A few hours later, Angela Rayner delivered some remarks to a Labour conference fringe event which included the following description of the Tories: Well, she’s running. Labour’s deputy leader has suffered false starts in her efforts to
Whether it’s Michael Gove raving in an Aberdeen club, Humza Yousaf falling over on his scooter or James Duddridge mixing up Zimbabwe with Zambia in a eulogy, it’s certain been a summer for cringeworthy political clips. But now all those efforts have been trumped by a fresh entry from master of the video nasty, the star of the CCTV
Labour’s conference began yesterday and already there’s a familiar feel to events. We’ve had the timeless Labour shenanigans over membership rules, with an under-fire leader forced to compromise for his union backers. The party’s youth wing is on the war path, amid claims of organisers using ‘dirty tricks’ against Young Labour to scupper attendance at their
As I read The Wet Flanders Plain by Henry Williamson, a veteran of the first world war who encountered hostility from locals when he returned to the western front in 1927, a thought struck me: have I stumbled upon the source of Emmanuel Macron’s Anglophobia? Let’s not beat around the bush; the president of France does
