All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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The Prime Minister is in America to meet Joe Biden and discuss COP26 and the new Aukus security pact. But what do the two leaders hope to achieve? Also, the Labour party conference is this weekend. can Keir Starmer get the left of his party to heel or will his leadership be brought even more
On Saturday it was the seventh anniversary of the Scottish vote on independence – how time flies. That contest saw a decisive ten point majority against separation; not that you’d know it from the way Nicola Sturgeon conducts her affairs. The SNP First Minister succeeded Alex Salmond in the post just weeks after the plebiscite
It’s been said far too many times that Boris Johnson and Donald Trump have a lot in common. Trump himself called the Prime Minister ‘Britain Trump’ – to Donald’s mind, the greatest compliment any man could give. Others use the Trump-Boris analogy to pour scorn. French newspapers have called him ‘mini-Trump’. Or ‘Trump with a
Ursula von der Leyen has demanded a full investigation. EU officials are considering pulling out of technology talks with the US. And negotiations over a trade deal with Australia have been put in doubt. Over the last 24 hours, the full might of the European Union has been deployed on the side of France in
Canada has just surpassed even its own previous records for absurd and boring elections yielding predictable and dreary results. Almost inexplicably, Trudeau called this election with the shortest possible campaign. He believed he could regain his majority as a recognition of what he imagined to be his distinguished leadership of the country through the coronavirus
The Spectator is a magazine for conservatives written by liberals. From that tension comes an editorial persuasion — there is no line — that can seem winsome, beguiling, even perverse. Optimistic but never idealist, sceptical of the big but not the new, The Spectator combines a radical’s grasp of the possible with a reactionary’s sense of
One of the most shocking images from the Corbyn years of the Labour party was Luciana Berger flanked by police officers at Labour conference. Here was a Labour MP who had been subjected to so much hostility and outright racism from cesspit leftists that she felt unsafe at her own annual party gathering. That a
The last few months have been a period of change for SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford. The waistcoat-wearing MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber placed one of his two Skye homes on sales for £400,000 and quit his £39,000-a-year directorship of Golden Charter – the investment firm which gets its money from pre-paid funeral plans. The company caused Blackford a
You know that mate of yours who is always boasting they pay way less for energy than you because they’re constantly surfing for the best deal on price comparison websites? Well they are still going to have the last laugh, even though the energy company that supplied them is going bust. That is because the
For many Brits and Europeans with ties to America, human relationships have been put on hold for an insufferably long time during the Covid-19 crisis. Today, at last, that changed. White House advisor Jeffrey Zients announced that anyone fully vaccinated from anywhere in the world will be able to enter the U.S. with a negative test
So farewell then, Stephen Toope. The undistinguished Canadian lawyer who has spent recent years trying to run Cambridge University into the ground has just sent an announcement to all faculty, alumni and students. In it he informs them that he has decided to step down from his position as Vice-Chancellor at the end of this academic year.
For years it seemed as though China’s massively inflated property bubble would just keep on expanding, seemingly defying the laws of economics, as well as regular warnings of the dire consequences for the economy should it burst. Now that moment may have been reached, as the country’s biggest developer teeters on the brink of bankruptcy. Evergrande is the biggest debtor in China – and
It’s been a tough pandemic for all of us here in Britain. Lockdowns, supply shortages, over-zealous policemen and Matt Hancock’s gurning face – there’s been a shortage of joy these past 18 months. But now Mr S is delighted to discover there is light at the end of the tunnel: a forthcoming book bonanza by
Tory MPs will not get the chance to force the government into a U-turn on scrapping the £20-a-week Universal Credit uplift this afternoon after the Speaker didn’t select their rebel amendment. Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Damian Green had tabled the motion refusing to give a second reading to the bill on the basis that the
Why has Britain suddenly been plunged into an energy crisis, with day ahead auction prices for electricity rising to over £400 per MWh, ten times what they were this time last year? The spike in global gas prices caused by economic recovery from Covid has been commented on often enough, as has the failure of
Ping! No, not the latest sound of the dreaded test and trace app. An email has arrived in Steerpike’s inbox, subject line: ‘HANVEY CALLS FOR “UNITED FRONT” TO DEFEAT DRACONIAN POWERS.’ It is of course the latest dispatch from Scotland’s little-loved sixth party, Alba, Holyrood’s home for the dispossessed and the never-possessed. Intrigued, Mr S
Emmanuel Macron has said that his thought is too subtle to be readily understood by mere mortals, and he’s right. Penetrating the logic of his four-dimensional brain is not a task for the intellectually deficient. The trick is to remember that he understands the Anglo-Saxon commentariat, and he knows when they can be useful to
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With many smaller energy companies folding because of a steep rise in the cost of gas, how long will it take before the bigger firms turn to the government for help, and will continuously rising wages help soften the blow? Katy Balls talks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.
Justin Trudeau’s snap election has just gone from bad to worse. The incumbent Canadian Prime Minister decided last month to call a snap election to improve his parliamentary standing. It was a contest no-one wanted (or expected) and the move seems to have backfired spectacularly. Hectored by anti-vaxxers, lambasted for his Covid record and lampooned as ‘UnCanadian’ for
The office of the Afghan president, the Arg, sits in more than 80 acres of parkland, quadruple the size of the White House estate, and more than twice the size of Buckingham Palace grounds. Since it was built in the late eighteenth century, most of its occupants have died violently in one of the elegant
The Prime Minister has touched down in New York for the UN General Assembly where he hopes to press countries on committing funds for the Cop26 climate talks. Ahead of the summit, Boris Johnson has urged wealthier countries to contribute to a £100 billion a year funding target aimed at helping developing nations to cut carbon emissions. That
It is four days since the US, UK and Australia announced their historic security pact in the Asia-Pacific but there are few signs of anger abating from the usual suspects. The deal will let Australia build nuclear-powered submarines for the first time, using technology provided by America. Cyber ability and undersea technologies will also be shared in the pact,
Alok Sharma: Net zero targets can be met with incentives With the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow looming ever closer, Andrew Marr spoke this morning to Alok Sharma, the President for COP26. Marr asked about what the UK government was preparing to do in order to meet its ambitious targets of zero carbon emissions
The German election campaign has been entirely lacking in substance. Laschet, Baerbock, Scholz: none seem to grip the public’s attention. None are good enough to stand out, yet none are bad enough to drop out as the media and the opposition struggle to land definitive blows. Amid the monotony of political circus and sclerosis, the
Zhou Xiaoxuan was in tears when she emerged from the Beijing court around midnight on Tuesday. ‘I’m really sorry there wasn’t a better result,’ she said in a video clip shared by supporters after the court threw out a sexual harassment case against one of the country’s most famous television hosts. Zhou claimed she had
The forming of the Australia-UK-US (Aukus) military alliance in the Pacific shows how everything Trump can say, Biden can do. The problem is, Biden isn’t doing it very well. Biden’s administration, like Trump’s, is committed to building its Pacific alliances while sustaining Nato. Yet on Australia as in Afghanistan, the Biden team are doing exactly
In early August, Italy banned the unvaccinated from most forms of social life, then most forms of travel and now most forms of work. The unvaccinated are pariahs. Yet unlike in France, say, where hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest against compulsory vaccine passports, in Italy hardly anyone has protested against ‘Il
The Tory party has had a difficult relationship with China in recent years. David Cameron and George Osborne’s ‘Golden era’ of Sino-UK diplomacy foundered on the rock of Beijing’s actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang while Boris Johnson’s backbenchers have consistently urged a tougher line on tech companies like Huawei. The G7 summit in June illustrated the
The fallout from Australia’s cancellation of its submarine contract with France and the new trilateral Indo-Pacific security pact between Australia, the US and the UK continues. France has recalled its ambassadors from Canberra and Washington (though significantly not from London) for ‘immediate consultations’; the well-worn diplomatic gesture of discontent. This is the first occasion ever
Scottish civil servants are to start work on a ‘detailed prospectus’ for independence so the Scottish government can hold another referendum ‘when the Covid crisis has passed’, Nicola Sturgeon announced earlier this month. The irony of this – coming just days before the Office for National Statistics reported that the percentage of Scots testing positive in a
In the dying days of Theresa May’s benighted premiership I spotted a long-serving Tory MP on the same weekend train as me, a few rows down. This old whips office hand had naturally bagged a table of four for himself and spread out documents and newspapers across it to deter all-comers. But he seemed most
Fear has been the watchword of Westminster this week, as nervy ministers check to see whether they have survived the cull. Their civil servants meanwhile have had no such troubles, able to wait in their Whitehall offices to comfort, console or congratulate their political masters and listen to yet more interminable farewell speeches from those unceremoniously
