All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
We don’t yet know what Rachel Reeves is planning to do with the welfare bill in her Budget. Will she propose more cuts to personal independence payments, or remove the two-child benefits limit? And what will she do about the new benefit which the Home Office has just invented? It is called – or at
That strange sound coming from their primeval swamp is the noise of two Tory dinosaurs trumpeting their disdain and disapproval of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. As if in coordinated stereo, former prime minister John Major, 82, and his erstwhile rival for the party leadership, Michael Heseltine, 92, have both sounded off with dire warnings to their
Ten people have gone on trial in Paris accused of harassing France’s First Lady, Brigitte Macron, online. The defendants, eight men and two women aged between 41 and 60, are charged with ‘moral harassment by electronic means’ and mocking a false claim that she was born a man by the name of Jean-Michel Trogneux. Prosecutors say
To understand why education reform – and school improvement – is so hard it helps to get inside the mind of the officials who are supposed to be driving higher standards. This week Jonathan Slater, a former Department for Education permanent secretary, published a report for UCL Policy Lab that perfectly illustrates many senior officials’
Back to the collapsed China spy case. Attorney General Lord Hermer is this morning giving evidence to the joint committee on the national security strategy about the matter. He has been quizzed on the context of the case, how it could have been handled differently and the legislation involved. But while Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour
Zarah Sultana loves to pose as a champion of the working class, seeing the world through the lens of class struggle. Even, it seems, the war in Ukraine. In her latest interview, she calls Nato ‘an imperialist war machine’ and advocates for putting all our effort into ending the war, rather than making weapons, thereby
Imagine the horror of discovering that you have been rubbing shoulders with terrorists. No, I’m not talking about those gullible souls who join the Gaza marches in London, but about the British airline crew who had an unfortunate brush with Hamas at a five-star Marriott hotel in Cairo. Full marks to the Daily Mail, whose veteran
Should anyone really be surprised at the House Builders’ Federation’s (HBF) warning that the government has little chance of hitting its target of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of this Parliament? The target of 300,000 new homes a year has become something of a holy grail for previous governments, too. If Boris
‘My wonderful ally and friend’ is how Japan’s brand new, and first female, prime minister Sanae Takaichi described President Trump in her recent tweet. As has been commented in Japan, this is a bit strong given that the two have spent a total of one day together (Trump is visiting as part of a tour
In the wake of yet another rupture in the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the region finds itself suspended in an unstable equilibrium – tense, volatile, but for now, deliberately held back from tipping into open war. On Tuesday, Hamas terrorists launched a coordinated double attack against Israeli troops operating inside the designated ‘yellow
In the latest blow to the beleaguered Gaza ceasefire, Israeli aircraft this week struck targets in Gaza City after Hamas carried out an attack using rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire on IDF soldiers in the Rafah area. One Israeli reserve soldier was killed in the Hamas attack. The exchanges of fire took place amid continued Hamas
In this episode, US arts editor Luke Lyman is joined by Kate Andrews, formerly of The Spectator, to discuss President Javier Milei’s landslide victory in the Argentinian elections this week. The polls were wrong – how did the self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist survive? Plus, Luke and Kate discuss Kamala Harris’s suggestion that she could run again in 2028.
To Barnet, where a council by-election will take place on Thursday. Former councillor Joshua Conway lost his Hendon ward seat after a change of jobs made him ineligible to serve on the council. Six candidates are in the running for the council seat – but the contest is shaping up to be a two-horse race
Another day, another Reform press conference. Today the central London meet-up saw former Conservative MP-turned-defector Danny Kruger take to the podium to set out his plans to prepare the party for government. As James Heale wrote for Coffee House, Kruger wants to reduce civil servant numbers, end leases on a selection of Whitehall premises and
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There are reports that the OBR will downgrade Britain’s productivity growth forecasts, increasing the size of the black hole facing the Chancellor at the end of the month. This continues the spate of bad news for the Chancellor on the economy – but can we trust the figures? James Heale and Michael Simmons join Patrick
Charlie Taylor, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, has a habit of speaking difficult truths which senior civil servants might wish to keep quiet. He’s done it again, following the publication of a recent inspection at HMP Bullingdon. Taylor tweeted that ‘Bullingdon, like many other jails, is heavily dependent on prison officers recruited from West Africa.
Andy Burnham is back. After his humiliation at Labour conference, the Mayor of Greater Manchester has returned, hawking his conscience around once more. At last night’s London launch of his new book, Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain, co-written with Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram, Burnham attacked Starmer again. He criticised the ‘narrow
Sir Keir Starmer is proving to be an unlucky prime minister. This week began with a demonstration of his haplessness. The Prime Minister travelled to Ankara to announce an £8 billion deal to supply the Turkish air force with 20 new Eurofighter Typhoons, beginning in 2030. Yet the political headlines in Britain were full of
When it rains for the Labour lot, it pours. Today’s YouGov poll for the Times shows Nigel Farage’s Reform UK with a ten point lead on the current party of government, with Labour tied with the Tories. More than that, the survey of 2,400 adults found that half of all those who supported Sir Keir
The grotesque return of a body part falsely presented as one of Israel’s remaining hostages marks a new low in Hamas’s campaign of calculated cruelty. Israeli authorities confirmed today that the casket transferred by Hamas did not contain the remains of any of the 13 captives whose remains are still known to be in Gaza.
The British steel industry has been staggering from one crisis to another for the whole of this year. Half of the industry has fallen into effective state control, and what’s left is teetering on the edge of collapse. The government has finally come up with a plan to rescue it. In collaboration with the US
Alex Lloyd, a former teacher and head of sixth form in Bournemouth, has been drummed out of the profession for making remarks that many would find intemperate, even insulting, but few would seriously call career-ending. In 2022, Lloyd led a PSHE lesson on so-called ‘honour’ killings. When two pupils giggled during his lesson, he shouted
Nigel Farage’s call this week for parliament to seize control of the grooming-gangs inquiry sounds superficially compelling. The government’s statutory inquiry has stumbled – survivors have resigned, the chair has stepped down, and momentum appears lost. Why not, Farage argues, bypass this chaos with a parliamentary investigation that can summon witnesses, operate transparently, and confront
The on-again, off-again relationship between Canada and the US is off-again, again. In the latest chapter of this perpetual saga, US President Donald Trump announced on 23 October that trade negotiations between the White House and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had been ‘terminated.’ Two days later, he went back to his Truth Social account
One of the many horrors of the Prince Andrew scandal is the way that, ever since it worsened a now scarcely imaginable ten days ago, there is the growing sense that it is becoming uncontainable. The depth and extent of public anger became clear yesterday when, during a visit to Lichfield Cathedral, a lone protestor,
We are still four weeks away from the Budget and already we have had virtually every tax rise floated before us by Treasury leaks. This is presumably in the hope of managing our expectations so that if we think the Budget is going to be really, really dreadful, we will be pathetically grateful to Reeves
The rise of Reform UK has at times seemed to defy gravity. From winning four million votes at the general election last year to emerging as the largest party at this year’s local elections, they have broken through ceiling after ceiling. What’s more, as the only party regularly hitting 30 per cent in the polls, in
What imaginary country does Labour’s new deputy leader, Lucy Powell, live in? When Powell was crowned as the official thorn-in-the-side of Keir Starmer – as if he needed one – this weekend, she painted a picture of a Britain frustrated at the slow pace of change that Labour is delivering. It’s always enjoyable hearing about
As Germany braces for economic hardship and the mounting danger of confrontation with Russia, its leaders appear preoccupied with the wrong battle. The coalition government, the social democratic SPD party, and even Chancellor Friedrich Merz seem more intent on finding ways to muzzle the AfD party than on facing the realities before them. Yet none
Six weeks after his defection from the Tories, Danny Kruger will tomorrow set out his thinking on how a Reform administration would function. The East Wiltshire MP is billed as the party’s ‘head of government’ unit and is charged with working out how to overhaul the British state. In a speech, he will set out
Hadush Kebatu’s Magical Mystery Tour of North London was the subject of this afternoon’s debate in the Commons. In a scandal which may as well have been permanently accompanied by the Benny Hill theme tune, the police and prison service conspired accidentally to release the Ethiopian schoolgirl-botherer onto the streets of Chelmsford on Friday, followed
When the grooming gang crisis came under renewed scrutiny at the beginning of this year, the former Tory mayoral candidate Susan Hall asked Sadiq Khan eight times during mayor’s questions whether or not grooming gangs were operating in the capital. His response was odd, to say the least. Instead of directly answering the question, Khan repeatedly
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With the news that the Home Office has spent billions of taxpayers’ money on asylum hotels – and following the accidental release of the Epping sex offender – Tim Shipman and James Heale discuss this most shambolic of government departments. Is it fit for purpose? Can Shabana Mahmood fix the cursed department? And, if not,
