All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
One of the benefits of devolution has been giving Scots their own parliament in which the great issues of the day can be discussed. Issues that might not otherwise make it onto the political agenda. Now the Scottish parliament has posed a question that can be avoided no longer: are buses racist? James Dornan is
Since his eight hour long testimony to a joint select committee last month Dominic Cummings has been unusually quiet. The Vote Leave maestro has declined interview requests after levelling a litany of accusations at Boris Johnson and his government, leaving Matt Hancock and others to defend their record in various studios and parliamentary appearances. Now though he has
The report by Sir Richard Henriques into Operation Midland argued that the Metropolitan police was institutionally incompetent, stupid and credulous. If the devastating report by the independent panel into the 1987 murder of Daniel Morgan is to be believed, the force is also institutionally corrupt. The institutional corruption consisted of dishonestly ‘concealing or denying failings,
The jibes thrown at Boris Johnson over his unhappiness with the Northern Ireland protocol — based on the obvious observation that he was the one who signed it — have been based on the assumption that he is either a liar or a fool. A liar because he knew full well what he was signing up
Members of the Supreme Court have had something of a wary relationship with ministers in recent years. Since the landmark Gina Miller verdict in January 2017 and then the unanimous prorogation case in September 2019, there have been various Tory rumblings in Westminster about moves to abolish, reform or simply rename the highest court in the land.
Hungary (Orban 1, 90) 2 Europe and the WHO 0 Now THIS was a proper game of football. Fractious and furious, bitterly contested in front of 61,000 magnificently partisan Hungarians in Budapest. Scarcely a mask in sight and certainly not a knee. Orban has had enough of lockdown: Hungary took us back to the old
GB News, the UK’s first new news channel in decades, launched on Sunday night with a monologue from the estimable Andrew Neil, setting out the channel’s philosophy. ‘We will puncture the pomposity of our elites and politics, business, media and academia and expose their growing promotion of cancel culture for the threat to free speech
NHS England boss Sir Simon Stevens’s final speech today was watched online by hundreds of health service bigwigs. But its main audience was much smaller. It was aimed squarely at just two people: Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. Stevens’s main message was about funding. The government, and, in particular, the Treasury, may not be thrilled once they
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The government has agreed its first post-Brexit bespoke trade deal. But the agreement with Australia has already caused consternation among Conservative MPs about the potential competition from Australian farmers. Are these fears overstated? James Forsyth argues yes: ‘Both its proponents and its critics exaggerate its importance. Meat prices in Asia are roughly twice what they
Until this month ‘taking a knee’ has not been a French phenomenon. When the Black Lives Matter movement spilled out of America twelve months ago and spread across the world, France was one of the few Western nations where it failed to make any headway. In a bold television address at the time, Emmanuel Macron declared that
Did anyone fancy being in Boris Johnson’s shoes before he made the decision to delay the full lifting of Covid restrictions? Keir Starmer, perhaps. But even Starmer might have preferred opposition if he had read the latest paper by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) committee, which will have informed the Prime Minister’s
What is it with Labour and Brexit? An issue that during Theresa May’s premiership looked like it could rip the Conservative party apart has instead made them electorally invincible – and caused huge problems for the Labour party. For that reason, Keir Starmer tends to avoid the topic these days, seeking to show that he
The latest employment figures, published this morning, confirm a remarkable aspect of the Covid pandemic: that it appears to have caused no more than a little bump in the jobs miracle of the past decade. That is in spite of the economy shrinking by nearly 10 per cent in 2020 — a performance that in the
Arching out across a quiet Balkan valley, Montenegro’s first motorway cuts across the rocky scrubland with unnatural precision: a modernist stroke of concrete that gleams against the stony outcrops of the Dinaric Alps. Hung on one of the vast grey pillars is the country’s distinctive crimson banner, a golden two-headed eagle at its centre. The
The UK government has agreed its first bespoke trade deal since leaving the EU. After Boris Johnson met with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday night, a deal has been agreed between the two sides. The deal on the table offers tariff free trade for all British goods, enhanced access for British tech companies
A new court will be established with powers over both countries. Labour and product laws will be harmonised. Flags with kangaroos and crowns will flutter over buildings, there will be a special parliament moving weekly from Cairns to Coventry and an anthem that mashes up Rolf Harris and The Beatles will be played at every
It appears there was a nasty atmosphere down on Whitehall yesterday, where an anti-lockdown demonstration took place. Footage has emerged today of the BBC Newsnight presenter Nick Watt being pursued by an unpleasant mob at the event, with a group screaming at the journalist and calling him a ‘traitor’. Eventually, Watt was forced to run
After resigning as a visiting professor at City University in March after admitting to supporting IRA terrorists in the 1970s, Roy Greenslade has now popped up again in the institute’s student magazine XCITY. In an interview with budding hacks, published this month, the former Guardian media commentator claims that ‘given that it was more than 20 years since the
When Boris Johnson announced that unlocking would be guided by ‘data not dates’ he handed detractors ample scope for derision and defiance. In the four months since, lockdown critics have rightly insisted that he uphold the slogan and accelerate a roadmap, designed to move at such a glacial speed, that it risked fraying the DNA
The government has just suffered a further verbal drubbing for the way it announced it would be delaying the roadmap out of Covid restrictions. Matt Hancock gave a statement in the Commons tonight, a couple of hours after the Prime Minister announced all the details of the delay. Before he spoke, though, he had to
11 min listen
It seems Freedom Day is no longer June 21st. The writing was clearly on the wall this morning, but now the Prime Minister has officially told the public, it is likely to be another four weeks of restrictions. ‘Conservative MPs are getting really agitated by this moving of the goal posts‘ – Isabel Hardman But after
Boris Johnson has this evening confirmed that he will delay the lifting of all Covid restrictions by four weeks to 19 July. Announcing the decision in a press conference, Johnson said the Indian variant – also known as the Delta variant – has changed the picture and meant the government was no longer able to proceed
Scotland 0 Czech Republic 2 (Schick as a parrot, 42,52) Have you ever visited Carlsbad, now known as Karlovy Vary? I’d always had a faint hankering to live there, being hugely enamoured of what we once called eastern Europe, but I’m told it’s full of the most ghastly Russians these days. Maybe Slovakia is a
It is not the Battle of Marston Moor, but it strikes me that we are now in something of a constitutional crisis following the Speaker’s dramatic outburst this afternoon. In response to points of order about the fact Boris Johnson is announcing lockdown changes in a press conference rather than to parliament, Hoyle said that
The Speaker was not holding back this afternoon when asked by Sir Edward Leigh about Boris Johnson’s 6 p.m. Covid press conference. Lindsay Hoyle laid into the government from the Speaker’s chair, accusing ministers of disrespecting parliament for failing to inform the House first of all changes to Covid restrictions. Indeed he even claimed that
As Boris Johnson prepares to announce a four-week delay to the final stage out of lockdown, he faces a mixed reaction. Labour plans to back the delay but make clear that it was avoidable and is down to bad leadership. The public is seen to be more forgiving — with a Times/YouGov poll over the weekend
Sunday saw a watershed moment in Israeli politics: Bibi Netanyahu was removed from power after 12 years, and his government replaced by an eclectic coalition headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, both of whom will serve as Prime Minister under a rotation agreement, starting with Bennett. It may be that one of Bibi’s greatest
Lord Sumption was one of the starring guests on last night’s launch of GB News. The former judge, who stepped down from the Supreme Court in 2018, has enjoyed a varied career as one of Britain’s best paid barristers, a medieval historian and even as Keith Joseph’s onetime adviser but has emerged in recent months as
‘Horror’ conjures up several images; a fanged Dracula or a night at the cinema perhaps. But there’s a deeper kind of horror; the slow, white-hot kind that grips you in its claws. In hearing, over and over, testimonies to some of the most obscene violations of human rights imaginable. To look, as I have done,
Israel’s new government is a daring, possibly doomed but nonetheless fascinating experiment. Headed by tech millionaire turned nationalist figurehead Naftali Bennett and TV journalist turned voice of centrism Yair Lapid, Jerusalem’s 36th government is an ideological hydra. Bennett’s right-wing national-religious Yamina party is joined by the secular liberals of Lapid’s Yesh Atid, along with Kahol
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Boris Johnson is expected to announce a delay to reopening later today. How will the Prime Minister make his case, and will his backbenchers support him? Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth. On the podcast, Katy says uneasy Conservatives may give him the benefit of the doubt this time: ‘There are some Tory
The Chesham and Amersham by-election is on Thursday. Thank God it’s almost here — hopefully then we can stop hearing any rubbish about how the Lib Dems are set to tear down the Conservatives’ ‘blue wall’ in the home counties. As the campaign has demonstrated, the Lib Dems are miles away from being able to
When Boris Johnson announces the delay to reopening tonight, he needs to set out what this pause is meant to achieve. If it is to enable more people in vaccination groups one to nine, who account for 99 per cent of all Covid deaths, to have their second jab and receive the full benefit of that