All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Tory victory in Hartlepool, with a swing of 16 per cent and the biggest increase in a governing party’s vote in any by-election since 1945, is a terrible blow to Labour hopes that the choice of Sir Keir Starmer would soon stem their rot. What happened in what was a safe Labour seat —
Keir Starmer is facing a rocky few days as the party’s results from the local elections start to come in. Labour has lost Hartlepool with the Tories taking the seat with a majority of 6,940. While many Labour campaigners were braced for defeat, the margin by which the Conservatives have won has taken both pollsters
This morning Labour are in damage limitation mode after the party’s candidate in the Hartlepool by election conceded defeat. However, not everyone has got the memo. Step forward Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the onetime shadow minister for natural environment and air quality who quit Starmer’s frontbench in July last year. The Brighton left-winger did not even wait
The Tories have taken Hartlepool on a remarkable 16 per cent swing from Labour. The Tories saw the biggest increase — 23 per cent — in a governing party’s share of the vote in a by-election in the post-war era. Labour has been trounced in a seat that has been theirs since its creation in
Labour has started bracing itself for a very unpleasant few days of results in elections across the country. As polls close in local, mayoral, devolved assembly and police and crime commissioner elections, as well as the Hartlepool by-election, a party source has said: These were always going to be tough elections for Labour. Keir has
It’s been a good week for seeing the vaccine factor at work. We’ve had multiple real-world updates on the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness against new variants of Covid-19 (this bodes well for the UK, which was the first country in the world to use the vaccine to protect its most vulnerable residents). And today we’ve had
Last month Steerpike revealed which politicians are set to release books after putting their respective lockdowns to good use. But it appeared Mr S missed one looming literary attraction – the release of Michel Barnier’s forthcoming memoirs about the Brexit talks. Barnier, who held the role of the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator between 2016 and 2021,
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Once again it’s all about the fish – following protests from French fisherman over their rights in the waters surrounding Jersey, Boris Johnson has despatched Royal Navy boats to the Channel. Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about why tensions escalated so quickly.
The stand-off between France and Britain has escalated into something altogether more serious. Yesterday, the French maritime minister called for Jersey’s electricity supply to be cut off in response to a dispute over fishing rights. Egged on by French officials, around 80 boats began blockading the port of St Helier this morning in a move
The situation in Jersey is rapidly spiralling out of control and dominating the headlines. But once again, the Lib Dems have surpassed themselves in responding terribly to a crisis that offered them a chance to win over voters. After a predictable post-Brexit mix-up on fishing rights in the Channel, France’s maritime minister Annick Girardin hit back. Girardin threatened to
It’s polling day for the local elections but the focus of the government is on Jersey, where a row has broken out over post-Brexit fishing rights. After 80 French boats gathered at St Helier in protest over new licences required for fishing there, the UK hit back by sending two British naval patrol vessels as
‘The world’s changed quite a bit,’ was Domic Raab’s fitting, if somewhat understated, opening remark at the G7 meeting of foreign secretaries this week. The first in-person meeting of the alliance in two years saw masked dignitaries, elbow bumps and distanced discussions behind plexiglass screens. But two members of the Indian delegation still ended up
How do you forgive the person who put you through hell as a child? That’s the question that will be running through my mind when I watch footballer turned pundit Ian Wright’s documentary tonight on domestic violence. Wright says he has made peace with the stepfather who subjected him and his family to physical and psychological abuse.
Ah, Hartlepool. The by-election there brings back memories: I am old enough to have reported on the last one, back in 2004, when Peter Mandelson went off to Brussels and left behind what was then a fairly safe Labour seat. My slightly faded memory of that 2004 vote informs my view of what is apparently
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A poll last night gave the Tories a 17-point lead in Hartlepool. Tomorrow’s by-election in the red wall seat is to be one of the first barometers of Keir Starmer’s leadership so far. How serious would a Labour loss be? Isabel Hardman speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.
Registered Covid deaths fell to just one on Monday, leading many to comment that the epidemic in Britain is effectively over. One day’s statistics don’t mean an awful lot, especially over a bank holiday, but what about the wider picture? Over the UK as a whole, there have been 90 deaths over the past seven
Campaigning in the Hartlepool by-election is reaching its feverish final hours as the Labour party tries to hold onto the seat. There has been sufficient talk of the party losing the constituency for such a result not to come as a shock if it does happen. Indeed, many in the party are already talking as
It has been a tough few weeks for David Cameron. The former Prime Minister’s brief lobbying career appears to have come to an end with the collapse of Greensill capital while his long-awaited UK-China investment fund is still ‘yet to be established’ four years after being announced. Still, at least he can always relax with
In Tuesday’s regional elections in Madrid, the right-wing Partido Popular emerged as by far the most successful party, more than doubling its representation to win 65 of the 136 seats in the assembly. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the 42-year-old local Partido Popular leader who was seeking re-election, won more seats than the three left-wing parties combined.
Care homes have been at the centre of controversy and mishandling throughout the Covid-19 crisis. Decisions taken last spring to move patients out of hospital, without so much as a Covid-19 test, contributed to a surge of cases in facilities designed to look after Britain’s most vulnerable. Failure to tackle early on the problem of
David Davis was ‘truculent’. Dominic Raab was ‘almost messianic’. Theresa May was ‘rigid. While Boris Johnson kept asking to borrow a tenner and whether it would be okay if Carrie joined the meeting. Okay, I made that last one up, but the rest are among the startling revelations contained in Michel Barnier’s Brexit diary, published
Bank Holiday Monday, in case you didn’t know, was also World Press Freedom Day. Unesco understandably marked the occasion. But more interesting than its official communiqué – and a great deal more informative about the way that organisation thinks – was a recent report it sponsored in support of two journalists said to be the subject of
Britain and India have been trading for over 400 years. For 190 of those, between 1757 and 1947, the subcontinent was close to being a captive market of the United Kingdom. Today commercial turnover between the two nations is a mere £23 billion — a tenth of the goods and services traffic between Britain and
The Church of England has spent much of 2021 grappling with how it handles race relations. In the wake of one Anglican ordinand claiming in February that ‘The cult of Captain Tom is a cult of White British Nationalism’ the Church has had to contend with revelations about the use of Non Disclosure Agreements in silencing allegations of
This week will see the biggest set of polls in UK history outside of a general election. Contests are under way in Wales, Scotland, London and in the various mayoral, local and PCC elections across Britain as part of a so-called ‘Super Thursday.’ But while past election nights have been met with the chimes of
Sunday’s anti-climactic finale looked set to be the biggest Line of Duty let-down for fans of the hit BBC series. But now one of the drama’s stars Martin Compston has waded into the Scottish independence debate and urged his fellow Scots to vote SNP this Thursday. He says that the ‘Tory government in Westminster’ some 325
Two hundred years ago today, Napoleon Bonaparte closed his eyes for the final time. A man born to relative obscurity in Corsica, he was lifted by merit to become Emperor of the French and conqueror of Europe. But the fault of his ambition and the might of his enemies ultimately led to his defeat at
Meghan Markle has written a book for children. Of course she has. There is no celeb, no matter how busy, who doesn’t have a children’s book in them, because children’s books, you might think if you didn’t know better, don’t need plot or character or much in the way of style. It was either that,
When the unthinkable happened in 1882 and England lost a test match on home soil to Australia there followed a mock obituary in the Sporting Times. ‘In Affectionate Remembrance of English Cricket, which died at the Oval on 29 August 1882, deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances,’ it read, adding
Concerns around unemployment during the pandemic have, understandably, been focused on younger people. Last year it was under-24 year olds most likely to be furloughed and then subsequently made unemployed when coming off the government’s scheme. For millions, the fate of their jobs remains on the line, as unemployment is expected to rise over the
Ever since the Brexit vote in 2016, there has been a committed group of activists and politicians convinced that only Russian meddling could possibly explain why the British people decided they wanted to leave the EU. The political equivalents of Hiroo Onoda – the Japanese soldier who refused to accept the second world war was
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One of the key aspects of the imminent G7 summit will be the return of face-to-face meetings between politicians. What will be on the agenda, and can the rest of us hope to follow suit and leave Zoom behind? Fraser Nelson talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.
Westminster is something of a ghost town this week as MPs, staffers and wonks all fan out across the country to pound the doorsteps ahead of polling day. With Parliament prorogued and the airwaves dominated by talk of the Red Wall, there is precious little to amuse those poor souls still remaining in SW1 ahead of the
