All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Among the scientists and medics calling this week for caution in the government’s reopening of the economy was Dr Lisa Spencer, a consultant in Liverpool and honorary secretary of the British Thoracic Society, who warned on the Today programme on Tuesday that the country was covered with a series of ‘mini Covid volcanoes’ which ‘could
While the EU agonises about whether to boycott Belarusian potash or state-owned oil companies, there is one very easy measure that would not only be a powerful symbolic rebuke but also limit the regime’s campaign to spy on, harass, intimidate and harm the opposition outside the country’s borders. Kick out the KGB. It is a
In 2019, the then-deputy prime minister of Ireland Simon Coveney spoke at the UN Human Rights Council, where he underlined Ireland’s commitment to defending human rights – which he said was strengthened by his country’s membership of the EU. As he told the summit, freedom and justice are: woven through our foreign policy, through our bilateral
Lesbian and gay rights are still not secure in the UK. This week the LGB Alliance – a group used to being smeared and misrepresented – came under further attack. With astonishing impudence, the LGBT+ Consortium, Gendered Intelligence, the LGBT Foundation, TransActual, and the Good Law Project ganged up with Mermaids UK in a staggering
Every year since the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, Hong Kongers have gathered in their thousands to remember the fallen. The annual Tiananmen Vigil, where candles light up Victoria Park, was an event laden with significance. It was a statement that Hong Kongers would not forget those who had died under the
Austria’s government has unveiled a map detailing the locations of mosques and other Muslim associations all over the country. The publication has been swiftly condemned by Austrian Muslim groups, including the Muslim Youth Organisation which announced a lawsuit in response. But Austria’s government is so far refusing to back down. The ‘Islam map’ is a project of the government-backed Political Islam
It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so mind-numbingly tedious. The Bishop of St Davids, the Right Reverend Dr Joanna Penberthy, has discovered Twitter. And we’ve discovered just what goes on inside the mind of a mid-ranking Anglican bore. It is, apparently, a rather angry place — not the quiet reflective serenity one might expect
The government’s ambition to close the learning gap that has occurred as a result of the pandemic hit a stumbling block today. After the Department for Education announced plans for a £1.4bn programme in schools to help children catch up, ministers were criticised for not going further in their proposals. Now the government’s education catch-up chief has
13 min listen
The government’s education tsar Kevan Collins resigned this afternoon, saying that the £1.4 billion pledged by the government for schools is only a tenth of what is needed. Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about who will take the flack. On the podcast, James says Collins’s resignation is ’embarrassing for the government’. The
34 min listen
What was once dismissed by the mainstream media as a right wing conspiracy theory, seems to have made its transition into credible possibility. It now seems very plausible that Covid came from a Chinese lab. But will we ever know for sure? And even if we did, what would we do about it? Freddy Gray
Heinz is expanding a huge factory in the UK. Tesla is reportedly scouting the north for locations for a new car or battery plant. Even the pound is bouncing to three-year highs. It has been a difficult few weeks for some hardcore Remainers. Still, at least there is finally something to cheer them up. Tim
Belarus’s president Alexander Lukashenko has been roundly condemned following the arrest of Roman Protasevich, but he still has one ally. Lukashenko spent the weekend at Sochi, on the Black Sea, where he was hosted on president Vladimir Putin’s yacht. The two leaders greeted each other with a hug. After dolphin spotting, the pair wrapped up a deal on the
How damaging is the ‘culture war’ to the Labour party’s hopes of one day regaining power? On the left there is a fragile consensus in place that it doesn’t matter very much. The Times columnist David Aaronovitch set this out recently, using some opinion research from King’s College, London. According to the study most voters don’t
One of the many reasons I hate wokers is because they indulge so shamelessly in what Bebel coined ‘the socialism of fools’ – anti-Semitism – under the convenient cover of sticking up for the Palestinians. Pretty much all socialism is for fools these days and as we see the Tories ditch misogyny, racism and austerity
This was perhaps the most heavily-trailed Kleenex moment in recent TV history. The advance clips of Sir Keir Starmer’s interview with Piers Morgan suggested that the Labour leader would well up on-screen as he recalled his parents’ deaths and the fate of a family pet that was killed in a shed fire. We’re accustomed to
One of the biggest challenges for any leader of the opposition is getting noticed. Doing that requires taking some risks and Keir Starmer’s sit down with Piers Morgan was a bit of a risk – politicians can get caught out in these more personal formats. Starmer did well, though. He didn’t fall into any Nick
It’s been a bad night for Stonewall. Yesterday, the Labour MP Dawn Butler created a Twitter Poll. ‘Who do you trust more?’ she asked her 150,000 followers, Stonewall or Liz Truss? It’s not exactly clear what inspired Butler to ask this question online, but this is, of course, the MP who last year told Good
Oriel College, Oxford’s decision to retain the statue of Cecil Rhodes has generated the usual voluminous fury. It has also shown it to be just that: noise. The university’s willingness to face down activists could mark a turning point in proving that when campaigners don’t get their way, the world continues to turn. This might sound obvious but it marks
Keir Starmer’s appearance on Piers Morgan’s ‘Life Stories’ is a sign of desperation. The Labour leader knows he must do something about the dire situation his party is in, following the disastrous defeat at the Hartlepool by-election. One of the big criticisms levelled at Starmer is that he lacks charisma. His decision to agree to
Time is running out for Bibi Netanyahu. In the next couple of days, the fate of Israel’s next government will be decided. If opposition parties manage to reach a deal tonight, it will mean that Bibi and the Likud will no longer be in power – for the first time in twelve years. Four rounds
Time is, I fear, running out. Running out, that is, to avoid handing to a small number of multinational corporations our right to buy and sell things. Running out to prevent governments and central banks helping themselves to our savings, by means of negative interest rates. The payments industry is closing in on its target
Boris Johnson is more popular in France than Emmanuel Macron, which might not be a high hurdle to overcome, since Macron is rather generally unloved. Except Johnson is not just marginally more popular, but massively so. Indeed, the French seem to like him even more than the British. And he’s popular right across the French
‘Kawaisou’ or ‘wagamama’ (poor thing or spoiled brat)? That’s the question Japanese tennis fans have been asking ever since world number two Naomi Osaka quit the French Open, having refused to fulfil her post-match press conference obligations. The tennis superstar cited mental health problems for her reluctance to be quizzed by journalists, after which she was censored
Cracks are beginning to appear in the shiny veneer of the German Green’s professionalism, a feature that was supposed to mark out the insurgent centrist party and contrast them against the spluttering greyness of the outgoing Merkel regime. If indeed the Greens are to win a quarter of votes in September’s German elections— as their
Amidst the drama of Dominic Cummings’s appearance in front of MPs last week, perhaps the most important thing the PM’s former adviser said was almost entirely ignored. As well as slating his former boss, Cummings criticised the UK’s disaster planning. The pandemic has shifted attention to how Britain would deal in the future with another respiratory virus, but arguably a
Given the power that the daily statistics of Covid deaths have exerted over us this year, it was only a matter of time before we started being bamboozled with terrifying figures of the estimated death toll from climate change. Sure enough, the latest issue of Nature Climate Change contains a widely-reported paper by the London
12 min listen
Now officially in June, the significance of the 21st seems even greater for the country, but with the Indian variant still on the rise how safe is the date? Katy Balls says that for the government: ‘The plan is to offer all over fifties two doses before June 21st.’ And a glorious weekend of weather for
So farewell, then, to Israel’s vaccine passport, the green pass. Less than three months after coming into effect, the Covid vaccination certification scheme was scrapped today, along with almost all of the remaining Covid-19 restrictions in public places. Israel was the first country to introduce a vaccine passport back in March. Cafes, bars, restaurants, gyms
After a month of Franco-British naval conflict, Brexit barbs and, most importantly, the release of Michael Barnier’s diaries, one might expect Boris Johnson’s stock in France to be low. For a certain kind of #FPBE bien-pensant, Johnson represents all that the continent should hate: British belligerence, slapdash scruff and Little Englander jingoism. Yet polling reveals that 51
While Boris Johnson used the bank holiday weekend to get married, scientists have been busy filling the airwaves with various warnings about proceeding with the final lockdown easing on 21 June. There have been a series of statements from both government advisers and other scientists arguing that in the face of rising cases of the Indian
A large, investigative collaboration between Scandinavian public service outlets and European newspapers such as Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung has revealed a rather sensational espionage story. US intelligence agency NSA has reportedly been snooping on American allies, including Swedish politicians, with the help of…Sweden’s neighbour, Denmark. To make matters worse, the Danish defense minister has
Librarians aren’t known for causing trouble. But at our elite universities, in the grip of an increasingly unhinged culture of offence-taking, it doesn’t take much to cause trouble nowadays. This is the news that a library director at King’s College London has been forced to make a grovelling apology for emailing around a photo of
The five most frustrating words a journalist can hear are: ‘This is not a story’. Over the years, I have heard that warding charm invoked by press officers governmental and party, private sector and charitable. Every time, it guaranteed I would work doubly hard to ensure the story in question made it into print. Political