All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Remember the days when David Cameron was the sleek young prime minister who had brought to an end 13 years of Labour government and Boris Johnson was just a clown on a zipwire? There seemed little doubt that Dave had won the race between the Bullingdon Club contemporaries for the glittering prizes of political life,
Some time around 2006 my then flatmate, a filmmaker, had a good idea: why not make a programme of reverse anthropology? Instead of going to the jungle with some square-jawed presenter to marvel at the natives, he decided to bring the natives here, to England, to see what they made of us. The islanders who
The Lugano convention – part of a tapestry of complicated international law agreements ensuring the courts of one country recognise the courts of another – has a dull name but it matters a great deal. Since the EU referendum, the convention has played a small role in the great internecine conflict between Britain and Brussels.
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The UK and EU are holding talks over how to fix the Northern Ireland Protocol and stop the continuing violence on the island. Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman about whether there’s a way forward.
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Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck, is currently on trial in Minneapolis. What does the evidence say, will the city stay peaceful when the verdict is delivered, do violent viral videos do more harm than good, and should the country’s political leaders call for order? Freddy Gray speaks to Scott
As Westminster reels from Alan Duncan’s shocking revelations that he didn’t much like Boris and that he should have been in the cabinet (not that he cared) who will be next to publish their tell all book? With the watering holes of SW1 shut for most of the last twelve months, politicians have been forced
Can things get any worse for Keir Starmer? Yes appears to be the answer, if the latest YouGov poll is anything to go on. While the Tories have surged ahead to 43 per cent, support for Labour has tumbled down to 29 per cent. It’s important not to blow a single poll out of proportion,
The process that delivered us the Northern Ireland Protocol already seems to have been rewritten in official memory. It suits most parties involved to pretend the outcome was inevitable. For Brussels, it helps them defend an arrangement designed to ‘protect the peace’ which is instead corroding loyalist support for the Belfast Agreement. For those in
Robert Webb is best known for making people laugh, but he conducted himself with poise and grace when he was ambushed by American podcast host Jesse Thorn. Thorn had invited Webb and long-time collaborator David Mitchell to talk about their latest show, and their experiences performing together as a double act over the years. But
It’s been a bruising week for the government as ministers have come under fire over their involvement in David Cameron’s Greensill lobbying scandal. Labour have gone on the attack on the issue – with Keir Starmer putting in one of his more assured performances at PMQs on the topic this week. With numerous inquiries now
Berlin’s rent freeze, hailed by some as a potential model for London, is already coming to an end after less than two years. In its final ruling this week, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court struck down the rent freeze as unconstitutional. In this sorry saga, there are plenty of lessons for those who supported rent freezes
Ursula von der Leyen isn’t particularly keen on diplomatic protocol. Earlier this year, in a bid to get EU hands on British bound vaccines, the Commission announced its intention to implement a hard Northern Irish border — without bothering to tell either Dublin or Belfast. (Naturally, that fit of international irreverence was blamed on a Brussels subordinate). Then
Britain’s favourite Frenchman, Michel Barnier, is in the Calais region today where he will address a conference about his part in Brexit and perhaps give a further indication as to his presidential aspirations. The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator was described in yesterday’s Le Figaro as the man who can ‘unite the right’ and in doing so
It’s not easy to frame sanctions, these days. They occupy that huge, hazy diplomatic no man’s land between sternly-worded but essentially vacuous expressions of concern – grave concern, if you really want to pretend you’re serious – and sending a gunboat. When it comes to trying to make an impression on Vladimir Putin, who has
It was just two days ago that Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau was claiming in his country’s parliament that Britain was ‘facing a very serious third wave.’ But now cases in the country have overtaken those of its southern neighbour the USA, whose approach to the pandemic received widespread criticism prior to the vaccine roll out. Data from
The radicalisation of the Ben & Jerry’s PR department has been one of the stranger spectacles of recent years. After all, for all its hippyish origins and homespun shtick, Ben & Jerry’s is a corporate giant flogging expensive ice creams with wacky names like Cherry Garcia and Truffle Kerfuffle. And yet it has become remarkably
Seventeen months is clearly long enough, as far as Prince Andrew is concerned, to spend in the royal wilderness. While mourning the passing of his father, he’s made tentative steps to reclaim his position as one of the public faces of the House of Windsor. His private status, close to his mother, has never been
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A number of cases of the South African variant have been detected around parts of London, leading to surge testing of those neighbourhoods this week. Could this variant stunt the UK’s vaccine rollout? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.
It’s arguably been a good week for Labour, as the Tory party becomes more and more implicated in the Greensill lobbying scandal, which saw the former PM David Cameron ringing around ministers last year to secure emergency cash for the flailing financial firm. Labour leader Keir Starmer certainly seemed to enjoy the ongoing revelations about
Steerpike finally got his hands this week on a copy of Failures of State by the Sunday Times Insight duo Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott about Britain’s experience of Covid. While not exactly a barrel of laughs, Mr S did enjoy one contribution from SAGE member Susan Michie, professor of health psychology at University College London and a Communist party
For residents of six London boroughs, as well as those in Smethwick in the West Midlands, the partial relaxation of lockdown rules this week hasn’t quite gone according to plan. They’ve had a day out in the sun, alright, but not necessarily sitting enjoying food and drinks in a pub garden – more likely they
When David Cameron started contemplating life after Downing Street, he settled quite quickly on a model of what it should look like. He would stay on the backbenches, providing advice and wisdom to whoever came after him, earn a little bit of extra money while still working as an MP, and continue in public service
Boris Johnson’s ‘fixer’ Eddie Lister is once again in the headlines, making the splash of today’s Daily Mail for being ‘on the case’ of the attempted Saudi takeover of Newcastle United. It comes two days after a piece in The Times reported that former Lister was considering combining his current role as the prime minister’s special envoy
In 2001, US President George W. Bush stared into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and said he saw his soul. Joe Biden, on the other hand, famously claimed to have told the Russian leader, ‘I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.’ Now the new incumbent of the Oval Office might have
So it was just a blip after all. Remember those huge headlines last month revealing that exports to the EU had plunged by 41 per cent in January, leading frustrated remainers to bleat: we told you so? ‘Brexit – the unfolding disaster’ tweeted Lord Adonis for one, along with a graph showing the sharp fall in
Sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. In politics, it’s more often than not the latter that matters most. Liz Kendall, star of my somewhat unsuccessful 2015 campaign to ‘Make Liz Kendall Labour Leader and Queen of Everything’, has been pilloried online for suggesting care workers would be ‘better off stacking
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A civil servant advised Greensill Capital while still working in government, it emerged yesterday evening. Is the scandal hurting Boris Johnson, or just damaging an old rival? Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and the New Statesman‘s political editor Stephen Bush.
In its flailing response to the Covid crisis, the German government appears to have finally given up on federalism. Angela Merkel’s latest idea is to introduce nationwide ‘emergency brake’ measures to combat rising case numbers, replacing a patchwork system across the 16 federal states. But will it help bring Germany’s third wave under control? Legal changes
He backed Brexit for a wheeze – and then, when he realised that it was actually going to happen and the implications for his business sank in, he fled to Singapore. That, very simply, is the Remainer case against Sir James Dyson. But how does it stand up against reality now that Brexit has happened?
‘Keir today, gone tomorrow.’ The whisper before Easter was that Labour’s troubled leader might not survive until the next election but the spectre of Tory sleaze – which felled John Major’s government – has come to the rescue. Sir Keir started PMQs by alluding to David Cameron’s freelance activities for Greensill Capital. ‘Are the current
Benjamin Netanyahu has a problem: he doesn’t have sufficient support to form a coalition. With 20 days left to complete this near impossible task, he is desperate; and, when backed into a corner, Netanyahu looks to Iran as his saviour. The timing of the recent explosion in Iran’s Natanz’s nuclear facility – and particularly the
The past week has seen the war in Ukraine, which has been simmering for the last seven years, once more come to the boil. According to Kiev, Russia has massed as many as 85,000 troops near its border, while Moscow has actively talked-up the possibility of full-scale war and warned that it ‘would mean the