All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Trade union Unite are back in the news again after a brief hiatus following the end of the Corbyn melodrama last year. Outgoing general secretary Len McCluskey is facing questions about the £98 million of members’ money spent on building a four star Marriott hotel complex and conference centre in Birmingham which will house union
Last month the Downing Street Twitter account released a sixty second trailer for a forthcoming film heralding the triumphant success of Britain’s vaccine story. Titled: ‘A Beacon of Hope: The UK Vaccine Story’ with the tagline ‘Extraordinary. Unexpected. Fantastic’ the brief clip featured Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance, Jonathan Van-Tam and other familiar faces from the
It was the great British scientific triumph: an example of how big pharma can work altruistically for the good of the world, by making a vaccine available at cost price. But is the writing now on the wall for the AstraZeneca vaccine? This afternoon the European Medicines Agency (EMA) ruled that blood clots can be
Although Alex Salmond and his Alba party have understandably been getting most of the attention, the separatists aren’t the only side riven with divisions over a new challenger. Unionist relations, especially between the Conservatives and partisans of George Galloway’s ‘All for Unity’ outfit, grow more rancorous by the day. To the former, the latter resemble
Eight law enforcement officials, including three policemen and five members of a local anti-jihadist force, were killed in a jihadist attack in Burkina Faso on Tuesday. Jihadist raids on two military bases in Somalia, using suicide car bombers, killed 23 on Saturday. On Friday, South Africa decided to deploy its troops in bordering Mozambique, days
Sadiq Khan’s decision to launch a commission looking into decriminalising cannabis is a perfect advert for his time as London mayor. It shows all too clearly that Khan values empty gesture politics over getting on with his day job. Don’t get me wrong: legalising cannabis seems a smart idea. It is, after all, a waste of police time
Even with Alexei Navalny imprisoned, Russia’s opposition continues to struggle against Vladimir Putin and his quarter-century of Kremlin rule. This already daunting task has been made harder by the fact that key figures are now imprisoned or in exile: the opposition leader’s principal aides Vladimir Ashrukov and Leonid Volkov have fled to London and Vilnius
A lot of politicians go through phases with phrases – falling back on buzzwords and self-coined instant cliches when seeking to set out a thought to interviewers or people that they meet. Often this becomes the subject of private jokes between their spin doctors – with sneaky glances and wry smiles greeting the umpteenth rolling
Boris Johnson’s announcement about vaccine passports was met with criticism from backbenchers on both sides of the political spectrum. The scheme was described as potentially ‘discriminatory’ with warnings that it may lead to a ‘two-tier’ Britain. Labour leader Keir Starmer even said the use of vaccine passports is ‘not British.’ Given the deep suspicion towards
What do you get for the man who has everything? Newspapers, banking, venture capital, think tanks and speaking engagements – former Chancellor George Osborne has done it all since he left Parliament in 2017 and earning himself a considerable fortune in the process. So it seems only right that the former Evening Standard editor has now
After a year in which young people have lost their jobs, been denied time in the classroom and at university and not been allowed to see their friends, could they now be penalised again? Boris Johnson said we ‘have to be very careful how you handle this and don’t start a system that is discriminatory’ when
How can a country abide a government that consistently says one thing and then does the exact opposite? Whether it’s lockdown two, lockdown three, or masks in schools, the government has consistently stated one thing and then changed its mind months, weeks, or even hours later. This not only exacerbates the problem of trust in
Who will educate the educators, when the educators get things wrong? This week, one of Britain’s leading teaching unions passed a motion to ‘decolonise’ all subjects in the secondary school curriculum: not just history or English, but all subjects, including food technology, computer science, geography, and maths. Black history must be ‘fully embedded’ across the curriculum, NASUWT’s
Pity poor Major Biden, First Dog of the United States, FDOTUS for short. Thrust first from the lowly surroundings of a shelter in Delaware then on to the porticoes of the Biden HQ and finally the White House, he appears to be experiencing teething problems as he adapts to his new life. And teeth are,
Tonight the Scottish National party released its latest party political broadcast on Twitter. Featuring a young red-haired woman sitting on a stool, striding around a stage, it flashes various images onto the back of a screen complete with melodramatic background tones. Ignoring the Scottish government’s own record of the last 14 years on health, education,
Keir Starmer obviously regrets visiting Jesus House last week because of the furore it has caused in his own party. But he will likely come to regret his reaction even more. The Labour leader posted a full apology for the Pentecostal church visit, saying: ‘I completely disagree with Jesus House’s beliefs on LGBT+ rights, which
Last month Mr S was first to report that Downing Street veteran James Slack was off to the Sun after four years in No. 10. Slack, who survived the transition from May to Johnson but had only served as Lee Cain’s replacement since January, was well-regarded from his time as the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson
If Alex Salmond and his new Alba party did not exist, pro-Union parties would find it necessary to invent them. Perhaps, of course, that is what has happened. Be that as it may, Salmond’s emergence from the swampy waters of his own disgrace is the best thing to have happened for Unionism in a long,
And so the National Trust’s crazed attack on its own properties goes blazing on. Their latest self-hating wheeze is to get children to write poems attacking Britain’s history. One hundred primary school pupils have been taken around the Trust’s country houses before they compose poems about the former owners’ connections with the British Empire. It’s all
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The government needs to be ‘honest’ about vaccine passports, Labour’s shadow health minister Jonathan Ashworth said today. Boris Johnson yesterday said the ‘certificates’ would not be needed for pubs or shops, but a recent paper from the government said venues could scrap social distancing rules if they’re used. Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and
It is depressingly appropriate that a weekend which started on Good Friday was one which illustrated the shaky foundations of the agreement which brought a form of peace to Northern Ireland. Twenty three years on from that landmark deal, discontent among the Province’s unionist and loyalist community is beginning to mount. Violence once again erupted
The UK might be the most inventive country in the world. Think of all the technologies which only came about thanks to British research: the world’s first commercial jet, computers based on Charles Babbage and Alan Turing’s ideas, lithium-ion batteries which stemmed from the research of John Goodenough at Oxford. And now think of the
Could we really see another peak in Covid-19 hospitalisations as bad as January once society reopens in June? That was the story widely reported this morning, based on the latest modelling from SPI-M, the government’s advisory committee on modelling for scientific emergencies. The study caught attention not least because back in January very few people
As opposition grows to government plans to introduce vaccine passports, not even the Prime Minister appears keen to defend the proposals. In Monday’s press conference, Johnson refused to be drawn into a conversation about the plans and wouldn’t even say whether there would be a Commons vote on the policy. However, government figures suggest the
Alan Duncan’s diaries are currently being serialised by the Daily Mail ahead of their release next Thursday. As a long-serving MP of 27 years who knew four successive Tory premiers, who lent Major his leadership headquarters, was part of May’s Oxford generation and worked alongside both Cameron and Johnson, surely such chronicles would be brimming with brio
‘Some Christians believe homosexuality is a sin — get over it.’ I feel like this needs to be made into a poster. Or put on the side of a bus, perhaps. Because, amazingly, there are people out there who seem not to realise that traditionally minded Christians think it is wrong for a man to
First off the blocks criticising Dr Tony Sewell’s report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities was Professor Kalwant Bhopal from the University of Birmingham. Writing in the Guardian and focusing on her specialism of education (she is director of the Centre for Research in Race and Education), she took exception to the statistics that
Two decades after devolution, the Scottish Parliament’s election system still confuses ordinary voters and seasoned political observers alike. Politicians on both the Unionist and Nationalist sides have capitalised on this complexity, putting forward new parties – most prominently George Galloway’s Alliance for Unity (A4U) and Alex Salmond’s Alba – that aim to game the system
Thanks to the indelible characters found in the Houses of Parliament, and beyond, it sometimes seems as if there is nothing especially shocking that novelists could dream up for their fictitious political scandals. This means that stories about political naughtiness and shenanigans have to be that much more dramatic in order to ring true. Here
The biggest question facing Boris Johnson is the future of his so-called vaccine passports. A few months ago, the idea was dismissed by No. 10 as ‘discriminatory’. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said: ‘We are not a papers-carrying country.’ But now, without debate or democratic scrutiny, vaccine passports are quickly heading from unthinkable to unstoppable. Today, No. 10 released more details — hence the
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The next stage of lockdown easing is going as planned, but some caveats around international travel and vaccine passports are being floated for further down the line. What did the government’s announcements today clear up? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.
In his 1992 football memoirs, Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby remarks on the ‘maleness of it all’. Rebecca Welch’s appearance yesterday as a referee in a Football League match between Harrogate Town and Port Vale is a sign of how much things have changed. It is not surprising, however, that there are sceptics. After all, we
When Boris Johnson first unveiled his roadmap out of lockdown, there was a promise of an end to restrictions by 21 June. That date was quickly dubbed ‘freedom day’ online and in the press. However, many of the tricky decisions on social distancing, travel abroad and IDs were pushed later down the line into various government reviews. Today,
