All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Prince Harry has seen the light. His awokening is complete. Yesterday, in a video chat hosted by GQ magazine, he confessed to the sin of ‘unconscious bias’ and instructed the rest of us — the unwoke throng — to ‘educate yourself’. And there you have it: this duke, sixth in line to the British throne,
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More than 50 Tory MPs have signed a letter organised by Jake Berry’s Northern Research Group, urging the government to not forget its pledge to level up the North. But does Boris Johnson need to recalibrate his ambitions in the age of Covid? Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and John Connolly. Tell us your
My childhood in 1980s West Yorkshire wasn’t a clichéd mash-up of a Hovis commercial and Kes. For most of my youth we had an indoor toilet, for instance, and though we lived in a cramped terraced house it wasn’t a back-to-back – which meant we could hang our washing in the back alley rather than
The Tories may have taken self-identification of legal gender off the table, but the transgender thought police have certainly not gone away. Their latest victim is Kevin Price who, until last Thursday, was a Labour member of Cambridge City council, in a seat he had held for ten years. While residents were probably more concerned
Imperial College’s latest React study — an attempt to measure the spread of Covid by testing the general population — suggesting that the number of people in Britain carrying antibodies for the SARS-CoV-2 virus has dropped sharply over the past three months. This led a few headline-writers to run somewhat ahead of the facts. ‘Covid immunity only lasts
Boris Johnson must have been hoping that his troubles in the north were over, after his scrap with Andy Burnham was resolved last week and Greater Manchester moved into Tier 3 coronavirus restrictions. It appears though that it’s not only the metro mayors in the north that have the capacity to cause the Prime Minister
It’s hard to imagine German politics without Angela Merkel, but next year the country’s long-term chancellor will leave office. While some of her advisors have attempted to change her mind, Merkel – who became Germany’s leader when Tony Blair was still Britain’s PM – is determined to say goodbye after the end of her fourth term. But there’s
In the course of his three-and-a-half year presidency, Emmanuel Macron must have the record for the most number of international states antagonised in the shortest time. From eastern Europe to the United States via Brexit he has the knack of putting states’ backs up by a mixture of outdated Gaullian pomposity, lesson-giving and base tactlessness.
This is a story about a man called Kevin Price, who was until last week a councillor and who is, for now at least, employed as a porter at a Cambridge college. The story illustrates two points. First, political conflict over trans rights and women’s rights is far from over, especially in the Labour Party.
What is the Conservative case for facing down Marcus Rashford on free school meals during the holidays? Ask a handful of Tory MPs, including the Prime Minister, and they’ll throw out a contradictory mess of answers. Many of those who are most uneasy with the way the government has refused to U-turn on the matter
Emmanuel Macron’s staunch defence of the right to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad proved popular in France. But now the president has a big fight on his hand abroad: French products have been removed from shops in Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan – and calls for a boycott are spreading. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is
A few years ago, when I was in the queue to catch a plane, a Spanish lady caught me watching her as she surreptitiously removed a sticker from her hand luggage, which meant it would have been stored in the hold. ‘Los españoles somos muy pícaros’ (we Spaniards are real rogues) she told me with
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Boris Johnson said the government would ‘do everything in our power’ to ensure children wouldn’t go hungry over Christmas, after backlash over their refusal to extend free school meals over the holiday. Tory MPs have criticised the position following a campaign by Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford, with Sir Bernard Jenkin saying the government had
How easy it has been for the government’s opponents to leap on the bandwagon of Marcus Rashford’s campaign to extend free school meals through the holidays. Nothing is more guaranteed to stir up emotion than the Dickensian charge that the government is out to ‘starve’ children – while MPs guzzle down subsidised booze in the
When they were first introduced in the spring, lockdowns were meant to be a way of controlling the spread of Covid-19. But, in much the same way that viruses themselves sometimes do, they have mutated into something far more sinister and potentially far more dangerous – a way of waging war on every form of
Throughout this year, the biggest worry for healthcare planners has been what happens if a second wave of Covid-19 coincides with a winter flu epidemic. We are now in what looks like a second wave of Covid-19 – and October is the month when flu cases tend to start rising. So are we on the
Is Labour finished in Scotland? There has been an assumption by many, particularly those in England, that the SNP behemoth will start to roll back at some stage; being in government in Holyrood will inevitably cause political gravity to take hold. Yet the SNP’s political humbling seems more remote than ever before, with a large gain
Crises often lead to new paradigms. The politicians of the day try to repair the damage, learn lessons and prevent recurrence. Frequently, they start by strengthening international institutions, or creating new ones. That has not happened over Covid. The international body which should have been most closely involved, the World Health Organisation, has been feeble.
The decision to implement lockdown was inspired partly by the appalling scenes from Lombardy, where hospitals were overrun and dying patients left in corridors. In London, ministers were terrified by the prospect of the same happening here. Today’s Sunday Times has published a long investigation from its Insight team looking at the Covid disruption in hospitals,
Brandon Lewis – Our position on free school meals ‘is the right one’ Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to extend the provision of free school meals over the school holidays has seen the government facing considerable criticism, with Labour forcing a vote on the issue in the House of Commons last Wednesday, which was
The most important fact about British politics is also the most mundane: the next general election is an awfully long way off. Given the extraordinary events we are living through, it is sometimes tempting to forget this and to suppose that a big political moment in any given week is going to have transformative consequences.
Throughout the pandemic, the government and its scientific advisers have made constant predictions, projections and illustrations regarding the behaviour of Covid-19. Their figures are never revisited as the Covid narrative unfolds, which means we are not given an idea of the error margin. A look back at the figures issued shows that the track record,
In the National Trust’s recent interim report, ‘Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic slavery’, nothing caused more controversy than its unfavourable mention of Winston Churchill, whose country house, Chartwell, it owns. The entry said that the British government’s response to the Bengal famine when he was prime minister was ‘heavily criticised’. It failed to
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Many on this side of the pond and on the stateside believe that there is a natural affinity between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. So what will Anglo-American relations be like under a President Biden? Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Sir Christopher Meyer, former Ambassador to Washington, about the opportunities and the pitfalls.
Worse tales have emerged during the pandemic than that of the ‘Florence Three’ – Rhys James, Quinn Paczesny and Will Castle, who have all now returned home to Britain after 61 days incarcerated in a hotel in the Italian city. Some might say a couple of months stuck in Florence could have been a blessing
On Covid, there is a basic question: what is the government’s strategy? No one seems to know what ministers are doing and why. But how could we? Neither do they. The lockdown approach is based on a premise, which has turned out to be false: that we could suppress and eliminate the virus – or
What do Conservatives care about? First, high-quality education and academic attainment. Second, value for money for the taxpayer. Third, (unless you are an arch-libertarian) recognition that the battle that must be won is not between big government or small government, but good government. Combating child hunger should, therefore, be a cause that all Conservatives can
Italy is the only European country where Brexit is viewed with some sympathy and the British are not assumed to be off their heads. It is an odd state of affairs. The country benefited spectacularly from the EU. It transformed itself in a few years from a society of peasants and small craftsmen into an
In four decades working as an engineer and scientist, I have rarely known a more polarised time within the scientific field. The marketplace of ideas is depressingly split down the middle: you are either for herd immunity in the shortest possible time or for a full lockdown. There is, however, a third way: a method
‘Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.’ There are lots of sayings about statistics, but I think this one by Mark Twain best describes where we are at, regarding hospital figures and Covid-19. There are three questions that currently need answering when it comes to the Covid debate: firstly, are we experiencing a second
Donald Trump may have turned in a more effective debate performance last night, but Joe Biden is still the favourite to win the election next month. So, how would No. 10 deal with the election of a president who was so opposed to Brexit? There’s little doubt that the first few months of a Biden