All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Is Andy Burnham’s resistance to tier three a principled stand or just an attempt to extract more money from central government? While Burnham is insisting that he ‘won’t be rolled over’ for money — he is believed to have been offered between £75 million to £100 million if he agrees to the higher level of
Just over six months ago Boris Johnson gave the British people one very clear instruction: ‘you must stay at home.’ It was impossible for anybody to anticipate the unintended consequences of those five words and quite how much pain and anguish they would unleash. Through a mixture of emotional coercion and relentless scaremongering millions of
As far as I can gather, the EU has only one genuinely non-negotiable red line that could prevent a resumption of talks on a free trade agreement with the UK – which will be made clear by its negotiator Michel Barnier in a telephone call on Monday with the UK negotiator David Frost. Barnier and
The mother of my daughter didn’t attend yesterday’s rally in Paris to honour the memory of Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded in a street in the north-west of the French capital last Friday. A teacher herself in a state school in Seine-Saint-Denis in the north of Paris, a district often cited as the most deprived
Is Greater Manchester about to go into tier three restrictions? That’s the hope in government following a week of negotiations, a war of words playing out in the media and internal Tory division. Metro mayor Andy Burnham — known in some parts of the internet as the ‘king of the north’ — has been resisting
If there is one word that best describes Senate Republicans in the age of Donald Trump, it’s “docile.” With the exception of a few independent-minded lawmakers who have been able to make a name for themselves or who have spent decades cultivating their own brand, the Senate GOP conference has played the roll of cannon
Nearly a month ago, I called for an urgent 24-day full national lockdown, arguing that the restrictions were unlikely to make a significant difference in reducing transmission. If we had acted strongly and decisively then, and implemented a circuit-breaker lockdown — as we now know that the government’s scientific advisory group Sage also wanted — we would be in
Andy Burnham – Trapping us in tier three will ’cause real harm’ The government’s standoff with regional leaders in the north west was played out on television this morning. Andrew Marr spoke to Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who has been the most prominent voice in resisting the highest level of coronavirus restrictions
Something very significant happened during Boris Johnson’s national address this week. It was not the announcement of the new three tier local risk-based system of restrictions – imaginatively titled medium, high and very high. It was what didn’t happen. The Prime Minister resisted applying a ‘circuit break’ national lockdown which it now transpires was being
The appearance of SARS CoV-2 has been deemed worthy of extraordinary measures to contain or suppress its spread. With a rise in infections across Europe, politicians are once again scrambling to reintroduce a series of policies that amount to lockdown in all but name. France has introduced a curfew. Italy has made the wearing of
The decapitation of middle school teacher Samuel Paty, 47, by an Islamist in a suburb of Paris yesterday is not just another tragedy and blow to French morale — it is also a reminder of why Emmanuel Macron feels exposed on the issue of what he calls ‘Muslim separatism’. Channelling the Spanish civil war slogan
Jacinda Ardern’s Labour party has won re-election in a landslide. Her government improved its vote-share by around 12 per cent from the last election in 2017, its best result since 1938. New Zealand’s political system is proportional, allowing minor parties garnering more than 5 per cent of the vote to enter Parliament. Jacinda Ardern’s victory
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The Spectator‘s economics correspondent Kate Andrews talks to Freddy Gray about why she’s voting for the Democrats with a heavy heart.
Boris Johnson has not had the easiest of relationships with the north lately. While the Prime Minister started his premiership promising to ‘level up’ northern regions, during the pandemic he’s ended up spending more time clamping them down, as Covid restrictions have been introduced across swathes of the north, and he’s clashed with local MPs
If they were to give out awards for best use of an anorak to communicate stroppy defiance then Andy Burnham would be about to break the stranglehold of former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher. In a city where it rains on more than 150 days a year, it is perhaps unsurprising that the anorak has become
For a while, it seemed as though Scotland was taking the lead on challenging the new gender orthodoxy. Despite all the odds (and taxpayer funding) being on the other side, gender-critical feminist campaigners secured a last-minute pause in the Scottish government’s plans to banish medical experts from the gender recognition process and shift to self-identification.
One of the more peculiar features of Covid is just how cleanly the crisis has split us down political lines. As a serving Tory councillor, you may assume that my views on masks, lockdown and the virus are predictable. But I’m also a microbiologist and I’m dismayed by the attitudes of some fellow travellers. Pandemics,
Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, should be seen as a feminist hero. When she stood up in the House of Commons last year during a debate on the domestic abuse bill, Duffield moved several colleagues to tears as she recounted the hell she had endured at the hands of a violent male partner.
Despite being barely two months old, Spectator TV — The Spectator‘s latest broadcast venture — is already making headlines from New York to New Zealand. Andrew Neil‘s interview with Dr David Nabarro of the World Health Organization was raised in the House of Commons and even tweeted by Donald Trump. In this week’s episode, Andrew Neil is joined
In a press conference this afternoon, Boris Johnson stepped up his war of words with Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, after the government failed to reach an agreement with the region about moving into Tier 3 coronavirus restrictions again today. The Prime Minister first singled out for praise the Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram, London Mayor
Boris Johnson will hold a press conference later this afternoon to discuss the new local restrictions — and how they’ll work. Even if he wanted to do a national circuit-breaker lockdown it is now almost politically impossible for him to do so given that Keir Starmer has now called for it, I say in the
Since Boris’s thumping general election win in December, I’ve lost count of the number of people – both Remainers and Leavers – who tell me that no deal just won’t happen. Boris needs a deal, they insist, and the EU will bend a little here and there to give the Prime Minister a ladder to climbdown. Yet I’ve
It was never the plan for the NHS to deal with a second wave of Covid. The official strategy, all through the summer, was for the £12 billion Test and Trace system to come along and zap new cases. Decisions for NHS investment this winter were made on the assumption that hospitals would be fine
Is the British countryside racist? BBC Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison thinks so. ‘Even a single racist event means there is work to do,’ she said. ‘In asking whether the countryside is racist, then yes it is; but asking if it’s more racist than anywhere else — maybe, maybe not.’ As a native Northern Irishman who has been warmly welcomed on
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Boris Johnson today told Brits to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, saying the European Union were ‘not willing’ to offer a Canada-style trade agreement. Is this really the end of the talks, or is progress being made behind the scenes? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.
In recent months, Boris Johnson and his team have been keen to suggest there is a hard deadline when it comes to agreeing a Brexit deal. The Prime Minister argued last month that both sides ought to walk away from the talks and prepare for no deal if there was no agreement by the EU summit on October
What percentage of people who are infected with Covid-19 will go on to die of the disease? The dramatic response to the pandemic on the part of almost all governments around the world has been based on the idea that Covid-19 is a far more lethal disease than seasonal flu, which is often quoted as
Half an hour before a partial lockdown began on Wednesday night, scores of people packed into tents outside a bar in the Hague to drink and party. Their celebrations were perhaps characteristic of how the Dutch have handled the pandemic. Metres away, in the Dutch lower house, parliamentarians were at that moment enacting a partial
What is it that today, in our society, endangers our Republic, our ability to live together, and inform you of the decisions taken as a result which are the result of methodical work carried out for nearly three years? The problem is not secularism. Secularism in the French Republic is the freedom to believe or
President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden were supposed to debate in front of the American public last night. The debate, however, was called off after Trump refused to do it via video link. So instead, Americans were treated to two different town-halls on two different U.S. television networks. While Trump was talking
Keir Starmer has made life difficult for Boris Johnson this week with his demand for a circuit-breaker lockdown. But the Labour leader’s colleague Andy Burnham is currently presenting a far greater threat to the Prime Minister. On Thursday, the Mayor of Greater Manchester gave a furious speech in which he accused the government of being
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Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, today slammed the government for attempting to put the region in the highest tier of Covid-19 restrictions, saying the North would not be a ‘sacrificial lamb’. Why has the three-tier system backfired on the government? John Connolly speaks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth.