All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
There is an awful lot going on at the moment. So much, indeed, that stories that might once have detained us now rush past unobserved and all but un-commented upon. One such story is the conviction and sentencing of Khairi Saadallah for the murders of James Furlong, David Wails and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett on 20 June
My contention in this speech is that it is our constitution that makes us prosperous and that returning powers to Westminster from Europe will boost our economic growth. But explaining why our nation has been so successful over the centuries relies first on recognising the existence, and then identifying the nature, of an unseen dark
I’m worried about Ireland. My family’s homeland is being ravaged by Covid-19. It now has the highest infection rate in the world, according to the expert Covid-watchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US. Ireland’s seven-day rolling average is an eye-watering 1,394 Covid cases per million people. That is way ahead of the UK (810
It’s slow business for global terrorists these days with all the targets banged up under Covid house arrest. But there’s one place in the United Kingdom where it has been pretty much business as usual for violent extremism. Northern Ireland’s police service has just released its security assessment for 2020. This contains some startling information
Khairi Saadallah is a name that should not be forgotten in a hurry. Found guilty of the murders of James Furlong, David Wails, and Joe Ritchie-Bennett, Saadallah was yesterday given a whole-life jail term for the June 2020 terrorist attack in Reading’s Forbury Gardens. He will never leave prison. We shouldn’t, though, remember Saadallah’s name because of
At tonight’s Covid press conference, the Home Secretary Priti Patel sought to defend the coronavirus restrictions against suggestions that the law was confusing and hard to follow. She said: ‘The rules are actually very simple and clear. We are meant to stay at home and only leave home for a very, very limited number of
As the government’s ‘enforcement week’ rumbles on, Priti Patel addressed the nation on Tuesday evening over the need for the public to play by the rules. While the Home Secretary was keen to praise the vast majority of people who have followed the lockdown rules so far, she said a minority were ‘putting the health of the
Tuesday’s cabinet meeting discussed the usual topics of Covid and the Brexit transition period, but at the end, Boris Johnson told ministers he had asked Sir Michael Barber to conduct a rapid review of government delivery ‘to ensure it remains focused, effective and efficient’. Downing Street’s readout of the meeting said the Prime Minister told
With Covid-19 cases still rising a week into the third lockdown (and after several weeks of Tier 3 restrictions in London and the South East) the questions are inevitably being asked: why isn’t lockdown reducing transmission of the virus and do we need even more stringent rules, whatever they might be? While some studies claim
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Boris Johnson has been criticised for taking a bike ride in the Olympic Park, seven miles away from Downing Street. Should the government make the Covid rules clearer? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.
Is Donald Trump’s expulsion from Twitter an attack on free speech? A great many Republicans are saying so. You certainly can call it ‘deplatforming’: when you lose your speaking invite, your social media posting rights or your book deal. Josh Hawley, a Republican Senator, has claimed that his First Amendment rights were violated by Simon
In this woke age, we seem to have incredibly short memories. We feel the need to damn people today for holding views that were completely acceptable yesterday. But the memory of Russell T. Davies, the acclaimed British screenwriter, seems to be particularly short. In an interview for the Radio Times — promoting his new Channel
It can be hard work adjusting to a new position. Just ask Alok Sharma, who was appointed as full-time President of the UN climate change conference, COP26, last week. Sharma had been running the conference alongside his role as Business Secretary of State, but it was felt that the climate shindig, which will be the
The Chinese Communist Party regime’s repression is pervasive and intensifying. Over the past five years, Xi Jinping’s brutal assault on basic human rights has accelerated with horrifying ferocity and speed. But while the incarceration, forced sterilisation and enslavement of millions of Uyghurs is increasingly recognised as a genocide, and the dismantling of Hong Kong’s promised
The pandemic has not been kind on either libertarians or people in poverty. The libertarian argument that the state should generally leave people alone to make their own choices has not often succeeded as government, largely backed by the electorate, has chosen to respond to a collective risk with collective action, even if some of
Rewind a few months, and it was all meant to be very different. With Covid-19 rampant across the world, the European Union would take charge of sourcing vaccines from the major drugs companies. Its massive buying and regulatory power, coupled with its finely-tuned administrative machine, would make sure its 440 million people were protected from
Tony Blair has made a tentative return to the heart of British politics by offering Matt Hancock strategic advice on the vaccine rollout. But does the former prime minister’s ambition stretch further than this? More than a decade after leaving office, Blair is said to keen on a ‘De Gaulle style comeback’. For Blair’s critics,
‘Send in the troops. The nation must restore order. The military stands ready.’ Aficionados of the New York Times may recall that these sentences appeared as the headline of Tom Cotton’s op-ed in June that led to the departure of the paper’s editorial page editor James Bennet. Bennet resurfaced as a guest author of Politico’s Playbook newsletter
Matt Hancock spent Monday evening trying to explain a very delicate tension to the public. There’s the good news of the vaccine and his determination that all four of the most vulnerable priority groups will be vaccinated by mid-February. And then there’s the bad news that in the meantime, coronavirus is spreading and we haven’t yet seen
Exercise is a dangerous game these days. As two women recently discovered, drive five miles for a walk at a beauty spot complete with two cups of coffee and you can find yourself fined £200. Meanwhile, alarm inside government at the number of people out and about despite the ‘stay at home’ message has led to tighter
The Florence Nightingale Museum is unwell. Just as the government announced that Nightingale hospitals were being ‘reactivated’ to cope with the surge in coronavirus cases, the museum’s Director David Green also had something important to say. To prevent the museum becoming financially insolvent, their galleries are closing indefinitely. Any attempt to reopen in the coming
Jessica Allen and Eliza Moore had a bad experience with the Derbyshire police last week. The two women met for a socially distanced walk roughly a five-mile drive away from their home. This resulted in the pair being ‘surrounded’ by police officers, who fined them £200 for leaving their local area and drinking takeaway coffee,
Scots may be getting vaccinated against Covid, but they already have the highest rate of immunity to the appeal of Nigel Farage to be found anywhere in the UK. So it was not a particular surprise that Farage today stayed away from the launch of the Scottish offshoot of his new entity, Reform UK. Instead
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Chris Whitty said that hospitals will face ‘the worst weeks of this pandemic’ in a broadcast round this morning, as he implored Brits to keep social contact ‘to an absolute minimum’. It comes as the government is considering even stricter restrictions to improve compliance. Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth.
The professor of public health, Devi Sridhar, has had an interesting part to play in Scotland during the Covid pandemic. A champion of severe restrictions and a ‘zero-Covid strategy’, Sridhar sits on the Scottish government’s Covid-19 advisory group, where her role is to help Nicola Sturgeon stamp out the virus. At times though, it has
Inevitably, Keir Starmer’s main intervention today has been on Covid, with the Labour leader calling for more restrictions within the next 24 hours. But he made this demand as part of his first major policy speech as leader – and there was more in it than just Covid curbs. Starmer has decided he wants to
Covid aside, how should we sum up the last twelve months? The Year of the Abject Apology fits rather neatly. The past year has witnessed cringing confessions by all sorts of institutions to prior complicity in slavery, colonialism or exploitation in some form or another. University College London is the latest institution to apologise, saying sorry because scientist and
When the third national lockdown came to a vote in parliament last week, only 12 Conservative MPs voted against the measures. This was a far cry from the second lockdown – which saw a rebellion of over 50 – and the mood at that time. Back in November, members of the Covid Recovery Group –
We are supposedly getting a lot more data on the numbers of us being vaccinated, later on Monday. What’s less clear is whether we will be getting data that is useful. Here is what we should be told on a granular daily basis, to reinforce confidence both that the vaccination operation is efficient and effective
The crisis facing hospitals is truly awful and cannot be understated. But while the short term situation is grim, it is important that we detach the immediate challenges from the post-vaccine outlook. They are radically different landscapes and must be addressed separately. Before enough people are vaccinated against Covid-19, we can’t pull any punches in
Lockdown is no fun for anyone, but spare a thought for those of us with kids. The third lockdown has, once again, made full-time teachers of parents. But this time, things are much harder. Why? Because during the current restrictions, teachers have been turned into a sort of truancy police force. ‘Important information. If your child
Keir Starmer – Covid restrictions ‘may not be tough enough’ Sir Keir Starmer was in the hot seat this morning as the latest of Andrew Marr’s series of interviews with the major party leaders. Marr’s first question to Starmer was about the government’s heightened Tier 5 restrictions. The conversation comes at a time when the
Israel’s remarkable vaccine rollout has been deservedly praised. But not everyone is full of goodwill. Depressingly and inevitably, commentators and human rights groups have queued up to find a reason to condemn the Jewish state. Israel, which is leading the world in the speed of the rollout, has been accused of ‘excluding’ the Palestinians from getting