All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Some Tory MPs are hoping that Dominic Cummings’ departure from Downing Street will bring with it a vital lift to Boris Johnson’s premiership. Other Tory MPs have made up their minds about Boris already. Either they think he was always a flawed character whose only use was winning them the 2019 general election, a job
In the weeks before the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic became clear, Priti Patel was the biggest story in Westminster. In March, her most senior Home Office civil servant, Philip Rutnam, resigned and when doing so read out a statement in which he said he had been subject to a ‘vicious and orchestrated campaign’ against him after
Today marks Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR). Every year on 20 November, clusters of people gather to remember the hundreds of transgender people whose lives were cut short by violence in the preceding year. In 2020, like everything else, the candles, the readings and the list of names will be Zoomed across the aether. But who are
11 min listen
The government has announced a £16.5 billion increase in defence spending, far more generous than previously expected. Will this new budget signal an end to the MoD’s spending blackhole? John Connolly talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.
Whenever Donald Trump tweets something these days, it doesn’t take long before Twitter moves in with a warning. ‘This claim about election fraud is disputed,’ is one of the latest hectoring messages to be slapped on the outgoing president’s tweets. Yesterday no fewer than nine of Trump’s tweets were accompanied by similar links added by moderators. It’s
Boris Johnson’s comments about devolution having been a ‘disaster’ were not entirely wrong: it is hard to point to a problem devolution has solved. But given the popular support for devolution, it was a mistake for Johnson to say this out loud, I say in the magazine this week. The comment was a gift to
Oh dear. Readers may remember that back in March the Brexit talks between Britain and the EU were briefly derailed, after the EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier tested positive for coronavirus. Shortly afterwards, the UK negotiator David Frost also began to develop symptoms and was forced into isolation. You would have hoped after the incident,
The EU would like you to know that it doesn’t want to ban encryption. In fact, it correctly recognises that encryption is absolutely essential for our privacy and financial safety on the internet. That’s why a draft resolution – due to be tabled in front of EU leaders at a pivotal summit later this month
There’s a surefire way to tell Christmas has arrived. Forget the Oxford Street lights. Forget the sudden appearance of stacks of selection boxes in your supermarket. Forget Noddy Holder’s pained cry, ‘It’s Chriiiistmaaas!’ No, these days it isn’t really Christmas until we have the annual handwringing over The Pogues’ song ‘Fairytale of New York’. And
The Red Wall, Blue Collar Conservative, Old Labour, Workington Man – or whatever name you wish to attach to this loose coalition – will be unimpressed by Boris’s ‘green industrial revolution’. This group of voters, many of whom had never turned to the Tories before, backed Boris Johnson to ‘get it done’. Their vote for Brexit was a
Do face masks work? Earlier this year, the UK government decided that masks could play a significant role in stopping Covid-19 and made masks mandatory in a number of public places. But are these policies backed by the scientific evidence? Yesterday marked the publication of a long-delayed trial in Denmark which hopes to answer that very
29 min listen
With essayist Mary Eberstadt, whose recent article for First Things argued that the riots in the wake of George Floyd’s killing come down to the sexual revolution and fatherlessness.
That looked pretty weird. The self-isolating PM attended parliament today from a remote location. His advisers had blundered badly. They might have created a warm, friendly look by seating Boris in a big leather armchair, lit by honey-coloured lamps, and surrounded by portraits of his latest children. Instead they’d emptied out a cubby-hole in a
Is Boris Johnson really Prime Minister? Or is Marcus Rashford? It’s not hard to see why some are confused. Whenever the Manchester United footballer has opened his mouth – not least on helping children who get free school meals during holidays – Boris has, often reluctantly, bowed to Rashford’s requests. Rashford’s latest project, a book club
18 min listen
Boris Johnson has today announced a raft of new environmental policies, following the departure of Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain last week. Will it reset the direction of Number 10, or are more comprehensive changes needed? Cindy Yu speaks to Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Katy Balls.
Jeremy Corbyn’s fan club has reacted with predictable outrage to the decision not to hand him back the party whip. Starmer’s refusal to do so was not ‘the right thing to do,’ said Labour MP Clive Lewis. ‘At a time of national crisis, division in the Labour party serves nobody but the Tory Government,’ said Richard Burgon. But Mr S wonders
The government’s Covid-19 strategy is designed to keep Christmas gatherings on the cards. But what might be the trade-offs? At this morning’s Downing Street press conference on Covid-19 data, Public Health England’s Dr Susan Hopkins and deputy chief scientific adviser professor Dame Angela McLean gave some indication of what tactics could be used to make
Keir Starmer had no control over whether to end the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn after only 19 days. Yet it was up to him, as party leader, whether or not to restore the party whip to the former leader. This choice represented another big moment for Starmer. He knew he had to do something before
‘Has that orange baboon gone yet?’ asked a senior professor in the teacher’s room at my university yesterday. The remark went down well, despite the unfashionable remark about someone’s skin colour and the dubious zoomorphic comparison. As did an earlier comment from another colleague joking about how he’d like to replace Trump’s corona medication with
There is nothing wrong with the general direction of policy contained within the government’s ten point plan to cut carbon emissions, announced today. Who doesn’t want clean energy and more energy-efficient homes and vehicles? The problem is the perverse target which lies at its heart: the legally-binding demand, laid down in the Climate Change Act,
Vote blue for green jobs in the red wall. That’s the message we’re supposed to take from Boris Johnson’s ten point plan for reaching zero carbon emissions. The launch follows some shallow Westminster chatter about how this stuff relates to the departure of Dominic Cummings, chatter which somehow overlooks the fact that said departure has
As the UK approaches the end of the Brexit transition period, ministers have made it clear that businesses and Britain must ready themselves for ‘no deal’. But will Britain be ready? Almost every day, there are new concerns from the road haulage industry, not just about Kent and access permits for lorry drivers, but about
Fresh from sparking protests around the world with his comments on Islam, Emmanuel Macron now has a new adversary to add to the list: the New York Times. ‘The president has some bones to pick with the American media,’ read a piece by the NYT‘s media editor Ben Smith, published this week. ‘So president Emmanuel Macron
Sir Keir Starmer has just announced he will not be restoring the Labour whip to Jeremy Corbyn following his comments about the extent of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party being exaggerated for political purposes. A panel of the party’s ruling National Executive Committee last night reinstated Corbyn as a member, but this morning Starmer said
Since Dominic Cummings was last week given his marching orders, after allegedly calling Carrie Symonds ‘princess Nut Nut’, are members of Tory high command finding more subtle ways to make digs at the Prime Minister and his fiancée? Yesterday, Cummings’s ally Robert Halfon – chairman of the Education select committee – gave the Sun a quote,
As Brexit negotiations enter a critical stage, the EU’s eyes may again have been diverted after Hungary and Poland plunged the bloc into yet another crisis. The Visegrád Group allies have vetoed the EU’s €1.8 trillion (£1.6 trillion) budget and recovery package, responding to plans to make cash conditional on adherence to the ‘rule of
Test and trace boss Dido Harding has been ordered to self-isolate by her own app. The Baroness joins a handful of Tory MPs — not to mention the Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who have been ‘pinged’ by contact tracers. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that Harding has been told she only has to isolate for nine
Jeremy Corbyn has been readmitted into the Labour party just 19 days after he was suspended for saying that anti-Semitism had been ‘dramatically overstated for political reasons’. The party’s ruling National Executive Committee this evening decided that a statement issued earlier today by the former Labour leader was sufficient to merit no further action. Corbyn’s
Could British residents be forced to have a Covid-19 vaccine? Yesterday Health Secretary Matt Hancock refused to rule out mandatory inoculation, telling TalkRadio that the government would ‘have to watch what happens and… make judgments accordingly’. His comments have sparked questions about how realistic the prospect of mandatory vaccination is in the UK, or what
Sarah, a 15-year-old victim of sexual exploitation by grooming gangs is pimped out and degraded by scores of men every week, beaten by her exploiters, and alienated from her friends and family. After a year of hell, Sarah is given an option: recruit two more girls for the gang and she can go free. Out
13 min listen
Boris Johnson told northern MPs last night that he thought Scottish devolution had been a ‘disaster’, a comment that was immediately disowned by the Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross. Katy Balls talks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.
Has the advertising industry been nationalised? It certainly looks that way. The run-up to Christmas is usually the time for UK advertisers to spend big. But not this year. While the John Lewis Christmas ad has been greeted with some fanfare, this is the exception, rather than the rule in 2020. Companies whose businesses have been