All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
Now that we seem to have two Covid-19 vaccines that work, do we really need Operation Moonshot, the government’s programme to test 10 million people a day by early next year? It’s a poignant question, not least because of the extraordinary sums which appear to have been committed to it: briefing documents leaked to the
Over the weekend, more than a hundred religious figures from across the different faiths launched a legal challenge against the ban on communal worship in England. They claim the Covid restrictions are a violation of their basic human right to freedom of religious expression. Leaders from the Anglican and Catholic churches, as well as the
Series four of The Crown begins with the murder of Lord Mountbatten at Mullaghmore in August 1979. Mountbatten was killed with three others, on the same day 18 British soldiers were ambushed at Warrenpoint. It was a devastating blow for the British establishment. But it held a more intimate horror too. If you listen carefully
Every so often I make the mistake of thinking Boris Johnson must have exhausted his capacity for indolent carelessness and each time I do he pops up to remind me not to count him out. There are always fresh depths to which he may sink. For he is a Prime Minister who knows little and
At the end of October Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the party he loved and led, after suggesting that concerns about Labour’s anti-Semitism problem during his tenure had been ‘dramatically overstated’ for political reasons. At the time of his suspension, the former Labour leader seemed to strike a defiant tone. In a broadcast interview, Corbyn
Boris Johnson says devolution has been a ‘disaster’. This has the rare quality for a Boris statement of being true but he, or rather the Scottish Tories, will be made to pay a political price for it. Barely had the contents of the Prime Minister’s remarks in a Zoom chat with northern MPs been reported
Who runs a newspaper – and especially a great liberal newspaper – in a digital age when liberalism often seems to be in retreat, menaced by its enemies internal and external? In the not-too-recent past, the question would be easily answered: the editor, supported by his (for in the past it was usually ‘his’) senior
Sweden has been pretty much the only country in the world to have responded to coronavirus using a voluntary system: advising, rather than instructing, the public. But this has changed today with Stefan Löfven, the Prime Minister, saying he will pass a law to introduce a ban on gatherings of eight people or more. ‘Do your
Boris Johnson is self-isolating in Downing Street after hosting an MP who subsequently tested positive for Covid-19. As we all know, Johnson has already been affected by SARS-Co-V2. So can the Prime Minister, who has presumably built immunity to this virus, be reinfected? For once the answer is clear: it’s possible. We know this thanks
A couple of shots to the arm and this will all be over. With today’s news from Moderna, last week’s from Pfizer, and with a potential update from AstraZeneca in the next few days, we may soon have three vaccines against Covid-19 (and if you add in candidates from Russia and China perhaps more). And
The BBC and Channel 4 are self-censoring their comedy output because they are so terrified of offending people. So says Jimmy Mulville, the producer of Have I Got News For You, who claims ‘cancel culture’ has resulted in a fearful atmosphere in these institutions: ‘People who cause offence now can be cancelled. And the BBC are
15 min listen
Boris Johnson has been told to self-isolate by contact tracers after meeting with a Covid positive MP last week. It comes just as the PM was expected to reset his premiership following the departure of Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain. Gus Carter is joined by Fraser Nelson and Katy Balls.
While most people welcomed the news last week that Pfizer had developed a vaccine that was over 90 per cent effective, others saw it as a very personal vindication. In particular, allies of the head of the UK’s vaccine taskforce, Kate Bingham, suggested that her decision to buy 40 million doses for the UK was
Another week, another set of preliminary results from a Covid-19 vaccine trial. This time it is the Moderna vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273. And, to judge by the figures put out by the company this morning, it has outdone the Pfizer vaccine in its efficacy. Out of the 30,000 people involved in the phase three trial (half
As a liberal remainer type, I’m not sad to see Dominic Cummings leave Number 10. I fundamentally disagreed with his agenda, from Brexit to civil service reform to a more active state aid programme. Yet I cannot chime in with those saying Cummings was a failure, an ad man who blustered his way into the heart
The revelation that both Pfizer and Modena have created seemingly effective and safe Covid vaccines that could be here by December is surely the first bit of good news 2020 has brought us. But we are, of course, nowhere near yet out of the woods. Even if a vaccine gets regulatory approval by early December,
What is the Equality and Human Rights Commission for? It’s definitely not for the likes of David Goodhart, according to plenty of progressive types reacting to the news of Goodhart’s appointment as one of the EHRC’s commissioners. ‘Appointing the spectacularly ill-suited Goodhart to the EHRC is an awful move from the government,’ says the journalist Rachel Shabi. ‘The EHRC’s
Boris Johnson wants to use this week to relaunch his leadership after a torrid few days in his top team. Downing Street says tonight that the Prime Minister will ‘will make a series of critical announcements over the next couple of weeks that will be a clear signal of his ongoing ambitions for the United
After a weekend of torrid headlines over infighting in 10 Downing Street, Boris Johnson had hoped to use this week to prove his critics wrong about the state of the government. Following the departure of his senior aides Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain and amid speculation the Tory party could pivot to a softer form
Boris Johnson needs to use the departure of Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain to repair relations with his parliamentary party. That is very clear, and the problems have been brewing for months. What is less clear is how much of a group of naturally loyal MPs, who have the same political instincts as the Prime
Simon Coveney – Internal Market Bill could mean no trade deal Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney returned to Sophy Ridge’s show this week to make clear his objections to the government’s Internal Market Bill. The bill, which famously threatened to break the EU Withdrawal Agreement in ‘a specific and limited way’, has recently been watered
The £12 billion splurge of taxpayer cash into a test-and-trace system meant that due process was suspended. Cash was spent without question, shortcuts were taken, and basic questions were dodged. For example: was contact tracing ever going to stop a virus which, as we knew as early as March, left no symptoms in many of
If the first victim of war is truth, then the first victim of Covid-19 was a sense of proportion. The pandemic continues to dominate the news every waking hour, as well as continuing to restrict our lives in ways not seen since wartime – in some ways even more severely. Yet how many people even
One aspect of the original outbreak of coronavirus in March and April that has not received enough attention was the spread of the virus in NHS hospitals. With NHS staff lacking Personal Protective Equipment – and as we know now, suffering from a lack of preparedness – the virus spread at rapid speed between people
A new era of transatlantic cooperation will have begun. The United States will pivot towards Brussels. The trade wars will come to a swift end, and the American president will once again be a respected figure on this side of the Atlantic. With Donald Trump finally defeated, if not quite yet evicted from the White
Maybe it had to come: a note on my local (London) message-board said that the two Marks & Spencer food halls where I have taken to shopping since the first pandemic lockdown are now offering – toot the bugle, as the Prime Minister might say – a booking system. Of course, this is presented as
It can’t be much fun being a national leader these days. Be it the US, the UK, all are assailed on myriad fronts by coronavirus, widespread societal division and impending economic ruin. But being president of France takes the biscuit. Since 2014, France is fighting a war against Islamist extremists in the Sahel. 5,100 French troops
Donald Trump’s increasingly outrageous attempts to contest the results of the US presidential election were given their absurd symbol early on with what one commentator called The Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco. A week ago, with the decisive votes being counted in the last, critical states in the election, with Trump making a forlorn attempt
Ever since Giacomo Pylarini, a physician working in the Ottoman Empire, sent a report to the Royal Society in 1701 that Turkish women believed pus from a smallpox survivor could induce immunity in a healthy person – and was dismissed as a dangerous quack – inoculation has been as much an art as a science.
With Boris Johnson’s senior aides Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain both working from home until they officially leave their roles, attention is turning to what will follow the Downing Street Vote Leave era. Up until now, aides from the Vote Leave campaign have held the balance of power in No. 10. This has seen Johnson successfully re-establish the Tories
