All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Jo Swinson has branded accusations she fired stones at squirrels as ‘very fake news’. Screenshots of what appeared to be a Daily Mirror story have been widely circulated online. The article alleges that a private video of the Lib Dem leader has surfaced on Facebook, showing her pelting the furry mammals with pebbles using a slingshot. The Remain
Nicola Sturgeon has not hitherto often been considered a humorist but she is busy revealing a new side to her character in this general election. This is pleasing for many reasons but not least because this election already needs some levity. Consider the article written by – or, rather, for – Sturgeon and published at
Boris Johnson has clashed with Jeremy Corbyn in the first leaders’ debate of the snap December election. Here are all the highlights as they unfolded:
At what point did the Conservatives’ 2017 campaign start to go off the rails? A lot of Conservative MPs point to the manifesto launch and the creation of the so-called dementia tax. However, many view comments Theresa May made during a stump speech on fox hunting as just as damaging. The then prime minister said
On Saturday, I visited Chartres and stood in awe inside its cathedral. I was as stunned by its splendour as I was by the knowledge that men once wanted to blow the cathedral sky high. The Revolutionary Committee was only prevented from carrying out its wish in 1793 by a local architect who warned that
Croydon Central’s last Tory MP wrote the book on how to win a marginal constituency. At the 2017 election, Gavin Barwell subsequently lost his seat. Now Barwell’s ex-Downing Street colleague is determined to win it back. So what went wrong last time? And will things really be different for the Tories two years on? Mario
I emerged with three thoughts from my interview with the Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, which is three more thoughts than I often have after interviewing a senior politician. First, her attack on Labour was massively personalised as an attack on Jeremy Corbyn, who she says is not fit to be PM, rather than on the party itself.
The Conservatives are naturally very determined not to repeat the mistakes of the last election campaign, particularly when it came to the way the party’s manifesto was ‘dumped’ on an unsuspecting public in the middle of the campaign. Campaign aides say the 2017 mistake was not to roll the pitch in the run-up to the
As the election campaign enters its third week, the Conservatives are enjoying a 17-point lead, according to a YouGov poll. However cautious Tory MPs are quick to point out nothing should be taken for granted, as this is broadly speaking where the Tory party was at this point in the 2017 campaign. But for Labour
Last week, Boris Johnson made a last-minute change to his itinerary in the West Country after protesters from Extinction Rebellion and others had gathered outside a bakery he had planned to visit near Glastonbury. The visit, it was reported, had not been publicised, but word had nevertheless got out. The Prime Minister swerved off to
I am that rare thing, a vice-signaller; a breed defined by the fact that unlike our virtue-signalling opposites, we delight in presenting ourselves as somewhat worse than we are. Reasons vary; sometimes we were Bad People in the past and changed but (like teenage wallflowers who grew into table-dancing divas and still describe themselves as
Prince Andrew is a creep. But he’s not the only one. There is also something creepy about the public shaming of Andrew. There’s something disturbing in the obsessive, salacious chatter about his allegedly depraved private life and the presumption that he is guilty of terrible crimes. The Andrew storm increasingly looks like a clash of
Hats off to Newsnight. BBC 2’s flagship political show bagged itself an almighty royal scoop. Emily Maitlis was given an hour to quiz Prince Andrew about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex-offender who was found dead in his jail cell in August. The first bombshell of the night was the news that months
Jeremy Corbyn – ‘I want a close relationship’ with the EU The Labour leader was Andrew Marr’s chief guest of the day. Marr began by asking for Corbyn’s personal stance on Brexit, something which has proved highly elusive since the referendum result in 2016. Corbyn happily gave the Labour party’s position, but once again refused
On the Marr show this morning, Jeremy Corbyn was asked – and refused to say – five times whether he would campaign for Leave or Remain in a second referendum. Referring to himself in the third person, Corbyn said the only thing Corbyn could reveal was that we would have a close trading relationship with
I have a shameful secret. I’ve been watching these… videos online. Amazing what you can get in a couple of clicks these days. Being what the Corbynistas deride as a Centrist Dad, I have taken to seeking out short films of taboo figures like Tony Blair and Barack Obama, talking about current affairs and being
At times, it can be hard to avoid the preachy style of reviewing that talks to readers in the tone of a teacher ordering you to eat your greens. This, I’m afraid, is one of them. If you know what’s good for you, watch Spotlight on the Troubles: A Secret History on BBC iPlayer and
What will my former school chum, Philip Hammond, do with himself now? He’s thought better of standing as an independent in the coming election, cut his losses and walked away from parliament. I wonder if he’ll be tempted to return to his roots. When I knew Phil ‘the Goth’ at Shenfield Comprehensive in Essex, he
Some were surprised when history lecturer and Brexit party candidate Kevin Yuill revealed that there were plenty of secret Brexit supporters in British universities. As another out-and-proud academic Brexiteer, I am happy to report that I too have come across my own fair share of pro-Brexit colleagues. But we should not underestimate the isolation that many of those
It will be the biggest moment of the campaign so far. On Tuesday night, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn will go head to head in an ITV debate. I say in The Sun this morning that this debate is the biggest risk that Boris Johnson has taken in this election. There’s a reason why none
Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron have more in common than just a desire to ‘get Brexit done’. The pair also recognise the threat posed to the West by Islamic extremism – and the Prime Minister can learn from the growing determination of the French president to stand strong against the hardliners and in defence of
Your latest challenge was to compose clerihews about any date in the calendar. I was very grateful recently to eagle-eyed John O’Byrne, who drew my attention to the fact that the closing date for Competition No. 3125 was not 20 November, as printed in the magazine, but 13 November. Even better, he did it in
Today the Conservative Party announced that it would cut business rates for shops, cinemas and pubs. The proposal sounds great, but the moment you look at the detail, you groan. There’s a percentage cut… to a discount… that applies to a subset – yawn. Has someone brought George Osborne back? Recent polling shows that the
The Conservatives like to say that their road to electoral victory is steep and narrow, but has Nigel Farage broadened out that path this week? Plus, is it time to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants? And last, should baby boomers apologise for crimes against young people? Lara Prendergast and Katy Balls talk to James Forsyth,
‘Elect me once more and we will finish off socialism for good,’ declared Mrs Thatcher before the 1987 general election, or words to that effect. Not so fast. Thirty two years on and we are engaged in an unseemly contest as to which party can increase public spending, and with it the size of the
In this election, the Tories hope to persuade voters who have never backed the Conservative party before to turn blue. Key target seats lie in parts of the Midlands and North that are historically Labour. As I say in this week’s magazine, to help candidates and activists take on this new terrain, the party has
The Labour plan to nationalise broadband is a good illustration of why the Corbyn-McDonnell team are much better at politics than their Conservative critics realise. It is also more evidence that the allegedly radical socialist Corbyn is actually engaged in an almost Blairite exercise of calculated branding and positioning. If you read certain newspapers and
If you wanted to completely destroy a modern twenty-first century economy there are various places you could start. You could print money to finance unlimited government spending. You could put up tariff barriers on all your main imports. You could even try raising the minimum wage to £30 an hour, while cutting the working week
One of the strange things about this election is that the Conservatives could quite conceivably wake up on 13 December to find they have won a majority, but their prime minister has lost his job. In 2017 Boris Johnson only won his seat of Uxbridge and Ruislip with just over 5,000 votes, placing his constituency
Is Jeremy Corbyn a democrat? With Labour now promising a ‘democratic revolution’ this has become a critical question. We can only judge Corbyn on his record as Labour leader and that suggests his rhetoric of radical empowerment conceals a traditional politician’s desire to hold on to the levers of power. Corbyn won’t like it, but
What do Extinction Rebellion, the Guardian’s style guide and over 200 local councils have in common? All have declared a ‘climate emergency’. Yet while these councils are keen to talk up the consequences on our planet of failing to act, are they actually practicing what they preach? The decision of some councils to purchase cars
John McDonnell today explained that the broadband nationalisation plans are perfectly affordable – upkeep costs would just be £230m a year. This was based on a report from the National Infrastructure Commission. It compared going for full fibre (the bars in blue, below) with incremental upgrades of the copper system (orange, below) and gave a
We’re all sick of celebrities making a meal of their mental health problems – but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t facing a potential crisis. The unique strains of living in the technology-driven 21st century are taking their toll on people who, in an earlier era, would have been psychologically robust. Many of us are
Labour has pledged to close the gender pay gap by 2030 and the party has chosen today – ‘Equal Pay Day’ – to launch its supposedly women-friendly work policies. The party plans to force small and medium-sized companies to perform gender pay gap audits, just as bigger companies of 250 are required to do already. This sounds all
