All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
In July 2018, Elizabeth Denham – the woman in charge of enforcing the UK’s laws on data protection – appeared on the Today programme, and made a stark allegation. ‘In 2014 and 2015, the Facebook platform allowed an app… that ended up harvesting 87 million profiles of users around the world that was then used
Robert Jenrick – ‘None of us’ want to return to national lockdown This morning Andrew Marr interviewed the Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick, amid news that the UK’s ‘R’ number (the rate of transmission of the coronavirus) is now estimated at between 1.2 and 1.5, remaining stubbornly above the critical number 1.0. With the Prime Minister
Matt Hancock broke his own 10 p.m curfew to continue drinking at a parliamentary bar, according to reports in the Mail on Sunday. A senior Tory MP told the paper that the Health Secretary continued to nurse a large glass of white wine until at least 10.25 p.m. during a late night tipple that saw Hancock mock the government’s
Another week has passed with more restrictions piled on – but as lockdown measures become ever more restrictive, the demand for evidence grows. Sir Keir Starmer, for instance, has asked to see evidence for new lockdown measures. In mid-August, Andy Burnham called on the government not to put Oldham into lockdown as Sir Richard Leese,
Replacing Islington’s Jeremy Corbyn with Camden’s Keir Starmer never seemed like the most obvious way for Labour to win back its lost northern heartlands. True, Starmer was not such an extremist as Corbyn, but his classic leftie London lawyer mindset was surely destined to go down like a lead balloon out on the Blue Wall.
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John Connolly, Katy Balls and Patrick Maguire discuss Sir Keir Starmer’s shift in approach to the government’s Covid measures.
Britain is often said to be two weeks behind France in the new Covid wave — so how bad are things in France? Lille, Grenoble, Lyon and Saint-Étienne have switched to maximum alert, with two thirds of regions on ‘enhanced alert’. Things are at their most worrying in Paris, where hospitals have been given permission
When the Scottish government made the decision this summer to do a U-turn and award teachers’ predicted grades instead of exams, it was inevitable that England and Wales would follow. Now that Scotland has cancelled National Highers next summer, the question is: will GCSEs again follow suit? With less than 84 per cent of secondary
Once upon a time, a long time ago, this country was consumed by the matter of Brexit. Everywhere you turned, in every medium, even among friends and colleagues, you couldn’t get away from the subject: everyone was talking about Brexit. We were obsessed by it. From 2016 to 2019 there was no escape. All of
There was a time when the announcement of new Treasury spending tended to spell good news. However, these days it usually means that something has gone wrong on coronavirus. This afternoon, the Chancellor confirmed a shift in policy — new support packages for workers. Employees at UK firms that are forced to shut by law will now be
Keir Starmer’s political position is stronger than people would have expected a few months ago. The improvement in Labour’s poll position is giving him more personal authority within the party, allowing him to move on from the Corbyn era faster than expected. ‘The Labour party has the smell of power in its nostrils now and
Since the general election, many members of the cabinet besides the prime minister have been prevalent in the media. Rishi Sunak has become an out and out superstar, even occasionally lauded by portions of the centre-left media. Matt Hancock, for good or ill, has become a constant presence throughout the crisis. Yet it’s amazing how
August should have been a relative boom for the British economy: restrictions were the most relaxed since the Covid crisis began. Businesses in the hospitality and leisure industries were largely allowed to reopen by this point, and public transport guidance changed to allow non-essential workers to return to the office. On top of these liberalisations,
Berlin’s partygoers are being told to stay at home by health experts and politicians amid rising new coronavirus cases. Researchers say that clubs and restaurants have become super spreading hubs as Germany’s looser Covid-19 restrictions have allowed events to take place again. Germany’s infection control agency warned on Tuesday that the country could see up to 10,000 new coronavirus cases a day after
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Today the Chancellor will announce new economic packages targeted at the areas under lockdown. But will the measures go far enough to save businesses, already under strain? Katy Balls talks to Kate Andrews and James Forsyth.
We are in a time where money has lost meaning and value, so perhaps the £10 billion plus spent on Test and Trace doesn’t merit comment. But what do we get for our money? Well, we get a daily case tally which provides headlines for media outlets and endless graphs. We get a regional breakdown
A ground-breaking case in the High Court will decide this week whether the UK’s only gender identity development service (GIDS) for under-18s will be allowed to continue to prescribe puberty blockers for children as young as 10-years-old. The case against the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, which runs GIDs, is currently conducting its own internal
As a first-generation immigrant, my mum’s greatest ambition for me was to get into Oxbridge. For her, it was clear that these world-leading universities would be a passport into a better world. So she’ll be aghast to learn of BBC Director General Tim Davie saying the BBC can’t ‘just take people from a certain academic
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Overnight, news broke of the three-tier system that the government has in store for the country. First to be put into the strictest tier is likely to be large parts of the North of England, from next week onwards. Cindy Yu discusses with Katy Balls and James Forsyth the political fallout over the next few
Perhaps Senator Kamala Harris would have performed better last night if she had remembered who she was debating. It was not — as she hoped it would be when she was a candidate in the Democratic primaries — President Donald Trump. Instead, it was a candidate with a radically different demeanour. Vice President Mike Pence
When the lockdown tiers are announced, it is inevitable that huge swathes of the north will be under much tighter restrictions than the south. It is not hard to see how a divided Britain translates into political trouble, as I say in the magazine this week. Labour and northern leaders will claim that support packages
History repeats itself — but sometimes in reverse. Only a pessimist would have predicted a global pandemic followed by a growing regional conflict. And yet the ongoing fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan — and its accompanying web of political ambition, ethnic tensions and territorial disputes — leads to uncomfortable comparisons with the start of the first world war. That
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Democratic Senator Kamala Harris and vice-president Mike Pence yesterday battled it out in the VP debate. Ms Harris accused the Trump administration of ‘ineptitude’ and ‘incompetence’ in its response to coronavirus, while Mr Pence said Biden’s plans to tackle climate change would ‘crush American jobs’. But who came out on top? Freddy Gray speaks to
The death of legendary axe grinder Eddie Van Halen is a sad reminder of how far rock music has fallen since those heady, head-banging days of the 1970s and 1980s when hairy, denim-clad blokes bestrode the earth, power-chording their way into our collective consciousness. Once the foundation of any self-respecting rock anthem, the obligatory guitar
Later today, two men will be sentenced for their part in the attempted murder of a prison officer at high security HMP Whitemoor in January 2020. Unfortunately, extreme violence against the men and women who put on the uniform has become almost normalised in a system beset with squalor, overcrowding and unchecked predatory behaviour. Even
So there you have it. Cambridge Analytica was ‘not involved’ in the 2016 EU referendum. The digital marketing firm that Remainers love to hate did not swing the British electorate towards Leave, as we were constantly told. In the words of the Guardian, no doubt uttered through gritted teeth, Cambridge Analytica did not ‘directly misuse
Britain’s judicial system may be about to give $1 billion (£770 million) to one of the world’s most notorious dictators. Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan strongman, wants access to gold reserves held by the Bank of England. The leader, internationally condemned for chronic mismanagement of the economy and facilitating vast corruption, says he’ll use the funds
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris is a former prosecutor. Vice President Mike Pence is a career politician. The debate between them was always going to be less lively and dramatic than the name-calling last week between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. But it wouldn’t be a snooze-fest – nothing in this election cycle is. Harris began
Vice President Mike Pence emerged from the 2020 vice presidential debate Wednesday night with a sound victory over challenger Sen. Kamala Harris. The debate was, of course, calmer and more focused on policy than the presidential debate between Trump and Biden last week. Although it may seem surprising that such conditions would work in favor
Tiresome things, words. And it is even more tiresome when people insist they retain their traditional meanings. Thus I suppose one may sympathise with Peter Murrell, chief executive of the SNP and — for this is not irrelevant to the subject being discussed here — husband to Nicola Sturgeon. In January 2019, Alex Salmond was
