All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
President Trump has presided over a notable deal between Kosovo and Serbia. It’s interesting in more ways than one. For starters, the deal is very, very Trump. It’s about the economy, stupid. The deal-maker-in-chief, Richard Grenell, former acting director of National Intelligence, has, as he said, flipped the script. The deal has put economic development
Dominic Raab – This week is ‘the moment of reckoning’ for EU deal The Sunday interview shows return this week to general fanfare across the nation… The first government guest to join Sophy Ridge was the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who was asked about the prospect of the UK reaching a satisfactory trade deal with
Even a hermit in total and complete lockdown will have been aware of the bullying suffered by J.K. Rowling this summer when she had the audacity to stand up for women’s rights. Thankfully she stood firm – sadly, the same cannot be said for the Co-op, who this week wobbled in an apparent fit of
It feels good, doesn’t it? Hearing Labour say something sensible for a change. Last night, eco agitators Extinction Rebellion targeted newspaper printworks hoping to disrupt the distribution of papers like the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph. How did the Corbynite backbencher Dawn Butler respond to this attack on free expression, which has so far seen
This week France announced a €100 billion (£89 billion) stimulus package equivalent to 4 per cent of GDP over two years. It might seem churlish to ask why the French government has put so much money on the table. To save the French economy, of course. But there’s a graver concern in France that has lately
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The deadline for a Brexit deal is fast approaching, but the level of subsidies paid to companies and industries could prove a stumbling block. Will state aid – which makes up just 0.34 per cent of the UK’s GDP – scupper an agreement with the EU? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.
It is encouraging to hear that the new Director-General of the BBC, Tim Davie, is demanding changes in the BBC’s comedy output to correct its bias to the left. As a starting point for reforming the whole Corporation, comedy might seem an oddly trivial place to begin. This, however, signals intent. Not that reforming comedy
When Boris Johnson addressed MPs on Wednesday, the hope in government was that the Prime Minister’s multiple appearances would rally the troops. First at PMQs, then before the 2019 intake, before addressing the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers. With MPs returning from the summer holidays fed up after a string of policy U-turns and constituent complaints, many
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed that tests showed ‘unequivocally’ that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned by a military-grade novichok nerve agent. Germany became involved in the affair when Navalny was transported to the Charité hospital in Berlin two weeks ago. But, while Berlin decided to reveal the test result and called on the
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Rishi Sunak has faced a backlash this week over proposals to increase taxes to pay for the UK’s coronavirus response. Can the chancellor push the changes through, and how will the party react? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.
Downing Street now thinks that the chances of a Brexit deal are down to 30 or 40 per cent, I say in The Times today. The sticking point is, rather surprisingly, state aid. Since Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979, the UK has been sniffy about the idea of government ‘picking winners’. It doesn’t use much
Has the Covid ‘second wave’ already run out of steam? On 9 July, just when Britain was reopening the hospitality sector and other businesses, the World Health Organisation announced that the pandemic was ‘accelerating’. Much of the coverage in Britain also implies that we are possibly in the early stages of a second wave. But
You sometimes wonder whether we live in an adult country anymore. For the last two days the broadcast media has been obsessing about whether Tony Abbott is a fit and proper person to be a trade envoy for the United Kingdom. Since he is a former Prime Minister of Australia, a distinguished statesman and a
It is, by any measure, a heck of a lot of pizza. The ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme turns out to have been a huge success. We learned today that is was used more than a 100 million times in August. In many cities, it was virtually impossible to get a table from Monday
One of the most impressive qualities of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership so far has been his ability to land blows on the government without seeming political. He’s a lawyer with the demeanour of a bank manager: he’s just telling you how things are. That has served him well in his broadsides against ministers’ handling of
One of the most craven moments in the recent history of the British media was an interview Sky News conducted with the French writer Caroline Fourest days after the staff of Charlie Hebdo had been massacred in January 2015. Fourest was a former columnist for the satirical magazine and a friend to many of the
If you were looking for the archetype of a crank it would be Piers Corbyn. Rather like his long-forgotten younger brother, he has an unfortunate habit of consorting with people who hold very unpleasant views. So it was no surprise that the anti-lockdown demonstration he organised last Saturday was attended by a motley crowd, with
What a scandalous idea, drinking with someone you might disagree with. Rather than grilling the transport secretary over his own views, Sky’s Kay Burley instead decided to attack Grant Shapps over whether he would ‘have a drink with’ Tony Abbott because of his perceived ‘homophobia’. Which seems an odd line of questioning given the fact
Charlie Hebdo’s decision to republish the Mohammed cartoons has the media a-fretting. Al-Jazeera called the illustrations ‘offensive’. The Daily Telegraph brands them ‘notorious’. For the BBC, they are ‘controversial’. I consider gunning down Parisian cartoonists in the middle of an editorial meeting somewhat controversial, but maybe I’m overly sensitive. The satirical magazine reissued the drawings
It’s not going to be an easy autumn for the Tories, which is why the top brass have started holding meetings with nervous backbenchers to try to allay their fears about tax rises and other politically difficult decisions which are looming. Rishi Sunak also clearly saw the value in ensuring the public was aware he
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Matt Hancock today announced Operation Moonshot, a £500 million scheme to ramp up the UK’s testing capacity and offer a return to normality without social distancing. Does it really offer a way out? John Connolly speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.
When Extinction Rebellion took over the streets of London last year, even some of those who disagreed with the aims of the movement found the number of protesters an impressive sight. Thousands of people descended on the capital, blocking streets and causing chaos as they desperately tried to outfox police officers. This week, Extinction Rebellion is back.
The cause of the latest spike of coronavirus cases in Bolton points to why we need continued vigilance against Covid-19, and why it would be highly surprising if we were not now set on an upward national trend. The locus of the Bolton surge was some pubs, and possibly one in particular. And it may
Are we a lot closer to achieving herd immunity with Covid-19 than has been made out? It is a question which has been asked many times, not least because the disease has a tendency to fizzle out in communities where around a fifth of people have been infected – as has been observed in London,
All year, the nation has been gripped by one mystery. Exactly how will Harry and Meghan fund the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed? How on earth will they pay for the Californian mansion (£11 million), the security detail (£5 million a year) and the costs of the Frogmore Cottage refurbishment (£2.4 million)? Well,
If the SNP win a majority at next year’s Holyrood elections, the UK government should be prepared to start independence negotiations with them. This may sound like a mad idea, at first. But as I say in the magazine this week, it might actually offer a way to save the Union. Rather than saying a
This week saw the publication of an independent review into multi-agency arrangements that manage terrorist offenders released into the community. The report was ordered by the Government following the horrific murders committed by released Islamist extremist, Usman Khan in November of last year who was at the time subject to these arrangements and had convinced
In a year that almost everyone will want to forget there is some emerging good news. Covid-19 related hospital admissions are undoubtedly falling. By the end of August there were barely over 300 people in hospital in England with coronavirus listed as a diagnosis, and only 46 in London. To put this into context, the
A Balliol-graduate and Oxford Union president who reshaped our relationship with Europe on the mandate of a decisive general election victory, but whose once-promising leadership was derailed by social unease, domestic tensions within the Union and economic turmoil. The comparison between Ted Heath and Boris Johnson is irresistible, if somewhat unintuitive. In personality, the two
People of a conservative or Eurosceptic disposition should be thankful that the BBC’s new director general, Tim Davie, is to address the widely-held perception that its comedy output is disproportionately left-wing. For years, listeners and viewers of the likes of The News Quiz, The Now Show, Mock The Week and Have I Got News For
Graham Brady isn’t an MP given to criticising the government in public very often at all. As chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, he tends to communicate his views and those of the party to the Prime Minister in private. So when he does speak out, it’s worth listening. His criticisms have been escalating over
Welcome to the wacky world of Irish national economic accounts. The official figures for Ireland’s tax-haven economy are so bizarre that they have been dubbed ‘leprechaun economics’ by Nobel Prize winning American economist Paul Krugman. And now the distorted figures which are used to measure Ireland’s GDP could be coming back to bite Ireland in the
