All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Boris Johnson confirmed in his coronavirus press conference yesterday that gatherings will be restricted to a maximum of six people from Monday onwards. This is the legal number allowed to meet (with a few exceptions), and those who fail to comply will face fines or even arrest. In one way, this isn’t that much of a change to what’s allowed
One thing is keeping the temperature among Tory MPs in check: the government’s poll lead. It’s hard to claim that this or that event has been an election losing disaster when the opposition is still behind. The explanation for why the Tories are ahead despite such a torrid summer holds the key to what will
In the row about the Internal Market bill, some important constitutional propositions are in danger of being misunderstood. The introduction of the bill, which would empower ministers to disapply provisions of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol to the Withdrawal Agreement, has been widely reported as Government law-breaking. The Attorney General and Lord Chancellor have been criticised
The foreign ministers of China and India, Wang Yi and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, will meet today on the sidelines of a conference in Moscow. Their conversation is sure to be frosty: earlier this week, a four-month stand-off between the two countries’ armed forces escalated into warning shots being fired in the western Himalayas. This was the
In spite of our Black Lives Matter moment, there is a serious injustice that persistently affects young black men living in our inner cities and which is almost never discussed. It is the risk of over-conviction created by the current law of homicide and its disproportionate impact on black and ethnic minority defendants. Homicide law
If Scotland can claim independence — and a ‘geographical share’ of the oil regardless of population — then why can’t Orkney and Shetland? The Shetland Islands Council has voted 18-2 to begin exploring options for achieving financial and political self-determination, which sounds daft – but is it any less daft than Scottish independence? Laurance Reed,
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Women’s Prize For Fiction, and there is much to celebrate. Over the last quarter of a century the prize has become one of the most successful awards in the world, and has exposed readers to important, challenging and accomplished works by female authors. There is no doubt
A senior Tory tells me the House of Lords will turn the Salisbury-Addison convention – which says the upper house won’t block legislation that stems from a government’s election manifesto – on its head, when it comes to the two bills amending the Withdrawal Agreement. He points out that the Tory manifesto describes Boris Johnson’s
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Boris Johnson held a press conference this afternoon to announce that only groups of six or smaller would be able to meet from Monday. The new restrictions come after a spike in coronavirus cases, and were brought in alongside threats to fine those who break the rules. But is there more to come? John Connolly
Normally the best response to political correctness at the Oscars is to laugh at it. Whether it’s Lady Gaga singing a song about campus rape culture or Leonardo DiCaprio taking a break from his lovely, fossil-fuelled, jet-setting life to lecture the billion-strong TV audience about the scourge of climate change, a chuckle is usually enough
After last week’s shambles, Boris could barely have performed worse at PMQs today. Sir Keir Starmer began with a horror-story endured by two parents in London. They needed an urgent Covid test for a feverish toddler but were told that nothing was available in the capital. Go to Romford, was the advice. Then they were
Keir Starmer went back to what he most enjoys at Prime Minister’s Questions: calling the government incompetent and demanding that it ‘get a grip’, especially over Covid. Let’s face it, he’s hardly short of material given all the let downs and U-turns that the PM has inflicted on the nation. He swiftly reduced Boris Johnson
Pakistan’s stock exchange isn’t typically seen as one of the world’s best, but in recent weeks it has outperformed almost every other rival market. In terms of weekly profit, the Pakistan stock market was among the world’s top-performing last week. In August, it was Asia’s best and the fourth-best globally. For many, this has been a surprising turnaround
Even a politician as tenaciously optimistic as Matt Hancock was struggling to put any positive spin on it: the world has woken up to the disappointing news that trials of the Oxford vaccine for Covid-19 had been paused after an adverse reaction in one patient. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was one of seven in Phase 3
Another crucial period has begun in the Brexit saga. Boris Johnson has ruled out extending the transition stage beyond 1 January, after which the UK will no longer automatically take over EU regulations or align with EU trade policy. So the key question surrounding Brexit will finally need to be answered: what are the conditions
The general consensus in the media these days over PMQs is that Keir Starmer is a pro and Boris Johnson verging on incompetent. Today’s exchange saw Starmer once again turn the heat up on Johnson’s government. During a fiery exchange at PMQs, Keir Starmer criticised the government’s track and trace system. However, it was not what
Boris Johnson has described himself as ‘a passionate defender of Israel’ and, what’s more, ‘a life-long friend, admirer and supporter of Israel’. He says the UK ‘has always stood by Israel and its right to live, as any nation should be able to, in peace and security’. That recognition that the Jewish state should be
The reverberations from what Brandon Lewis said yesterday continue. Having spoken to various peers, it is clear that the internal market bill will now really struggle in the House of Lords. Two peers who are far more sympathetic to this government than most in the upper house don’t think that it will pass the Lords
The question for Boris Johnson is why he signed a Withdrawal Agreement that gives the EU the power to decide whether British agricultural products are fit for export to Northern Ireland. There was no secret that this is in the Withdrawal Agreement. It is there in black and white. Critics of the deal cited it from the
Matt Hancock has announced his ‘Moonshot’ project of achieving population-wide mass testing for Covid-19. He should be congratulated for this shift in strategy. The previous strategy of ‘Test, Trace and Isolate’ relied on people with the virus feeling ill and so taking a test. Those who tested positive would then be called by one of
At a solemn ceremony at the Panthéon to mark the 150th anniversary of the (re-)birth of the Republic, president Macron chose a 59-year-old anti-Brexit British expatriate to be one of five newly naturalised French citizens emblematic of what it means to become French. Macron does nothing without gauging its historical and political theatre. Coming just days
There’s significant mounting interest in the increase in detected cases in the UK. However, it’s worth looking at the data to try and understand what is going on. First, it is essential to analyse cases by the date the specimen was taken, as opposed to reported. The second vital thing to do is to observe
As Boris Johnson comes under fire from his own MPs over his potentially unlawful Brexit plans, Keir Starmer has made his first significant Brexit intervention. After keeping relatively quiet on the issue since winning the leadership, the Labour leader has laid out his party’s position on Brexit during an evening broadcast round. Despite previously backing a
The penny seems to have belatedly dropped for Boris Johnson. He can have a no-trade-deal relationship with the European Union – what he calls an Australian-style relationship – or he can have Northern Ireland as a seamless member of the UK’s internal market. But under the EU Withdrawal Agreement that he signed, he cannot have
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As Michel Barnier arrives in London for another round of trade talks, Brandon Lewis today said that government plans to reinterpret the Brexit withdrawal treaty could break international law. Cindy Yu speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about what the No. 10 proposals could mean, and whether Tory backbenchers can stomach the move.
When Dawn Butler sent a message of support to Extinction Rebellion protesters who had blockaded newspaper printworks, it wasn’t long before her tweet was deleted. So what happened? It was widely assumed that the order to delete the message came from the top of the Labour party and showed all too clearly that things are now
Following widespread speculation that the UK government intends to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis was summoned to the chamber to answer an urgent question on the issue. Despite government attempts to suggest that intended changes to the Withdrawal Agreement through the new Internal Market Bill were simply to tie up loose
It wasn’t so long ago that Sir Keir Starmer was making headlines as shadow Brexit secretary for his role moving the Labour leadership in favour of a second referendum. However, since taking over the party, Starmer has gone rather quiet on the matter. With a global pandemic dominating the news agenda, that was understandable for a while.
You can tell something about a campaign by the desperation-levels of its fundraising emails. In recent weeks, Team Trump’s digital team has started to resemble a company on the verge of bankruptcy. My inbox is full of emails purporting to be from various members of the Trump family, telling ME in CAPITAL LETTERS how important
Who can we blame for Covid-19? Over in the US, Trump is still desperately trying to make ‘the China virus’ and ‘the Wuhan flu’ stick. There can be no doubt where his finger is pointing. The United Nations, on the other hand, has a different target. The UN’s Twitter account notified the world yesterday that,
After reports emerged on Monday suggesting that Boris Johnson plans to use new legislation to override key parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement relating to the Northern Ireland protocol, government ministers sought to play down the changes. Environment Secretary George Eustice suggested that any changes to be laid out in the internal market bill were aimed at simply
There is no region of the UK where Labour has dominated more – both politically and culturally – than Wales. Since 1922, the party has consistently won general elections there, and has ruled Cardiff’s devolved government relatively unchallenged since it was established in 1999. But Keir Starmer would be wise to keep his eye on