All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
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
It’s sometimes said that Rishi Sunak has been playing politics on easy mode: when you’re giving away loads of cash, it’s hard not to be popular. Now, as summer fades and autumn beckons, politics gets harder. The chancellor is facing his first real test with Conservative MPs over reports that his Treasury is considering a
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Bolton and Trafford were returned to Manchester’s local lockdown this morning after yet another U-turn by the government. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer went head to head for their first PMQs of the new parliamentary term. Finally, Rishi Sunak and the PM met members of the 2019 Tory intake in an attempt to shore
It was woeful. It was ugly to behold. It was beyond gruesome. Even Boris’s most faithful supporters had to watch PMQs from behind the sofa. Sir Keir Starmer, who turns 58 today, got a fabulous birthday present – a stunningly inept performance from the Prime Minister. Sir Keir demanded a ‘straight answer to a straight
Recently, the government has provided Covid data on a UK basis – merging official figures from the constituent parts of the UK. But are the English and Scottish figures really comparable? Take figures for the number of Covid patients in hospital in Scotland on 28 August. The Scottish official count is 255, a drop of
Whose fault is the school exam results fiasco? Based on who has left their jobs in the past few weeks, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was officials in the Department for Education and at Ofqual, not the Secretary of State for Education. Gavin Williamson has apologised for the ‘stress’ caused to pupils, but remains
They’re all it at. The dust has barely settled on the ruthless removal of Jackson Carlaw from the Scottish Conservative leadership yet it seems the Caledonian branch of the People’s Party are in rebellious mood too. Three Labour MSPs have called on Holyrood chief Richard Leonard to stand down, with moderate Jenny Marra describing his leadership
Oh dear. It’s safe to say that Rishi Sunak is not having the best week. Although the Chancellor’s made the news every day, it’s more because Tory MPs are complaining about various Treasury tax proposals than because they have anything nice to say. While the jury’s out on tax rises, it seems that the Chancellor has at least
PMQs today was a reminder of how the socially distanced chamber removes the Prime Minister’s most important structural advantage, having more MPs behind him than the leader of the opposition. Keir Starmer was keeping Boris Johnson on the back foot with a series of questions on government U-turns. So, Boris Johnson tried to change the
One of the main things that’s holding up an UK-EU trade deal is the demand that the UK sticks to current state aid rules. Boris and Frost are refusing to budge. They want the freedom to do whatever they wish with state aid in post-Brexit Britain. Restrictions around state aid spending are in place to ensure
The latest data on weekly deaths in England and Wales, published today by the Office of National Statistics, show what could be the beginning of a disturbing trend. From mid-June to mid-July, the number of excess deaths has been running at below the five-year average. But for the second week running, that has reversed: in
Could war finally be coming to the eastern Mediterranean? It’s not as excitable a question as it might first appear. In an article titled, ‘Erdogan’s calculated war,‘ the German newspaper Die Welt quoted sources from the Turkish military saying that president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had recently ordered his generals to sink a Greek warship, without inflicting
Donald Trump is, perhaps predictably enough, pulling out of the World Health’s Organisation’s global vaccine programme. The Russian president Vladimir Putin has been cutting every corner to get a Russian shot out first, while allegedly sending spies to steal the Oxford one. And China is racing to have the first vaccine on the market, already
When Labour MP Neil Coyle took to Twitter for his extraordinary rant against Jacob Rees-Mogg and Brexit voters, he perfectly summed up Keir Starmer’s main problem as Labour party leader: it’s his party. In purely political terms, Starmer himself has done well, dampening down internal Labour party dramas, showing himself as relatively normal and clawing
