All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
‘Hello, is that Paul?’ ‘Yes’ ‘This is Alan Parker. I’ve just read your new book. I thought it was terrific and I want to talk to you about it. Are you free for lunch next week?” ‘Yes!’, I practically yelled. The following week, I found myself sitting opposite one of my advertising and film-making heroes,
Why do so many news outlets – the BBC in particular – prefer reporting grim worst-case scenarios made by mathematical models to more optimistic real-world data? The Today programme excelled itself again this morning by putting in its lead 8.10am slot a study by UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine into
There can be a hallucinatory quality to the progressive mind, a tendency to see enemies in allies and demons in opponents, to imagine a public consensus for niche propositions and to experience even mild-mannered political disagreements as near-physical attacks. One or more of these behaviours can be found across the spectrum — lefties hate other
It has been a long few months for the Prime Minister, who has seen both his personal and his party’s poll-ratings take a hit, as the government struggles with the coronavirus pandemic. However, there is one Tory whose popularity continues to buck the trend. Step forward Rishi Sunak. The Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to
Early on in lockdown, I was picking up my daily paper and was confronted by someone who had contrived his own face mask with polythene bags and masking tape. He seemed blissfully unselfconscious, despite looking as if he was off to a Hannibal Lecter-themed fancy-dress party; I shared a superior snigger with the newsagent and
In the ‘bad bank’ model, a bank protects itself by dumping its toxic assets onto a second, newly-created institution. By taking the problems off its books, the first bank hopes to restore its reputation and financial health so that it will be able to carry on business as usual. The Spanish monarchy has just carried
The Crown Prosecution Service’s latest grim statistics show that, despite the increasing number of police recorded rapes over the past five years, the prosecution rate has reduced. This state of affairs, has been branded as the ‘decriminalisation of rape’ by the Victim’s Commissioner Dame Vera Baird QC. And the data’s fine print also reveals a heart-breaking truth: the victims
The return of lockdown measures across parts of northern England, as well as the announcement of dozens of new peerages, almost entirely overshadowed the Lord Chancellor’s launch on Friday of an independent review of administrative law. Lord Faulks QC, former minister of state for justice, is to lead five other barristers and academic lawyers in examining
It’s summer but the war on women continues. The latest person to fall victim to the transgender thought police is Labour MP Rosie Duffield after she liked a tweet by Piers Morgan where he harrumphed CNN’s reference to ‘individuals with a cervix’. Duffield later angered her critics more by asking: ‘I’m a ‘transphobe’ for knowing
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Today marks the start of the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme – but can the move save Britain’s restaurants without risking a second spike? Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Kate Andrews about the Treasury initiative, as well as the possibility of more local lockdowns.
John Hume, the first and the greatest of the Irish peacemakers, has died aged 83. Few political leaders are truly indispensable, but it remains difficult to imagine a Northern Irish peace process without John Hume. Without Hume’s questing belief that peace was not only desirable but possible, there might have been no peace process at
Make no mistake: Layla Moran’s Lib Dem leadership platform is terrible. She wants to scrap Ofsted, stop publishing league tables of schools and call time on SATs for primary school kids. These policies are so bad that as a parent of three I would have to seriously think about leaving the country if Layla was ever put
John Hume emerged in 1964 as a modernising voice within the stale and defeated world of Catholic Nationalist politics in Northern Ireland – a world in which the Unionists seemed to hold all the cards, including their relative prosperity on the island of Ireland. His first major intervention was to insist that the credo of
I’m starting to think that Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer have quite similar views about the politics of trans rights, sex and gender. I’m also inclined to think this could be a good thing. In the last couple of weeks, both the PM and the Labour leader have been invited to wade into the lake
The government has restricted the movements of millions of people in England because Covid is apparently on the rise. But what happens when you start digging into the data? I have used two datasets to piece together the number of tests, cases and results for Pillar 1 tests (which are done in healthcare settings) and
Is Covid accelerating the eclipse of France and the UK as ‘great powers’? For over two centuries Paris and London have been seated at the top table in world affairs. The essential element of their power has been economic, allowing both states to maintain powerful defence budgets, pursue active foreign policies and in the last
A brief but sharp twist of the knife was felt across the world of our gagged choral musicians on Friday evening, when the Times Science Correspondent Tom Whipple tweeted ‘It’s not good news’ about the future of choral singing. Sage documents had ‘dropped’, he wrote, containing the ominous statement, ‘There is some evidence to suggest
We can’t travel with ease anywhere, anymore. First it was Spain, now Luxembourg is the latest holiday spot to require a two-week quarantine on return. But there is one destination that is guaranteed to be hassle as well as quarantine free: your home. If you’re wondering how you can make your 15-foot square lounge the
Rishi Sunak is contemplating a 2 per cent tax on goods sold online, possibly combined with a ‘green’ levy on delivery vans and a radical review of business rates, all designed to improve the survival chances of high-street retailers while harvesting more revenue from online sellers who have boomed during lockdown. About time too —
It is remarkable to think that just 15 days ago, Boris Johnson was setting out a plan to end all social distancing by November. But, as I say in The Times this morning, the mood in government has become much more pessimistic in the last week or so. This winter the government could be dealing
When the Intelligence and Security Committee’s (ISC) Russia Report was finally published last week, the name of one person who gave evidence will have leapt out for many people. Among the ‘external expert witnesses’ listed was none other than a certain ‘Mr Christopher Steele, Director of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd’. Steele, you may remember, was
In an effort to avoid another national lockdown at all costs, the government is relying on two tools: a comprehensive track-and-trace scheme and localised lockdowns. The first isn’t expected to be up and running until autumn at the earliest, after a series of setbacks and U-turns (the pains of which are already being felt, as
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Statistics released this week showed that England had the worst excess death rate in Europe during the first half of 2020. Katy Balls speaks to Kate Andrews and Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University about what’s behind the numbers.
For once I find myself on the other side of the argument in agreeing that ‘Big Chief’, the erstwhile tomahawk-wielding mascot of the Exeter Chiefs rugby club, deserved to be axed. He was an affront to Native Americans, perpetuating the calumny that their ancestors were – to quote the Declaration of Independence – ‘merciless Indian savages’.
I recently heard on the radio that last year an average of 14 pensioners a day had to sell their house to pay for their care. This was supposed to shock us. Actually, the figure seems remarkably low (a little over 5,000 a year) and, in principle, reasonable. Rather like home ownership itself, care in old
It’s not often that feminists threaten legal action over plans to increase women’s representation on public boards, so the Scottish Government has managed something of a feat. ‘For Women Scotland’, a volunteer-funded gender-critical lobby group, isn’t against the principle of the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act. It’s the Scottish Government’s definition of ‘women’ they
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Overnight, the government announced a return of stricter social distancing measures in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and East Lancashire, with multiple households no longer allowed to meet indoors or in pubs and restaurants. Then, in an impromptu press conference today, the Prime Minister also called off the reopening of bowling alleys, casinos and indoor concert
Remember levelling up, whereby low-income areas in the Midlands and North would enjoy a greater share of the nation’s wealth? It is pretty hard to square with the government’s policy on releasing the country from lockdown. Rather, policy seems to be construed so as to make sure that the economies of the Midlands and North
Evgeny Lebedev, owner of the Independent and the Evening Standard – and son of the former KGB spy Alexander Lebedev – has been nominated for a peerage by Boris Johnson today. The appointment has certainly raised eyebrows in Westminster, and perhaps suggests that Boris will be hoping for slightly more positive press in the tycoon’s papers
This afternoon, the government revealed the new peers who have been appointed to the House of Lords. New members of the Upper Chamber include Jo Johnson, Ian Botham, Evgeny Lebedev, Claire Fox and Charles Moore. Below is the full list of appointments: Political Peerages 2020 Nominations from the Leader of the Conservative Party 1. Lorraine Fullbrook – former
The national security law in Hong Kong has been passed for just over a month, but the scope of Beijing’s plans are now clear. This is a constitutional coup. The safeguards which have historically defended human rights in Hong Kong have been shattered. Rule of law has been replaced with rule by law – and
After deciding over the weekend to impose a two-week quarantine on Britons returning from Spain, Boris Johnson has pulled the hand brake once again. In a press conference alongside chief medical officer Chris Whitty, the Prime Minister announced that in light of a rise in coronavirus cases he would be pausing aspects of lockdown easing