All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
We’re fairly used to this government’s IT blunders now. Only recently there was the fiasco of the NHS coronavirus app – it was predicted here that it would be ‘dead-on-arrival’, weeks before the government was eventually forced to admit the same. Now with each passing month comes yet another poor decision by the UK. The latest
Death and disruption breed anger. A lot of people are now looking for someone to blame for the pandemic and China is an obvious target. It has a leadership which is authoritarian at home and menacing abroad. Its human rights record is deplorable. Western memories still encompass the invasion of Tibet. Today, its wet markets
A massively profitable American technology giant that pays small amounts of tax on vast profits, while massively over-charging for products that quickly become obsolete. Apple is a hard company to love, and an unlikely champion of anything apart from its own bottom line. And that might explain why many people instinctively cheered when the European Union slapped
A long, long time ago – by which I mean last month – I was firmly under the impression that no-one had any interest in conflating gender with biological sex. This, at any rate, was what some trans-people and many trans-activists told me and everyone else who cared to involve themselves in the boiling argument
I am hearing there will be positive news soon (perhaps tomorrow) on initial trials of the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine that is backed by AstraZeneca and supported by tens of millions of pounds of government money. The first data is due be published in the Lancet. Apparently the vaccine is generating the kind of antibody and
Each week it seems as though a new public figure enters the foray to offer their verdict on who is to blame for mistakes made in the UK response to coronavirus. Today Boris Johnson committed to holding an official inquiry to find out just this. Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Johnson said – in response
What can the UK learn from Australia and its occasionally rocky relationship with China? The welcome decision to ban Huawei from Britain’s 5G network has prompted concerns that China will find a way to hit back. This is hardly surprising, as the Chinese ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, has warned Britain that ‘if you want to make
Is Banksy a Tory propagandist now? His latest juvenile stunt suggests he might be. On the day the government announced that it will soon be mandatory to wear face masks in shops, Banksy released a video showing himself daubing a Tube train carriage with pro-mask slogans and images. Way to stick it to the man,
Matt Hancock appeared to have no time for Donald Trump’s boasts this morning when asked about the US President taking credit for the U-turn on the use of Huawei technology in our 5G network. Asked on Sky News whether he believed that the decision to scrap Huawei’s involvement was down to Trump, the Health minister replied
Here in Greece the temperature is rising. As July rolls on, the heat thickens: people become irritable in 40 degrees. Now they have even more reason for anger. Last Friday, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia would open for Muslim prayers as a mosque. He made the announcement after a Turkish
Britain has been here before when it comes to furores about face masks. Exactly 80 years ago the same argument was raging, with the country split between those who wanted the wearing of gas masks to be made compulsory on pain of financial penalty, and those who maintained it should be an individual choice. Unlike
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a sucker for conquest symbolism. As Covid-19 restrictions were being eased this year, he ensured that mosques reopened on 29 May to coincide with the 567th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. The Turkish president has now gone on to sign a decree converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque, just
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Much as expected, the government has u-turned on Huawei, though the new government policy doesn’t go as far as some of the most hardline Tory MPs would wish. On the podcast, Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson about the UK’s China policy in the years to come. Also on the episode: masks
Earlier today, Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times and published a devastating letter of resignation on her website (also available here). There will be those who try to pretend that this is no big deal, or that it is just a storm in a journalistic tea-cup: they would be wrong. For several generations
Dear A.G. (Sulzberger), It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from the New York Times. I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives
The government has announced that wearing face masks while shopping will become mandatory from 27 July. It’s fair to say though that some Conservative backbenchers aren’t best pleased about the decision. ‘Nothing would make me less likely to go shopping than the thought of having to mask up’, Tory MP Desmond Swayne rallied in the House
Layla Moran’s Lib Dem leadership bid has taken something of a hit in recent weeks. The Oxfordshire MP has been the subject of a slew of coded criticisms after she said that under her leadership the Lib Dems would be ‘even more radical than Labour’. Both Tim Farron and Vince Cable came out against her
Turkey’s strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that the Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia will become a mosque again, after 85 years as a museum and a designated Unesco World Heritage site. It will be the fifth church of the same name — all once symbols of the Eastern Roman Empire and priceless cultural
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir? That defence of the political u-turn was purportedly uttered by the great economist John Maynard Keynes and is recognised as the classic intellectually respectable case for abandoning a stance in favour of an opposite one. It is certainly the best defence available
It is a big deal that the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is being totally excluded from the UK’s new fast 5G mobile network, and is redolent of a de facto cold war between the West and China. But Johnson has taken a more gradualist approach to the exclusion of Huawei than his Tory critics wanted
The government has today u-turned on allowing Huawei a role in the building of the UK’s 5G network. From the end of this year, mobile providers will be banned from buying Huawei kit and it’ll have to be removed altogether from their 5G networks by 2027. The UK government’s line is that this change in position
It is an uptick so small that it could almost be comic, but the UK economy started to grow in May: by 1.8 per cent following a 20 per cent slump in April. Office for National Statistics figures out today show that, even in lockdown, surging online retail sales – coupled with signs of a recovery
The government’s messaging on the coronavirus has left a lot to be desired in recent days – with confused statements on the easing of lockdown and the efficacy of face masks becoming the norm. Now it appears that even the government’s own ministers are struggling to keep up. On Monday, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland was
Is the Chancellor’s latest round of economic measures just another instalment of Keynesian emergency funding, necessary only until the crisis has passed? Or is the Government on the road to a command economy? Policy-makers are currently being pulled in two contradictory directions by these questions, as the Government’s response to the crisis is impaired by
The narrowness of President Andrzej Duda’s victory in this weekend’s Polish presidential elections, where he defeated Rafał Trzaskowski, the Mayor of Warsaw, by less than 2 per cent, was God’s gift to opinion commentators. What with Brexit, Trump et cetera we can write 800-1200 words about a nation being ‘divided’ and ‘polarised’ in our sleep.
A five hundred quid shopping voucher for everyone. Five per cent off VAT across the board. Maybe suspending income tax for a couple of months, or getting rid of corporation tax until the end of the year. As today’s disappointing GDP numbers landed on his desk, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak must have been tempted to
The government will announce today that from 24 July face coverings will be mandatory in shops and supermarkets. Those who don’t wear one risk a hundred pound fine. This decision is partly about reducing the spread of the virus – in a shift from the beginning of the crisis the government now thinks masks are
As Sir Keir Starmer marks 100 days this week as Labour leader, the polls have shown encouraging signs for his leadership. After leading Boris Johnson a few weeks ago on the question of who would make the best prime minister in an Opinium poll, an Observer poll over the weekend found that he also leads on competence, while 52 per
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In recent days, more supportive noises have been made by those on the top of government about the wearing of face masks indoors, especially in shops. Scotland has already made it compulsory. But it wasn’t long ago when the government was saying that face masks may even harm efforts to control the virus. So does
This week, former Chancellor Philip Hammond delivered a stark warning to Boris Johnson’s government about China. Speaking on Radio 4, the former Tory MP suggested that Britain should avoid weakening trade links with the world’s second largest economy, and instead be ‘frank’ in private about our ‘strong differences of opinion’. It was a strange intervention
When police kit out their patrol cars in rainbow flags or when officers don pride polo shirts, two questions spring to mind: Should the police be doing this? And how much does it cost? Now, we have some answers to the second of these questions. Among the top spenders on supporting and promoting LGBT causes
The Labour Party has officially joined the advertising boycott of Facebook, following the lead of several large corporations over the past few weeks. Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said on the BBC over the weekend that the boycott was in ‘solidarity with the Black Lives Matter campaign’ but also ‘to express