All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Given that Labour has just faced its worst electoral defeat, arguably since 1935, it always looked odd – and dangerous for the Opposition – that the final run-off might have been between two candidates, Sir Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, whose hands were well and truly in the blood of that disaster, as part of
The proposal to relocate the House of Lords to York is harmless enough, though residents of York might disagree. The idea of an upper chamber of philosopher kings to check democratic excitability is sound in principle but when your definition of a philosopher king extends to John Prescott, you begin to question the merits of
The Japanese are fond of poeticising the fleeting beauty of the cherry blossom season, which no sooner reaches its full glory than is gone, leaving behind nothing but bare branches, scattered petals, and a sense of wistful regret and nostalgic yearning. It’s the theme of countless haikus and mournful folk ballads. But if the cherry
It was pretty inevitable that once rain finally started to fall in South Eastern Australia, extinguishing some of the bushfires which have been raging for weeks, the wet weather, too, would be blamed on climate change. ‘Climate apocalypse starts in Australia,’ a human rights lawyer tweeted in response to golf ball sized hailstones falling in
Lisa Nandy has won the endorsement of GMB and is one step away from reaching the final stage of the Labour leadership contest. Announcing the decision, the union’s general secretary Tim Roache said: ‘Lisa Nandy is a breath of fresh air in the debate over Labour’s future. The more members see of Lisa in this
Rebecca Long-Bailey has been criticised over comments she made on abortion that set her apart from many of her Labour colleagues. Long-Bailey said in a response to a questionnaire asked by Salford deanery: “It is currently legal to terminate a pregnancy up to full-term on the grounds of disability while the upper limit is 24
In the past few minutes, Jess Phillips has confirmed that she is pulling out of the Labour leadership race, saying the party needs a candidate who can unite people across its movement. In a video message, she said: ‘I have to be honest with myself, as I said I always would be throughout this campaign,
Who should be able to celebrate Durham’s proud legacy of mining? Maybe those who represent the miners’ constituencies in Westminster? Not according to the man who organises the annual miners gala, which takes place every July. Durham Miners president Alan Mardghum told the BBC: ‘To paraphrase Johnson, I’d rather be found dead in a ditch
As far as we know, George Orwell never visited America. This is a great pity. What a joy it would be for a biographer to find in some provincial attic the long-lost diaries of his travels around the segregated South, or his acid reflections on working as a scriptwriter in late 1930s Hollywood. I think
After Labour’s catastrophic showing in the 2019 general election, most sensible people in the party decided that now was the perfect time to reflect on the result, and try to understand why it had lost so many voters in its former heartlands in the North and Midlands. Well, for Ian Lavery, the bellicose Corbynite MP
What’s John Bercow up to these days? The ex-Speaker is enjoying the limelight, of course, but he isn’t necessarily cashing in. Last Friday, he did a solo gig at a community centre in Holland Park where his appearance raised thousands of pounds for a local charity. He charged no fee. And he spent time before
In what turned out to be the last year of his life, Roger Scruton often mulled on the nature and techniques of twenty-first century denunciation. For Roger, like others who had seen totalitarian societies up close, knew what intimidation and officially-imposed forms of thinking were actually like. Which is not to say, of course, that
Keir Starmer has made it through to the final round of the Labour leadership contest, having secured the backing of shop workers’ union Usdaw. The party’s rules state that a candidate needs to get the backing of three affiliated organisations, of which two must be trade unions (or the nomination of at least 33 constituency
This government has just suffered its first defeat of the parliament in, unsurprisingly, the House of Lords. The Lords voted for the Oates amendment which entitles EU nationals to a physical document attesting to their right to stay in the UK after Brexit. In truth, the government and the Lords aren’t that far apart on
Ever since Boris Johnson won a majority of 80 in the December snap election, the Conservative benches have been a place of unity and happiness. It’s far removed from the past year of infighting and blue on blue attacks. However, today cracks began to emerge as an issue came to the fore which divides Conservative
There’s conceit, there’s pomposity, and then there’s the New York Times editorial board. Yesterday, the Grey Lady wiggled her well-connected bottom, cocked a leg authoritatively, and let her hotly anticipated Democratic primary endorsement rip through cyberspace. ‘In a break with convention,’ declared the board, breaking wind with tradition, ‘the editorial board has chosen to endorse
It’s vital to talk plainly about what led to the situation in Manchester, where vulnerable white working-class girls were sexually abused as those tasked with protecting them simply looked on. The perpetrators have been described as belonging to ‘Asian’ grooming gangs. But the Times has reported that those involved were ‘mainly of Pakistani heritage’. So
As Soviet communism fell in 1989, the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger wrote a defence of the art of possible that deserves to endure. Terrible regimes aren’t always toppled by romantic revolutionaries, who reject everything they stand for, he wrote in The Heroes of the Retreat. ‘In the past few decades, a more significant protagonist
There is one qualification which ought to be vital for Tony Hall’s replacement as director-general of the BBC, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the BBC Board, which is charged with making the appointment, will regard it instead as a disqualification. The new director-general needs to accept that the licence fee will disappear
When Labour leadership challenger Jess Phillips urged men to ‘pass the mic’ to a woman on the top job, telling Sky’s Sophy Ridge it would ‘look bad’ if Labour failed to elect a woman, she more or less admitted not being up to the job. Surely the weakest argument any leadership candidate could use is
Tony Hall is stepping down as BBC director general of the BBC this summer, but I’m not sure his departure is a pure exercise of free will. A couple of days ago, a very well-placed source told me Hall’s preference was to stay until the corporation’s centenary in 2022, but that BBC’s chairman David Clementi
Winston Churchill’s comment about France has lost none of its piquancy. Churchill famously said of the difference between Britain, France and Germany: ‘In England, everything is permitted except what is forbidden. In Germany, everything is forbidden except what is permitted. In France, everything is allowed, even what is prohibited.’ France’s debilitating national transport strike, now
When the actor Laurence Fox appeared on Question Time last week, and laid into the growth of identity politics in the UK, it’s fair to say he didn’t make many friends online. The actor has since been bombarded with abuse for refusing to apologise for his comments and was even denounced by the actors’ union
I have been trying with considerable success not to give two hoots about this Harry and Meghan thing. But a detail of their departure from the royal orbit bothers me. It arises from Harry’s surrender of his royal patronages, part of his move to cease being an HRH and become a plain old duke. That
The Labour Party claims to be learning lessons from its crushing defeat in December’s general election. But are they the right ones? While some have been moving through the stages of grief more slowly than others, the party has generally woken up to the reality that something’s gotta give. But it’s not yet obvious that
In two weeks’ time, we will finally escape the European Union, freeing ourselves from its monumental waste. Waste, that is, like continually shifting MEPs and their staff between the two seats of the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg – a farce which the European Parliament itself calculated in 2013 was costing it 103 million
Jess Phillips’ campaign slogan is ‘speak truth, win power’, but in yesterday’s party hustings, she seemed to think that the extent of the truth that the Labour Party needs to hear is that it needs to win elections again and it had a few duff ideas in its manifesto that voters didn’t believe. The candidate
James Cleverly – If the Queen is happy, we should be happy Sophy Ridge began the day by talking to the Conservative party chairman James Cleverly. The interview began with the latest developments in the royal family, which from this spring will see Prince Harry and Meghan Markle step back from their official duties. The
The ‘third way’ of being a senior royal – representing the Queen one day, earning serious money the next, was always untenable. When Harry and Meghan first made public their desire to change the status quo they described it as a ‘progressive new role’. Critics, better versed in the workings of an ancient institution than
In the end, it took just over a week for Prince Harry to announce and finalise the terms of his exit from the royal family. But Queen seems to have told him that, while he’s free to leave the firm, out means out. He and Meghan have agreed to give up their ‘royal highness’ titles
Keir Starmer has clearly decided that in order to win over the membership he must appear sympathetic to Corbyn and Corbynism. His campaign launch video was a masterclass in repositioning, presenting the soft-left Starmer as some kind of socialist stalwart. Indeed, speaking at the Fabian Society conference this afternoon, the frontrunner was asked by the
I am not going to lie: I am bored sick with Brexit. Like so many of you, I have become that frustrated child in the back of the car moaning, ‘are we there yet?’ Boris Johnson won’t tell us. Or at least not in precise terms. So on this marathon journey, just days before we
Have you noticed how chaotic and wasteful eucalypts are? They have branches that grow in all directions and lengths and they seem to be forever dropping dead bits off them. Why hasn’t natural selection tidied them up so their branches are all economically organised to maximise access to light like beautifully ordered pines or symmetrical
The first hustings of the Labour leadership campaign was not particularly inspiring. It did not suggest that any of the candidates either believed their party would win the next election or that they were capable of telling the membership what it really needs to hear in order to get as close as possible to winning.