All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s been a year to forget for Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz. The German Chancellor’s coalition collapsed last month and on Monday he lost a confidence vote in parliament. Elections are now likely in February. The President of France has had a few election issues himself, as a result of which Macron is on his
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Springfield Ohio became a talking point in this year’s Presidential election after Donald Trump referred to Haitian migrants ‘eating the cats and dogs’. Steven Edginton, GB News US Correspondent has been to Springfield Ohio to speak to some of the migrants there, investigate some reports that migrants are fleeing America in fear of a Trump
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After days of speculation online, the alleged Chinese spy has been named as Yang Tegbo. This latest example of Chinese espionage has opened up a number of debates in Westminster, firstly around Labour’s push to ‘reset’ its relationship with China, as well as the conversation around the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme – a number of
As if Starmer’s Labour government hasn’t had enough bad news lately, it now transpires that Mauritius has rejected the Sir Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands deal. Mauritian PM Navinchandra Ramgoolam has told his parliamentarians that the agreement was just not good enough and is now calling for improvements. Back to the drawing board… Speaking to his
Well, well, well. It has now emerged that the SNP government will ban WhatsApp on official devices in the wake of the Covid Inquiry. The announcement from the SNP’s deputy first minister Kate Forbes came today after the publication of an external review into the use of mobile messaging apps on government devices. ‘The use
It’s happened. To the likely dismay of both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage has met with Elon Musk to discuss his party’s electoral prospects. The Reform party leader along with the party’s new treasurer Nick Candy spoke to the tech billionaire and close Donald Trump ally at Mar-A-Lago, in Florida, on Monday. Announcing
Another day, another drama. Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has finally confirmed that the WASPI women will not receive pension compensation. The decision comes after women born in the 1950s began campaigning to be reimbursed for a previous rise in the state pension age, with activists claiming millions had not been adequately informed
As the fallout continues from the latest China spy scandal, it is hard not to conclude that Labour’s policy on Beijing – as far as one can be identified – adds up to appeasement in the vain hope of some economic crumbs from the Emperor’s table. It will certainly be seen by the Chinese Communist
Good news for workers: wages are up. According to the latest data, released by the Office for National Statistics this morning, annual pay increased by 5.2 per cent in the three months leading up to October. Despite inflation returning broadly to the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target, these above-inflation wage increases will be
Another one down. This morning, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of RKhBZ, Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence Troops, was heading out of his block of flats in Moscow’s Ryazansky Avenue, accompanied by his aide, when a bomb placed inside an electric scooter exploded. Both men were killed in the latest Ukrainian assassination operation targeting Russian
What else can you do but laugh? Former human rights supremo Sir Keir Starmer has done a deal to tackle illegal migrants with Giorgia Meloni – who is called ‘the heir to Mussolini’ by many on the left and in the media. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was in Rome at the weekend with a team
Well, well, well. It now transpires that hapless Humza Yousaf will step down as an MSP at the next Holyrood election, with the former first minister of Scotland making the announcement this morning. It comes after Yousaf spent a year in the top job before being ousted in April this year when he rather abruptly
What is going on with the drones buzzing over New Jersey in the United States? Reportedly ‘the size of cars’, sometimes flying low in formation, these mysterious semi-identified flying objects have been sighted in their thousands every night – and only at night – for weeks. They might not even be drones. Are they alien
You can’t expect anything reasonable when Hollywood gets on its high horse, but really, are our pension contributions truly helping to strip the Amazon of its rainforests? That is the claim made in a short film featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, in which the actor appears in a sauna as ‘Benedict Lumberjack’, the CEO of a logging
Donald Trump has yet to comment on the Prince Andrew ‘Chinese spy’ story, and online sleuths are already trying to join the vague dots between Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and the Duke of York. But the real story about Donald Trump and monarchy is the extent of his admiration for the British crown. At the big reopening
Has Keir Starmer dropped the ball on Ukraine? Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian former foreign minister, certainly thinks so. Kuleba, who stepped down from his post in September, had few kind words to say this week about how Starmer’s Labour government had dealt with Ukraine in the five months or so since coming to power: The
The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in parliament yesterday. It’s almost certain now that Germans will head to the polls for a snap election on 23 February. What is less certain is whether this will bring about the change so many of them crave. Of 717 Bundestag deputies only 207 expressed their
The threatened Commons drama of an MP using parliamentary privilege to name the alleged Chinese spy was dampened rather after the High Court lifted the anonymity order on Yang Tengbo. It meant the urgent question (UQ) in the Chamber this afternoon ended up being much more about the UK government’s attitude towards China generally –
Everything that has gone wrong in modern Ireland is summed up in the fact that it is winning praise from Hamas and criticism from Israel. Last week Ireland was gushed over by that army of anti-Semites that carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, while being spurned by the Jewish homeland that
This afternoon Angela Rayner will unveil potentially the biggest shake-up of local government since the 1970s. The Housing Secretary will speak at 1:50 p.m. on her plans for a devolution ‘revolution’. All areas covered by two tiers of local government — generally district and county councils — will be asked to submit proposals to merge
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Labour will reveal plans today to re-design local government, with district councils set to be abolished, and more elected mayors introduced across England. The plans could be the biggest reforms of their type since the 1970s, but with the May 2025 local elections set to be Labour’s first big electoral test since the general election,
It will maintain the single price ‘universal service obligation’. The government will keep its ‘golden share’. And there are ‘legally binding obligations’ to protect the company. The Labour government may feel it has negotiated enough concessions out of the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky to allow his £3.6 billion takeover of Royal Mail to go ahead.
Another day, another bit of bad news for Sir Keir Starmer. A new Ipsos poll carried out between 27 November and 4 December has revealed that dissatisfaction with the Labour leader has reached a staggering 61 per cent – his worst rating as leader of the lefty lot. Good heavens… It’s not just Sir Keir
Sixty years ago, in the aftermath of one of the twentieth century’s most salacious scandals, the former MP John Profumo took on a role as a volunteer at the East End charity Toynbee Hall. The unpaid and distinctly unglamorous job, which saw Profumo serving meals to the homeless and cleaning toilets, became a kind of
The property tycoon Nick Candy, interviewed in yesterday’s Sunday Times, appears to be hoping to position himself as a UK equivalent of Elon Musk – a billionaire political kingmaker for Nigel Farage just as Musk was for Donald Trump. Newly anointed as the treasurer of Reform UK, he has pledged a ‘seven-figure’ sum to the party
To Scotland, where more SNP ministers are under scrutiny over their use of official limousines with First Minister John Swinney facing calls to investigate the matter. It’s not a good look for the Nats who, alongside ministerial slip-ups, have the ongoing police probe into the party’s funds and finances to contend with. Dear oh dear…
‘Tis the season of goodwill to all men. Except for the Irish and Israelis, that is, who have seen their already frosty relationship plunged into positively freezing temperatures this weekend with Israel’s decision to close its embassy in Dublin. Sunday’s announcement was unusually stark in diplomatic terms, but it reflects the growing resentment and, at
Readers of The Spectator may remember the 2021 defenestration of author and teacher Kate Clanchy, which saw her part company with her publisher Pan Macmillan. This was after whole extracts of her award-winning book Some Children I Taught and What They Taught Me were slated for rewriting, more or less at the behest of a
So farewell Michel Barnier, the man who will now be best remembered not as the suave face of the EU in the Brexit negotiations, but as the most hapless prime minister in the history of the Fifth Republic. That is assuming his successor, Francois Bayrou, isn’t ousted in under three months. The French media has
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper admits relations with China are ‘a complex arrangement’ An alleged ‘Chinese spy’ with links to Prince Andrew, who also met David Cameron and Theresa May, has been banned from entering the UK on national security grounds. On the BBC this morning, Laura Kuenssberg asked Home Secretary Yvette Cooper if the threat
Political office does odd things to parties which were in opposition. Angela Rayner and Steve Reed have written in the Sunday Times this morning complaining that environmental rules are threatening the government’s house-building targets. We’re in a situation, they say, ‘where bats and newts are getting in the way of people who desperately need housing.’ They are
‘The mullahs are moody,’ said Aisha, a female university student, explaining her daily nail varnish run in with the aging female crones who guard the entrance to Tehran’s University of Arts. All female students had to pass through a daily ‘modesty’ check to reach their classes. But the line on what was acceptable – nail varnish
By one estimate, Chinese military exercises close to Taiwan this week were the largest since 1996, when Beijing attempted unsuccessfully to disrupt the island’s first fully democratic presidential election. Up to 100 warships were estimated to have taken part in what Taiwanese officials described as a ‘significant security challenge’, while Russian warships were also spotted
In the weeks since Donald Trump won the US election, Democrat supporters, amidst much gnashing of teeth, have offered up a range of post-mortems. While The View host Sunny Hostin and MSNBC presenter Joy Reid have blamed Kamala’ Harris’s defeat, predictably enough, on American ‘racism’ and ‘misogyny’, others have been more constructive. Last week, onetime