All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It would be putting it mildly to say that Angela Rayner has had better weeks in politics. The Deputy Prime Minister has been in the spotlight over the last few days after admitting on Wednesday that she had underpaid stamp duty on her third property. While Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave a spirited defence of
The outrageous arrest of Graham Linehan this week seems almost designed to cause maximum embarrassment to the British government. Just a day after the news broke, Nigel Farage was already raising the case at a free-speech Congressional committee in Washington, DC, where the Reform leader happily played prime-minister-in-waiting as he opined gravely about our values
On Tuesday, Admiral Tony Radakin finished his term as Chief of the Defence Staff much as he started it – dealing with the immediate and long-term consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There is an irony that Radakin, appointed by Boris Johnson to ‘restore Britain’s position as the foremost naval power in Europe’ as part
Angela Rayner is now in a bind. Laurie Magnus, the Prime Minister’s independent ethics adviser, will report shortly on whether the Deputy Prime Minister’s purchase of a Hove flat broke the ministerial code. If Magnus finds that she did, then Rayner, who in opposition demanded that the code be strengthened, will have to resign. Even
Well, if they’re arresting comedians, at least Nish Kumar is safe. Graham Linehan, not so much. The British like to sniff that Americans don’t get irony. Arresting a comedian fresh off the plane from the US after months of dismissing US concerns about freedom of speech is one way to teach them. Not only was
‘They’re vampires’ was my first thought. I had just heard the news that Putin and Xi were discussing how to prolong their lives, as they walked toward their places at the Tiananmen Square military parade. On the official news footage, Putin’s translator could be heard saying in Chinese: ‘Biotechnology is continuously developing.’ And then: ‘Human
Against the background of turbulent transatlantic relations, the visit this week of Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, to Washington was deemed a success. US president Donald Trump affirmed continuation of US commitment to Poland’s security and invited Poland to join G20, in a testament to the country’s impressive economic record. Yet the trip also leaves a
This week, we had a rare example of a family-friendly policy coming into effect: working parents of children aged 9 months or over will now have access to 30 hours of free childcare a week during term time. I should be elated by this news: I went back to work part-time after 11 months of
A softer version of totalitarianism has been gnawing its way through the British body politic like a cancer for many years now. With the Graham Linehan arrest at Heathrow this week, it seems to have metastasized into something entirely malignant. If Linehan’s arrest isn’t a bright red line for Britain, what on earth would be?
Burkina Faso’s transitional legislative assembly passed a bill this week to outlaw homosexuality – making it the 32nd out of 54 African countries to criminalise homosexuality. The legislation, enacted under the military junta-run country’s new Persons and Family Code, penalises ‘behaviour likely to promote homosexual practices’ with prison sentences up to five years. The move
It is a tough time for the Tories right now. Nigel Farage’s grinning face appears to be everywhere, as the Conservatives desperately try to find fresh relevance in opposition. One idea that some senior figures within Conservative Campaign Headquarters have alighted upon in recent months is creating a new ‘digital army’. The hope is that
What’s the most idiotic question ever posed by an interviewer? There was the real-life Sally Jockstrap who asked David Gower whether he considered himself a batsman or a bowler. Or the Radio 1 DJ who asked Marc Almond – at the height of his fame with Soft Cell – whether he was going steady with
33 min listen
On this episode, Nick Gillespie, Reason’s editor at large, joins Freddy to discuss whether Trump 2.0 is really as authoritarian as people say. Is he closer to a gangster than a dictator? They also discuss tariffs, the weaponisation of the Justice Department, and the state of free speech in the UK.
If it had been a sketch in one of his many comedy shows, it would surely have been rejected as too absurd. After landing at Heathrow on a flight from Arizona, Graham Linehan, the Irish comic who created Father Ted, was arrested by five armed police officers for tweets that he had posted five months ago.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer took aim at Nigel Farage in PMQs today for not being in the Chamber. In fact, the Reform leader is on the other side of the Atlantic, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee on the state of free speech in the UK. The timing couldn’t have been better for Farage, what
It was taxes that eventually did for Al Capone. And Spiro Agnew. And Judy Garland. So now the taxman’s bell tolls for Big Ange – who has often presented herself as a sort of mix of all three of those figures. The hard-partying working-class girl turned union bruiser turned second most powerful politician in the
17 min listen
Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch faced off in the first Prime Minister’s Questions following summer recess. With the date of the Budget announced that morning, the economy was expected to dominate – which it did, to the surprise of most MPs, who expected Badenoch to attack over the Angela Rayner tax row. The deputy prime
Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer clearly didn’t spend their summer breaks working on their performances at Prime Minister’s Questions. Today’s exchanges between the two leaders fell quickly into the usual meandering grudge match of accusations about blowing up and running down the economy, and ministers resigning or not resigning. Each question was ostensibly about the
The massive military parade in Beijing today definitively marks the end of the post-World War Two era. Nominally, the 80th Anniversary of China’s victory in ‘The War against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War’, it has been used by China’s president Xi to, in the words of Reuters, ‘…demonstrate Xi’s influence over nations intent on
The education system may produce ignoramuses (my daughter finished school in June, never having been taught a thing about Napoleon, the French Revolution, Julius Caesar, the Industrial Revolution, or any basic geography), but there was solace out there for the unlearned and undereducated: they could always listen to In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg’s radio exploration
Kneeling for Black Lives Matter, making pronoun declarations, and taking children to drag queen story hours: some things will be forever associated with ‘peak woke’. With any luck, these actions will soon become so unfashionable that no one will ever own up to having dabbled. Sadly, however, not all relics from this past mania are
‘Hello’. It’s strange to think that Melvyn Bragg has said that for the last time on In Our Time. That was how every show started – more than 1,000 of them. Each episode began with the minimal courtesy, and then we’re off: ‘Hello. In 61 AD, an east Anglian queen took on the might of the Roman empire
To the Deputy Prime Minister, who has been in the spotlight over the last week over accusations she avoided tax on one of her properties. Angela Rayner has now given a rather revelatory interview in which she admits that she didn’t pay enough stamp duty on her Hove residence, she has referred herself to the
The arrest of comedian Graham Linehan at Heathrow Airport this week over his Twitter posts sparked outrage across the country – but you can count on the Greens to take an opposing view. While shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has condemned the move as ‘ridiculous’ and Health Secretary Wes Streeting has even suggested the law
Today’s vast military parade in Beijing is the climax of three days of political theatre orchestrated by President Xi Jinping, with supporting roles played by those pantomime villains Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. The smirking North Korean and Russian dictators joined Xi to witness the People’s Liberation Army’s goose-stepping soldiers and shiny weaponry rumbling through
Well, well, well. The arrest of Graham Linehan this week sparked outrage after the Father Ted co-creator was taken into custody by police after landing in Heathrow on Monday. The comedian was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence in relation to his Twitter posts about transgender people before being bailed pending further investigation. Shadow justice
Will the compulsory ID card lobby ever give up? For more than two decades it has been trying to exploit every national crisis to push its product on the country: terrorism, violent crime, Covid and now illegal migration. Apparently the answer to all of them is to force all of us to carry about a
Since early August, Spain has been reeling from its worst forest fires in decades. Exact estimates vary but so far more than 360,000 hectares – an area the size of Mallorca – have been destroyed in dozens of blazes. The flames have forced the evacuation of thousands of villagers, wiped out tens of thousands of
As the Chancellor Rachel Reeves gets to work on her second Budget – to be delivered on 26 November – red lights flash everywhere. Gilt yields were up again as markets lost faith in her ability to balance the books. Reeves or Darren Jones – whoever is really calling the shots – will spend the
For much of my career, beginning as a foreign policy adviser to the United States Congress, I have proudly stood as one of America’s strongest advocates for Britain. I have defended her history, her institutions and her role as the original home of liberty. I have championed the UK in forums throughout the US and in publications across the globe, reminding
‘Pigeons, beaten to a fine lead by hunger, flickered amongst the rusted girders of the railway bridge… rubble was being trucked from busted gable ends, and demolishers worked in a fume of dust and smoke. You would’ve thought that the Ruskies had finally lobbed over one of their big megaton jobs.’ Jeff Torrington’s brutal poetry
Three researchers from Leicester University’s Centre for Hate Studies produced a curious report on Monday about the English countryside. Their theme is that much of rural England is a white racist redoubt, where anyone from an ethnic minority is made to feel unwelcome and psychologically, if not physically, excluded. People of colour, it is said,
Belgium will become the latest western country to recognise a Palestinian state. Its foreign minister Maxime Prevot cited ‘the violence perpetrated by Israel in violation of international law’ and Belgium’s obligation to ‘prevent any risk of genocide’. He maintained his government was not ‘sanctioning the Israeli people’ but ‘ensuring that their government respects international and
