All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Oh dear. NHS Fife has come under fire yet again after it emerged that the health board shared details of nurse Sandie Peggie with the Scottish government. Peggie was suspended in January 2024 after complaining about sharing a changing room with transgender medic Dr Beth Upton. The nurse then lodged a harassment complaint under the
Today is a perfect day. Not just any old great day, but the first truly perfect one for over six months. As I write this, I sit at my desk looking out over the green acres of a north London park. The leaves are that glorious autumnal reddish brown, the weather is crisp and bright, and
Who really won the by-election in Caerphilly? I know officially it was Plaid Cymru, and I wouldn’t want to diminish that funny little party’s glee. Congrats, etc. But the true victor was a far newer party. An angry party. A party of the fretful and anxious. A party so fresh it doesn’t even have a
35 min listen
In this episode of Americano, Freddy Gray speaks to Tara Reade — the former Senate aide who accused Joe Biden of sexual assault and now lives in Moscow after seeking political asylum. She discusses her allegations, why she left America, and how she views the war in Ukraine.
Quietly, day-by-day, the inquiry into the Southport killings is revealing how disastrous failures of the British state led to Axel Rudakubana murdering young girls in August 2024. Yesterday it was the turn of the killer’s former headteacher, Joanne Hodson, to give evidence. She first met Rudakubana in 2019 when he enrolled at the Acorns School
16 min listen
On the face of it, the Caerphilly by-election result is a disaster, a drubbing and a humiliation for Keir Starmer’s Labour party. A once secure bastion of the Welsh Labour heartlands fell without a squeak from the governing party. Their vote collapsed to a miserable 11 per cent, while Plaid Cymru won with 47 per
Soldier F, a former paratrooper accused of shooting dead two unarmed protestors on Bloody Sunday in 1972, has been found not guilty of their murder and attempting to kill five others. At court in Belfast, the Judge Patrick Lynch KC said the evidence before him ‘fails to reach the high standard of proof required in
If I didn’t tell you professor Michael Ben-Gad was an Israeli, you could probably figure it out from his response to a hate-filled campaign to drive him out of his job at City St George’s, University of London. On Wednesday, a masked, keffiyeh-wearing mob stormed his lecture hall and helpfully filmed themselves doing so. Asked
Never has a Welsh Senedd election seemed so interesting; the Caerphilly by election marks a true turning point in history. It is the moment when the duopoly that has ruled British politics for the past century finally crumbled. The question was never: could Labour hang on in the face of a challenge from an up-start
On the face of it, the Caerphilly by-election result is a disaster, a drubbing and a humiliation for Keir Starmer’s Labour party. A once secure bastion of the Welsh Labour heartlands fell without a squeak from the governing party. Their vote collapsed to a miserable 11 per cent, while Plaid Cymru won with 47 per
Javier Milei never professed to be humble. But publishing a book about his presidency entitled Constructing the Miracle? Fronting a rock concert to launch it? Singing ‘I am the king’ to the crowd? He did all this on 7 October, and well, it was a step up. Perhaps Milei should be more humble. In recent
The Welsh nationalists have won almost half the vote in the Caerphilly by-election, storming to a victory in a seat that has voted Labour for more than a century. The party’s candidate Lindsay Whittle took 47.4 per cent of the vote, with Reform UK’s Llyr Powell taking 36 per cent and Labour’s Richard Tunnicliffe on
This week, a group of Pakistani-heritage men appeared in court. The 54-year-old alleged ringleader stands accused of preying on two vulnerable school girls, and abusing them ‘in the most humiliating and degrading way imaginable’. The girls were alleged to have been passed between six men in total, with prosecutor Rossano Scamardella KC telling jurors, ‘Unprotected sex
Well, well, well. TfL Commissioner Andy Lord has been accused of lying about graffiti on the underground, after he made comments following a clean-up operation by Looking For Growth (LFG). After footage of volunteers wiping graffiti from tube carriage walls was published, Lord claimed at a Greater London Assembly meeting earlier this year, without mentioning
This week I resigned from the Victims/Survivor Liaison Panel of the National Inquiry into Grooming Gangs. Victims have been fighting for an inquiry for a long time. Previous governments did not commit to a national inquiry. It’s not something Labour pushed for in opposition. As a topic, grooming gangs did not feature in any political
Have you ever wondered what a less competent Rachel Reeves would be like? If you’re a small business owner, the London Stock Exchange or Sir Keir Starmer, it’s presumably the sort of thing that keeps you up at night. Yet it isn’t just a thing of nightmares – this concept exists in the flesh in
Donald Trump has at last lost patience with Vladimir Putin. He cancelled their anticipated meeting in Budapest after Putin refused to make a single concession on a ceasefire following their phone call last week. Having returned to the diplomatic stage only to derail the sale of American long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, Putin then ramped
A police officer has been sacked for gross misconduct. His offence? Racist remarks made while off duty in a pub – that traditional sanctuary of the sharp and unguarded tongue – captured by the Panorama programme filming undercover. Mr Neilson, dismissed over what were described as ‘highly racist and discriminatory remarks’ about different ethnic groups, protested that
In any other week – or month, or year – King Charles’s visit to Rome would have been a truly seismic occasion, laden with symbolism and religious importance. Some may have recalled the unexpected significance of that great Father Ted line, ‘That would be an ecumenical matter’, when the news was announced that the King
Lord Glasman delivered a speech at the inaugural Frank Field Memorial lecture last week. Here is an edited transcript of the speech: I am honoured by your invitation to give this Frank Field inaugural lecture, more than I can say. And that is because I loved and admired Frank Field, more than I can say. I rarely
I’m delighted to announce the launch of my new podcast and newsletter Reality Check. In each episode I’ll cut through the spin and explain the numbers behind the noise. For the first installment I sat down with the American economist Arthur Laffer. ‘Course you would,’ is not the answer I expect when I ask tax-cutting
Should Jess Phillips resign? That’s the demand made by four survivors of the ‘grooming gangs’ in a public letter to the Home Secretary. The letter came after days of chaos which have left the inquiry in disarray. The collapse began on Monday morning when Fiona Goddard, a survivor from Bradford, quit the inquiry. Fiona was
16 min listen
With every new poll predicting a Reform win at the next general election, the party continues its preparation for government. James Heale joins Oscar Edmondson and Tim Shipman to talk about his article in the magazine looking at what – or who – is shaping Reform’s intellectual revolution. Cambridge intellectual James Orr, close friend to
‘How could you possibly say the EU is good as it stands?’ the woman says. Brexit, she continues, is a ‘first step [in] exposing the EU’. The speaker is Catherine Connolly. She is the frontrunner to win Ireland’s presidential election tomorrow. The footage stands out for two reasons. One, it’s rare for an Irish politician so
Put down the glitterball. Mop up the sequins. The news – oh, the unthinkable news – has arrived: Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman are quickstepping away from Strictly Come Dancing. ‘We have loved working as a duo and hosting Strictly has been an absolute dream,’ the pair announced on Instagram this morning. ‘We were always
The grooming gang inquiry is becoming more chaotic by the day as people continue to step away from the process. Now pressure is mounting on safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who has faced calls to resign over the whole palaver. Four child sex abuse survivors have dropped out of the victims’ advisory panel while the two
Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again threats to sanction Russia for its intransigence over peace talks in Ukraine solidified today into concrete action. The US has announced sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, two of Russia’s largest oil companies, and their dozens of subsidiaries. Between them, the two giants are responsible for nearly half of Russia’s oil exports
Sit on a roundtable of small businesses – as I have on many occasions – and it won’t be long before the topic shifts to the maddening number of rules and regulations that companies have to comply with if they want to sell to government. At one point, vendors are asked about employing ‘people seeking
Calls to release Marwan Barghouti – the leader of Fatah’s armed wing, who is currently serving multiple life sentences in Israel – is gaining traction. Supporters see him as the only credible Palestinian leader to challenge Hamas and negotiate peace. But freeing a convicted terrorist is never a simple calculation, and the risks are great.
Like Nicolas Sarkozy, I knew I would be a disgraced former president going to prison. Okay, as the once co-president of my hospital’s junior doctors’ mess, perhaps my comparison is a bit grand. And where Sarkozy brought only a few books with him – including Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, perhaps manifesting an
France is not a safe country. That was the excuse given by an Iranian man who returned to Britain last weekend a month after his deportation. The man was one of the first illegal immigrants to have been sent back to France as part of the ‘one in, one out’ deal agreed between the two
28 min listen
With a Gaza ceasefire deal, President Trump’s attention has turned to ending the war in Ukraine. A meeting with Putin was suggested, before coming to nothing. Owen Matthews joins Freddy Gray to talk about the fundamental differences between Trump and Putin, the limits on Ukraine’s President Zelensky when it comes to negotiation and why the
