All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Dawn Butler: ‘I’m the most experienced candidate’… Sophy Ridge started her show by speaking to Dawn Butler, one of Labour’s five deputy leadership contenders. Butler, who was first elected in 2005, argued her case for being chosen: “I am the most experienced candidate.”@DawnButlerBrent MP explains her strategy to become deputy Labour leader, claiming that she
Tory activists are in uproar this morning over varying reports of tax raising measures Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid are considering for next month’s Budget. Plans currently being mooted include cuts to pension tax relief and the introduction of a recurring property tax that could replace stamp duty. Critics have been quick to say that
How would you define bullying? Perhaps it involves aggression or intimidation? Or perhaps bullying might include name-calling or the use derogatory language? But according to Labour’s would-be deputy Dawn Butler, bullying goes quite a bit further than that. During an interview with Sky’s Sophy Ridge this morning, Butler told the presenter that she thought the
As the well-worn cliché has it: if you’re not a socialist at 16, you don’t have a heart; if you’re still one at 60, you don’t have a head. The Labour party is on the brink of extinction. To survive, its members must use their heads. At 16, I was a fanatical socialist, reading Lenin,
This week’s National Conservatism Conference in Rome was an important meeting of national conservatives from all over the world. Sadly, it has been sullied by disgusting attacks from British liberals against the Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski for agreeing to take part. Publications from BuzzFeed to the Guardian pounced on Kawczynski’s decision to appear alongside European
Nish Kumar was the star turn on Friday at a ‘Brexit and Comedy’ panel discussion in central London. The event was staged by ‘The UK in a Changing Europe’ which describes itself as ‘an independent organisation created to make the findings of academic research easily available.’ Essentially it’s a left-leaning think-tank which behaves like a
Next week, the government will introduce emergency legislation to stop anyone convicted of terrorist offences from being automatically released half-way through their sentence. But, as Whitehall sources acknowledge, this only tackles one vulnerability in the system. So, as I write in The Sun today, a broader plan to deal with the jihadi threat is being
Have we reached peak populism? This is the question being asked after a recent regional election in Italy delivered a setback to Matteo Salvini, the de facto head of Europe’s populist family. In the affluent and historically left-wing region of Emilia Romagna, Salvini’s right-wing alliance finished more than seven points behind the Left. It wasn’t
Regardless of one’s views on climate change, one should welcome the fact that Boris Johnson removed Claire Perry O’Neill from her post as president of this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP 26), which will be held in Glasgow. He is at last trying to exercise the power of patronage. Ms Perry O’Neill is a
A week on from Brexit day, it is worth stopping and reflecting on just how Britain’s departure from the EU actually came about. We’re familiar of course with those from the Leave side who contributed to Brexit. But what about the unintentional heroes of Brexit, those who ensured accidentally that Britain really did leave the
Ever since leaving parliament, George Osborne has been piling up jobs almost as fast as he piled up the national debt when in office (nine, at the last count) But he might soon have an easier balancing act, with his editorship of the Evening Standard in question. The rumour from Derry Street is that the
On Thursday, Boris Johnson will reshuffle his cabinet for the first time since winning a majority of 80. Soon after the election result, there was talk of a Valentine’s Day massacre in which multiple ministers would lose their jobs. However, in recent weeks there have been suggestions that it won’t be as drastic a reorganisation
When diplomatic cables leaked to the Mail on Sunday last year revealing that the UK’s man in Washington Sir Kim Darroch had described the Trump administration as ‘inept’ and ‘incompetent’, the ambassador was forced to resign. Since then there has been much speculation over who would succeed him and work to rebuild UK/US diplomatic relations.
This week every contender for the Labour leadership and deputy leadership signed up to a series of pledges issued by the pressure group We Own It, an organisation established in 2013 to campaign against privatisation and in favour of what it calls ‘21st century public ownership’. The pledges repeat many of the promises made in
Oh, Laura Pidcock. The former Labour MP for North West Durham, former shadow cabinet member, and former leadership hope of the Corbynite left may be gone from parliament but she has not left the political stage. Pidcock, it seems to fair to say, is on the left of politics. A proud socialist who said she
Now that the Tory party has a mandate for change, it is refreshing to hear that Boris has committed more resources to the NHS and started to reverse some of the government’s blatant own goals, such as the nurses’ bursary cut. But the exponential increasing demand on the service, especially amongst people with more than
Iain Dale was joined this morning by Corbynista Grace Blakeley on Good Morning Britain. The pair were there to discuss reports that an autistic teenager who threw a young boy off the Tate Modern’s viewing platform had warned his carers beforehand that he planned to push someone off a building in London. Blakeley of Tribune
When Israel Folau settled his multi-million dollar grievance with Rugby Australia after he was sacked over a social media post that summarised a Bible passage, it looked to be an end to the matter. But now Folau’s attempt to move on and play rugby again is under threat. Folau was unquestionably one of the best
In the week after the UK formally left the European Union, we are still no closer to understanding how the British government will meet the Prime Minister’s goal of attracting “the brightest and the best” to these shores. Ensuring a continued flow of workers from anywhere in the world, as part of the new immigration
I imagine that in recommending Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke for peerages, Boris Johnson sees himself in engaging in a Tory healing process. ‘I may have kicked them out of the parliamentary party,’ he is saying, ‘but let bygones be bygones – I’m big enough to honour my former enemies.’ And of course, unlike David
Watch Nathalie Loiseau, Emmanuel Macron’s Europe sherpa, simultaneously mislead and patronise Andrew Neil on his show last night. I assumed Neil would chew her up and spit her out. But on the night, it was even more bizarre: Asked by Neil if it was the time to take a hard line on Brexit negotiations, when Europe’s
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov kicked off his tour of Latin America this week with a visit to Cuba. The choice is not a mere coincidence. Lavrov’s visit comes at a time when Moscow and Havana are enjoying their closest relationship in decades. The Soviet Union was once Cuba’s greatest patron. It lavished the island
Larry Sanders, Bernie’s literal bro, moved to England in the late 1960s and settled in picture postcard Oxford. I was told that Bernie visited Larry there some time ago and was taken to historic Blenheim Palace. Bernie walked around the galleries, he viewed the state apartments, he breezed around Hawksmoor’s library and strolled through Vanbrugh’s
Oh dear. While most of us will have had an embarrassing IT cock-up at some point in our lives, most of us don’t have a Prime Minister for a son. So it was with some sympathy that Mr S saw the news that Stanley Johnson had mistakenly emailed details of a private meeting he had
It’s budget day in the Scottish parliament and the Scottish finance secretary has just resigned. Derek Mackay has quit his role as finance secretary hours before he was due to deliver his budget following a story published in the Scottish Sun alleging he sent inappropriate messages to a 16-year-old boy on social media. The paper
Boris Johnson has responded to the Streatham attack by vowing to crackdown on convicted terrorists, introducing retrospective legislation to end the automatic early release of such prisoners at the halfway stage. But this is the wrong approach. Instead, the fault lies within a dysfunctional and ineffective probation service that attaches insufficient weight to protecting the
The impeachment of President Trump was unfounded in law and in fact and was never anything but a smear-job organised by the Democratic House intelligence chairman (Adam Schiff) with a pretend whistleblower. Trump asked the president of Ukraine for the facts about the association of former vice president Biden and his son’s activities in Ukraine,
Since Boris Johnson returned to No. 10 with a majority of 80, there’s been a growing sense that the Prime Minister and his team plan to use their newfound political capital to challenge the status quo. High on the list of institutions and conventions that they believe require a shake-up is the BBC. Today Culture
After Claire Perry O’Neill was unceremoniously dumped as the president of the COP26 UN climate change summit in Glasgow, it was revealed today that Boris Johnson had been casting his net wide in search of her successor. It has been reported that Boris asked none other than David Cameron to take Claire Perry O’Neill’s place,
Some ministers prefer to jump before they’re pushed. Take Philip Hammond, who opted to walk away last year before the inevitable happened. So Mr S. can’t help but wonder whether Geoffrey Cox is soon to follow suit. Reports have already emerged that Cox is planning a return to life as a barrister. And who can
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Climate change dogged PMQs today. ‘We are at the eleventh hour to save the planet,’ announced Jeremy Corbyn grimly. The experts who warn of disaster have clearly caught the Labour leader’s ear. ‘Coastal flooding and crop failures could threaten political chaos,’ said Noel Brown, director of the UN Environment Programme. He added that a polar