All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
This week is seminal for Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron. Boris, in Watford, is hosting one of the most important Nato summits for years. Its significance is not because it marks the Alliance’s 70th anniversary, but because of President Macron’s ‘disruptive’ and trenchant criticism of the Atlantic Alliance as close to ‘brain dead’, which has touched
If Donald Trump really doesn’t want Jeremy Corbyn to become Prime Minister, he should, I say in the Sun this morning, just ignore the Labour leader when he comes to London for the Nato summit next week. The Labour leader would like nothing more than to get into a war of words with the US
My Sunday job is to ask questions; but in this campaign there is a line of criticism of television interviewing which makes me pause. The rise of misnamed social media (mostly Twitter) makes it all too easy to clip and post ‘Gotcha!’ moments, when a politician appears to be gasping for air at a particularly
Boris Johnson likes to call black people ‘piccaninnies’. Everyone’s saying it. Even Stormzy said it this week in his endorsement of Jeremy Corbyn. It is ‘criminally dangerous’ to give the keys of Downing Street back to a man who refers to ‘black people as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”’, the grime superstar said. Whether Stormzy also
With the polls seemingly reluctant to move in their favour, Labour have set out their stall very clearly: they hope to win the election by pledging perhaps the biggest increase in government spending in living memory. Billions have been promised for students and the health service. Under Corbyn, there will be free broadband for all,
I’d love for James Kirkup to be right when he claims I am wrong about Boris Johnson. And as he knows vastly more than me about Tory party politics, it’s really not easy to disagree. But I must confess I remain to be convinced. To start with, here’s why I want him to be right: I
For a seven-way debate which didn’t even feature the two main party leaders, tonight’s BBC election programme was remarkably good. It felt as though it started with a jolt, with all the senior politicians present looking dazed as they struggled to find the words to respond to this afternoon’s terror attack at London Bridge. It
Boris Johnson has just released a statement in response to the terrorist attack at London Bridge this afternoon. Several people were stabbed before a man wearing a fake suicide vest was shot dead by police. The Prime Minister, who returned to Downing Street from his constituency following the incident, said his message to terrorists is
Is the Labour party starting to panic? After a YouGov forecast this week suggested that the Tories could win scores of seats in the North of England, the Labour party appear to have made a rushed attempt to address regional inequality today. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell announced this morning that not only would his party have
With YouGov’s MRP model pointing to a 68-seat Tory majority, Conservative voters might think they have pretty solid ground for optimism. But as I say in my Daily Telegraph column today, things can still go wrong for the Tories. Here are my reasons to be fearful:- The Labour vote has grown since the election was called. Anti-Semitism
Where to start with the Conservatives’ “Buy British” promises to end EU state aid rules? The obvious point is that dumping rules that prevent governments subsidising domestic firms will make it much harder to strike a trade deal with the EU after Brexit. Limiting state aid is pretty much fundamental to the EU’s very existence
How do you weigh a once-in-a-generation transfer of power from private sector to public sector and from capital to labour, against an irreversible rupture with the European Union? That is the choice being offered to voters, by Labour and the Tories respectively. Talk about chalk and cheese, or bicycles versus fish. How on earth do you decide, if you
In the new episode of That’s Life, comedian Geoff Norcott talks to Spectator Life’s satirical writers Andy Shaw and Benedict Spence about the words, people and events that have shaped the recent news agenda. Geoff discusses the future of ‘woke-ism’, Emma Watson’s assertion that she is self-partnered and why from now on he’s going to
Charles Walker, the former chairman of the influential Conservative 1922 Committee, took to the airwaves last night in an attempt justify Boris Johnson’s growing list of TV no shows. The interview followed a Channel 4 leaders’ debate on climate change in which the public service broadcaster decided to replace Boris Johnson with a melting block
When James Forsyth and Katy Balls interviewed the Prime Minister for the magazine this week, the Boris they found was optimistic, humorous, and above all, on message. So can anything still trip him up in the final fortnight of this election campaign? Katy speaks to James and Paul Goodman, editor of the Conservative Home website.
Never mind the polls, Conservative insiders are more terrified about something else at the moment. The Donald is coming. CCHQ is quaking. After Black Friday comes Orange Monday, when the US president will touch down again in Great Britain ahead of another Nato summit. Trump is, we all know, a news cycle hurricane. What havoc
Labour is heading for its worst election performance since 1983, according to YouGov’s long-awaited MRP forecast. The poll also makes for miserable reading for parliament’s independent candidates, most of whom look set to lose their seats. Given that YouGov was one of the few pollsters to correctly predict a hung parliament in 2017, it would seem foolish
So, will Boris Johnson sit down for an interview with Andrew Neil? Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon have done theirs while Jo Swinson and Nigel Farage are scheduled for next week. The Prime Minister hasn’t yet agreed a time for his. Given how tough an Andrew Neil interview is, just ask Jeremy Corbyn if you
The Conservatives have launched a new party election broadcast that ran for the first time this evening on BBC One and ITV. The video (which you can view below) is made up of lots of different voters explaining why they’re backing Boris Johnson. But what does this advert tell about the Tories’ overall election strategy?
Whoever wins the election, three things are certain: borrowing is going to rise, taxes are going to have to go up – and there will be a lot more trees. There may even be enough trees to replace those lost to produce all those Lib Dem election leaflets and bogus newspapers. The election campaign has
According to a YouGov poll 45 per cent of Britons believe today’s party leaders are worse than any of their predecessors in history. The survey fits neatly into the dominant narrative of the 2019 election, where ‘Don’t Know’ is the preferred option of prime minister for one third of the UK, only 14 per cent of the
General election time in Britain invariably means one thing: lots of Labour, Green and Lib Dem posters displayed outside people’s houses and in front windows but hardly any Conservative ones. In my 11 years living and travelling around Kent, I haven’t seen a single one. The last time I saw one was in the Holland
Most British people who watched Prince Andrew’s cringeworthy interview with Emily Maitlis this month will have done so with a certain amount of disbelief. But for Japanese observers, the spectacle of a crown prince being asked awkward questions about his private life by a forensic interviewer would have been totally incomprehensible. The Japanese royal family doesn’t
As in every election in recent memory, a debate has broken out over the point at which a person becomes ‘rich’ and is, therefore, able to cough up a bit more to fund public services. The magic number this time is £80k – the salary around which a person enters the top five per cent
For the first time in living memory, the Jewish community is deeply afraid of one of our two main parties. What makes matters worse is that this is the very party that, until recently, had felt like a natural home for many in the Jewish community. Labour is a party that is supposed to protect
When the 2017 snap election result came through, it proved a shock to many who had been covering the campaign in depth. The bulk of the polls had suggested Theresa May was on course for a comfortable majority. However, there was one poll that had predicted a hung parliament – YouGov’s MRP model. This poll
Dear Vote Leave supporters, Let’s honour the referendum result and get Brexit done so the country can move on. Days after the 2016 referendum, I emailed all of you to say thanks for your heroic efforts. I also said — keep an eye on my blog, if Brexit is in danger then I will send
After last night’s interview with Andrew Neil, Jeremy Corbyn desperately needs to change the conversation. He attempted to do that this morning, presenting a set of leaked documents that he said showed the NHS would be sold out if the Tories won the election. But the problem for Corbyn is that these documents don’t show
Elections are a frantic time for parliamentary candidates, as they scrap for a place in the House of Commons. Nonetheless, one of the few things you expect from them is to know the seat they’re actually standing in. Apparently not though. Step forward John Nicolson, who was the SNP MP for East Dunbartonshire before he
Jeremy Corbyn claims he has the ‘proof’ that the NHS is at risk in a post-Brexit trade deal with the US. The Labour leader this morning called a press conference to reveal a series of leaked UK papers from trade talks with the US, which he said contained comprehensive evidence that the NHS was for
Jeremy Corbyn was grilled by Andrew Neil last night in an interview for the BBC (you can read the full transcript here). The results were less than flattering. Labour’s leader was asked about his party’s response to anti-Semitism and gave a reply that raised more questions than it answered. Corbyn referred Neil to Shami Chakrabarti’s
Jeremy Corbyn is desperate to move on from talk of his mauling at the hands of Andrew Neil last night but some journalists still won’t play by the Labour script. At a Labour event this morning, two reporters asked questions about anti-Semitism. It’s safe to say it didn’t go down well with shadow international trade
There are many reasons why I am suspicious of the Conservatives’ current lead in the polls. The Tories may have peaked too soon. Labour voters flirting with the Liberal Democrats could return the more they see of Jo Swinson. Many Conservative target seats, while Brexity, have voted Labour since there was a Labour Party to
The Labour party have their work cut out this election if they want to close the gap in the polls and make up for their leader’s disastrous interview with Andrew Neil last night. Unfortunately, it appears that the Labour party campaign machine might not be quite up to the challenge. Local Labour activists in South Thanet