All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The New York Times’s strange jihad against post-Brexit Britain continues. Some readers may have missed the paper’s insistence that having only just finished eating mutton, the British public are currently stock-piling food and all but preparing to start eating each other (see here, here, and here just for starters). But yesterday they have returned to the
Tom Penn and Eve Leigh, the next-door Remainer neighbours of Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds who recorded their late-night row, managed to spark a lively debate about the balance between public interest and privacy when they passed the recording on to the Guardian shortly after the incident last weekend. It appears though that the Brexit
He just will not do. Sexual incontinence alone should not disqualify Boris from the premiership, though it is hardly an asset. But the latest incident dramatises the flaws in his character. Indeed, one could say that he is all flaw and no character. There are three major flaws. The first is serial dishonesty. He simply
Notepads out, pencils in-hand, and water at the ready, a pack of Democratic presidential candidates did battle last night in the first nationally televised debate of the primary. There were no mentions of little hands, no personal insults, and not much entertainment (Donald Trump after all wasn’t part of the show), but there were plenty
For many years, a framed cover of The Spectator looked down, like a silent reproach, on the drinkers in the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Its cartoon showed Britannia and the British lion on a barren rock, bent in a kowtow towards a distant, unseen overlord. The title read: Our Betrayal of Hong Kong. It
The deaths of El Salvadorian migrants Oscar Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria are, it goes without saying, a horrible tragedy. But is the photo of their lifeless bodies, washed up on the shores of the Rio Grande, really a ‘picture that shames America’ as, for example, the Evening Standard put it yesterday? Whatever you
Forget what you’ve been told about the Conservative leadership campaign. The Boris campaign’s weekend meltdown has not lost him the election. And Jeremy Hunt has not suddenly leapt into the lead. This is still Boris’s election to lose and the odds are that he will almost certainly triumph. The reason is simple. Boris is following the tried-and-tested playbook
Has the excitement of pitching to be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats gone to contender Ed Davey’s head? Yesterday, the potential successor to Vince Cable was forced to apologise for his violent language, after he said a Remain alliance should ‘decapitate’ the ‘blond head’ of Boris Johnson in an opinion piece for the Times.
I don’t prefer shopping at a specific supermarket. For some it’s a sign of social status, like the toffs who pride themselves in navigating the aisles of Waitrose, while sneering at the plebs in Lidl. However, my supermarket choice may now be influenced by the outrageous behaviour of Asda (in Dewsbury), who sacked a disabled
According to the Education Secretary Damian Hinds, ‘every child must learn about gay relationships before leaving school’. Under plans drawn up by his department, educating pupils about LGBT relationships will become compulsory from September 2020.This announcement follows Angela Eagle’s emotional and passionate defence of a Birmingham school besieged by protesters for teaching children as young
You might have thought that many of the world’s scientists and doctors had come to an unequivocal decision on homeopathy: that it doesn’t work. There has been extensive research into homeopathy, and the unambiguous conclusion is that it has no more benefit than any other placebo. This is not to say that it’s harmful, unless it
Rory Stewart’s pitch for prime minister seems strangely distant now, lost in the enveloping chaos of Boris Johnston’s shamble to glory. All is not lost, however. The divergent metrics of parliamentary and public sentiment – and the character deficits of the frontrunner, who claims to be able to square that circle – make it abundantly
Boris Johnson’s statement that he would not impose a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the event of no deal may be said with sincerity and for the best of reasons, but he is either proposing something completely reckless – which will be deeply and fundamentally damaging to the whole
Chris Williamson is back in the Labour party. The controversial Corbynite MP was suspended from Labour earlier this year following comments he made about anti-Semitism in the party. But now after an internal investigation, Williamson is once again a Labour MP. Williamson was slapped with a formal warning after he was filmed at a Sheffield Momentum event
When Boris Johnson was asked by TalkRadio yesterday what he did to relax, and he embarked on a confusing ramble about his secret passion: making models of buses and painting them, few thought it was a sign of the former London Mayor’s famed erudition. https://twitter.com/rosskempsell/status/1143491303466053633 Indeed, many seemed to think that Boris’ strange rant was
Theresa May, our stand-in prime minster, was hit by a surprisingly effective ambush at PMQs. Jeremy Corbyn led on Britain’s involvement in the Yemeni conflict. Last week the Court of Appeal ruled that the government had overlooked Saudi Arabia’s responsibility for breaches of international law. Mrs May sounded desperate as she quoted a legal finding
There is a lot of confusion about Boris Johnson’s approach to Brexit. And that is deliberate because the candidate has yet to make a big call about the nature of the modifications he is seeking to the Brexit plan negotiated by Theresa May. The ultra Brexiters among his supporters, the hard core of the European Research Group
Jeremy Hunt’s case to be Conservative leader is that he is the sensible, low-risk option. While Boris is now committed – thanks to his interview on Talkradio yesterday to leave the EU on 31st October, come what may, ‘do or die’, Hunt is holding out the prospect of some flexibility. The last day of October,
Theresa May’s Brexit strategy was to play chicken with parliament. Boris Johnson’s is to play chicken with the EU. Theresa May believed that if she pressed on with her deal, parliament would – ultimately – blink and pass it. Her thinking was that MPs’ scared of no deal would vote for her deal to avoid
The Sutton Trust’s recent report – on the privately-educated dominating prestigious jobs by a scale of five to one – is an important read. The study highlights how critical an independent school education was twenty years ago, especially for those now at the top of their chosen career paths. This isn’t, however, particularly surprising. Back then,
A spark of humanity flickered in the courts today as they lifted a cruel, ill-thought through and counter productive restriction on the lives of the mentally disabled. Like so many other cruelties, it flowed from the best of intentions. Rosa Monckton and Dominic Lawson, and two other families of children with mental disabilities had challenged
Dr Noah Carl, the young conservative academic who was fired from his Cambridge college after being targeted by a left-wing outrage mob, has decided to fight back. He is launching a campaign to crowdfund a legal action against St Edmund’s College, not just to restore his own reputation but to protect the rights of other
After one of the most difficult missions ever undertaken in the Himalayas, Indian mountaineers have now finally been able to reach a team of climbers on Mt Nanda Devi who went missing last month. As of writing, they have recovered the bodies of almost all of the eight climbers, four of them British, who were
On Sunday night, I went to the local synagogue to listen to a talk by Louise Ellman, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside. This was surprising on several levels. I hadn’t set foot inside a synagogue for over 30 years (apart from weddings and bar mitzvahs) and had even gone as far as marrying a
Around nine million people – over 17 per cent of the population – live in an area classed as ‘rural’. That number is set to grow; by 2025, it has been estimated that the population of the English countryside will have increased by half a million. So surely, when a politician is bidding to become
Modern politicians are like drug dealers intent on keeping their clients’ hooked. They sell fixes to their core voters: upping the strength and deepening the addiction. The punters know at some level they are being played. But a temporary high is better than no high, and infinitely preferable to the sweats and shakes the cold
Boris Johnson has had a tricky time being quizzed by journalists over the past few days, as he’s been grilled about his Brexit position, his negotiating stratgey, his late-night row with Carrie Symonds and his history of consuming (or not quite consuming) Class-A drugs. But it seems as if the former Foreign Secretary was floored
After nine years cleaning up Labour’s mess, things are looking up. Government debt as a share of the economy is starting to fall. For Theresa May’s successor, this means there is an opportunity to spend some desperately-needed money on public services: the police, prisons, schools and local government. But it’s also vital – and a
The Boris Johnson campaign has today responded to accusations that Johnson has been avoiding scrutiny by sending their candidate on a mini-media blitz. In the past 24 hours, Johnson has given interviews to the BBC, LBC and Talk Radio. There’s even a promise of more media interaction to come. In all of the interviews, the
Whatever you think of Boris Johnson’s ability to be Prime Minister you have to admire the PR skills of Carrie Symonds. Last Thursday evening an event occurred which could seriously damage Boris’ chances of winning the Tory party leadership contest – a domestic row between the couple in which the police were called to her
I asked important EU and UK people involved in Brexit talks what they made of Boris Johnson’s claim on BBC that: 1: The EU would be prepared to cancel the Northern Ireland backstop. 2: Continue free and frictionless trade with UK for an “implementation period” after Brexit on 31st October. 3: Negotiate a new package of measures
Boris Johnson has come out of hiding but it seems he is still doing his best to dodge scrutiny. On LBC this morning, Boris was quizzed repeatedly about how a picture of him in the Sussex countryside with his girlfriend Carrie Symonds found its way into the media. And 26 times, he refused to answer.
Can veteran Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow stop putting his foot in his mouth when it comes to race? The channel has already been forced to apologise this year after the presenter observed live on television that he had ‘never seen so many white people in one place’ when covering a Brexit rally in
In today’s Times, a “long-standing friend” of Boris Johnson complains that “there’s a tendency to infantilise Boris”. Putting the man who still looks likely to be the next leader of the Conservative and Unionist party and prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland under a form of, well, house-arrest must