All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Just when everyone seems to be revising down expectations of growth, real world data starts pointing in the opposite direction. The Office for National Statistics estimates this morning that GDP grew by 0.5 per cent in February. It also revised January’s figures upwards to give growth for the last quarter of 0.6 per cent, and
My first night in Turin, I thought of all the things I could be doing in this north Italian city, if I was there strictly for tourism. I could have gone to the Cathedral and seen a digital display of the Turin Shroud (the real thing is hidden away from prying eyes), or visited the
Donald Trump has opened a new front in his trade war with China, deploying a family confidant to Kinshasa to challenge Beijing’s control of critical minerals. Almost unnoticed amid the tariff battles, Trump is working to reclaim the mineral supply chains that power the modern world – starting in the Democratic Republic of Congo at
Sometimes it’s the little things. Get ready, world. America is back – with shiny, clean hair, glowing skin and a faint aura of L’Occitane Cherry Blossom. And all thanks to Donald Trump, who has just signed an executive order unleashing the power of the American showerhead. The order rescinds an Obama era rule which limited the
On Wednesday, the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, gave a speech to students at the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) National Defence University in Beijing. Take a moment to think about that. Radakin also met General Liu Zhenli, chief of staff of the joint staff department of the Central Military Commission,
Watching Kemi Badenoch being interviewed this morning on the BBC, I couldn’t help but think of one of the public shamings during the Chinese Cultural Revolution: confess your crime, woman who refuses to watch Adolescence. Breakfast hosts Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty asked the Conservative leader whether she had finally watched the Netflix drama about
Does partaking in mass killing, raping and hostage-taking make one a terrorist? Hamas isn’t so sure. In a mind-boggling development, it transpires that the Palestinian Islamist group is employing lawyers to fight its designation as a proscribed terrorist group by the UK government. Instead, it argues, Hamas is a ‘Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement
Dear oh dear. As the Birmingham bin strikes rumble on and rubbish continues to pile high on the city’s streets, some of the area’s residents can’t get out of there quick enough – including the, um, MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, Liam Byrne. The senior Labour politician has found himself in the
Britain prides itself on being a nation of dog lovers – but is this true? Animal rights campaigners have targeted a leading dog show, accusing the event of promoting ‘deformed’ breeds such as pugs and bulldogs. Peta wants the Scottish Kennel Club to disqualify brachycephalic dogs, which have shortened noses and flat faces. These dogs
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Two days ago, talk of a 90-day pause on Donald Trump’s ‘reciprocal tariffs’ was branded ‘fake news’ by the White House. But yesterday, the President confirmed a 90-day pause on the higher tariff rates on all countries apart from China. There is some confusion about whether this was The Donald’s plan from the start –
Well, that’s one way to reduce NHS waiting lists: to kick off a load of patients whom you have decided don’t need to be on them. New NHS chief executive John Mackey has ordered that everyone on a waiting list must be ‘validated’ – with the aim of removing 300,000 of the 7.43 million names
The progressive class’s obsession with Adolescence continues – and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is having none of it. When Badenoch appeared on BBC Breakfast this morning to discuss her party’s local election campaigns, presenters were quick to quiz the parliamentarian on her thoughts on the Netflix series, which has been lauded by Labour MPs –
Asian markets are rebounding after President Trump announced a 90-day ‘pause’ in the implementation of the ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs that had sent shock waves through the financial community. Most dizzying perhaps were events in Japan, where after a vertiginous plunge on Monday, the Nikkei surged over 8.5 per cent on this morning’s trading. Japan’s iconic
Germany has a new government. It may also have a new government in waiting. On the same day that the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD) announced they had concluded coalition talks to form a government, a poll showed the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the most popular party
The BBC is once again at the centre of criticism – this time for spending more than £500,000 in restoring the vandalised sculpture of Ariel and Prospero from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, that adorns the entrance to its London headquarters Broadcasting House. The statue was sculpted in 1931 by Eric Gill, rightly described today by both the
I wasn’t intending to write about Lily Phillips again. Her story would ideally be ignored. But if it does appear in the media, we must be vigilant about how it is represented, especially if the BBC is doing the representing. On some issues, neutrality is a bogus aspiration. It means allowing a very dubious narrative
Donald Trump has peered into the abyss. The US President watched the Wall Street meltdown and the global trading system (from which America benefits as much as anyone) start to collapse, and he hit pause. The conventional narrative will be that Trump has blinked, but I think he simply got what he wanted. Yesterday’s decision
So were Donald Trump’s tariffs a negotiating tactic all along – never intended to come into force but rather as a shock tactic to bring other governments to the negotiating table? That was a popular theory before ‘Liberation Day’, but one rather snuffed out by the severity of the tariffs announced and the realisation that
Two days ago, talk of a 90-day pause on Donald Trump’s ‘recipricoal tariffs’ was branded ‘fake news’ by the White House. This afternoon, the President has confirmed a 90-day pause on the higher tariff rates on all countries apart from China. ‘Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets,
China hit back on Wednesday with an additional 50 per cent tariff on US imports, matching the extra levy imposed overnight by Donald Trump on Chinese goods. That made the running totals 104 per cent so far from Washington, vs 84 per cent from Beijing, prompting one analyst to compare them to two racing cars driving straight
A Harley-Davidson will cost you a little more in France; Florida orange juice will be more expensive in Germany and American soybeans will go up in price everywhere across Europe. The European Union has decided to start taking the fight back to President Trump with a round of retaliatory tariffs. The trouble is, it is
We are all betrayed by our body language eventually. It’s our inner quisling, itching to expose to the world the feelings our more sentient side would prefer to keep hidden. Yesterday it was Jess Phillips’s turn to be snitched on by her own mannerisms. The surliness with which she listened to MPs speak about the
Today, the CDU’s Friedrich Merz has signed a coalition agreement with the Social Democrats. In doing so he has formalised the most spectacular betrayal of centre-right voters in modern German history. The document might as well be written in red ink, given how thoroughly the SPD has dominated the negotiations despite suffering their most catastrophic electoral defeat
On Tuesday, the United States Senate Committee on Finance met to question Jamieson Greer, Donald Trump’s Trade Representative. The subject – a masterpiece of senatorial understatement and restraint – was ‘The President’s 2025 Trade Policy Agenda‘. What it meant, of course, was the sweeping and stringent tariffs unveiled by the President in the shabbily glitzy
The Labour party’s long flirtation with extending the franchise to 16-year-olds smoulders on. As Starmer told this week’s Liaison Committee: ‘We will definitely get it done, it’s a manifesto commitment and we intend to honour it.’ If true, this will be the largest change to the electorate since 1969 when the voting age was reduced
Anyone who thought that government bonds would provide a safe haven from the turmoil on global stock markets has just had a rude awakening. While bond yields initially fell after Donald Trump’s ‘Liberation day’, yesterday they rebounded, with the yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds hitting 4.5 per cent – higher than they were before
To Sir Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats. The fun-loving party made headlines during the general election campaign after its party leader was pictured on paddleboards, waterslides and even a bungee jump during the lead-up to the July poll. But while the party’s strategy appeared all fun and games from afar, the Lib Dems were working far
As if Prime Minister Keir Starmer didn’t have enough to worry about overseas with Donald Trump’s tariffs, now old tensions are also threatening to cause problems closer to home. The British Medical Association has announced today that its junior doctors – now referred to as ‘residents’ – have re-entered a dispute with the government over
In January, the Home Secretary pledged £5 million for five locally led inquiries into ‘grooming gangs’, in the wake of public outcry led by the richest man on the planet Elon Musk. Yesterday, on the last day before Easter recess, the government watered down its promise to victims and survivors of rape gangs. The £5
China has announced it will impose 84 per cent tariffs on US goods imports from tomorrow, as the war of words and levies between the world’s two largest economies escalates. The new measures – 50 per cent on top of the 34 per cent already imposed by Beijing’s finance ministry – are a like for
It’s a story so wild as to be almost unbelievable. Kerri Pegg was a ‘rising star’ of the prison service, promoted to governor at the open jail HMP Kirkham just six years after joining as a graduate trainee. And yet she was also in a relationship with a prisoner, Anthony Saunderson, serving ten years for