All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
If I were a pensioner, I’d be a bit miffed by the BBC’s decision to end the policy of giving free TV licences to the over-75s. At present, the cost is met by the government, but it was due to be picked up by the BBC from 1 June 2020. At least, that’s what I
Brexit is both the cause of the Tory leadership contest – it was too much for Theresa May – and is the toxin that threatens to destroy the contest to replace her and her party. The reason is that even if the new prime minister were to take the UK out of the EU –
ITV breakfast presenter Lorraine Kelly has such a reputation for being friendly and warm on screen, that the TV host managed to win an entire tax case based on the fact that she doesn’t play herself, but a ‘chatty’ version of ‘Lorraine’ in front of the cameras. So plenty of eyebrows were raised this week
Rather rashly, Boris Johnson published The Churchill factor: How one man made history in 2015. It was without historical merit, or intellectual insight, but Johnson did not intend readers to learn about Churchill. The biography was not a Churchill biography but a Johnson campaign biography, where we were invited to see our hero as Winston
Toby Young claims that ‘being LGBT is now the height of respectability, while being a white “cishet” male is morally suspect.’ Toby, you’re wrong: virtue and respectability are not based on labels, and LGBT people have many more battles ahead. I would like to present Exhibit A: David Attenborough. Why this venerable presenter, you might
Boris Johnson is currently the quiet man of the Tory leadership contest, lurking in the shadows rather than courting media attention as he usually does. His campaign team has deliberately held him back from touring the studios to avoid gaffes or rows. They’re even nervous about the limited exposure he has, joking that he is
Michael Gove is one of those people who enjoys finding themselves with their back against the wall, fighting. His leadership launch this afternoon was mired in questions about his past drug use, but the Environment Secretary looked totally unruffled by the rows of the past few days and the questions from journalists after his speech.
Is this the best the Conservative and Unionist party can do? Really? The extraordinary thing about Boris Johnson’s campaign to become the country’s next prime minister is that even the people supporting him do not think he’s up to the job of being prime minister. The best that may be said of him is that
The Tory leadership race is turning nasty. And not for the first time, it’s Michael Gove who is taking a pop at Boris Johnson. After a disastrous weekend for Gove that was overshadowed by revelations of drug-taking, Gove has just attempted to start afresh at his campaign launch. Gove also used his speech to take
Well, that was surprising. The BBC has announced that from 2020 it will do away with free TV licences for the over-75s. In future, free licences will only be available to households which have at least one member receiving pension credit. Everyone else will have to pay the full whack of £154.50 a year. In
You might not have realised from his lack of appearances but Boris Johnson is standing to be Tory leader. There are MPs on the left of the party, and so he’s told them he’s a One Nationer. There are MPs on the right of the party, and so he’s told them he’s a tax-cutter. And
One of the words that has become increasingly useless over recent years is ‘radicalisation’. As more and more terrorist attacks took place across the West in recent years the word got trotted out with some utility. Al-Qaeda and Isis fighters were reported to have been ‘radicalised’. Soon a whole arm of dubious expertise grew, purporting
The economy would tank. Trade would collapse. Unemployment would soar, and house prices would sink. In the run-up to the referendum, and in the three years of tortured negotiations about leaving since then, we heard lots of dire warnings about what would happen to the economy if we left the EU. And yet we heard
After receiving a boost over his Cabinet rivals at the weekend with the endorsement of Amber Rudd, Jeremy Hunt has today used his official launch to unveil support from a senior Brexiteer. Penny Mordaunt has come out in support of the Foreign Secretary. Speaking at the launch in Westminster, the Defence Secretary said she trusted
Dominic Raab’s launch was just downstairs from the event that Matt Hancock held, and rather more serious, too. He was able to underline his parliamentary support, filling the front row of his audience with MPs who cheered loudly at appropriate moments. He was introduced by Maria Miller, who joked that she hoped to persuade him
So it turns out that there may have been a quid pro quo behind Amber Rudd’s backing for Jeremy Hunt, her former political mentor, beyond the usual conversations about Cabinet jobs. Amber – who is for some reason that escapes me is considered a kingmaker – was interviewed this morning about one possible impediment to
Today is a big day for the Tory leadership candidates, as the nominations for the race close, and several of the contenders officially launch their pitch to be the next Prime Minister. But if Tory leadership contender Matt Hancock was hoping to use the day to boost his profile and win over his fellow MPs,
The concept of Boris Johnson avoiding publicity takes some getting used to. Normally, the man seeks out TV studios like apes seek out trees – they are a natural habitat from which it would be cruel to separate him. Yet Boris has suddenly gone missing, to the point Boris-watchers might soon start to worry about
What does Matt Hancock offer the Conservative party? He’s a former Remainer who has stayed loyal in Theresa May’s Cabinet and so has a bit of a tricky pitch to make to a party furious about the outgoing Prime Minister’s failure to deliver Brexit. He also hasn’t got an eye-catching drugs story to get attention,
It’s official: the Tory leadership contest to replace Theresa May as Prime Minister has now begun. At 5pm today, the nominations closed for candidates to enter the leadership race before hustings and the first round of voting takes place this week. In order to narrow down an already crowded field, each candidate had to receive
The latest challenge was an invitation to compose a contemporary take on ‘The New Colossus’, the 1883 sonnet by Emma Lazarus that is inscribed on a bronze plaque on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our
Which two candidates will make the final two of the Tory leadership contest? At the moment, the race is Boris Johnson’s to lose with the former foreign secretary on course to make it to the membership ballot. However, the contest for the other place is tight. The make up of the Parliamentary party means there
This week, the Conservative leadership content enters the Parliamentary stage. The various contenders – at the time of writing there are eleven – will be whittled down to two. The remaining pair will then tour the country for membership hustings ahead of a members’ ballot. So, how exactly will it play out? All candidates must
The Conservative leadership race continues in full force, with four contenders paying a visit to the TV studios today. Michael Gove has been making the headlines for all the wrong reasons after admitting to taking cocaine ‘on several occasions’ while he was a journalist for the Times. He expressed his remorse to Andrew Marr: MG:
The Tory leadership race is on and while it can be hard to keep track of the growing number of candidates entering the race, it is even trickier to stay on top of the lurid confessions of wrongdoing made by those who want to be PM. To help out, here is Mr S’s full and
To fund the war against Napoleon in 1813, Princess Marianne of Prussia invented an ingenious tax-raising scheme. Wealthy Prussians were called on to hand their jewellery to the state; in exchange they were given iron replacements for the gold items they had donated. Stamped on the iron replicas were the words ‘Gold gab ich für
How do you feel about the standard of political debate in this country? I ask this question at the very moment two blimps are flying over London. The first attempts to depict President Donald Trump as a giant baby in a nappy and is the property of people who do not like Donald Trump; the
It’s almost 25 years since the atrocity at of Srebrenica, the last massacre on European soil. It’s not the kind of event that anyone will be too keen to remember: we quite rightly salute D-Day veterans, a reminder of those whose sacrifice led to the freedom we have today. But it’s worth remembering Srebrenica too
The problem for Michael Gove is not that thousands of Conservative party members will open their copy of the Daily Mail this morning and think to themselves: ‘Gove has taken illegal drugs, therefore he is unfit to be Prime Minister’. It is that Gove or his supporters will fall into the trap of trying to
The Tory leadership race has taken on a new turn this weekend with the Daily Mail splashing on Michael Gove’s cocaine confession. The Environment Secretary tells the paper that he took the ‘drugs on several occasions at social events more than 20 years ago’. At the time, Gove was working as a journalist. Of the
The Tory leadership is fast becoming Boris Johnson’s to lose, I say in The Sun this morning. He has more MPs backing him than any other candidate, and his campaign receives a further boost this morning with the former Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon endorsing him. In the words of one of those knows the
Maurice Bowra, the flamboyant warden of Wadham College from 1938 to 1970, once argued against the legalisation of homosexuality on the grounds that it would take all the fun out of it. Without the risk of being picked up by the police, cruising up and down the Cowley Road at one in the morning would
As the left sinks into psychosis, what remains? The answer is sugar, profanity, snacks and toys. Protest now resembles Clown Town, a dystopic toddler play barn near Finchley Central. To mark the American President’s trip to London this week, the Donald-Trump-in-a-nappy balloon rose again. There was also a Donald Trump robot. It sat on a
Since being elected a Brexit Party MEP, I have gone from gamekeeper to poacher as far as the broadcast media is concerned. Until six weeks ago, I had the privilege of being a commentator who could sit on couches endlessly pontificating. Now as a politician, I’m the target of my fellow commentators. They either discuss me