All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
So there is more than one Old Etonian hoping to ride to the nation’s rescue. My first reaction to the news that Justin Welby is involved in plans for a citizens’ assembly to find an alternative to a no-deal Brexit was sceptical. Too late for such an initiative. Give Boris a chance to get on with
Sajid Javid has this afternoon cancelled a speech he was due to give tomorrow, and brought forward the one-year spending review to early September. It was due to take place later in the autumn. A statement from the Treasury said ‘the forthcoming Spending Round will instead be brought forward in early September and will cover
Gordon Brown has broken his silence again. The former prime minister told the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the Scottish Parliament had ‘failed to deliver a fairer and more prosperous Scotland’ and had instead become a ‘battering ram for constitutional warfare’. What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s trapped down the well? And creating a Scottish parliament to
Jeremy Corbyn’s cross-party talks to stop a no-deal Brexit have broken up, with opposition leaders and MPs releasing a statement saying they ‘agreed on the urgency to act together to find practical ways to prevent no deal, including the possibility of passing legislation and a vote of no confidence’. The Labour leader opened the meeting
Who knew the Royal Mint, of all places, had been captured by the cult of political correctness? According to the Mail, the Mint’s Advisory Committee decided not to put Enid Blyton on a 50p coin to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her death because she is ‘a racist, sexist, homophobe and not a very well-regarded
I’m on holiday with my family in Turks and Caicos, and maintaining my current weight is proving difficult. Regular readers will recall that I lost about half a stone at the beginning of 2018, after an army of offence archeologists started sifting through everything I’d written, dating back more than 30 years, looking for evidence
The latest stage in a series of arcane gambits and cunning plans designed to frustrate Britain’s exit from the EU came in the form of Jeremy Corbyn’s recent letter to leading opponents of a no-deal Brexit, inviting them to discuss the joint coordination efforts. In his letter, Corbyn rightly predicts that during the next few
Britain’s civil service is supposed to be the envy of the world, seamlessly executing the will of whichever government happens to occupy the offices of state. But Mr S wonders whether the reality can be rather different. Disgruntled civil servants have toppled more than one over-mighty minister. Others have admitted actively trying to undermine government
The Oval, 1902. Headingley 1981. Melbourne 1982. Edgbaston 2005. And now Headingley 2019. Move over Sir Ian Botham, you’ve got company and there’s a new king in the north. This astonishing, heart-stopping, game will forever be remembered as Stokes’s match and recalled for as long as test cricket is still played and savoured. For a
I’ve learned only one thing at the G7 summit of big rich countries here in Biarritz: Boris Johnson absolutely loves being Prime Minister. There’s little of the conspicuous sense of duty that weighed on the shoulders of Theresa May, Gordon Brown and Sir John Major. Nor is there that unnerving claim to embody the spirit
Sophy Ridge returned this morning after a few weeks holiday. Representing the government was the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps. Shapps was upbeat about the UK’s prospects should it encounter a no deal Brexit, and proudly told Ridge that his department was fully equipped to tackle any challenges: 'We will be ready for no-deal, in fact,
To the G7 summit in Biarritz where Boris Johnson has held his first meeting with Donald Trump since becoming Prime Minister. The two blondes used the breakfast meet to talk up trade, with President Trump saying the UK leaving the EU will be like losing ‘an anchor round the ankle’. A more jolly affair than the
In Competition No. 3112 you were invited to submit an extract from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Brexiteers. The title of this new addition to the G&S canon was, of course, a nod to The Gondoliers. But in an entry both serious and silly, full of wit and whimsy, you also plundered The Mikado (‘Four little
Nigel Farage: whatever happened to him? You remember, the chap in the coat who used to go on about Europe and all that. Time was, you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing him. These days, not so much. Farage’s relative quiet in political circles says quite a lot about how easy a ride Boris
We are living through the most dramatic period in British peacetime history since the agitations leading up to the Great Reform Bill – and, irrespective of Brexit, there is more to come. The UK is about to experience a revolution in government. This will take one of three forms. There could be a chassis revolution,
I am up on the far north-west coast of Scotland, where the weather is changing every five minutes under vast skies and huge seascapes. Go to the beach and look left, and it’s a sparkling Mediterranean scene, bright white sand and opalescent turquoise water, what you might call Rossini weather. Swivel your gaze right, and vast
He looks nothing like a financial expert. Moneyweek journalist, Dominic Frisby, has a huge Santa beard and he dresses like a funeral director from a Roald Dahl fantasy: a top hat, a white shirt with wing-collars and a flowing silk cravat. As a gesture of solidarity with the gilets jaunes he sports a bright yellow
‘France has a German policy, she has no other’, remarked the seasoned observer of international affairs and future editor of Le Monde André Fontaine in 1952. With a British withdrawal from the EU she is again confronted by an old demon dating from 1871 : management of a dominant Germany on the continent of Europe.
The past decade has not been kind to those we entrust, in the words of Sir Robert Peel, ‘to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen’. Since 2010, police numbers have fallen by more than 20,000, with too many choosing to leave the force owing to physical and emotional assaults in
As was to be expected, the EU’s reaction to Boris Johnson’s offer of revisiting the Withdrawal Agreement if the backstop is removed has been to reject it out of hand. But there are still 68 days to go before the UK is due to leave the EU and if the EU’s resolve wavers between now
It should be obvious by now — but somehow isn’t. Whenever @realDonldTrump says something wild, you can bet the real Donald Trump is contemplating something sensible — and vice-versa. Often the Commander-in-Chief does the opposite to what his social media handle has just said. Trump the Twitterer is the yin to Trump President’s yang. One
I suppose the question is who we sack first. For like many, if not most England fans, I am at a stage beyond rage, beyond reasonable doubt, beyond all good sense. I want blood. As a friend of mine who supports Everton posted on Facebook this morning, ‘Name two seven-letter sports teams beginning with E
In the London Review of Books this month, James Meek wrote a long article about Jacob Rees-Mogg and his ‘curious duality’ in being both a high Catholic, fogey Brexiteer and a founder of Somerset Capital Management, which the author sees as globalist and ruthless. The piece is elegantly done, but entirely sneery. It makes not the slightest
Is Boris Johnson more likely to get a Brexit deal after his meetings with Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron? The Prime Minister today tried to dampen hopes, saying that while the ‘mood music’ had been ‘very good’ during his meetings with the two leaders this week, it was still going to be hard to persuade
Donald Trump’s attempted purchase of Greenland may have fallen through but if he’s still in the market, there’s some prime real estate in the neighbourhood. It’s smaller, yes, but just as cold, almost as sparsely populated and even has its own independence movement agitating for a breakaway. Happily, the president already owns a chunk of
Mr S was curious to spy a puzzling email sent out by CCHQ to their prospective parliamentary candidates today. The message asked would-be Tory runners to send in their CVs so that the party can select candidates for the next general election. Recipients were told that anyone selected as a parliamentary contender would cease to
The ‘Non’ was not quite as frosty as it might have been. When Boris Johnson met up with France’s president Emmanuel Macron there were at least some pictures of the two men talking amicably. Even so, while Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel and some of the EU’s other leaders have at least left the door a
Gillette has learned the hard way that if you annoy your customer base, your business will suffer. Ever since it released its woke men-bashing ad earlier this year, its sales have slumped. Who’d have thought it? Telling men they’re disgusting bullies and sexual harassers — as Gillette’s ad did — will not endear you to
The time has come to announce the winner of our much-lauded Brexit poetry competition. Earlier this week, we called on our good readers to provide us with a poem to commemorate the UK’s exit from the European Union on 31 October. Our announcement came in response to the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage saying that he
How come the crowd was so small? A free show at the Edinburgh festival featuring two local MPs, three stand-up comedians – and Alastair Campbell – should have been a massive draw. Barely a few hundred attended the open-air People’s Vote rally at the Meadows yesterday. ‘You’ll forgive us. We’re comedians. Our language may get
From the moment Donald Trump stepped onto the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president of the United States, there have been people in the Republican party who have sought to bring him down. During the 2016 GOP primary, Republican national security officials wrote scathing and embarrassing open letters against him.
A steady stream of royal scandals has put the monarchy firmly in the limelight this week. Prince Andrew’s suspicious friendship with the late Jeffery Epstein and the continued controversy over Meghan and Harry’s hypocritical bow to ‘woke’ causes have given the royal press office a lot to think about. But is this latest set of
Why is it considered better that we liberal Danes run Greenland rather than the Americans? Is liberalism more effective at countering Russian and Chinese expansionist ambitions? Gullible Danes, who are now smugly laughing off Trump’s offer, find Chinese commercial investment innocent because it does not make territorial claims explicit. And our pacifist vision for the