All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Justin Trudeau found himself in hot water last week after pictures emerged of him ‘blacking up’ for a fancy-dress party. A week on, an unlikely supporter has leapt to the Canadian prime minister’s defence. Step forward, Desmond Swayne. In a blog on his website titled ‘Trudeau’s Turban’, the flamboyant Brexiteer said the only thing Trudeau
Labour MP Karl Turner took the opportunity to berate Boris Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings in a heated, and slightly bizarre, exchange in the House of Commons yesterday. Turner (whose staff just happened to be filming the MP’s grandstanding) approached Cummings in Portcullis House and attacked him for the ‘sort of language’ Boris Johnson had used
The Scottish National Party has come round to the idea that Jeremy Corbyn may shortly have to become temporary caretaker prime minister, in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit on 31 October and immediately afterwards hold a general election. A source close to the SNP leadership tells me that Ian Blackford, leader of the SNP
The left no longer exists as a coherent political force in France. Embarrassed in the 2017 presidential election, the Socialist party has continued to disintegrate, polling just 6.2 per cent of the vote in May’s European elections. That was marginally fewer votes than Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, which mustered a distinctly modest 6.3 per
This week, the Supreme Court gave its bombshell ruling – Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was unlawful. With parliament resuming the very next day, Boris Johnson has been dealt a humiliating defeat. Yet, MPs still won’t trigger a general election, until Boris requests a Brexit extension. So is there any escape for the Prime Minister,
If President Donald Trump hoped the release of a memo detailing his July 25 telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was going to exculpate him from questions about misconduct in office, his hopes were dashed the moment the public read the transcript. Suspicions of Trump trading £323m ($400m) in military aid to Ukraine in return
The Supreme Court’s judgement is the latest constitutional perversion after the Benn act. But ironically it may assist the Government in achieving its objective of Britain leaving the EU by 31 October, without having to seek an extension to the Article 50 process. In paragraph 34, the Supreme Court states that its ‘proper function’ under
There is no love lost between MPs in the Commons today following last night’s fractious debate. But has one Labour MP gone a little too far in calling for her opposite number to say sorry? Shadow Commons leader Valerie Vaz took to her feet this afternoon to ask Geoffrey Cox to ‘come to the House
Rarely has there been such a flagrant display of hypocrisy and cant as there was in the House of Commons last night. Opposition MPs stood up one after the other to denounce Boris Johnson for his use of apparently toxic and dangerous words like ‘surrender’ and ‘sabotage’. Such language is polluting the public sphere and
Boris Johnson’s behaviour in the Commons last night was clearly part of his strategy to set up a ‘people vs parliament’ narrative ahead of an election. We can debate the rights and wrongs of telling MPs that the best way to honour Jo Cox would be to get Brexit done, but there are also political
It was never clear what this Parliament was going to do if it was no longer prorogued. For three years the UK Parliament has been unable to act on the 2016 referendum result. It was never clear what they were hoping to achieve if they got an extra three days, weeks or months. But the
The death today of the Fifth Republic’s fifth president, at the age of 86, is also the passing of its most romanesque character. Tall and debonair, Jacques Chirac’s charms worked their magic with the ladies at a higher rate than even the standard operating procedure for most French presidents. Chirac’s social and political ascension bears the
Ruth Bader Ginsburg likes her office. The US Supreme Court justice, a spry 86-year-old who trains twice a week with an ex-Special Forces soldier, is a liberal icon on America’s highest court. A decade ago, she gave an interviewer a tour of her chambers, explaining: ‘I like a quiet place and I am glad to
Now that more experts have had time to study the ruling, the legal validity of the Supreme Court decision on the prorogation of Parliament is unravelling with every passing day. The court cited two cases to justify its involvement in political decisions: the Case of Proclamations (1611) and Entick v Carrington (1765). The Case of
Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be a liberal from San Francisco, California and a diehard political opponent of President Donald Trump, but she is also an institutionalist at heart. Having gone through the saga of former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in the late 1990s, she has never been a fan of using the procedure to push
Something ugly has come out of the Supreme Court’s decision to change the law and our constitution yesterday. Instead of basking magnanimously in the fact that they won, there have been wholly unwarranted calls from Remainers for ‘heads on plates’. The cry has gone out for the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, to publish his legal
Scottish politics is stuck. As with Brexit across the wider United Kingdom, the 2014 independence referendum has permanently shifted attitudes of the majority of the population into Yes/No camps, with little room for compromise. The SNP government stumbles from one crisis of service delivery to another yet continues to consistently poll around 40 per cent.
The House of Commons has just turned very ugly indeed, after Boris Johnson dismissed a Labour MP who was complaining about the abuse and threats she and other colleagues are receiving as ‘humbug’. Paula Sherriff – who has had a particularly sustained campaign of abuse against her, including swastikas being left at her office – made
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have just clashed spectacularly in the House of Commons. Boris Johnson repeatedly goaded Jeremy Corbyn over his refusal to go for an election now. This was not a Prime Minister acting like one who had been chastened by the Supreme Court’s decision, but one determined to set himself up as
Boris Johnson wants a general election now. Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon both say they want an election but not till after they are sure that the provisions of the Benn Act have been effective and the UK is NOT leaving the EU without a deal on October 31. As far as I can see
On the face of it, the Labour party conference commitment to bring forward Britain’s net zero greenhouse gas emission target to 2030 is nothing short of reckless. ‘We need zero emissions,’ the economist Paul Johnson and member of the Committee on Climate Change tweeted. ‘Getting there by 2050 is tough and expensive but feasible and
Geoffrey Cox is not a happy bunny. The Attorney General has just blasted MPs, telling them that Parliament is a ‘disgrace’. Here’s what he had to say in the Commons: ‘This Parliament has declined three times to pass a withdrawal agreement. Then we now have a wide number of this house setting its face against
Did Labour’s conference help or hinder Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of becoming prime minister? For some, Corbyn ended up stronger than ever. There will be a review of the post of deputy leader, one likely to see the authority of Tom Watson, his severest internal critic, greatly diminished. Corbyn also won a critical vote on Brexit
Amid Labour’s jubilation over the Supreme Court decision yesterday it would have been easy to miss Jeremy Corbyn’s latest attack on the market economy. But it shouldn’t go unremarked because what Corbyn proposed would seriously damage the pharmaceuticals industry – either meaning that taxpayers would have to bear the enormous costs of developing drugs, or
This week’s podcast features the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, talking about his new collection of short stories Fly Already. Topics on the agenda: how an Israel writer can address the Holocaust, why one of Etgar’s stories caused a dear friend of his to have to change his name, whether writing stories is a useful thing
Forty years of membership of the EU has taught us a lot. Many of us have learned a new language; most of us have learned new recipes for our supper; and our Judges have learned how to seize power from democratic institutions. For there has always been a fundamental cultural clash between us and most
In a dramatic decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that the prorogation of parliament was unlawful and that the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Lords Speaker should bring parliament back at their convenience. John Bercow has already said that parliament should return as a matter of urgency. The Supreme Court verdict is
At first, I assumed it would be a one off. I’m chatting about nothing in particular with a friend at a teacher conference when, having checked that no one else was in earshot, she blurted out: ‘Look, don’t tell anyone, but I don’t think I can vote Labour any more. Their education stuff… it’s just
Below is a summary judgment released by the Supreme Court, explaining why the Court ruled that Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament was unlawful and void. We have before us two appeals, one from the High Court of England and Wales and one from the Inner House of the Court of Session in Scotland. It is
Jeremy Corbyn has just delivered one of his better party conference speeches. It wasn’t just because it was much shorter than the average political address, but also because it made clear that Labour knows what it wants to do when it gets into power. There were a lot of policies in there. Some had popped
This is an extraordinary and precarious moment in our country’s history. The Prime Minister has been found to have acted illegally when he tried to shut down parliament.The highest court in the land has found that Boris Johnson broke the law when he tried to shut down democratic accountability at a crucial moment for our
In one respect Gina Miller is right. Today’s Supreme Court decision is bigger than Brexit. We are now in a civil war without bullets – between two sides who both claim to be fighting for democracy but who have very different ideas of what it entails. In the one corner are those who believe that
Ignore, with great respect, the people telling you today that the justices of the Supreme Court have waded into politics, exceeded their mandate and involved themselves in matters that belong to elected officials not the judiciary. Take five minutes to read the Court’s judgement on Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament, where you will find a