All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s no secret in Westminster that Philip Hammond’s idea of the best Brexit possible is one that keeps Britain close to the EU. The Chancellor spent the last year issuing dire prophecies about the impact of a hard Brexit and his Treasury forecasts have become infamous for spelling out the doom and gloom of no
This week, Universities UK and the Russell Group, seemingly speaking on behalf of the whole sector, produced an Open Letter from distinguished vice-chancellors. ‘It is no exaggeration to suggest,’ said the letter, ‘that this [leaving the EU without a deal] would be an academic, cultural and scientific setback from which it would take decades to
If hell is other people, Twitter is the Devil’s noticeboard. Occasionally, though, its asteroid-inviting awfulness unearths a little insight into human nature, specifically when our instincts clash with our ideology. Take J.K. Rowling, author of the Cormoran Strike series who has also dabbled a little in children’s fiction. The Scottish novelist is a well-kent supporter
Whenever I find myself visiting some great historic house, I always like to break off from gawping at tapestries to ask the tour guide: ‘How did the family make its money in the first place?’ For some reason, this almost always astonishes and bewilders. It’s as if the devotion of capital to bricks and mortar,
Benjamin Netanyahu is only the second prime minister in Israel’s history to win three elections in a row, but could ‘Bibi’s’ time finally be up? When Israel’s PM called a snap election – due to take place in April – initial polls suggested that his Likud party would win twice as many seats as any other party. His
Lorries backing up in Kent, a Mars bar shortage, and no more Rome city breaks – these are just some of the things that we have been warned about when it comes to a no deal Brexit. But what will really happen? In this week’s cover piece, Ross Clark weighs up the pros and the
People are talking about the ugly protests outside parliament as if they are a new and strange phenomenon in British politics. The rough bellowing at politicians. The hollering of the word ‘Nazi!’ at people who clearly aren’t Nazis. The attempt to shout down politicians and journalists who simply want to make a political point. It is all
Before Christmas, we at The Spectator arranged an evening with Jacob Rees-Mogg. The idea was that I’d interview him in front of our readers, and he’d take questions. After just one advert in the magazine, we sold out: a thousand tickets, gone. So, what to do? We may come to regret this, but we’re doing something
At the end of last year Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was convicted of perverting the course of justice, after lying to police about a speeding charge. She has since been suspended from the Labour party but will remain the MP for Peterborough unless she is recalled or sentenced to longer than one year in jail.
In football, a player can be sent off the pitch for violent conduct or ‘using offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures towards another player’. If a footballer attacks another player rather than the ball, they are disciplined. This is an accepted and acceptable approach to a game where passions run high. A similar approach
John Bercow has been an excellent, reforming Speaker of the House of Commons. He has supercharged backbenchers with greater use of urgent questions, for instance, and has also made Parliament more family-friendly. His pomposity while chairing Prime Minister’s Questions – the endless chiding about what the public might think of MPs’ behaviour, often accompanied with
The Guardian has published a piece by Andrew Adonis urging Oxford and Cambridge to set up ‘access colleges’ which would only admit applicants from comprehensives. I’ve long been a fan of Adonis. He did more to drive up standards in state schools as a Labour education minister than most Conservatives do as education secretaries. Unlike
Brenda from Bristol, look away now. Jeremy Corbyn is pressing Theresa May to call a general election, saying: ‘To break the deadlock, an election is not only the most practical option, it is also the most democratic option. It would give the winning party a renewed mandate to negotiate a better deal for Britain and
John Bercow ditched Parliamentary precedent when he allowed a vote to take place on Dominic Grieve’s Brexit amendment yesterday. His decision caused uproar among Tory MPs, but Bercow defended the decision by saying that precedent didn’t count for everything when it comes to setting the rules in the Commons. He told MPs: ‘I am not in the business
When James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and I spent a year writing nonsense academic papers on topics such as ‘dog-park rape culture’ and ‘fat bodybuilding’ and submitting them to journals known for producing a similar standard of ‘scholarship,’ one question came up repeatedly: ‘What are they going to do to Peter?’ James and I were relatively
Ignore the colourful and fresh-faced Democrats filling up your social media feed. The new face of their party is the same as the old one. It is a white, wrinkled face that no amount of plastic surgery can reconfigure. It is Chuck & Nancy; Schumer and Pelosi, the dinosaurs who don’t die. They aren’t likable, to
When the media falls in love, it falls hard. Its latest crush is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat congressgirl from New York. With Obama gone, she’s their new idol and how they gasp every time she flutters her Bambi eyes from behind those Deirdre Barlow-grade glasses. Brits find the deference US journalists show their president unseemly —
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, is one of the most controversial politicians in Europe. The 45-year old chief of the League party exudes a down-to-earth demeanour with his common-man social media posts, in which he shares pictures of himself eating Barilla pasta and Nutella. To his many opponents, Salvini is a thick-headed, semi-fascist
Another day, another defeat for the government—this time on Dominic Grieve’s amendment, which requires Theresa May to set out within three sitting days what she’ll do next if the meaningful vote doesn’t pass. The significance of this is that Grieve thinks that the motion the government would put down would be amendable, so MPs would
PMQs began with tributes to the late Paddy Ashdown. The philandering man-of-action was the closest thing the Liberal Democrats ever got to James Bond. And though he was often ridiculed by MPs as a self-important windbag, today they hailed him as one of the greats. In this respect the House truly reflected the people. Death
Before Brexit: The Uncivil War is allowed to drift off into the ether, there is an important point which needs to be made, and yet which has not been addressed in all the reams of comment which have written about it. There is a gaping hole in its narrative. That narrative seems straightforward enough: Vote
At this week’s cabinet meeting, Michael Gove said that MPs hoping for a better deal from Brussels were like “mid-50s swingers” waiting for Scarlett Johansson to turn up to one of their parties. Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, added “Or Pierce Brosnan”. But while the casting choices were up for debate – David Gauke
It would be tempting to dismiss the past hour and a half of points of order in the House of Commons as MPs making fools of themselves by complaining about things not going their way. Indeed, there was some evidence to support that theory, such as the final exchange of the session between the Speaker
A New Year and the same old mess, only with knobs on this time. If the government cannot be said to be distinguishing itself right now, its directionless meanderings are matched by those of the House of Commons as a whole. Brexit, we were often told, was a means by which ‘sovereignty’ could be restored
Britain’s foreign aid department was on the defensive this week, following a Mail on Sunday article casting scorn on the decision to spend £200 million in aid on Bangladesh, after the violent and possibly rigged spectacle of the country’s election at the end of last year. In a blistering response, the Department for International Development
Martin Selmayr, the so-called ‘monster’ of Brussels, has reacted angrily to claims that he set out to punish Britain over Brexit. Selmayr, controversially elevated last year to become secretary general of the European Commission, was said to have told a meeting in Brussels in November that ‘the power is with us’ in Brexit trade talks.
The European Commission likes playing hard ball. Back in 2009 it decided that a bloated RBS had to sell off its Williams & Glyn unit to meet European Union state aid demands. But after a seven-year hunt for a buyer, RBS abandoned the sale and instead proposed a £775 million fund to help strengthen its
Brexit: The Uncivil War makes a big claim right at the start: to show us what really happened in the EU referendum two years ago, and to give us insight into the inner workings of the Vote Leave campaign. It’s an enticing offer but (ironically for a film about allegedly dodgy campaign pledges) I’m not really
The government has been defeated in the House of Commons. Yvette Cooper’s amendment designed to limit the Treasury’s ‘no deal’ powers has passed by seven votes. Now, the Treasury view is that the changes mandated by this amendment are ‘fairly minor’ and won’t stop no deal from happening, or the government continuing to prepare for
Even though Jeremy Corbyn and the men and women who support him are often shabby and occasionally reactionary figures, the rarest criticism you hear of them is criticism from the left. Political commentary in Britain runs like water through pipes. Conventional opinion holds that if you are left wing, you support the Labour leadership, and
Will Straw hasn’t had much joy when it comes to politics. In 2015, Straw tried – and failed – to follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a Labour MP, losing out to his Tory rival Jake Berry in Rossendale and Darwen. A year later, Straw’s luck hadn’t improved: in his role as executive director
Parliament, we are told, is in uncharted territory: the government looks unable to get the Prime Minister’s peculiar brand of Brexit through Parliament, and the House of Commons remains unready to realise the decision of the referendum three years ago. The European Question, that bête noire of Conservative collegiality, has once more split the party.
Here is what I have learned about this morning’s cabinet meeting: 1) The Prime Minister is still refusing to rule out a no-deal Brexit, in spite of pressure to do so from a number of ministers – but most notably from the Work and Pensions Secretary of State, Amber Rudd. In respect of May’s attitude
Brexit: The Uncivil War offered a wacky portrayal of the Vote Leave operation. I was intrigued to find myself portrayed at a board meeting which I never attended because I was not a member of the board and certainly not on the Vote Leave WhatsApp groups. Even a cursory glance of the records of Vote