All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
I can understand why Ben Stokes and his mother would rather not be reminded of the murder of the cricketer’s half-siblings by their father in New Zealand in 1988, three years before Stokes was born. His reaction, calling the Sun’s publication of the story as ‘immoral and heartless’ and ‘contemptuous to the feelings and circumstances
If Britain and Australia agree a post-Brexit trade deal, Liz Truss the international trade secretary has said that free movement between the two countries could form part of an agreement. In a press conference this morning in Canberra, Truss explained that ‘Australians want to come and live and work in Britain, and Brits want to
To understand the move last night by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to abolish the party’s student wing, Labour Students, you need to go back in time nearly 40 years to the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then, the party’s youth section, the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS), had been wholly taken over by Militant,
Labour has yet again shown it doesn’t care about its Jewish members. Jeremy Corbyn said earlier this year that “there is no place for anti-Semitism or any form of racism in the Labour party”. But not for the first time – and not for the last – Jews who still belong to the party have
This is an article about Twitter, so you might decide to ignore it. Social media is not real life, after all, and many sensible people dismiss it as meaningless noise: ‘it’s just Twitter’. But this article is also about the current state of politics and journalism, neither of which can – sadly – be discussed
The BBC PM programme today led on Boris Johnson’s discomfort when confronted by members of the public while out on press calls. A legitimate subject: Boris is neither nimble nor terribly empathetic. The story was tied to his confrontation today with a man in a hospital. The presenter, Evan Davis, played an audio clip of
Happy Union Day, the fifth anniversary of Scotland’s vote to remain in the United Kingdom. It’s gotten so commercial, though at least voting No to independence means the Scots still have a currency to buy their celebratory Union Jack bunting in. Only there’s not much in the way of celebrations today. In 2014, the Better
It might not feel like it after Monday’s press conference theatrics and the briefings coming out of Brussels, but there is still a chance of a Brexit deal. It should be stressed that it is still odds against an agreement being reached. There has, though, been some shifting in positions in the last few weeks.
Boris Johnson is using the conventions of British public life to destroy the British constitution. He is relying on the old understanding that good chaps don’t ‘go too far’ while ‘going all the way’ himself. He is counting on the judges being frightened of challenging him, while showing no fear as he tramps over and
‘King Bibi’ they chanted at Likud’s victory party last night but Benjamin Netanyahu has not clinched victory and the crown could yet be snatched from his head. Israel’s second election of 2019 — a poll in April ended similarly in deadlock — is poised to end the reign of the country’s longest-serving prime minister. Votes
Jeremy Corbyn has dashed the hopes of certain members of his shadow cabinet this morning with a Guardian op-ed in which he sets out his party’s Brexit position in any forthcoming general election. Rather than explicitly back remaining in the EU, Corbyn says a Labour government would pursue a softer Brexit deal with Brussels before letting
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has admitted she felt sympathy for the officer who said Carl Beech’s claims were ‘credible and true’. Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC, Dick said when she heard the officer’s comments she ‘just felt for him immediately’. Convicted paedophile Beech was jailed for 18 years in July after he was found guilty of
Thinking of digging deep for a good cause? Mr S is a big fan of giving his hard-earned cash to those in need but he won’t be coughing up for the latest organisation to ask for money. Leftist pro-Corbyn fan group Momentum has just emailed to warn that ‘in the coming weeks, we’re going to be
Jo Swinson has just delivered her first conference speech as Liberal Democrat leader. Here is her speech below. 21 years on from my first Liberal Democrat conference, I am thrilled to stand before you today as your leader. I’m delighted to see so many old friends who have kept the torch of liberalism burning bright
The shape of the Brexit fix that Boris Johnson wants from the EU’s 27 leaders is now clear. Here it is: In place of the dreaded backstop – that insurance policy for keeping open the border on the island of Ireland hated by most Tory Brexiters and Northern Ireland’s DUP – Johnson is suggesting: a) A unified single
Jo Swinson is quite obviously the only party leader enjoying what’s going on right now. This is, of course, partly because what’s going on for her is that she is regularly welcoming MPs from other parties into the Liberal Democrats. As she said in her speech to the party’s conference this afternoon, ‘I can’t be
The opening session of the epic Supreme Court hearing into whether Boris Johnson misled the Queen and broke the law when proroguing parliament did not disappoint. Because Lord Pannick, for one of the plaintiffs Gina Miller, captured with the clinical precision of a brain surgeon quite what is at stake. Summing up, he asked the
It’s the last day of the Liberal Democrat conference today, which means that leader Jo Swinson will deliver her keynote speech to excited delegates at the seaside town of Bournemouth. Normally, political parties arrange for a photoshoot ahead of the final speech of conference, so that various MPs and bigwigs are snapped walking triumphantly into
Singer Sam Smith has announced that from now on his pronouns are ‘they/them’, sparking an overdue conversation about the social justice movement’s ongoing efforts to influence the way we speak. Of course Smith is free to make his request – just as we are free to decide whether or not to accede – but with
Lord Hall of Birkenhead is feeling pretty bullish about the quality of the organisation he leads. “We’re not Netflix, we’re not Spotify. We’re not Apple News,” the BBC’s director general will apparently tell the Royal Television Society on Thursday. “We’re so much more than all of them put together.” To which the obvious answer is:
I am told Jean-Claude Juncker learned just one thing from Boris Johnson on Monday in Luxembourg. In the words of one of his colleagues there was “confirmation that the UK (under Johnson) wants more of a border on the island of Ireland than the previous government”. Which is the nutshell of the whole of what the PM seeks qua
Oh dear. Relations between Boris Johnson and Michael Gove could become a bit awkward this week after an extract from David Cameron’s memoirs published today in the Times revealed that the current PM asked Cameron whether Gove was “a bit cracked”. Johnson apparently inquired about the mental wellbeing of his now close cabinet colleague after Gove
Boris Johnson has just cancelled a press conference after being booed in Luxembourg, but was the Prime Minister set up? Luxembourg’s leader Xavier Bettel took a dig at Boris Johnson as he gave a short speech next to an empty lectern. Bettel said he ‘wanted to thank Boris Johnson’ as he pointed into thin air: But
Is Boris Johnson approaching a Brexit breakthrough? That’s the question being asked among Conservative MPs after there appeared to be movement last week from the government and DUP that could help to secure a deal with the EU. Today the Prime Minister met with EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in Luxembourg to discuss the prospect,
Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth is proving to be a jolly affair so far. I’m writing this in the garden of the Highcliff hotel, looking out over the Channel that divides the UK from France and, perhaps one day, the European Union. It’s Brexit that’s making the Lib Dems happy as they bustle by. Parties
Jo Swinson has said she will never forgive David Cameron for calling the EU referendum in 2016. ‘I think so many of the problems that we are facing right now stem from David Cameron’s shocking misjudgement in putting the interests of the Conservative party ahead of the national interest,’ the Lib Dem leader told her party’s
MPs who aren’t in the process of defecting to the Liberal Democrats are using their conference recess to phone around their colleagues canvassing for the next Commons Speaker. Lindsay Hoyle is, according to YouGov, the favourite to win, but Harriet Harman and Chris Bryant are also running strong campaigns, along with Meg Hillier. Then there
The Lib Dems are now the most extremist party in the UK. They might not look like extremists, being made up of mostly nice, middle-class people from the leafier bits of the nation. But they have just adopted a policy that is arguably more extreme, more corrosive of British values, more counter to the great
Ahead of the looming general election, moderate Labour MPs are understandably upset by an instruction they say the party has given to suspend the selection of new candidates in seats where the serving MP is retiring or has defected. They’ve been told the reason is to ‘concentrate on the trigger ballot processes’ – or the deselection of
When Jo Johnson quit government, reports began to circulate that his wife Amelia Gentleman – the Guardian journalist – had put pressure on him to leave frontline politics and thereby not serve in his brother Boris Johnson’s government. The Sun reported that Gentleman had grown tired of ‘seeing Boris presiding over an increasingly fractured government,
The Guardian has achieved the not inconsiderable feat of whipping up sympathy for David Cameron. A leader column written for Monday’s edition of the paper, and posted online on Sunday, contained this bilious burp: ‘Mr Cameron has known pain and failure in his life but it has always been limited failure and privileged pain. The
American liberals perceive it as a jarring inconsistency: my opposition to Trump and support for Brexit. Especially outside the UK, these two phenomena are perceived as identical twin expressions of an alarming ‘populism’, whereby the animals take over the zoo. I’m one of the curiously few political voyeurs who think the American electorate’s preference for
There are plenty of ways to go about winning an election if you’re fighting to become an MP, from coming up with a winning electoral strategy, to tapping into a burning local issue. The one thing you probably shouldn’t do though is start off by insulting your local constituents. The North Devon Liberal Democrat candidate
Supporters of Brexit are often accused by their political opponents of having an unhealthy obsession with the past, and wanting to take the country back to an age when the British Empire spanned a quarter of the globe. But, if the Liberal Democrat conference is anything to go by, it appears to Mr S that it