All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s exam season, so here’s a test, suitable for anyone interested in how the media and public conversation work in 2019. Here is a sequence of events: A charity involved in the safeguarding and welfare of children appoints a celebrity ambassador. It emerges that the celebrity has a history of asking children in emotional distress
For the past week they’ve been exchanging side-glances, passing on compliments, and making excuses to spend time together. Now they’ve made it official. Yes, late last night Chuka Umunna finally made his move and joined the Lib Dems. In an interview with the Times announcing the new relationship, the former Labour MP revealed that he
Before this Tory leadership election started, the party’s grandees and custodians were telling me party members MUST at all costs be given a choice of candidates to be leader and our next prime minister. Now they tell me Boris Johnson is so far ahead – both among MPs and seemingly among the membership – that it would
Boris Johnson has undergone a makeover and no, it’s got nothing to do with his tidier hair and vanishing paunch. While Boris’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds has been busy transforming his appearance, journalists are now doing their bit to rebrand Boris too. I’m talking of course about Boris becoming Mr Johnson. A ‘request’ from Channel 4’s
I have celebrated John Bercow, eulogised Martin McGuinness and urged Spectator readers to vote Labour. So I appreciate I’m on thin ice with a defence of Jo Brand, and since the hefty lefty and I are of similar girth, that metaphor could end badly. Yet the news she is being investigated by police over a joke ought
America’s last presidential election campaign won’t be easily forgotten. From leaked Access Hollywood tapes and spurious insults between the two contenders to incessant chants of “lock her up!”, Clinton vs Trump was something Americans simply hadn’t experienced before. It was ugly. But the 2016 election may turn out to be a walk in the park compared to the
When Tanya Gold criticised Nike for promoting unhealthy body images by using ‘fattequins’ — oversized mannequins — she received an extra serving of inbox hate for being ‘fatphobic’, and a side order of online death threats with extra malice. And all for speaking the truth about encouraging women to maintain a dangerous weight and buy into unhealthy
You might think that things couldn’t get any worse for the group of breakaway MPs, Change UK. First, the group was widely mocked for its poor branding and confusing name-change soon after its launch. Then, it had a disastrous showing in the European elections. And finally, earlier this month the party split and half of
Now the real shenanigans begin. Boris Johnson will – barring a disaster of Johnsonian scale – be on the ballot of Tory members to pick their next leader and our prime minister on or around 22 July. And, truthfully, given that he is by a margin the darling and chouchou of those members, it is
The results of the first round of the Tory leadership election are in, with Boris Johnson achieving a resounding victory over his rivals in his bid to be the next prime minister. Further behind was his colleague Rory Stewart, who managed to make it through to the next stage after reaching 19 votes. The international
Boris Johnson’s campaign team has been so well-organised that it predicted exactly the number of votes he would get in today’s secret ballot, I understand. According to WhatsApp messages between his supporters, one member handed Johnson a sealed envelope with ‘114’ written in it before the result, telling him to open it once the official
If half of Boris Johnson’s supporters had stayed in bed this morning, he’d still have won by a safe margin. The number of MPs supporting Johnson is astonishing, given how many were saying until a few weeks ago that they despised him. They may well still do, but Nigel Farage is now grasping them by
Critics of Boris Johnson were quick to seize on the fact that when Beth Rigby, the political editor of Sky News, asked a question at his launch yesterday she was jeered by some of his supporters. Jessica Simor QC, an opponent of Brexit, tweeted: ‘The road to fascism – their boos at Beth Rigby made
It is isn’t a great surprise that Esther McVey, Mark Harper and Andrea Leadsom have been knocked out of the first round of the Tory leadership contest, with 9, 10 and 11 votes respectively. None of them had particularly organised campaigns or a sufficiently distinctive pitch to the Conservative party. McVey, for instance, was still
Boris Johnson has today confirmed his place as the frontrunner to be the next prime minister. In the first voting round of the Tory leadership contest, the former foreign secretary romped home with 114 votes from MPs. This means that Johnson has already surpassed the magic number of 105 votes – which means a candidate
Boris Johnson won a landslide victory in the first round of the Tory leadership contest. The frontrunner picked up 114 votes – 71 more than his nearest rival, Jeremy Hunt. Andrea Leadsom, Mark Harper and Esther McVey were eliminated from the contest after the trio all failed to reach the threshold of 17 votes that
Is Boris Johnson’s campaign keeping a close eye on Jeremy Hunt’s? Three days ago the current Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, launched his campaign to become leader of the Conservative party in the decadent surroundings of Carlton Gardens, near his grace-and-favour home. Two days later his predecessor, Boris Johnson, kicked off his own campaign and chose
Tick-tock, tick-tock, the Brexit clock doesn’t stop. October 31st is the deadline and the next prime minister will barely have a moment to catch his breath before he has to make some vital decisions for the future of our country. That’s why, for the sake of the national interest, this farcical Tory leadership contest should
What a bunch of big babies the right can sometimes be. These people spend oodles of time mocking lefty snowflakes and touchy students for taking offence at every off-colour joke or un-PC point of view. And yet it turns out they’re just as susceptible as any moaning millennial to having a fit of the Victorian
The New York Times has said it will stop publishing political cartoons, six weeks after an image of a blind, kippah-wearing Donald Trump being led by a dog with the head of Bibi Netanyahu appeared in the paper. The cartoon was rightly condemned and an apology swiftly issued. But scrapping cartoons for good – and parting ways
This week’s books podcast promises to be a trip. I’m joined by Mike Jay to talk about the history of mescaline — a psychedelic drug whose influence goes from the earliest South American civilisations through the 19th-century Indian Wars up to W B Yeats, Aleister Crowley and (of course) Aldous Huxley and Hunter S Thompson.
Sajid Javid’s leadership launch was delayed by over an hour because Parliament was trying to make up its mind on whether to stop a no-deal Brexit. When he eventually arrived, there was a rather jolly atmosphere in the room, encouraged in part by the fact that his campaign team had thought it wise to offer
The first time I felt like an outsider was when I was six years old. My cousin told me we needed to change our walking route to her school because of the ‘bad kids’ who supported the National Front. That was the first time. But not the last. When I was at secondary school, the
MPs have voted to reject, by 309 votes to 298, an opposition day motion which would have attempted to stop Britain leaving without a deal on 31 October. The motion, put forward by Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable, Oliver Letwin and other representatives of the opposition parties, attempted to carve out a day in the parliamentary
Should Boris Johnson become Prime Minister it would be a calamity for his country and for Europe. That’s the view of Le Monde, a newspaper that declares it’s time for France and the rest of the continent to stop ‘regarding him as a buffoon’. In an editorial headlined ‘Boris Johnson at the head of the
Boris Johnson made his pitch to become PM at a spirited mini-rally in central London. He began with a swipe at the stalling economies of the Eurozone which he compared unfavourably with ‘the commercial dynamism of the British people.’ His one-nation pitch bore almost too many adman’s sound-bites. He called England, Wales, Scotland and Northern
Hong Kong As it was five years ago during the Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong’s legislature is under siege by angry protestors. The government, itching to get a controversial extradition law on the books has, at least temporarily, been thwarted. This follows an extraordinary demonstration on Sunday when more than a million people flooded the streets
A fair few MPs felt there was no reason to come to today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, given the real action is in the Conservative leadership contest. There were spaces behind Theresa May as she took questions from Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader clearly hadn’t put much effort into preparing for the session, either, offering a
Gary Lineker earned at least £1.75m for his BBC work last year. That’s the equivalent of the TV licence fee from 11,326 over-75s, who this week learned they will no longer be exempt from the £154.50-a-year charge. The BBC’s announcement that it will scrap the exemption for pensioners has been big news all week. So
A few jokes. A sprinkling of tax cuts. A few more jokes. A couple of flashy new buildings. And then back to the jokes. As Boris Johnson launches his pitch for the premiership – and takes a commanding lead among Tory MPs – it would be easy to dismiss his economic programme, along with the
It was the launch event everyone was waiting for. After weeks of keeping a low profile – a submarine campaign according to critics – with just one newspaper interview, the leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson emerged this morning to officially kickstart his campaign. However, rather than opt for a circus tent, waffle freebies and thinly-veiled attacks
It’s a measure of the resilience of this country that since the vote to leave the EU and in defiance of all predictions, the economy has grown much faster than the rest of Europe. Unemployment has fallen to the lowest level since 1972, exports have soared, English football teams have won both the Champions League
After spending some time in the shadows ahead of the first round of voting in the Tory leadership contest, Boris Johnson officially launched his campaign today, giving a speech in central London where he reiterated his intention to take Britain out of the EU by 31st October. Unsurprisingly, considering his confusing array of past comments on
Britain is not quite in the grip of Rorymania. He gave a properly impressive speech this week and he has spoken with honesty and clarity about politics and policy. But Rory Stewart isn’t going to be our next prime minister and it’s hard to see him remaining in Cabinet for much longer. He’s a hit