All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Earlier this week I wrote a blog here accusing children who were planning to take part in today’s Youth4Climate march of wanting to play truant. I realise now that I may have been a little harsh on them. Having read and heard what they have been saying and posting this morning, I fear that some
The thousands of children across the UK on ‘strike’ from school today to protest climate change are admirable. They’re part of a movement, Fridays for Future, which wants more aggressive measures to reduce emissions. It seems clear to me that climate change is real, man-made and requires action. If these kids can do their bit
Jacob Rees-Mogg often describes himself as a straight-talker who gives honest answers, no matter how unpopular they might be. But did his performance on Question Time last night live up to this billing? It was held in leafy Aylesbury, which lies on the proposed HS2 path thereby hitting house prices in the area – which explains
What would Winston Churchill have made of the hysterical debate yesterday, which tried to boil his legacy down to whether he was a ‘villain’ or a ‘hero’? Mr S wonders if the man who liberated Europe might have been amused at the situation, not least by being called a ‘villain’ by a shadow chancellor who thought
The UK magazine industry releases its circulation figures today, and I’m delighted to announce that sales of The Spectator are at another all-time high. We sold an average 76,201 copies in the second half of last year, up by over 7 per cent on the first half of the year. Subscriptions are driving this growth:
One of the more interesting developments over the last year is the attempted transformation of John McDonnell from a hard-left activist who joked about “lynching” a female Conservative MP, towards a softer, more jovial, chancellor-in-waiting. It seemed to be going quite well. I appeared with McDonnell on Politics Live last year and he laughed heartily
Winston Churchill can be blamed for many things. He was an essential figure behind the disastrous landings at Gallipoli. It was on his word that the thuggish ‘Black and Tans’ were sent into Ireland. His racial animus towards Indian people did not help Britain to formulate an effective response to the Bengal Famine. He was
Faced with the prospect of the UK’s departure from the EU, some Britons are contemplating urgent measures, whether applying for an Irish passport or migrating to New Zealand. Nothing wrong with either, of course, but the latter is an odd reaction. After all, one of the implications of Brexit is that it restores the fundamental
It is time for Labour and Tory MPs to wake up and see the Brexit reality staring them in the face. Which is — after tonight’s demonstration that the government doesn’t have the votes to push through a Brexit plan of any description with simply its MPs and those of Northern Ireland’s DUP — all
What will the UK do about Shamima Begum, the schoolgirl who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State? The Times’ stunning scoop this morning about the 19-year old’s plea to be allowed home from the Syrian refugee camp prompted Security Minister Ben Wallace to tell the Today programme that ‘actions have consequences’ and that she
There’s a lesson for all boardrooms — and an echo of the lost era of big-bucks, big-ego banking — in the story of Santander’s withdrawal of its job offer to Andrea Orcel. The Italian-born former UBS and Merrill Lynch investment banker was named last September as the next chief executive of the Spanish giant that
After Theresa May mysteriously evaporated from the Commons following tonight’s government defeat, Downing Street has issued a statement insisting that nothing has changed. The official line is, somewhat tortuously, that the previous set of indicative votes from MPs were the ones that mattered, whereas this one didn’t. A No.10 spokesman said: ‘While we didn’t secure
The government has been defeated by 45 votes tonight. This loss doesn’t force a change in policy on Theresa May, but it is a significant blow to her negotiating strategy. She has been saying to the EU that with legally binding changes to the backstop, she could get the withdrawal agreement through parliament. The EU
The European Research Group has decided it will abstain on the government’s Brexit motion, which MPs will be voting on in the next hour. An ERG source said that there was a ‘collective decision’ at a meeting this afternoon to abstain on the motion if no other amendments to it were passed. Voting has begun,
Winston Churchill is a war hero who saved Britain from the Nazis. At least, that is what many think of a man consistently hailed as one of the greatest ever Brits. Not so Chris Williamson. Instead, the Labour MP agrees with the shadow chancellor John McDonnell that Churchill was a ‘villain’. Speaking on the BBC’s
It is 30 years since the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses, and 40 since the triumph of the Iranian Revolution. The two are related, since the Ayatollah Khomeini, driven to rage by illness and military failure, wanted to mark the tenth anniversary of his glory days by doing something nasty. I have reminded
Today’s vote is not a meaningful vote. But that doesn’t mean it is meaningless. If Theresa May’s motion is passed tonight, it will enable her to carry on saying to the EU that parliament supports her approach and that a legally binding change to the backstop is needed to get a deal through. But if
So, what do you reckon then about the jihadi bride, Shamima Begum, unearthed by the Times’ Anthony Loyd in a refugee camp in Syria? Should she be brought back home for an NHS delivery for her imminent baby – with the cops hovering backstage – or left to stew in a Syrian refugee camp, to
As the possibility of no deal gets closer, the hyperbole is getting more hyperbolic. But catastrophe metaphors like crashing out, falling off a cliff edge, and burning in hell ignore the less than exciting fact that leaving the EU without a deal leaves us, at most, with transitional problems that can be managed. Despite what
It’s fair to say that shadow chancellor John McDonnell is no stranger to controversy, but last night he managed to outdo himself when he entered into the debate on Winston Churchill’s legacy. At a Politico event, McDonnell was asked by the host, Jack Blanchard, whether Winston Churchill was a hero or a villain. After a
Today is the 30th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s issue of a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for writing the novel The Satanic Verses. In the run-up to this anniversary there has as usual been much discussion of the controversy, but very little about the novel itself. This is consistent with the pattern of the last three
Tensions between the Labour leadership and some of its MPs reached breaking point once again this week, over the party’s failure to deal with anti-Semitism within its own ranks. Key to the dispute has been the treatment of Liverpool Wavertree MP, Luciana Berger, who her colleagues say has been targeted by a hard-left group in
Olly Robbins will be trying to avoid the Prime Minister today after his hurricane strength gaffe was splashed all over the newspaper front pages. He deserves a fair share of the criticism that has come his way, but I’m sure most of us have mouthed off a little too loudly in the pub after a
Tomorrow’s Brexit vote has gone from being billed the ‘Valentine’s Day massacre’ to threatening a desperately dull anti-climax, and then back again to being quite interesting. This latest development comes courtesy of the European Research Group, which has said it could vote against the government on the motion that has been tabled because they object
How do you put people off thinking that a no-deal Brexit might be alright? Jeremy Corbyn clearly thinks the best way to do this is to talk about Chris Grayling and the mess over the contract for ferry services. The Labour leader made this the focus of his stint grilling Theresa May at today’s Prime
Cripes. At this rate the CBI will be putting out reports on Brexit’s potential benefits, George Osborne will be reminding us he could always see its upside, and even the FT will be running leaders saying Brexit doesn’t quite mean the end of the world. There have been plenty of twists and turns in our
The world has become a very strange and unsettling place. Exhibit one is that a senior Tory Brexiter just now pulled out of being on my show tonight, because we didn’t have enough proper Leave-voting Brexiters on the programme. “The programme was startlingly unbalanced! Every guest but me having voted or campaigned for Remain,” the
Dr Victoria Bateman’s naked Brexit stunt should not be seen in terms of modern feminism but in terms of early modern religious performance art, especially that of the Ranters and Quakers. The trauma of the seventeenth century English civil war caused some strange religious groups to emerge, and some of them went in for shocking
Who needs the Comédie-Française when there is Emmanuel Macron in the Élysée? France’s recall last week of its ambassador from Italy for consultation was pure theatre on the part of the president. And it was a decision more for the benefit of his domestic audience than for the coalition government in Rome. In a statement
The rise to fame of Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, has been nothing short of extraordinary. Less than a year ago, she was an unknown schoolgirl from Sweden, albeit an unusual one: she is the daughter of a famous opera singer and an actor. Thunberg also has Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism.
This week’s Best Buys are one year fixed-rate ISAs. Even if you have opened one in the previous tax year, you can still open another, so if you have some spare cash to hand it’s always worthwhile taking a look at what rates are on offer. Here are some of the best, from data supplied
Earlier this morning, I pitched up at Good Morning Britain’s studios for what was billed as a Brexit debate with Dr Victoria Bateman A.K.A. the naked academic. I’d been warned in advance that she would be naked. And when I was shown into the studio, she was – totally. We hadn’t met backstage in the
In 1919, a 31-year-old Tommy from Bristol, named George Robertson – fresh from fighting alongside French troops on the Somme – married Suzanne Leblond in Abbeville, northern France. In 2017, George Robertson’s great grandson, Emmanuel Macron, became French president. Macron embarked on a policy that, while acknowledging Franco-British friendship, sought to ensure that Britain did not prosper
My colleague Angus Walker has a grade A scoop on how Theresa May’s chief Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, thinks the PM may be able to rescue her Brexit deal. The headlines are these. 1) He expects MPs to be presented with a choice in March of her deal or a potentially very lengthy delay to
