All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal is considering leaving the UK because of the Labour government’s abolition of the ‘non-dom’ tax regime. This confirms that Keir Starmer’s politics of envy is successfully destroying the British economy. Mittal would join tens of thousands of millionaires and billionaires – British and foreign – who have already abandoned Britain to
This is an excerpt from the latest episode of the Holy Smoke podcast with Damian Thompson, which you can find at the bottom of this page: It’s emerged that [Pope Francis is] going to be kept in isolation on the second floor of Santa Marta for at least two months, in what is, in effect,
Donors of the Reform party are considering creating a partisan think tank in the American style. These plans are subject to change, but it is not looking good. Many Reform backers, it seems, see the proposed institution, named provisionally as ‘Resolute 1850’, as a way to attract American money. Someone like Elon Musk hands over hundreds
Hundreds of people are feared dead after a 7.7-magnitude quake struck Myanmar. Tremors from the quake, which had its epicentre near Mandalay, caused devastation across Southeast Asia, including in Bangkok. Over 80 construction workers are missing in the Thai capital after a 30-storey building that was under construction collapsed. Search and rescue teams are scrambling
Nigel Farage has really done it this time. He may have sailed close to the wind before, but defending the gender pay gap? Telling a group of journalists yesterday that there’s a reason more men have top jobs in business than women? Surely, he won’t get away with that. As you’d expect he’s been roundly condemned.
For tourists aboard the Sindbad, the final moments of their planned jaunt below the waves will have been a hellish, adrenaline-fueled lunge for survival. Six Russian tourists, including two children, died yesterday when the submarine abruptly capsized in seas one kilometre off the coast of the Egyptian city of Hurghada at around 10 a.m. Sea
WH Smith is opting for the oldest trick in the corporate playbook. It is changing its name. It might have been better to get some new carpets – or at least to freshen up some of the display counters. As the chain’s high street shops are sold off, they will be rebranded as TG Jones,
On 27 March, the Houthis launched two ballistic missiles at Israel. It also reportedly launched ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and long-range one-way attack drones at US Navy warships in the region, including the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier. The attack likely came in response to a series of US air and naval strikes against Houthi
28 min listen
The Spectator’s columnist Douglas Murray joins Freddy Gray to discuss his recent column on why the JFK conspiracies just won’t die. They also discuss the moon landing, the emergence of American self-hatred, and the return of the post-truth era.
It’s the new rule of British politics: if you’re going to quit, do it on a Friday. Labour has had something of a bumpy first nine months in office. Sue Gray was out within 94 days – and now others are following her out the door too. This morning, Matthew Doyle, the No. 10 director
Ever since 2013, I’ve been hearing that Vladimir Putin is going to die any day. Is Volodymyr Zelensky now trying to spin the same line? At a press conference this week, the Ukrainian President said of Putin, ‘He will die soon – that’s a fact – and it will all be over’, adding ‘I’m younger
The news released last night that King Charles had been briefly hospitalised was an unwelcome surprise. A statement from the royal communications department tersely declared that: The public cannot expect minute-by-minute updates as to every aspect of the monarch’s condition Following scheduled and ongoing medical treatment for cancer this morning, the King experienced temporary side
Oh dear. The Babe Ruth of the bar has blundered once again. Jolyon Maugham, the kimono-cladded KC, has been raging about PPE contracts during Covid for years now. One company that has particularly attracted his ire is Meller Designs Ltd, formerly co-owned by businessman David Meller. During the pandemic, it was awarded six PPE supply
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has just confirmed that the economy ‘grew’ by 0.1 per cent in the last three months of 2024. Its final estimate for the last quarter of last year confirms that Britain’s economy continues to float just above recession territory. The very modest growth in the final quarter was driven
Early this morning, even before dawn broke, Australia’s Labor party prime minister, Anthony Albanese, asked the country’s governor-general to call a general election for Saturday 3 May. Albanese’s short drive to Government House in Canberra capped a week when his government brought down a budget, in response to which Liberal opposition leader Peter Dutton set
It has become customary for Budgets to unravel within 48 hours of being delivered. Rachel Reeves didn’t have much in the way of fiscal announcements to deliver on Wednesday, but even what she did have to say seems to be falling apart. It has since transpired that the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) did not
The British army is overstretched. This is not breaking news to anyone who takes an interest in defence. Although its budget has grown in real terms over the last decade, it has faced a complex network of problems. In only six of the last 25 years has recruitment exceeded outflow, meaning that the army has
Despite suffering their worst electoral humiliation since the 1890s, Germany’s Social Democrat party (SPD) is displaying a remarkable combination of arrogance and delusion. Having collapsed to a mere 16 per cent in last month’s election, the party has nonetheless strong-armed Friedrich Merz’s victorious CDU into abandoning fiscal discipline and embracing ruinous debt policies. This audacious
Anthony Powell died on 28 March 2000, twenty-five years ago today. It is also fifty years since he completed his 12-novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time, written over a quarter of a century. How well has this unique opus worn? With a title taken from Poussin’s masterpiece of the four seasons, Dance,
This afternoon, Vice President J.D. Vance is set to touch down in Greenland after deciding to join his wife Usha on her trip there. In a video on X, he explained that: ‘There is so much excitement about Usha’s visit to Greenland this Friday that I decided that I did not want her to have
Voters won’t want to thank Rachel Reeves if the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) turns out to be right in its forecast for zero real growth in earnings in 2026 and 2027. But static earnings could turn out to be the least of problems for households. They will take an even dimmer view of the
70 min listen
Join Katy Balls, Michael Gove, Lord Glasman, Lord Frost and pollster James Kanagasooriam as they unpack the highly anticipated Spring Statement and its implications for national policy and global security. Listen for: Michael’s plan for how to deal with the Donald, and why the Treasury is not fit for purpose; Maurice on his influence in
Emmanuel Macron couldn’t have been clearer about why he wants to boost defence spending: ‘We want to protect peace in Europe and thus deter anyone from attacking us,’ France’s president said last week. After years of hesitation, during which the Russian threat was underestimated, at least in Western Europe, it’s about time France is taking
Tonight, I’m going to hear Joyce DiDonato, one of the greatest living sopranos, sing Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise. On Saturday afternoon, I’ll be at a masterclass given by Gautier Capuçon, a glorious cellist. And on Sunday night, I’m seeing him play all five of Beethoven’s cello sonatas. I tell you this not (just) to make
A parliament is an odd place. It’s the arena where clashing worldviews come to cross swords and there’s low and ugly skullduggery. In most other workplaces, political differences are a topic to be avoided, but the job of a parliamentarian is to spend day after day with colleagues whose values they abhor and whose ideas
Talk about a belated Ides of March. It was less than 100 days before Keir Starmer sacked his first No. 10 Chief of Staff Sue Gray. To console the lifelong civil servant, Sir Keir rewarded her with a peerage, enabling her to spend the rest of her days making laws on the benches of the
So it’s a not-so-fond farewell to Just Stop Oil, the soup-throwing, hand-gluing environmentalist troupe. According to JSO activist Hannah Hunt, who helped kick off the group’s campaign of infamy back in 2022, she and her comrades are calling it a day. The reason? They’ve just been too successful. ‘Just Stop Oil’s demand to end new oil
In September 1987, during a radio interview with RTL, the late Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the French National Front, stated that the gas chambers were ‘a detail of the history of the second world war.’ This week, Jordan Bardella, the president of the Rassemblement National, the National Front’s rebranded successor, visited the hallowed Yad
Sirens blare across Israel, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They have been triggered by a barrage of missiles, launched from Yemen, purportedly by Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis. The Israel Defence Forces claim to have intercepted two missiles launched from Yemen, while Israeli emergency services say that at this time, there have been no
When two inebriated RAF engineers broke a Paddington statue in half in Newbury earlier this month, they could not have predicted the scale of the reaction. But in the UK of 2025, a crime against Paddington is not simply an act of drunken vandalism, but an egregious offence against whichever collection of buzzwords is today