All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Sir Richard Dearlove – I’m ‘troubled by Corbyn’s past’ The former head of MI6 has expressed concern about the Labour leader’s previous links to several unsavoury political groups. Speaking to Sophy Ridge, Sir Richard Dearlove outlined why he felt uneasy about the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister: "Someone coming from my background is
Is Jeremy Wright the new David Cameron? By that, Mr S does not mean to suggest that Wright is the man to go on to win a majority for the Tories at the next general election. Instead, Steerpike’s concern relates to football. During Cameron’s time in No 10, there was a running joke that despite
A recent news report says Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s childhood has been scrutinised by colleagues ‘for clues to understanding this most paradoxical of politicians — the popular, ultra-courteous free-thinker who, by knifing Boris Johnson in the 2016 Tory leadership election, became a byword for treachery’. Gove was adopted as a baby and has never sought
The latest competition asked for a sonnet in reverse, modelled on Rupert Brooke’s ‘Sonnet Reversed’, which turns upside-down both the form — it begins on the rhyming couplet — and the Petrarchan concept of idealised love, starting on a romantic high but ending in prosaic banality. This challenge produced a delightfully varied and engaging entry.
It was the line in her conference speech that demonstrated Theresa May’s desire to stay on as Prime Minister after Brexit. But it was also the line that will cause her the most trouble. I say in The Sun this morning that May’s declaration that austerity is over will cause problems even if the Tories
There are, one must admit, things to be said against Boris Johnson, but his leading critics do not understand that their attacks assist him. On Tuesday in Birmingham, Mrs May tried to upstage his arrival by claiming she had a new policy about post-Brexit immigration. She didn’t. The only person she upstaged was her Home
The debate over rights for transgender people rumbles on in the wake of proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act. Is there a so-called ‘trans orthodoxy’ shutting down debate on this issue? Meanwhile, across the channel, French socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon is aiming to unseat an increasing unpopular Emmanuel Macron. Does Mélenchon have a chance of
When it emerged over the summer that Jeremy Corbyn had attended a ceremony which commemorated the deaths of several terrorists linked to the 1972 Munich massacre, Labour were very annoyed at how newspapers covered the event. The media has seriously misrepresented what went on, they complained, while they dithered over whether Jeremy (pictured) had ever
In the end, the star of Conservative conference was a Brexiteer. Only it wasn’t Boris Johnson – or even Jacob Rees-Mogg. Instead, it was someone with a much lower media profile – Geoffrey Cox QC. Theresa May’s recently appointed Attorney General stole the show with a Mufasa-inspired barn-storming stage routine. In it, Cox’s booming baritone
How funny. Remember how, when Unilever announced back in March that it had decided to move its headquarters from London to Rotterdam, it was all to do with Brexit? According to the Guardian’s subheadline on 14 March: ‘Brexit and favourable business conditions in Netherlands said to be behind decision’. The following day an FT leader
My first reaction when I read Fan Bingbing’s apology for tax evasion was to laugh. Who wouldn’t? It was so wonderfully OTT in that unmistakably communist way. ‘I have failed my nurturing country,’ declared China’s highest-earning actress, who resurfaced this week after disappearing from sight over the summer. ‘I have failed society’s trust, and I
Last week, the Labour Party released a video called Our Town. It is a genuine piece of art, which shows that Labour takes the medium of video seriously. The Tories need to take note. It’s not impressive because of the message itself, since the message itself is familiar: we’re going to kick-start the economy, we’re
The alliance between the white far left and the Islamist right is a dirty secret in plain sight. Few can bear to look at it. None of the books and documentaries on Corbyn’s takeover of the Labour party asked, even in passing, how people who professed to be socialists and feminists, found themselves promoting theocrats
Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, is back in the news. Ten years ago, it was said to be in a state of terminal decline. Since then, it has become the ‘go-to’ agency for the Kremlin because of its flexibility, aggression and ‘can-do’ attitude. It is president Putin’s one-stop shop for global subversion. But it may
One of the things that the Tory conference taught us was quite how worried the party is about Labour. There was almost a Mean Girls-style obsession with talking about Jeremy Corbyn in speeches on the stage, including Theresa May’s own address at the end of conference, where she returned to the problems with the Labour
Anyone lusting after a McChicken sandwich will be left disappointed today, as McDonald’s employees go on strike to protest against low pay. As they man the McBarricades, they will be heartened to see veteran filmmaker and Corbyn devotee Ken Loach’s film team, Sixteen Films, come out strongly in favour of the strike. They urged Loach’s
After a better-than-expected conference speech, Theresa May has given her premiership a much needed boost. Only it seems not everyone wants her turn in fortune to continue. This afternoon, Donald Tusk took to social media, following a press conference with the Taoiseach, to bring the Prime Minister back down to earth with a an unhelpful
In this week’s books podcast, I’m joined by the political scientist William Davies to talk about his new book Nervous States: How Feeling Took Over The World. Here’s a deep dive into the parlous condition of our public discourse, drawing the line from Descartes and Hobbes to Trump and Generation Snowflake. Can speech be a
Schools will finally get a bit more money. Nurses and policemen may at last get a proper pay rise. Local councils can stop scratching around to see if there are any services left they can still cut and the Chancellor may even be able to lighten up budget day with a minor tax cut or
Congratulations once again to the BBC’s anti-Brexit propaganda unit, for its news website headline this morning: “Car sales plunge as Nissan warns on Brexit”. It takes talent to pin something on Brexit which even the Guardian admits is caused by something quite different – indeed, something which might more naturally be seen as constituting a case
After a successful and well-received conference speech, you would think the Prime Minister would at least get a week or two to bask in her cabinet’s support. Alas, not so. Andrea Leadsom, the PM’s Leader of the Commons was on Peston last night, and had a damning lack of confidence in her boss. Asked by
Every family across the UK knows the familiar dread of hosting a party, attended by an infamous uncle who can always be relied on to say something outrageous and offend unfamiliar guests. When it comes to Theresa May’s cabinet, there could be a few contenders for the title of ‘embarrassing uncle,’ but this week, it
For the first time in months, Downing Street have little to worry about from today’s papers. After delivering one of her best speeches since becoming Prime Minister, Theresa May is enjoying some of the best front pages she has had since the disastrous snap election. Each paper carries photos of a happy PM dancing –
Choosing a warm-up act to introduce a big speech is a delicate balancing act. Pick someone too woeful and the crowd is deflated before you’ve even begun. But pick someone too impressive, and your own efforts begin to pale in comparison. Theresa May came perilously close to the latter this afternoon, when she asked her
Theresa May has three faces that she shows to the world: the Brexit Boudicca, the dull technocrat (her default mode) and then what we saw today: the optimistic globalist. This act, that tends to come out only in set-piece speeches, portrays her as an open-hearted, funny and even (at times) inspiring Prime Minister. The speech
In a successful conference speech, Theresa May finally laid out to members and the public the direction she wanted to take the country. But did she make the most difficult part of premiership, her Brexit plan, any clearer? Judging by how well her cabinet understands her Chequers strategy, Mr Steerpike doesn’t think so. After her
Theresa May delivered one of her best conference speeches. In normal times, the political boost she’d get from this would carry her through to Christmas. But these are not normal times—and Brexit will soon reassert itself. There’s a European Council in two weeks time and that will soon dominate everything else. The speech was authentically
Theresa May would never sell herself as a great orator. But that was a good speech, perhaps the most significant of her lifetime in Tory politics. It was an address that achieved three things. It confirmed that she is sticking to her Chequers Brexit strategy – not that she even once uttered the controversial ‘C’
Theresa May appeared comfortable on the conference stage today for the first time. It wasn’t just her Dancing Queen entrance or her references to the various nightmares that beset last year’s address. It was also that she was able to defend what she was doing with real passion and conviction. She also offered a good
Thank you very much for that warm welcome. You’ll have to excuse me if I cough during this speech; I’ve been up all night supergluing the backdrop. There are some things about last year’s conference I have tried to forget. But I will always remember the warmth I felt from everyone in the hall. You supported me all the
Theresa May has made quite an entrance ahead of her big speech at Tory party conference. The Prime Minister danced on to the stage to the tune of Dancing Queen: Mr S. wonders whether the PM will still be in the mood for dancing by the end of her speech…
James Duddridge has chosen to take advantage of the run-up to the Prime Minister’s conference speech to announce that he’s sent a letter of no confidence in Theresa May to the chairman of the 1922 Committee Graham Brady. This is, to state the obvious, a stunt. I doubt it presages a more serious effort to
Poor old Theresa May. The Prime Minister hasn’t even got on stage to deliver her speech at Tory party conference and already things are not going quite to plan. Tory MP James Duddridge has announced this morning that he thinks it is time for Theresa May to step down – and that Boris’s speech was
One of the most beautiful things to happen in recent years was ‘the conceptual penis as a social construct.’ This was an academic paper which proposed that: ‘The penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a gender-performative, highly fluid