All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It’s just another day in office for Theresa May’s shaky government. Today MPs will enjoy the first of many days of debate over the seemingly doomed EU withdrawal agreement but before they get to that ministers must try and avoid being found in contempt of Parliament. After the government refused to publish the full legal
There has never been a more pressing need for a home for Brexit voters disillusioned by the spectacle of recent events. Yet Ukip, under a leader fixated by EDL founder Tommy Robinson, has marched to a place where very few Leave voters wish to go. When I left Ukip last week, what caused the biggest stir
Opinions are like social media accounts: approximately 2.7 billion people have one. I’ve no problem with people having an opinion of course. Quite the reverse: a nation without opinions is one without thoughts, ideas or morals. But over the last decade something has changed. We’ve always had opinions but now we feel compelled to share
Theresa May is taking a break from defending her Brexit deal in Parliament – giving the chance to her Attorney General to have a go instead. But Geoffrey Cox’s sales pitch to MPs on the Brexit backstop isn’t going entirely to plan. Cox confirmed to Parliament that there is ‘no unilateral right’ for Britain –
What does it take to boost Tory morale these days? Oddly enough, the answer appears to be an hour-long session on troubling legal advice. With an Opposition Day debate leading to a demand for Theresa May to publish the EU withdrawal bill legal advice in full, the Prime Minister attempted to satisfy angry MPs by
The fact that Naked Attraction is still being broadcast after a year or so strikes me as proof that there is something very wrong with our culture. In a healthy culture it would have been howled offstage after a few weeks, and the moral babies who made it shunned, and firmer procedures put in place
Britain’s ability to keep the lights on has just been thrown into doubt by the European Court of Justice. It has ruled that the backbone of the UK’s capacity market energy scheme, which pays power stations to generate electricity, is illegal state aid and must be suspended. To call this a body blow for energy
Brexit is an accident born of misunderstanding. One of the biggest miscalculations is about the EU and how it works. Troublingly, that misjudgement, embraced by both unwise Leavers and imprudent Remainers, could just lead Britain off a cliff, for the second time in three years. I attended my first EU summit in 2001 and stopped
At last, a people’s revolt against the tyranny of environmentalism. Paris is burning. Not since 1968 has there been such heat and fury in the streetsThousands of ‘gilets jaunes’ stormed the capital at the weekend to rage against Emmanuel Macron and his treatment of them with aloof, technocratic disdain. And yet leftists in Britain and the
I would say we’ll always have Paris. But maybe not. It was only a few weeks ago that French president Emmanuel Macron promised a red carpet for bankers fleeing Brexit Britain. As matters have unfolded, the carpet has become one of broken glass. On the Avenue Kléber, one of the toniest streets in Paris and
Theresa May has just over a week to go until her Brexit deal is voted on in the Commons, and while all the signs suggest she is facing a thumping defeat, the Maybot is still sticking to the script. In an interview with Phillip Schofield on This Morning, May was asked what will happen if
Naturally, the news that the League Against Cruel Sports is being sued by an ethical vegan, one Jordi Casamitjana, for discrimination – on the basis he was allegedly sacked for his beliefs – cheered up my whole day. The hunting sabs being called out for not occupying the moral high ground – Casamitjana says they
And so another hellish week for Theresa May begins. The Prime Minister must somehow avoid publishing the Attorney General’s legal advice for all MPs and then convince 100 Conservative MPs to put their doubts aside and back her deal ahead of next week’s vote. So far, the signs are not good. But there is at
I can see that there is a moral case for a General Election, as demanded by Jeremy Corbyn. An election which Corbyn would win, by some margin, I suspect. The government is inept, hopelessly divided, derided and May will not get the majority she needs to push her Brexit deal through the Commons. There is
Theresa May (and I) are just back from Argentina. And she is about to enter the most important week of her political life and the most important week in this country’s political and constitutional history for decades. It starts tomorrow with the publication of a summary of the legal advice on the PM’s Brexit plan
Keir Starmer – Government may be in contempt of Parliament Sophy Ridge began the day by speaking to the Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer. Starmer authored an article for this morning’s Sunday Telegraph, in which he announced that Labour would work with other opposition parties to declare the government to be in contempt of
You seemed to embrace the latest challenge – to supply seriously misguided love poems – especially wholeheartedly, and I admired your powers of invention in finding so many ways of making my toes curl. Even Brexit got a look-in: ‘Let me be your Brexit backstop/ I will never set you free…’ (Ian Barker). Dishonourable mentions
Myth 1. The UK economy could shrink by eight per cent in a single year under no deal (Project Fear, Bank of England version) You will have read about this. The Bank of England now sheepishly claims that this was never meant to be a forecast, only a worst-case scenario. Mark Carney surely knew the
Oh dear. It’s no great secret that under Jeremy Corbyn there is little love lost between the Labour party and the mainstream media. The Labour leader and his supporters rarely miss a chance to take a jab at hacks – whether it’s calling for press reforms or simply booing journalists at party events. However, the
For all but the most harried journalist motivated by a need to pay off the mortgage, the annual G20 summit – being held this weekend in Buenos Aires – is typically viewed as a perfect cure for insomnia. Who will stand next to whom in the family photo? Will the wording of a final statement
China’s leadership knows it has badly underestimated the Trump administration’s will to raise the stakes on the trade front. They therefore hope that today’s meeting between the president and Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires produces a return to the status quo ante. The ideal outcome for Beijing would be agreement to establish an on-going dialogue
George H.W. Bush, who died on Friday at the age of 94, oversaw the end of the cold war. Together with Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, he helped to ensure that the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the reunification of Germany took place peacefully. Even as hawks in
Who knows what they were talking about? Perhaps President Macron was scolding MBS for missing the hotel’s cooked breakfast by oversleeping. “I told you.” “Yes you told me.” “You never listen to me.” Or perhaps he was instructing him about something altogether more sinister. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is what communications wonks call
Theresa May has sought to frame her deal as a battle between the forces of common sense and wreckers – either Brexiteers or Remainers. Sam Gyimah’s resignation complicates this narrative due to the type of politican he is. Not a firebreathing Eurosceptic allergic to the idea of compromise, not an Adonis-style hyperventilater who never recovered
This article was originally published on Spectator USA. George Herbert Walker Bush, America’s 41st president, became a figure of nostalgia long before he died Friday night. He was already a symbol of the Oval Office’s lost dignity within months of his departure from the White House, following his loss to Bill Clinton in the 1992
No-go-day was meant to be yesterday, I say in The Sun. This was the moment when the Department for Exiting the EU wanted the principal purpose of government to become getting the country ready for leaving the EU regardless of whether there was a deal or not. Number 10 argued that a vaguer deadline of
Is Emmanuel Macron the oddest leader in the EU? When he became President of France last year, he made a speech at Versailles to both houses of parliament calling for a renewal of ‘the spirit of conquest’. This year, commemorating the centenary of the Armistice, he seemed more inclined to invent a project for perpetual
There’s a moment of realisation that comes to all parent’s post-baby: the flash back to those thoughts we all have that ‘having a baby won’t change us’. I wasn’t going to let my kids watch TV, eat sweets or be ‘that mum’ who cracks open a snack mid shop. Then it came, that thought at
Here we go again. After a relatively quiet week on the resignation front for Theresa May’s shaky government, Sam Gyimah has announced that he has left his role as Universities and Science Minister. Gymiah puts his decision down to concluding that he could not vote for the EU Withdrawal agreement. He tells the Telegraph: ‘Britain
In the last two years, $20 billion have left the UK as investors withdraw their money from British equity funds. Conventional wisdom might say that this is because of Brexit uncertainty, but talk to many in the City and they will tell you that the political event that their clients and partners are most afraid
I don’t know how the Chief Executive of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Dr Andrea Coscelli, gets to work, but I guess it isn’t by train. In fact, I could quite imagine he had never heard of the existence of railways at all. How else to explain the complete lack of interest of his
The Prime Minister might have been a bit too clever when attacking Corbyn’s and Labour’s opposition to her Brexit deal. Some four hours in to her 14 hour flight to the G20 leading nations’ summit in Argentina, she told journalists: “What they are doing is advocating rejecting the deal we negotiated with the European Union
With the 2017 Parliamentarian of the Year winner Ruth Davidson on maternity leave, Liz Truss stepped in to present this year’s awards – taking the opportunity to send up her cabinet colleagues, fellow MPs and the US president. Below is her speech in full: It’s fantastic to be here this evening. I have to admit
This week, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee looking into fake news convened for a special session. For the first time since 1933, when the joint committee on Indian constitutional reform included parliamentarians from India, politicians from nine other countries joined Damian Collins and other MPs to cross-examine Facebook and others. A couple of days