All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
It looks like today’s Cabinet will only be the first of two meetings this week. I understand that another one, which may well make an actual decision, is now likely to be held later in the week. Today’s was significant for an intervention from Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general. Cox’s contribution was about balancing risks.
Today’s midterm election is bound to put a bit of swagger back into the steps of Democrats. If polls are anything to go by — and since when have they ever led anyone astray? — it will be a dolorous evening for Republicans as they watch state legislatures, governors, and Congress turn Democratic. CNN has
The world’s poor are, as we know, suffering under the yoke of capitalism, getting ever poorer as we rich grab an ever-greater share of the world’s resources and pollute the environment for everyone else. We know this because the Left keeps telling us so. But amidst the unrelenting gloom of an ever-more unequal world, one
Agriculture is being transformed by innovation at a rapid pace. Genetically modified crops are being grown on 190 million hectares worldwide, with on average 20 per cent higher yields and 40 per cent fewer chemicals than their non-GM counterparts. Genome editing (which involves no cross-species DNA transfer) has produced fungus-resistant wheat and disease-resistant pigs. Farmers
Halloween may be over but fear still stalks the land. As we enter the Brexit endgame, it is apparent that Theresa May plans to terrorise her turbulent troops into supporting the Chequers-style deal she has cooked up with the EU. A deal at any price? That is the Prime Minister’s position. From the very beginning
The Trump economy has defied all sceptics and naysayers. Unemployment is at half-century record lows, wages are up, and Wall Street opened November by bouncing back from a rocky October. Trump was supposed to be a reckless leader who would panic the markets. He hasn’t. His tariffs were supposed to torpedo the economy. They haven’t. If Americans
Chuka Umunna loves to talk Brexit, telling anyone who will listen what a disaster Britain’s departure from the EU will be. The MP for Streatham has even made several hops across the Channel to discuss the subject with European politicians. But who paid for Chuka’s recent jolly to Paris to talk Brexit? Mr S can
What do people mean when they say Arron Banks ‘bought Brexit’? That phrase is everywhere. It’s a New Statesman headline: ‘The man who bought Brexit.’ He ‘bought Brexit’, the Observer informs us, with his ‘funding of the populist, social media driven Leave.EU campaign’. OpenDemocracy, like many others, wants to know where Banks’ money comes from,
The day’s most anticipated interview came from Arron Banks, the businessman and co-founder of the Brexit campaign group Leave.EU, who agreed to talk with Andrew Marr. Earlier in the week, the Electoral Commission announced that it was referring Banks to the National Crime Agency amid questions over the exact source of Leave.EU’s funding for the
The Mail on Sunday today splashes on “the most biased BBC News bulletin in history” – a reference to the Radio 4 Today programme on the morning after the Budget. I was a guest on that programme, coming in at the end, so I should be pleased to have been a part of history. But
The latest challenge, to supply a short verse biography of a well-known figure from history, produced a commendable entry in which notables long gone — Diotisalvi, Vercingetorix the Gaul, Dr Dee — rubbed shoulders with those still very much with us — Anthony Weiner, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson. There were borrowings from Edward Lear and
The campaign ‘Norway for Now’, an idea promoted by Nick Boles, is that Britain should join the European Economic Area and EFTA, until such time as we can move further out of the EU, for example with a Canada-style free-trade deal. This is what Norway and Iceland and Liechtenstein do. The idea sounds nice as
It is quiet out there, too quiet in the views of many Brexiteers in government. As I say in The Sun this morning, they fear that right now a deal is being done that they’ll be bounced into supporting. They worry that since last week’s Cabinet meeting, there hasn’t been any new Brexit offer put
Obviously it is wrong to attack NHS staff. But does the government’s new ‘zero tolerance’ policy consider why such attacks take place? There are eternal reasons, such as the inherent nastiness of some people, and wider social ones, such as drug abuse. Are there also specific NHS-related ones too, though? The worst aspects of the
In a monumental irony, the ECHR’s agreement with an Austrian court that offensive comments about the Prophet Mohammed were ‘beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate’ has handed a big victory to both Islamists and Islamophobes – while infantilising believing Muslims everywhere. The case concerns an unnamed Austrian woman who held a number of
It can be cruel, the way politics plays out. At the very moment George Osborne was telling the bemused staff of the London Evening Standard that his working life in politics had obscured a passionate desire to become a newspaper editor, a familiar figure could be seen in the fresh meat department of the Whole
Labour, as we know, is a party which has fallen into the hands of a dreamy left-wing idealist who is out of touch with the public, and who has managed to push out the party’s down-to-Earth moderates – people who, like Tony Blair, understand that if Labour wants to win power it must appeal to
The flurry of overnight speculation that a deal had been done to guarantee post-Brexit access for the City to the EU was all a bit odd. It’s true that a few weeks ago, the Treasury over the course of a couple of days successfully negotiated some “high level principles” for what the future access relationship
GK Chesterton observed that “Blasphemy depends on belief, and is fading with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.” And indeed this week began with an orgy of self-congratulation on the part of Irish pundits about the electorate doing away with a reference to
Which UK companies are rewriting the rules and redefining their marketplaces? Earlier this year, The Spectator and Julius Baer launched the inaugural Economic Disruptor Awards to celebrate the most creative entrepreneurs in the UK. Over the past six months, over 100 nominations have been reviewed by our panel. Last night, we announced the winners at
Angela Merkel is stepping down but what is her legacy and can the EU project survive without her? On this week’s Spectator podcast, we also take a look at whether WhatsApp has made it harder for MPs to plot; and ask: should Brits be allowed to forage for wild mushrooms? Merkel has been Germany’s Chancellor
Olivia Potts and I are delighted to be launching Table Talk, a new Spectator Life podcast with Spectator Radio. Each episode, Olivia – who writes the Vintage Chef column – and I will be joined by a guest familiar to Spectator readers. We will discuss their life story, through the food and drink that has
Which UK companies are rewriting the rules and redefining their marketplaces? Earlier this year, The Spectator and Julius Baer launched the inaugural Economic Disruptor Awards to celebrate the most creative entrepreneurs in the UK. Over the past six months, over 100 nominations have been reviewed by our panel. Last night, we announced the winners at a
Another one bites the dust. Sports Minister Tracey Crouch became the latest minister to resign from the government this evening, in protest at Theresa May and Philip Hammond’s decision to delay the introduction of a £2 maximum stake on fixed-odd betting terminals. Crouch’s resignation puts her in the growing group of Conservative MPs who have
Tracey Crouch has resigned as a minister at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, over the Government’s handling of reforms to the rules around fixed-odds betting terminals. I don’t know much about the policy or the events that preceded this, but I know enough about Tracey Crouch to be confident that this is exactly what
The Budget appeared to have landed well. Tory MPs at PMQs on Wednesday were in a notably better mood than normal; a fight with Labour over a tax cut cheered them all up. But this evening some of the sheen has come off the Budget with the resignation of the Sports Minister Tracey Crouch. Crouch
Well done to Sara Thornton, a senior police officer who has warned against extending the definition of a ‘hate crime’ to include misogyny, misandry and ageism. Yesterday, she told a conference of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners that they should be allowed to focus on ‘core’ crimes like burglary, rather than being forced to increase
Arron Banks has been referred to the National Crime Agency in relation to alleged wrongdoing during the referendum. The Electoral Commission said it had ‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect that Banks was not the ‘true source’ of an £8m loan made to Better for the Country, which ran Leave.EU’s campaign. It also said that the money
Once again, America is under attack. If it’s not hordes of migrants swarming over the border, it’s murky jews financing un-American attacks on the president of the United States, aided and abetted by a ‘fake news’ media in hock to the Democrats, liberals, and other malignant handmaidens to American weakness and decline. Of course we
When William Sitwell fired off a rude response to a vegan journalist he probably didn’t think it would cost him his job as editor of Waitrose Food magazine. Nor is it likely that he would have anticipated his email kickstarting the latest battle in the ongoing culture war. Yet that is exactly what has happened.
Is there anyone smugger than the poppy refusenik? I don’t mean people who don’t wear poppies. That’s absolutely fine. Knock yourselves out. I mean people who don’t wear a poppy and who tell everyone they don’t wear a poppy. At every opportunity. ‘It’s poppy-fascism time of year again but I won’t be falling for it
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Another well-heeled luvvee who knows better than the working class people he patronises in his dreadful films. Mike Leigh, then, in an interview from the Nonexistant, I mean Independent: Cut to Brexit,” he continues. “Some boneheads might say; ‘Hang on a minute, we’ve got the vote now and 52 per cent [voted to leave the
Now it is London museums bleating about Brexit. A memo from the V&A released under Freedom of Information laws, warns darkly: ‘we will struggle to keep the museum open to the public in the immediate short term’. A no deal Brexit, it is claimed, could affect visitor numbers from the EU, diminish donations and also