All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Something has changed in the way we cover Syria. In 2015, Turkey began building a wall along the length of its 550-mile frontier with the war zone. The reasons were valid: Turkey wanted to cut the jihadi highway through which tens of thousands of foreigners had travelled into Syria and joined up with Isis. It
Donald J Trump’s State of the Union was as expected: long, boastful, cheesy — and largely right. Trump says he is creating a ‘new American moment’ — and it’s hard to deny that he is. Before he was president, and even in his inauguration speech, Trump painted only a vision of America in ruins. Now,
It was a sound move by Donald Trump to single out the North Korean defector Ji Seong-ho in his first State of the Union address last night. In 2006, Seong-ho had hobbled his way out of what Trump rightly called a ‘depraved country’ to find freedom abroad. ‘Seong-ho, I understand you still keep those crutches
Julian Smith has his work cut out as Chief Whip. As well as trying to stop Tory MPs firing off letters to 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady, Smith must try and keep both Tory Remainers and Tory Brexiteers in line. In a bid to do this, Smith met with the European Research Group – the
Theresa May is in China so the Westminster bunfight has been replaced by dull politics. Journalists hate dull politics. But normal people welcome a few days respite from the cocktail of gossip, malice and envy known as ‘democracy’. David Lidington took the PM’s place. Decent chap. Reliable second-eleven all-rounder. Against him was Labour’s Emily Thornberry
A government minister has just dropped a clanger in the House of Lords – by resigning for missing a question. Lord Bates told peers that he was ‘ashamed’ for not being there to answer a query from Labour’s Baroness Lister. An emotional Bates told the Lords: ‘I am thoroughly ashamed at not being in my
Despite having to answer questions about whether or not she is a ‘quitter’, Theresa May must be reasonably glad that she’s got a few days’ escape from her domestic agenda while she is visiting China. But being away does mean that she has left her party to stew without her, and it’s not clear that
Four Japanese tourists complained to police after their restaurant meal of fish, steak and water cost £243 per head in Venice. Places where they could eat for a little more per head: Paris three-course collection menu at Restaurant le Meurice £335 Maldives Ithaa Undersea Restaurant £360 Lausanne Restaurant Crissier £290 Or if they wanted to economise:
January 31st means two things: firstly, the dreaded day on which your self-assessment tax return is due. And secondly – and probably more cause for celebration – is the fact that it’s the final day of Dry January. For those who gave up alcohol for the month, tonight – being the last day of January
The Brexit ‘inner cabinet’ met on Monday. It was meant to be an important meeting, one which made some real progress on deciding what kind of economic relationship with the EU the UK is seeking. Senior civil servants had been told that the crucial topic of the Irish border would be on the agenda. This
The real story about Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech today may not be what he says, but that Melania is showing up to attend it. Melania, left livid at reports claiming Trump paid porn star Stormy Daniels £90,000 ($130,000) in hush money on the eve of the 2016 election, skipped Davos and has stayed out
As Donald Trump makes his State of the Union address this evening his many opponents have an increasingly large problem: the US economy. Whatever else you might say about the President it is becoming impossible to deny that the economy has done extremely well in the year since he became president. Growth accelerated from 1.5
Oh dear. Theresa May’s bad week just got worse. On top of Tory MPs taking to social media, the airwaves and the papers to criticise her, it now seems that Conservative peers are going public with their grievances. In the new issue of Tatler magazine, Baroness Trumpington – who retired from the Lords last year
Viktor Orban, Hungary’s ‘controversial’ (i.e. conservative) prime minister, travels today to Vienna to meet the new premier of Austria, Sebastian Kurz, for their first serious political conversation since the latter’s election. Orban and Kurz are seen in the conventional narrative shared by the international media, the European Left, and most Western European governments as the terrible
The good news is that the latest civil service analysis of the most likely impact of Brexit is more optimistic than previous civil service estimates of Brexit’s consequences for the British economy. The bad news is that they’re still pretty gloomy. The best case scenario, modelled for officials at the Department for Exiting the EU,
Here we go. First the Stepford students at LSE submitted a motion to ban the university’s free-speech society, next City University students tried banning newspapers at the institution famed for its journalism school, then Lincoln University’s Student Union suspended the Conservative Society’s social media use after young Tories dared to suggest that the powers-that-be were intolerant of
The Conservatives are currently in such disagreement over what the government approach to the second round of Brexit negotiations should be that the vote on the final deal seems a long way off indeed. However, it’s clearly on the mind of the Opposition. At a Resolution Foundation panel event this morning, Len McCluskey – the
Finally some good news for Theresa May. After a tawdry few weeks in which Conservative MPs have taken to Twitter, newspapers and the airwaves to criticise the Prime Minister, May’s premiership looks on shaky ground. Reports on the number of letters calling for a confidence vote in May are said to be getting perilously close
The leaked government Brexit forecasts have this morning been reported by the BBC just as its leakers intended: as embarrassing proof that Brexit is bad for the economy. If it had any vague interest in being impartial, perhaps the Beeb would have bothered to make the rather obvious point: not only have we seen such
Theresa May’s not having a good few weeks. With Tories scrambling to either criticise their leader or covertly campaign to be the next leader, May’s premiership appears to be on shaky ground once more. Add to this a backlash from Conservative Brexiteers and a government Brexit forecast leak and it’s safe to conclude things aren’t
Michel Barnier’s Brexit transition deal offer – under which Britain will continue to pay into the EU’s budget and have no say on rules – has not gone down well with some Brexiteers. The Daily Telegraph says that this suggestion means that the date of when Brexit will happen has effectively been pushed back until
If you’ve got a chunk of money that you don’t mind having locked away for a set amount of time, fixed rate bonds can often give a better rate of return than most accounts. Here are this week’s picks of the best one year fixed rate bonds on the market at the moment. Data supplied
John Humphrys has had a rough time of late. Not only has the Today programme anchor voluntarily taken three pay cuts – with his salary thought to have been cut from £649,000 to under £300,000 – he has received little credit for it. Humphrys has come under flak from all sides after a conversation in
The centrist faction in the Labour Party has been pretty quiet since the snap election, with most MPs who opposed Jeremy Corbyn trying to focus either on Brexit or local issues and avoiding confrontations with the leadership at all costs. But today’s news from Haringey suggests that this isn’t likely to hold. The council’s leader
So this week two things have got feminists cheering and whooping. First, the coming together of BBC women to demand a hike in their already eye-watering levels of pay. And secondly, the erasure of the walk-on women from darts, the sacking, effectively, of these beautiful, usually working-class women who bring a touch of glamour to
Why aren’t spy stories sexy anymore? The revelations last year that Beijing destroyed America’s espionage ring inside China a few years ago, including executing a number of US informants, got a brief flurry of attention and then subsided beneath the waves. News reports of American bureaucrats arrested for passing information to the Chinese have also barely raised
Oh dear. After a weekend of on-the-record briefings against him, it’s safe to say that Philip Hammond has found himself on the wrong side of the Brexiteers. The Chancellor’s comments at Davos about close alignment and minimum change have led his colleagues to see red – with Nadine Dorries calling for him to be sacked.
PM: Mr President, how are you? DT: I’m good thank you, Piers. PM: It’s been a while! DT: It has, since you became my Champion on the Apprentice. PM: Well that was 10 years ago. DT: Can you believe it? It’s a long time but I appreciate all the nice things you’ve said, and every
Can Theresa May really solve the latest crisis affecting her leadership? Previously, her survival owed a great deal to Conservative backbenchers, who vowed to protect her against a badly-behaved Cabinet, but everyone is restless now. So what can she do? The Prime Minister isn’t going to have a personality transplant, but this doesn’t mean that
So was it Corbyn’s appeal to younger voters what swung last year’s general election in his favour? Not according to the British Election Study (BES) which today publishes a paper questioning the received wisdom that Labour’s unexpectedly strong showing was down to a surge of support from younger voters who managed to cast off their apathy
There are many things to worry about with Brexit, but the terms of the transition should be pretty low down that list. The transition was always going to have to be off-the-shelf (if you could negotiate a bespoke transition, you might as well do the final deal) and as long as it is time-limited, it
If any further evidence was needed about the disingenuousness of Jeremy Corbyn and the dangers a government led by him might pose internationally – not just for Britain but also for Britain’s Nato allies – it is worth watching Corbyn’s interview on Iran with the BBC’s Andrew Marr yesterday. ‘You’ve been very reluctant to condemn
Sir: Sir James Dyson is right (Letters, 20 January). We need big farming; that is where our food comes from. But the elephant in the room is tax — inheritance tax and roll-over relief — which of course he conveniently skirts. Farming at this level needs subsidy precisely because land is too expensive for food production
All progress is war on the past and millennials are particularly merciless combatants. The arrival of Friends on Netflix UK has had this neo-Victorian generation reaching for its fainting couch. Through woke eyes, the hit NBC sitcom isn’t a diverting entertainment but an artefact of racism, sexism and homophobia. If you were a twentysomething during