Next Wednesday Rachel Reeves will stand up in the House of Commons to deliver what she is calling her ‘spring forecast’. As so often with political language, everyone in Westminster knows it is no such thing, just as there was nothing ‘mini’ about Kwasi Kwarteng’s Budget of September 2022. The ‘spring forecast’ will be an
Washington D.C. For Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, it’s a case of today Ukraine, tomorrow the world. In their much-hyped telephone call this week, the Russian leader didn’t appear to give much away: a step towards a sort-of ceasefire, a prisoner swap and a few other bits and bobs. But Putin knows that Trump wants
Dominic Cummings may have left Whitehall but his spirit lives on. Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has repurposed Cummings’s call for ‘weirdos and misfits’ as a plea for ‘innovators and disruptors’. Downing Street this month launched an ‘AI Ideas’ competition in pursuit of bright sparks. A hackathon will follow. In No.
This year the European Convention on Human Rights and its Strasbourg court are 75 years old – the age at which British judges are obliged to retire. Is it time for Britain to retire from this ageing institution? Not according to the Attorney-General, Lord Hermer, a former human rights lawyer, who recently pledged that under
It’s not hard to see why the 93-year-old, wheelchair-bound Princess Astrid of Norway might feel that now is the moment to remind Norwegians ‘I can still be useful for something’, as she did in a rare interview last month. The Princess, who is the sister of 88-year-old King Harald, was awarded an honorary pension by
There is a war being waged in NHS hospitals. On one side are overstretched junior doctors in understaffed wards. On the other: physician associates (PAs) or, to use the more disparaging term, ‘noctors’. Since 2003, non-medical graduates have been able to gain entry to hospital wards and GP practices if they complete a two-year clinical
No one covers up their war crimes any more. They film them, celebrate them, post them on X. So we have videos from Syria this week showing Islamist fighters making terrified Alawite men get on their hands and knees and howl like dogs. In one video, the victims crawl along a street spattered with blood
The Congolese chapter of Islamic State has a ruthless way of stopping outsiders reporting their presence to the authorities. Under the edicts of their founder, Jamil Mukulu, who once lived as a cleric in London, anyone who strays across them in their forest hideouts should be killed on sight. ‘Slaughter him or her, behead them
David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, and Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, had rather tellingly different responses to the latest wave of violence in Syria. Lammy deplored the ‘horrific violence’ but failed to address where that violence was coming from. Rubio, by contrast, stated clearly that ‘radical Islamist terrorists’ were targeting minorities in Syria, including
Oscar, 26, joins me on Google Meet from Buenos Aires, having arrived earlier that day from New York – by way of a few hours in Mexico City and Panama. Just five days ago, he was in London. ‘New York was just going to be a weekend trip for a conference, but then I thought
No country in the UK receives more public money per head than Scotland. An extra £2,200 is spent on every person living there than in England – and £1,900 more than the UK average. Yet public services north of the border are falling apart. Take education. Scotland spends more per pupil than anywhere else –
It was a routine antenatal appointment. I’d done it twice before and knew the format. The obstetrician runs through the risks of an elective caesarean (ELCS). We agree a date, I sign the forms, then make a plea for adequate pain relief after the surgery, which I know will be ignored. So I was blindsided
‘Not marble nor the gilded monuments of princes,’ wrote Shakespeare, ‘shall outlive this powerful rhyme.’ To be a great poet, as the Stratford man knew, is to be immortal. But there’s another way to achieve immortality through verse – and that is the route taken by William McGonagall, the ‘worst poet in history’, who was
When my old school, Presentation College, Reading, was demolished a decade ago, the Labour council desperately searched for famous old boys after whom they could name streets on the housing estate that replaced it. This was a challenge. According to the local newspaper, ‘names rejected include one in recognition of Mike Oldfield, the musician behind
I’m on the 10.45 slow train to Ipswich. It’s not even lunchtime, yet everyone around me is already gorging on food. The corpulent man opposite is posting fistfuls of cheesy Doritos into his gaping maw, washing them down with cheap lager. A woman is noisily chomping her way through a limp burger that reeks of
In Sergio Leone’s epic spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Blondie, played by Clint Eastwood, and Tuco, played by Eli Wallach, are rival hunters for stolen Confederate gold. The treasure, they discover, is buried in a huge Civil War cemetery. Unfortunately, they have no idea exactly where. Having earlier taken the precaution
One of many reasons I felt blessed, seven years ago, to be offered a professorship at the private University of Buckingham to teach modern British history was that Buckingham appeared to reject the doctrinal horrors that were, and still are, poisoning many other universities. I, blissfully, had never heard the term ‘woke’, which certainly did
The Forcan Ridge off Glen Shiel can be a tricky place this time of year. There wasn’t a huge amount of snow, but the rocks in places were encased in ice. Without crampons, an ice axe and a head for what you are doing there are plenty of opportunities to fall to your death, but
Too many books? Yes, we had too many books. That’s what our social worker told us when we were being assessed to see whether we were suitable parents to adopt a baby from China back in 1996. It seemed to us, a middle-class, well-educated couple, an extraordinary statement and so it appeared to our friends
One of the great recurring James Bond tropes is to make it look as though 007 has actually been killed before the film’s title credits. You Only Live Twice, From Russia with Love and Skyfall all begin with Bond in a position where his demise seems inevitable. Of course, he always turns up alive. (Quite
