Westminster

Saturday

James Forsyth

3 things we should do to help tackle the Islamist terror threat

Those charged with keeping Britain safe from Islamist-inspired terrorism have always been clear that it was a question of when, not if, there would be another attack as I say in The Sun this morning. The one thing that has surprised the security services about this attack is the age of the terrorist. Up to now, their focus had been on angry young people. No one was planning for a 50 something terrorist. Our way of life should not change in response to this terrorist attack. But there are things we can do to combat this threat more intelligently. The security services don’t have the manpower to follow everyone who

Friday

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: How can we prevent a repeat of the Westminster attack?

Theresa May told MPs yesterday that Britain will not waver in the face of terrorism. She is widely praised for her emotional address in the Commons, in which she said simply: ‘We are not afraid’. But still the question lingers: what can we do to prevent a repeat of Wednesday’s attack? Theresa May hit precisely the right note in her address to MPs, says the Daily Telegraph, which compares the Prime Minister’s response to that of Margaret Thatcher’s after the Brighton bombing in 1984. Yet while her message is an important one, there are ‘inevitable questions’. The Telegraph says that already we’re following the ‘gloomy familiar aftermath’ to an attack,

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Pray for London, for Antwerp, for Nice: this is Europe’s new normal

The hashtag ‘PrayForLondon’ is trending on social media. But so is ‘Antwerp’. Because no sooner were we invited to pray for London than a man of ‘North African descent’ was narrowly prevented from doing something similar in the Belgian city. This is life as usual in Europe now, of course. But among the endless replays to date – and the endless replays yet to come – there are several things worth noting about Wednesday’s attack in London. The first is that the perpetrator – now identified as one Khalid Masood – was in one sense unusual. A recent comprehensive analysis published by my colleague Hannah Stuart found that among Islamist-related offences

Ed West Ed West

Around the world, Westminster is a byword for political moderation

As many people have remarked, a terror attack in the centre of London was expected at some point, although it is no less shocking for that. Aside from St Peter’s Basilica or perhaps the Eiffel Tower, there is probably no other European building as recognisable to Europe’s enemies as the Palace of Westminster. Theresa May wasn’t quite correct when she referred to it as the oldest Parliament – both Iceland and the Isle of Man have more ancient bodies, being descended from those egalitarian Vikings – but it’s certainly fair to call Westminster the Mother of Parliaments, a powerful symbol of representative government. Just west of the city of London

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Isis claim responsibility for Westminster terror attack

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for yesterday’s deadly terror attack in Westminster. Isis described the man involved – a British-born jihadist who has been named by police as Khalid Masood – as a ‘soldier of Islamic State’. The terror group released a short statement, saying: ‘The attacker yesterday in front of the British Parliament in London was a solider of the Islamic State, executing the operation in response to calls to target citizens of coalition nations’. The statement from Isis was published by the Amaq News Agency, a propaganda outlet with links to the organisation. Despite claiming responsibility for the attack, however, Isis released no further details about the man involved. Police said

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The scale of Islamist extremism is a problem for MI5

In her statement to the House of Commons, Theresa May said that the man responsible for yesterday’s attack was British-born and had previously been investigated by MI5 ‘in relation to concerns about violent extremism’. However, May stressed that, ‘The case is historic—he was not part of the current intelligence picture.’  Now, the fact that the attacker was known to the security services will lead to questions about why a closer watch wasn’t being kept on him. But there is, frankly, a volume problem here. The number of radicalised individuals is now so large — there are several thousand Islamist extremists being monitored by MI5 — that the security services have

The Spectator

Westminster terror attack: Theresa May’s statement to the Commons

Mr Speaker, yesterday an act of terrorism tried to silence our democracy. But today we meet as normal – as generations have done before us, and as future generations will continue to do – to deliver a simple message: we are not afraid. And our resolve will never waiver in the face of terrorism. And we meet here, in the oldest of all Parliaments, because we know that democracy, and the values it entails, will always prevail. Those values – free speech, liberty, human rights and the rule of law – are embodied here in this place, but they are shared by free people around the world. A terrorist came

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Westminster terror attack: Today’s newspaper front pages

Five people are now confirmed to have died in yesterday’s terror attack in Westminster and police have arrested seven people in connection with the incident. Here’s how the newspaper editorials and front pages have covered the atrocity: The Sun says the terrorists are wrong if they think that yesterday’s attack means ‘we will be cowed’. The nation will mourn those killed but ‘normal life goes on’. But the Sun says that we must now rethink how to tackle the terror threat. Yesterday’s attacker ‘could barely have picked a more ­fortified place’, the paper points out. But ‘imagine how much greater the carnage might have been elsewhere’. ‘Britain must consider a

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Westminster attack: Terrorist named by police

A terrorist who killed four people and injured forty others in yesterday’s ‘depraved’ attack in Westminster has been named by police. Khalid Masood, 52, who was born in Kent and is believed to have been living in the West Midlands, was a career criminal with a series of previous convictions. Scotland Yard named the Westminster attacker hours after Theresa May told MPs that the man responsible had previously been investigated by MI5. In her statement to the Commons, the PM also paid tribute to the dead police officer, PC Keith Palmer, who she said was ‘every inch a hero’. Aysha Frade, 43, who worked at a college in Westminster, Kurt Cochran, an American tourist,

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Theresa May tells the country to go about its business normally tomorrow

Speaking in Downing Street this evening, Theresa May has urged people to go about their business normally tomorrow. In a statement that struck an appropriately defiant tone, May said that the targeting of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament ‘was no accident’. But that that any attempt to defeat the values of ‘democracy, freedom, human rights, the rule of law’ through ‘violence and terror is doomed to fail’. Talking of the police officer who died in the attack, and the others who have been injured, she praised the ‘exceptional bravery of our police and security services who risk their lives to keep us safe’. This is the first terrorist attack

The Spectator

Westminster terror attack: Theresa May’s speech

I have just chaired a meeting of the Government’s emergency committee, COBRA, following the sick and depraved terrorist attack on the streets of our Capital this afternoon. The full details of exactly what happened are still emerging. But, having been updated by police and security officials, I can confirm that this appalling incident began when a single attacker drove his vehicle into pedestrians walking across Westminster Bridge, killing two people and injuring many more, including three police officers. This attacker, who was armed with a knife, then ran towards Parliament where he was confronted by the police officers who keep us – and our democratic institutions – safe. Tragically, one

Friday

Stephen Daisley

MPs can no longer employ family members – and SpAds are delighted

It wasn’t quite our answer to the West Wing — too young, too cynical — but it filled a Bartlet-shaped hole in the TV schedule. Party Animals followed a clique of sexually bipartisan political advisers at Westminster in the dying days of New Labour. Matt Smith and Andrea Riseborough played researchers to a Caroline Flintish Home Office minister, pragmatic and idealistic in the right measure, while Shelley Conn and Pip Carter worked for her shadow number, a sort of dishy Ed Vaizey eager to modernise the Tories one decriminalised spliff at a time. There was little in the way of Sam Seaborn idealism and the implausibly attractive leads seemed to

Thursday

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

The return of the What’s That Thing? Award for bad public art

Wouldn’t it be nice, in these divided times, for humanity to have a common enemy – preferably an inanimate one. Welcome to the What’s That Thing? Award. We’re in our second year, hunting down the most execrable new pieces of public art that have appeared in the past year in this country and this time we’ve teamed up with the Architecture Foundation. The prize grew out of a report I wrote six years ago when we were at peak public-art-as-urban-panacea and every council was desperately clambering over itself to add a bit of swanky tat to their portfolio of local amenities. (I remember going to a public art ‘consultation exercise’ in John O’Groats where two artists delivered a powerpoint presentation to

Tuesday

Melanie McDonagh

John Bercow should have kept his trap shut about Donald Trump

John Bercow is a little chap, and no harm in that, but does he really need to grandstand about his inviolable liberalism? Do we really need to know that ‘opposition to racism and sexism’ were ‘hugely important considerations’ in making him raise an issue which should have been left well alone, viz, the theoretical possibility that President Trump would address parliament in Westminster Hall? It wasn’t an issue, not really, until the Speaker sounded off about his opposition to it. We all know that he’s terrifically sound on all this stuff; we knew without him opening his trap what he thought about the Trump travel ban; he didn’t really need

Thursday

The Spectator

Power and the people

When The Spectator was founded 188 years ago, it became part of what would now be described as a populist insurgency. An out-of-touch Westminster elite, we said, was speaking a different language to the rest of London, let alone the rest of the country. Too many ‘of the bons mots vented in the House of Commons appear stale and flat by the time they have travelled as far as Wellington Street’. This would be remedied, we argued, by extending the franchise and granting the vote to the emerging middle class. Our Tory critics said any step towards democracy — a word which then caused a shudder — would start a

Thursday

Hugo Rifkind

Let’s shut out this angry, unrepresentative mob

If you’re aiming to refute the suggestion that you can’t comprehend the difference between mob rule and the rule of law, then I suspect it’s probably a bad idea to raise a mob and lead it marching on a law court. Just my little hunch. Yet here come Nigel Farage and his piggybank Arron (Piggy) Banks with a plan to do just that. When the Supreme Court meets next month, the chaps behind Leave.EU aim to lead a march of 100,000 people to Parliament Square, to remind the chaps in wigs what Britain jolly well voted for. As if that had anything to do with anything at all. So far,

Monday

Alex Wickham

The good, the bad and the ugly: a guided tour of Westminster’s pubs

My phone vibrates with a three-letter text message heralding another inevitable Westminster hangover: “MoG?”. The Marquis of Granby pub on Romney Street is an old-fashioned sort of boozer: mahogany-panelled bar with a chandeliered burgundy ceiling and a gents you have to wade through. There’s none of your poncey hipster food served on slabs of wood here; if you head to the upstairs dining room you’re having a pie and a pint. You can see why Nigel Farage loves this place for a photo opportunity. I’m meeting another journalist for an ale and a gossip, but this used to be a Tory haunt before Conservative Central Office moved from Smith Square.

Thursday

Matthew Parris

Something must be done for Wales

On Monday 25 July we climbed Cader Idris. No particular reason except a free Monday and a memory of what a fine mountain it looked when, many years ago and heading for the north Wales coast, I skirted this massive ridged hunk of green and black rising from oak forests. Some hills have a strong sense of their own identity and Cader Idris impresses itself on all who see it. It’s a walk, really, not a climb, but at just under 3,000 feet a big, steep walk, taking four or five hours up and down. So we set out from Derbyshire at seven and were there in three-and-a-half hours. In

Thursday

James Walton

MPs and DTs

In 1964, a newly elected Labour MP was put in charge of the House of Commons kitchen committee. (An unpromising start to a review, I appreciate, but bear with me.) His idea of selling off the House’s rather splendid wine cellar duly appalled some MPs, but was accepted as a useful money-making scheme. Only later did it emerge that he’d bought/ripped off a collection of the best bottles for himself at a bargain price, and that this was not untypical behaviour — because the Labour MP was Robert Maxwell. Order, Order! is packed with memorable tales like this. Ben Wright does give us all the old drinking-story classics, as George

Monday

Steerpike

Andrea Leadsom promises not to be the candidate for the rich… while speaking at restaurant of the super-rich

Today Andrea Leadsom has officially launched her campaign to be the next Tory leader. Speaking at the Cinnamon Club, the former banker declared that she would not be the candidate for the rich; ‘the richest people in Britain will not be my priority’. However, Mr S cant help but wonder if she should have gone for a different choice of venue if she wants to be taken seriously as a voice of the working people. After all, the Cinnamon Club is one of Westminster’s most expensive restaurants. A favourite of the metropolitan elite, the Indian restaurant serves a special gin punch for £400 a bowl. Meanwhile it’s hard to get through a lunch