Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
There are moments that cut through the din of braggadocio, vindictive utopianism and arrant stupidity surrounding Brexit. Anna Soubry has provided one in an impertinence during yesterday’s debate on the cross-border trade bill. She let into Jacob Rees-Mogg and his European Research Group (ERG) for coercing ministers to abandon much of the substance of the
David Davis has walked away. It’s what he does best. DDexit was inevitable from the moment he was appointed Brexit secretary. Davis is a quitter, not a fixer; asked to compromise, his preference is always for blowing the whole show up. Reports suggest he was especially irked by the No. 10 briefing about ministers being
Is it coming home? If it is, don’t expect all the home nations to welcome it. In Scotland, the dismal grunt of ‘Anyone but England’ (ABE) is the balm that soothes our aggrieved wee souls. It’s never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman watching England do well and even the most fleeting flicker of sunshine.
Pity the flunky at Bute House, official residence of Nicola Sturgeon, whose job it is to get the red carpet ready for formal visits. The poor lad mustn’t know whether he’s coming or going. Two weeks ago, the First Minister said it wasn’t ‘appropriate at this time for the red carpet to be rolled out’
To understand what has gone wrong in the American judicial appointments process, look no further than the apocalyptic hysteria which has greeted the retirement of Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy. Reagan appointee Kennedy has come to be seen as a ‘swing vote’ on the Court, though deciding to retire during the Trump administration has seen
Forgive me if I seem out of sorts but my country has been through a lot this past week. We have been subjected to ‘provocation’ and our imperial masters in Westminster intend to ‘exert a kind of colonial authority’ over us. Our parliament has been ‘slighted’ and we are bearing the ‘impact of such condescension on
The SNP thinks Westminster is an anachronism but boy does it love those anachronisms. The Nationalists’ London leader Ian Blackford got himself thrown out of the Commons for disrupting Prime Minister’s Questions. Blackford attempted to move — inartfully and tagged onto a question rather than as a substantive motion — that the House sit in
You can tell a lot about a leader by the diplomats they choose to represent them. Brezhnev had Anatoly Dobrynin, Nixon had Henry Kissinger, and Benjamin Netanyahu has Regina George. The queen bitch of North Shore High, fictional setting of the 2004 teen comedy Mean Girls, is blunt, conniving and vicious with a mid-hallway putdown.
On Sunday, thousands of demonstrators will gather outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in London for the annual al-Quds Day march. From there, they will proceed through the capital chanting ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ – which is to say, the State of Israel will be destroyed. Alongside the Palestinian tricolour,
Those who worry that Channel 4 has become risk-averse might be fretting needlessly. The broadcaster has shortlisted Glasgow as a location for its new headquarters. Currently, C4 has only 30 staff based outside London and hopes shifting its HQ to the regions, along with two other ‘hubs’, will help it better reflect that narrow slice of the
It’s always the ones you most expect. Roseanne Barr, an icon of Trump culture, has had her TV sitcom cancelled by ABC after she tweeted that former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett was the product of a union between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes. Jarrett is black and was born in Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the most unloved and unlovable figures in Israeli politics, a solid finish in a competitive field. Yet when it comes to polling day, his Likud party watches ‘Bibi’ pull off another win. Many consider him venal, duplicitous, arrogant, vain and loutish. His opponents have even worse things to say. Israeli
There are few sights more pitiful than Labour ‘moderates’ – I prefer to call them what they are: Corbyn-enablers – plating up meagre scraps as a feast of optimism for the party’s future. Last week, it was the routing of Momentum – and Unite-backed candidates for the Lewisham East by-election. That didn’t last long. Now, it’s
Oh Israel, why must you do it? Why must you make such an almighty balagan of these things? Hamas is out to provoke you and you are evidently in the market for provocation. Would it kill you to step back and find a way of resolving a crisis that doesn’t involve dead Palestinians and international
Are you considering a career in Labour politics but fear you may be left behind amid all the exciting changes the party is undergoing? Maybe you want to be a part of the Jez revolution but can’t get your head around the ever-developing terminology. Perhaps you are eyeing up a safe seat but aren’t sure which paramilitary
When Donald Trump pledged to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I was sceptical. Too many presidents had given then broken their word; Trump, before he ran for the White House, was lukewarm on Israel. When President Trump issued a proclamation recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, I was
An unexpected downside of Donald Trump’s presidency is the rare occasion on which he makes a wise call. Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran deal is wise and demonstrates a clear understanding of Tehran’s motives and tactics. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, and it was sold
There is a divide in Britain, one that cleaves us apart more sharply than Leave vs Remain, north vs south, or moody Owen Jones vs needy Owen Jones. Our real national fault-line is Kay Burley. The Sky News presenter is everywhere right now. She was named Broadcast Journalist of the Year by the London Press
When it became clear that Labour had fallen far short of its overhyped expectations in the local elections, I tweeted this: https://twitter.com/JournoStephen/status/992317867004657664 I would now like to retract, but only in one instance. Adam Langleben, councillor for West Hendon in Barnet, lost his seat on Thursday. Given Barnet’s sizeable Jewish population, and Labour now being
One of the joys of living under a nationalist government is the exciting pace at which the facts change. What was axiomatic yesterday may be contested today and heretical tomorrow. There is no burden of knowledge because what has happened can unhappen as the need arises. Nationalists, Orwell diagnosed, are ‘haunted by the belief that the
