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On this week’s podcast: Can Rishi Sunak steady the ship? Patrick O’Flynn argues in his cover piece for The Spectator that the asylum system is broken. He is joined by Sunder Katwala, director of the think tank British Future, to consider what potential solutions are open to the Prime Minister to solve the small boats crisis (00:52).
England did not expect. That was the key to this summer’s World Cup. Last night’s defeat by Croatia was a gut-wrenching disappointment. Yet four weeks ago, any England fan told that the World Cup run would end in extra-time in the semi-finals would have jumped at the prospect. On and off the pitch, it has
England kick off their World Cup campaign today by putting their faith in youth as they take on Tunisia: Gareth Southgate’s squad have the lowest average age and the fewest caps won of any of the 32 teams at the tournament. Only three of the squad – Gary Cahill, Ashley Young and Jamie Vardy – had
A new word has entered the lexicon – Brexodus – to reflect the claim that Europeans are leaving in droves as they shun post-Brexit Britain. But it is a funny sort of Brexodus which leaves the number of European nationals in Britain at an all-time high. While the quarterly immigration figures did show a significant
The decision to allow Anne Marie Waters – co-founder of anti-Islam group Pegida UK alongside former EDL leader Tommy Robinson – to stand for leadership of Ukip has created fresh fractures within a party that is preparing for its third leadership contest in a turbulent twelve months. Criticism of Waters’ candidacy has come not only from the modernising
After nineteen hours without food, nor even a drop of water, the prospect of the single succulent date which breaks the fast looms ever larger in the mind as sunset nears. A few minutes after nine o’clock last night, similar scenes were doubtless playing out in mosques and Muslim homes around Britain. But this event
There have been one or two calls to brand Ukip a racist party, and some media debate about whether it is. But what’s become clear during the last fortnight is that there is a strong, cross-party consensus both that Ukip isn’t a ‘racist party’ – and that it must get better at keeping out individuals
Who was the greatest sporting star who fought in the first world war? It is a difficult argument to settle at a century’s distance, with nobody still alive who saw them play and only fleeting glimpses from the very first steps of the newsreel era. The names are less familiar now, but contemporary accounts of
It seems strange now to recall that, it was not so many years ago, around the time of the millennium, that some in Whitehall were talking about how to scale down Remembrance Sunday. One theory was that marking the centenaries of the start and end of the Great War could also mark an appropriate moment
History is written by the victors. So Richard III might have anticipated that his death at Bosworth Field in 1485, the last English monarch to be killed on the battlefield, would only be the start of a downward reputational spiral. The last five hundred years have not been good for the man whose remains may
McDonald Bailey was certainly among the most famous names in British sport when Britain last hosted the Olympics, in 1948. Yet today he has almost been forgotten. It’s not how it should have been. He should have been our Jesse Owens. Look at a photo of the British Olympic team of 1948 and Bailey stands
