Tom Goodenough is online editor of The Spectator.
Theresa May’s £150,000 pay packet is dwarfed by that of many council employees up and down the country. Nearly 600 council staff now earn more money than the Prime Minister each year, and a report from the Taxpayers Alliance reveals that thousands of local authority employees earn six-figure sums. With many councils talking up fears about
Mark Reckless infuriated many Tories when he defected to Ukip. Now, he’s defected again – and made few people happy in the process. The Ukip AM has announced that he is joining the Conservative Group in the Welsh Assembly, where he sits as a regional representative. Not for the first time, he is following in
Ken Livingstone’s Labour membership card remains valid – but for how long? The former Mayor of London avoided being booted out of the party following his comments about Hitler. But he was told by Jeremy Corbyn yesterday that he faces another investigation into remarks he has made since the party’s decision to suspend him. The
The sorry saga of what Labour decides to do about Ken Livingstone isn’t over yet. In the last few moments, Jeremy Corbyn has released a statement saying Livingstone will now face a fresh probe into comments that he made about Hitler since yesterday – when he avoided being booted out of the party for doing exactly
Is Theresa May’s media honeymoon over? The bungled Budget might have led to a raft of bad headlines for the Government, but these were mostly aimed in Philip Hammond’s direction. Today, the Sun turns its fire on the Prime Minister. The paper says May has ‘shown she understands what most Brits want’ from Brexit. But
Theresa May says the way to deal with the row over Gibraltar is ‘jaw-jaw’ rather than war. And there is plenty of chatter on the subject in today’s newspapers: Of course we don’t want a war with Spain, says the Sun. But ‘nor will we sit quietly’ and let Madrid ‘launch its latest ridiculous attempt
Ten people have been killed and dozens injured in an explosion on the St Petersburg metro. The blast happened onboard a train travelling between the Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations in the city centre. Russian news agency Interfax said that at least 50 people were hurt. There are reports that the device which exploded was a nail bomb
Donald Trump once said that he wanted to share a hamburger with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. Now that he’s President, fast food diplomacy looks to be off the menu. Instead, the tough talk has started and Trump has used an interview with the FT today to warn that America will act against North Korea unless China
Remember the hoo-ha about the sharp fall in the number of EU students applying to study at British universities? Numbers were down, we were told, and there was only one reason: Brexit. In the months since the referendum, applications from EU students have fallen by seven per cent. Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, told MPs
The Great Repeal Bill has been unveiled – and Whitehall is already alive with the sound of copying and pasting as bureaucrats scramble to carry over EU law on to the statute book. With the Brexit clock ticking, is the Government up to the task? Make no mistake, this bill is the ‘the blueprint for
Britain’s biggest exercise in copying and pasting has begun in earnest. The Government has published its Great Repeal Bill White Paper, which it says is vital to ensuring that whether we end up with a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Brexit (or any other type of Brexit), it’ll be a ‘smooth’ Brexit. The scale of the task
We’re off! The two year countdown until Brexit has begun. Theresa May’s triggering of Article 50 has been met with unanimous praise in the press, with the newspaper editorials saying the PM hit all the right notes in her letter. But there was controversy too. Some are saying the inclusion of a message suggesting Britain’s
Britain is on its way out of the European Union. In the last few moments, Theresa May stood up in the Commons and announced that Article 50 had been triggered. She told MPs: ‘The Article 50 process is now underway. And in accordance with the wishes of the British People, the United Kingdom is leaving
Theresa May has put pen to paper on the Article 50 letter that will kick-start the process of Brexit. March 29th, 2017, will join June 23rd, 2016, as a key date in Britain’s modern history. The papers are unanimous in seeing today as a momentous moment. But they are also clear in their view that
The clock is ticking. At 12.30pm tomorrow, Theresa May will be on her feet in the Commons declaring that Article 50 has been triggered. Finally, nine months after the referendum, Britain will be heading out of the EU. The moment itself is likely to be underwhelming and we’re unlikely to find out much more of
Amber Rudd has vowed to ‘call time’ on tech companies who are giving terrorists ‘a place to hide’. The Home Secretary’s comments come after it emerged that Westminster attacker Khalid Masood was sending encrypted message on WhatsApp in the lead-up to the attack; Rudd is ‘right to read them the Riot Act’, says the Sun, which ups the
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
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
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’.
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