All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Jonathan Porritt’s arrest under the Terrorism Act 2000 is the apogee of a ‘luxury belief.’ Unlike the dozens of other younger people arrested in Westminster on Saturday for supporting the proscribed organisation Palestine Action (PA), Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet CBE is a longstanding member of the administrative and political boss class. He declared
What was Nicola Sturgeon thinking, reopening the war with Alex Salmond, her former mentor, who died last year, in her forthcoming book, Frankly? What did she hope to gain by raking over the darkest episode in Scottish nationalist history, claiming that it was all an attempt by Salmond to ‘destroy’ her politically? Poor me, wronged by
Over 1,265 days of full-scale war, Volodymyr Zelensky has delivered almost as many nightly addresses to the nation. Only a handful have been truly decisive. There was one just hours before the invasion when he asked, ‘Do the Russians want war?’ and vowed that Ukraine would defend itself. The next day, standing outside his office
The Home Secretary’s extension of the list of countries covered by the ‘deport now, appeal later’ scheme for foreign criminals, announced this morning, doesn’t actually add to the number of undesirables that we can deport. But it could lubricate the process of getting rid of them. Barring a Damascene conversion of the Strasbourg court, something
Oh dear. If Scotland’s former Dear Leader thought she could have an interview about her legacy that didn’t touch on the question of putting male rapists in women’s prisons she was sorely mistaken. Nicola Sturgeon has come under fire for a promotional clip ahead of tonight’s ITV interview with the ex-SNP leader. In the clip,
I haven’t written a poem in memory of Biddy Baxter, stern matriarch of Blue Peter, who died yesterday but here is one I made earlier. First, a brief thought on the programme that she edited from 1962-1988. On one level, it was just a magazine show for children – a bit of chat, a few
13 min listen
Another day, another Reform party press conference. Following political editor Tim Shipman’s cover piece on how Reform hopes to win over women, this morning’s event was led by the party’s top female politicians: MP Sarah Pochin, Greater Lincolnshire Mayor Dame Andrea Jenkyns, Westminster councillor Laila Cunningham, and Linden Kemkaran, the leader of Kent County Council.
To Lord Hermer, Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial Attorney General. It transpires that the British barrister will be given the final say on whether hundreds of protestors arrested for supporting Palestine Action at the weekend will be prosecuted – with the Tories piling pressure on the government to ‘enforce the law’. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick
When should a foreign offender be deported? The government’s new policy is that foreign offenders should be deported immediately after conviction, rather than after having served some fraction of a sentence of imprisonment imposed by a court. The measure is framed as ‘radical action’ to strengthen border security and to fix the broken criminal justice system, with
From Lord Kinnock’s demand for a wealth tax and VAT on private health fees to Gordon Brown pressing for gambling taxes, it is plain that Labour has run out of ideas other than dreaming up new ways to part us from our money. Even so, Kemi Badenoch is ill-advised to go on an all-out attack
Over the last few years, we heard a lot about how the giant turbines that dominate hillsides and coastlines across Britain and Europe would power a new era of prosperity. They will generate an endless supply of cheap, environmentally friendly energy. They will create hundreds of thousands of ‘well-paid green jobs’. And the countries that
There have been some interesting takes on Saturday’s protest in London by supporters of Palestine Action. The police arrested 522 people for expressing their support for the organisation, which has been proscribed under the Terrorism Act. But shockingly, according to a social media post by German comedian Henning Wehn, those arrests include geography teachers. ‘I
In 1968, the American broadcaster Walter Cronkite told his national TV audience the United Stated was losing the war in Vietnam, causing then-president Lyndon Johnson to remark, ‘If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America’, soon after declaring he would not stand for re-election. As he moves to implement a total occupation of Gaza in his
Amidst contradictory leaks and rumours coming from the US administration, no one is quite sure what to expect when Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska on Friday – not even the Russian press. Nonetheless, they seem rather less convinced that Trump is about to stitch up the Ukrainians than the Western media. On
‘It is in Alaska and in the Arctic that the economic interests of our countries converge and prospects for implementing large-scale mutually beneficial projects arise,’ said Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s long-time foreign policy adviser and former Russian ambassador to the United States, at a Friday press conference in Moscow. His words pointed to Arctic economic
What comes around goes around. After a short stint in Westminster after he won the Rochdale by-election in February 2024, George Galloway is now eying up a political comeback north of the border. The leader of the Workers Party of Britain has revealed that he will be the party’s second option on the regional list
Nicola Sturgeon gets an easy ride with the English media. This weekend, with a book to flog and an image to launder, we’ve had to endure another round of interviews with the former first minister. And what have we learnt? Her sexuality is ‘non-binary’; she has ‘famed emotional intelligence’; she handled Covid better than Boris;
I told off four strangers last week. The first was a foreign gentleman lounging on a side lawn at Marble Arch and cooking a meal. He fanned the flames of his makeshift barbecue with a flap of cardboard as four women in long robes looked on, awaiting their feast. ‘You can’t cook here’, I said.
On reading that Dean Cain (the actor who played the television Superman) had become an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, I felt a thrill of insurrection – so hot on the heels of the revelation that naughty Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican! I imagined Rosie O’Donnell crying into her morning decaf, Lizzo swearing at
Farming is hard, and sheep farming especially so. Sheep are endearing but awkward creatures, generally looking for the most inconvenient way to die. The weather is usually miserable. Lambing is an annual torment. The government is always dreaming up new ways to make things harder. In a real sense, I’m writing this because sheep farming
On both sides of the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, loudspeakers blasting news, music, weather reports, wailing sounds, or anti-DPRK messaging have formed a regular part of life along one of the world’s most militarised borders. Yet the South Korean government’s decision to remove these loudspeakers, which commenced on Monday, sets a
It was a hairy situation. At a drab corporate dinner in a posh hotel basement, one of my fellow diners grew increasingly prickly. My publication had committed some slight against him – perhaps passing him over for one of our phoney awards, more likely misspelling his name. Unassuaged by my non-apologies, the fur was beginning
In the UK today, hold the wrong view and you’re cast as beyond the pale. Brexiteers are bigots. If you oppose mass immigration, you’re a far right racist. Among parts of the political class and commentariat, these labels are considered the consensus. The political and media establishment have crafted a narrative in which dissent from
Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has posed a fascinating counter-factual question about our Prime Minister: what if Keir Starmer rather than Winston Churchill had been Prime Minister in World War Two? Huckabee’s characterisation of him as the arch appeaser may be a little harsh, but it does have the ring of truth The
It is generally agreed that Britain needs to improve its China capabilities. That a greater understanding of Chinese culture, history and language is needed in the UK was one of the few tangible findings from the government’s ‘China audit’, the bare bones of which were published earlier this year. But what happens when institutions responsible
My Oxfordshire taproom used to sing on Fridays: carpenters, teachers and office clerks, knackered from the week’s graft, would elbow for pints in a natural democracy of nods and grins. The bar was a grand leveller – toff or tiler, all waited their turn and banter stitched the room together. Post-pandemic, that tune has gone
The first Cold War thriller I ever read – before MacLean, before Le Carre, before Clancy – was Biggles Buries a Hatchet, from 1958, in which James Bigglesworth MC, DSO, of the Air Police, heads for Siberia to spring his nemesis Von Stalhein from a Soviet prison camp. The wily old German had first crossed
I may be the last person in the UK to have seen the 1999 film Human Traffic (rereleased last month). Justin Kerrigan’s inspired, low-budget comedy – which I watched this week – is about a group of clubbers and ecstasy-heads out for a night’s fun in Cardiff. Starring actors like John Simm, Shaun Parkes and
The golden era of flying is over: rowdy passengers, greedy airlines and miserable airports make travelling nowadays rather grim. The Air India crash in June, which claimed the lives of all but one of the 242 people aboard and 19 others on the ground, has also made many passengers rather jittery, not least because questions
17 min listen
Does – or did – Nigel Farage have a woman problem? ‘Around me there’s always been a perception of a laddish culture,’ he tells political editor Tim Shipman, for the cover piece of the Spectator this week. In last year’s election, 58 per cent of Reform voters were men. But, Shipman argues, ‘that has begun
You truly could not make it up. Kneecap, who spent the past three months whingeing and complaining about their gigs being cancelled because of their views on Gaza, have signed an open letter demanding a small community festival be shut down. All that guff about the sanctity of free speech and artistic expression. It was
Another day, another scandal in Britain’s collapsing public sector. Today’s concerns the country’s courts. A BBC investigation has turned up an internal report, not for public circulation, from HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) about an IT bug that deleted or hid information on hundreds of pending cases. The problem itself was bad enough: Britain’s state
28 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to podcast host and commentator Candace Owens about her story investigating whether Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigitte is a man, why she remains firm on her views about Gaza, and how Trump is doing in his presidency.
