Sunak’s Rwanda Bill finally passes parliament
After eight hours of debate on the Rwanda Bill, peers finally threw in the towel shortly after midnight. The two chambers have been engaged in a mammoth game of ping-pong for the past week,...
View ArticleTony Blair is a post-democratic product
Why was it that when I read a big interview with Tony Blair over the weekend – the ostensible premise being to wonder if he’d be pulling the strings of a Starmer government – I found myself humming...
View ArticleUNRWA hasn’t earned our trust in Gaza
Before 7 October last year, observers had long suspected an uncomfortable symbiosis between UNRWA, the UN organisation tasked with organising aid to the unfortunate Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, and...
View ArticleDoes Channel 4 think this counts as balanced?
We are now just nine months out from the latest possible general election, which means that in a year’s time the House of Commons is going to look very different. Absent a remarkable revival in Tory...
View ArticleAustralia doesn’t need a Ministry of Truth
Two unrelated acts of stabbing violence, first the random murderous rampage of a knife-wielding man in Sydney’s Bondi Junction, followed by the livestreamed knife attack on an Assyrian Christian...
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What happened to the Tory promise to balance the budget?
There is one big reason why a summer general election is unlikely, however tempted the Prime Minister might be to try to take advantage of the first migrant flight to Rwanda. Read between the lines...
View ArticlePrisons have lost the war on drugs
Aldous Huxley’s dystopian best seller Brave New World, published back in 1934, envisaged a society where stability was enforced by a numbing drug called ‘soma’. Constant consumption of soma, mandated...
View ArticleRishi Sunak vows to boost defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP
After finally getting his Rwanda legislation through the Lords, Rishi Sunak is in Warsaw today to meet with Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. There, the Prime Minister is expected to announce...
View ArticleWhy is Labour so ‘angry’ about our next man in Washington?
Civil service appointments rarely generate much excitement in Westminster. But it’s not every day that Britain’s most senior diplomatic posting comes up for grabs. The Financial Times this week...
View ArticleWhy did it take Rishi Sunak so long to up defence spending?
Britain is putting its defence industry on a ‘war-footing’, the Prime Minister has said, as he vowed to boost spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030. It was only a matter of time that Rishi Sunak...
View ArticleCampus Gaza protests are crippling US universities
University campuses across the United States are facing a growing wave of student-led protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Campus officials have responded by taking unprecedented measures,...
View ArticleSunak and Scholz gear up for an awkward meeting in Berlin
Rishi Sunak arrived in Poland today to announce a £500 million boost in aid to Ukraine, using the trip to Warsaw to also finally put a timeline on increasing Britain’s defence spending. By 2030, the...
View ArticleDoes Labour really love the St George’s Cross?
Following last night’s mammoth parliamentary ping pong session, a funny thing happened early this morning. As various members of HM Press Gallery began to stir themselves today, the social media feeds...
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Have Londoners forgotten how to stand up to anti-Semites?
There are some among the tens of thousands who march through London each week who genuinely seek peace in Gaza. There are others who march because they are anti-Semites. They hate Jews and want them...
View ArticleNarendra Modi is unbeatable
Voting in India’s national elections started last Friday. It will take six weeks to complete, which is less of a surprise when one considers that in a population of 1.4 billion people there are 969...
View ArticleHumza Yousaf and his ridiculous, feigned outrage
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf is a politician with two settings. If he’s being asked about a difficult issue – the Police Scotland investigation into SNP finances, for example, or his...
View ArticleFrank Field: 1942-2024
Frank Field, the former Labour minister and crossbench peer, died today aged 81. Below is an interview he did with Lynn Barber in 2018. Frank Field was given a standing ovation when he won The...
View ArticleWatch: Greens grilled on ‘zero murders’ pledge
To the fantasy land of the Greens, where no promises are off the table — no matter how surreal. Just 48 hours after the Scottish branch embarrassed themselves over the Cass report, now it’s the turn...
View ArticleThe Rwanda Bill won’t survive contact with reality
After significant wrangling in parliament, the government has finally passed its Rwanda Bill – while managing to resist any significant new amendments from the Lords. It is reported that the Bill is...
View ArticleHow to defuse the pension timebomb
Another day, another smart report arguing for higher payments into our pensions. Standard Life and WPI Economics have published a paper saying that minimum contribution rates into workplace pensions...
View ArticleRayner outsmarts Dowden at PMQs battle of the deputies
Few politicians have looked more pleased with a joke than Oliver Dowden did with his first offering at Prime Minister’s Questions today. He was deputising for Rishi Sunak, who is in Berlin, while...
View ArticleThe trouble with David Cameron’s China links
In the years following his resignation as prime minister, David Cameron appeared to become the poster child for elite capture by the Chinese Communist party. This is a term used to describe the...
View ArticleWhat Israel should do about Hezbollah
On Tuesday, Hezbollah launched its deepest attack into Israel since the current round of hostilities between Jerusalem and the Iran-supported Islamist group began last October. Sirens sounded in the...
View ArticleFrench bureaucracy cannot be defeated
When Emmanuel Macron launched his campaign to win the French presidency eight years ago, he promised to cut the number of civil servants in France by 50,000 and impose fundamental reforms on the...
View ArticleWho will pay the price for the boost in defence spending?
Rishi Sunak’s announcement that the government will increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP has been warmly welcomed, but how much is it really going to transform the UK’s military? Former...
View ArticleAngela Rayner’s staggering admission at PMQs
Angela Rayner stood in for Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs, and she opened with fireworks. ‘They’re desperate to talk about my living arrangements,’ she said, referring to her property woes, ‘but the public...
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Anti-colonialism and the distortion of history
In 2020, the National Trust released its ‘interim report’ on the connections between its properties and colonialism and slavery. It quickly became obvious that the report had not been commissioned in...
View ArticleTommy Robinson and the truth about two-tier policing
Tommy Robinson, a self-invented English ‘patriot’, was free to attend yesterday’s St George’s Day event in central London which descended into ugly clashes between participants and police. Earlier in...
View ArticleWas the London horse rampage avoidable?
The sight of runaway military horses – one covered in blood – wasn’t what any Londoner expected to encounter on their commute this morning. Seven horses from the Household Cavalry bolted during their...
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Lockdown’s impact on children is only beginning
Children who started school in the early days of the pandemic will have worse exam results well into the next decade. That’s according to a study released this morning by the London School of...
View ArticleHow eastern Europe became a fortress
On Tuesday, Rishi Sunak chose Poland to announce that the United Kingdom would boost defence spending to 2.5 per cent of national income by 2030 – leading to a real term increase of over £20 billion...
View ArticleWhy Portugal’s coup worked
Fifty years ago today, on 25 April 1974, Europe was stunned by an almost bloodless military coup that removed the continent’s most durable dictatorship: Portugal’s authoritarian ‘New State’ that had...
View ArticleWhy didn’t the Tories nationalise the railways?
The Conservatives can crow all they like about the benefits of privatisation – and make whatever claims they like about tickets being more expensive, and services worse, were the railways to be...
View ArticleWhen will the BBC apologise to Toby Young?
More bad times at the BBC. The Corporation is in hot water yet again following last week’s episode of Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. During a discussion on whether extreme weather events are caused by...
View ArticleMeta’s AI investment plan has backfired on Zuckerberg
It will write your WhatsApp messages for you. It will post a cute picture of your cat on Instagram, even if you don’t actually have a cat. And it will put some enhanced memories up for you on...
View ArticleIs this the beginning of the end for Humza Yousaf?
Scottish politics may be about to enter the abyss following the disintegration of the Green-SNP coalition. The Scottish Conservatives have tabled a vote of no confidence in First Minister Humza Yousaf...
View ArticleWill under-13 curfews really make France safer?
Rebecca, a British friend who taught theatre studies at a celebrated English public school before she was brutally sacked during the pandemic, moved to France and looked for a job. After putting out...
View ArticleWhy the EU is raiding Chinese companies
The target of Wednesday’s dawn raid has been on the radar of western security services for some time. There has been growing concern that Nuctech, which manufactures airport baggage scanners for...
View ArticleChildren could die because of Greenpeace’s Golden Rice activism
First, a word of warning. If you donate money to Greenpeace, you might think you’re helping save the whales or the rainforests. But in reality, you may be complicit in a crime against humanity. Last...
View ArticleWhy is the BBC censuring Kenneth Clark’s ‘Civilisation’?
‘What is Civilisation? I don’t know. I can’t definite it in abstract terms – yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it; and I am looking at it now.’ So suggested Kenneth Clark, looking towards...
View ArticleEven GB News viewers prefer Starmer to Sunak
Oh dear. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is no stranger to poor poll outcomes – but a new survey may cut a little closer to the bone. Over 500 GB News loyalists were quizzed on their political attitudes in...
View ArticleWho is General Gwyn Jenkins, the UK’s national security adviser ?
The Prime Minister’s announcement this week of an increase in UK defence spending from 2 per cent to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030 was unexpected. Debate continues on whether this is indeed, as Sunak...
View ArticleHow Humza Yousaf could survive
Did Humza Yousaf think it through? When he decided, late on Wednesday night, to pull the plug on the Green-SNP coalition arrangement, did he game-out the consequences? That is the question political...
View ArticleWhy do politicians keep getting gender politics wrong?
Gillian Keegan has declared that she will no longer use the slogan, ‘trans women are women’ because, as she explains, her understanding of the issue has ‘evolved’. Good for her; it is far better that...
View ArticleA tide of Euroscepticism is sweeping France
Britons should be fearful of Tony Blair’s call to the Labour party to ‘reset’ relations with the EU. The former prime minister has advised Keir Starmer that if he wins the general election he must...
View ArticleIreland can’t blame the Rwanda plan for its immigration woes
‘When in doubt, blame Britain’ has, since Brexit, become something of an iron law of Irish politics. So it came as no surprise yesterday to see Michael Martin, Ireland’s deputy prime minister,...
View ArticleThe truth about Australia’s controversial crocodile cull
The Northern Territory News, Darwin’s daily paper, is known worldwide for its front pages with headlines so cleverly lurid that they outshine the efforts of the Sun’s Kelvin McKenzie in his editorial...
View ArticleCan Humza Yousaf hang on?
Humza Yousaf is facing the biggest crisis of his leadership after the First Minister axed his party’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens. Since that decision on Thursday morning, events have...
View ArticleLabour’s plan to renationalise the railways doesn’t add up
Labour’s plan to renationalise the railways is not much of a plan at all. Rather, it is a list of goals: to eliminate ‘fragmentation, waste, bureaucracy’, to ‘bring down costs for taxpayers’ and to...
View ArticleThe BBC Proms could do much better than Sam Smith
The Proms, in its latest attempt to be accessible and inclusive, has (via the BBC) booked famously ‘non-binary’ singer Sam Smith to add dazzle to its Pop Prom. Previous pop artists employed for this...
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