Would scrapping juries help tackle the courts backlog?
There’s a lot to digest in the new Crime and Justice Commission report, which came out today. Its proposals include, for…
Are the wheels finally coming off net zero?
Hands up: who still supports net zero 2050? This is rapidly becoming a sensible question to ask. Kemi Badenoch for the…
Is Hungary right to quit the ICC?
When Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, who is nobody’s fool, offered Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a state visit to Budapest…
The US is right about free speech in Britain
The US government’s threat to scupper any trade deal with the UK unless we commit to widening free speech not…
Will Labour back ECHR withdrawal?
Amidst the U-turns, if there is one thing on which Labour has remained almost rock-solid until now, it is human…
Why should MPs tell parents how to discipline their kids?
Is it about to become illegal for parents to discipline their child with a smack? We might have known that…
The CofE is dealing with its safeguarding crisis badly
The John Smyth affair in the Church of England has already claimed the scalp of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby…
Should burning the Quran be against the law?
There are worrying signs in Britain that a blasphemy law – abolished in 2008 – might be sneaking in through…
Judges have finally backed a Christian who was sacked for LGBT posts
Finally, some good news on the free speech front: a Christian school worker who lost her job after sharing posts…
The Sara Sharif family court judges should have been named far sooner
There is something of an anti-climax in the naming of the judges involved in the Sara Sharif case. It’s true that…
Why is the assisted dying bill being rushed through parliament?
A change in the law letting people demand help from the state to kill themselves is the sort of thing…
‘Non-crime hate incidents’ are a threat to free speech
There’s more than meets the eye to today’s story of a leaked Home Office report calling for police to be encouraged to…
Why is the High Court ruling on political consultations?
No one came out very well from the government’s High Court defeat yesterday morning over planned changes to long-term sickness…
In defence of prejudice
There’s always something that seems clinically compelling about a claim that we need yet more equality laws. Mary Prior KC,…
Angela Rayner’s devolution plans encourage petty authoritarianism
Hidden in the hot air of Angela Rayner’s devolution white paper published just before Christmas – there are promises, for example, to…
The EU can detect weakness in its dealings with Keir Starmer
Labour’s election promise to respect Brexit and at the same time reset our relations with the EU was easy to…
What Nigel Farage gets wrong about ‘two-tier justice’
Stories of two-tier justice are back. On Monday, Victoria Thomas Bowen, the model who doused Nigel Farage with milkshake on…
Beware Labour’s desire to get cosy with Europe
There was nothing seriously unexpected in Rachel Reeves’s speech today to EU finance ministers. Most of it was non-committal flim-flam:…
The Lords needs more peers like Charlotte Owen
It is clear who is the unnamed target of Labour’s rule change over political nominations to the House of Lords.…
Why did the state let Kneecap win?
There was something predictable in the government’s agreement last week to accept defeat in the Belfast High Court. The overtly…
Is there really a human rights crisis in the Highlands?
It’s grim up north in Scotland, we’re told. A mission from Edinburgh has produced a report about the woes of life…
Why shouldn’t schools encourage middle class aspirations?
Education Minister Bridget Phillipson wants to make our schools engines of ambition and social mobility. Good for her. Unfortunately, some…
Non-crime hate incidents are out of control
It’s police overreach season again on free speech and non-crime hate incidents, or NCHIs. On Remembrance Day morning, we had…
Surely no MP can vote for this assisted dying bill
There’s a beguiling simplicity to the idea behind Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, published yesterday. If…
Raising university tuition fees will only delay the inevitable
Universities in the UK desperately needed Bridget Phillipson’s announcement this afternoon of a rise in tuition fees. The Education Secretary…
