Andrew Tettenborn

Beware Labour’s desire to get cosy with Europe

10 December 2024 2:53 am

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

6 December 2024 9:30 pm

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?

3 December 2024 12:48 am

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?

30 November 2024 6:00 pm

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?

21 November 2024 10:17 pm

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

15 November 2024 11:25 pm

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

13 November 2024 1:32 am

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

5 November 2024 5:01 am

Universities in the UK desperately needed Bridget Phillipson’s announcement this afternoon of a rise in tuition fees. The Education Secretary…

Street lights are costing Britain too much

29 October 2024 4:00 pm

The East Riding of Yorkshire is flat, prosperously agricultural and slightly off the beaten track. Deeply conservative, it isn’t the…

Chris Kaba and the danger of inquests

25 October 2024 1:49 am

The firearms officer Martyn Blake was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba this week. Kaba was a serious wrong ‘un: a…

Labour’s worrying creep back towards the EU

10 October 2024 1:10 am

In Labour’s manifesto this year, Keir Starmer cannily sought to reassure any Brexiteers out there by ruling out a return to the…

Boris is right: we need a referendum on the ECHR

4 October 2024 10:03 pm

Nobody should be surprised that Boris Johnson favours a referendum on leaving the ECHR, as his book now makes clear. Boris…

Why tuition fees should go up

30 September 2024 4:41 pm

The fees English universities are allowed to charge home students in England are fixed by government fiat. At £9,250 per…

Labour’s two-tier prison plans

26 September 2024 6:30 pm

There are not many women in prison, but those who are inside show worryingly high rates of mental illness, suicide…

Why the cost of replacing Britain’s border fleet has soared to £300 million

20 September 2024 4:10 am

The fleet of border control cutters responsible for patrolling our waters (and at times for dealing with irregular migrants on…

Labour is in denial about our bad universities

9 September 2024 9:38 pm

Our universities are in a mess. Too many degrees lack intellectual quality and utility, and leave those doing them with…

Scrapping one-word Ofsted verdicts is a mistake

2 September 2024 9:58 pm

The decision to scrap one or two-word Ofsted inspection grades for England’s schools is good news for teachers – but…

Starmer may regret an outdoor smoking ban

30 August 2024 1:40 am

It’s a curious political world. Few who voted Labour last month actually wanted Labour policies, or for that matter had…

The worrying return of non-crime hate incidents

29 August 2024 6:18 pm

The longer it continues in office, the more reactionary and beholden to vested interests this government turns out to be.…

Louise Haigh’s LTN policy is doomed to fail

23 August 2024 5:55 pm

The Labour party is in a bind over cars. Its instincts – collectivist, green, managerialist – strongly favour anti-car measures…

Are too many young people going to university?

15 August 2024 4:46 pm

University hopefuls trepidatiously opening their official A-level emails this morning will on the whole be happier than last year. All…

Will a social media crackdown really stop future riots?

12 August 2024 9:44 pm

The riots of 2024 will be remembered for many things. One of them is the way the establishment spectacularly closed…

Why Britain must say no – again – to China’s ‘super embassy’ in London

11 August 2024 4:32 pm

The previous Tory government may not have been very successful in containing the global ambitions of China, but at least…

24-hour courts are risky, but right

4 August 2024 7:48 pm

Yesterday evening, the government instituted a little-known procedure called the Additional Courts Protocol. Set up following the 2011 London riots,…

Does Labour care about free speech on campus?

27 July 2024 1:17 am

Universities fought tooth and nail against plans to impose fines if they failed to uphold freedom of speech. That proposal…