David Lammy has scored a win against pro-Gaza civil servants
Not for the first time in Whitehall, we are seeing a power struggle between elected government ministers and civil servants…
Kemi is walking into an ECHR trap of her own making
If you think Keir Starmer is rattled by Reform’s awkward-squad views on human rights, spare a thought for Kemi Badenoch.…
Brace yourselves for more Quran-burning trials in Britain
You might well have felt slightly repelled if last February you had passed someone ineptly trying to set fire to…
Britain’s Gulf trade deal is not the place for virtue signalling
Rachel Reeves announced that a trade deal with the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) – in other words, Saudi Arabia and…
How Starmer was stitched up over the Chagos islands
Yesterday, following a last-minute flurry of lawfare, the government published the text of its Chagos agreement with Mauritius. Future history…
Allowing camping on Dartmoor is a terrible mistake
Away from the hamlets and farms that dot the edge of it, the high moor on Dartmoor is a wild…
A 10mph speed limit is preposterous
The increase of 20mph speed limits in Britain has been sending drivers around the bend. But if an organisation called the Road…
Starmer will struggle to deport foreign criminals
The government is rattled on immigration. Forget its liberal metropolitan supporters: just-about-managing voters from Whitehaven to Waltham Cross are deadly…
Voters won’t be fooled by Yvette Cooper’s human rights gimmick
Keir Starmer’s government has grudgingly accepted publicly something it has privately known for months: voters are deadly serious about what…
We don’t need a crackdown on killer cyclists
Wayward cyclists watch out: Keir Starmer is coming for you. The government has announced a crackdown against bikers who kill…
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…
