World
How bad will Rachel Reeves’s Budget be?
After a needlessly long run-up, Budget day is finally here. Investors, bond traders and house builders are breathing a collective…
Will Rachel Reeves’s two Budget gambles pay off?
It’s traditional to describe Budgets as a political gamble. Rachel Reeves is actually making two bets. First, that voters can…
Starmerism was always doomed to fail
Numerous civil servants have recalled their first encounter with Labour ministers following their election victory last year. After the new…
Charleston notebook: following an English country band through the Holy City
My impression of Charleston, a city I’ve been visiting since my late teens, is that it is oddly more European…
Removing jury trials is a democratic outrage
In June 2020 the impact of Covid led some to argue that trial by jury should be temporarily suspended. David…
They should never make another James Bond film
The 25th and most recent entry in the James Bond franchise, No Time to Die, premiered over four years ago.…
Make Gordon McKee a minister
With his viral video explaining debt-to-GDP ratio through the medium of biscuits, Gordon McKee is putting the ‘nom’ into economics.…
The BBC’s new Civilisations treats us like idiots
Everyone’s moaning about political bias at the BBC. They have done for years. And they’ll continue to. The right’s accusations…
Why would Putin sign Trump’s peace deal?
It was summer 2022. Ukraine had just taken back Kyiv, people were returning to the city, and the mood was…
Only radical change can cut NHS waiting lists
A research letter in the Future Healthcare Journal, laying out the scale of performance failings in the NHS, has attracted a…
Watch: Labour MP’s bizarre Putin warning
To the Commons, where this afternoon parliamentarians have spent some time discussing the G20 and Ukraine. The Prime Minister updated…
No one wants to hear from the Tories
For a party long described as Britain’s ‘natural party of government’, the Conservatives have spent an astonishing amount of time…
The battle for Ukraine’s electric grid
On Sunday, Ukrainian drones attacked the Shatura Power Station located about 75 miles east of Moscow. The 1,500-megawatt gas-fired facility…
Lammy to scrap jury trials in backlog crackdown
Under a shake-up of the legal system, it transpires that juries are to be scrapped in all cases except murder,…
‘Peace’ is just another ploy in Russia’s playbook
Predicting Russian behaviour is a fool’s errand. As a young ‘stringer’ in Kyiv during the dying months of the Soviet…
Reeves’s Budget is dead on arrival
The Budget speech has no doubt been finalised. The red box has been dusted off. And the pie charts are…
Starmer apologises over banned TikTok dance
Of all the things the public might think Prime Minister Keir Starmer should apologise for, a TikTok dance is probably…
Rachel Reeves is running out of excuses
The Chancellor addressed her backbench troops last night, ahead of Wednesday’s Budget. Rachel Reeves’ remarks sought to impress upon her…
Trigger warnings are out of control at the University of Essex
You don’t need a PhD to see that censorship thrives in universities. In the past few weeks alone, a professor…
Two peers suspended over lobbying
To the House of Lords, where it transpires that two peers are to be suspended after they were deemed to…
Does Rachel Reeves really get more online abuse than most?
In politics, as in life, it helps to get your excuses in early. That presumably is why, ahead of tomorrow’s…
Nigeria’s mass school abduction is its worst yet – but the West doesn’t seem to care
The kidnapping of over 300 students and teachers from a Catholic school by armed men in the Papiri area of…
Children should be banned from pubs
Before I begin, let me say this: I like children. To my amazement, I even have two of my own. But do I…
The report that lays bare France’s Islamist networks
Bruno Retailleau, France’s former interior minister, has with his Senate group just published the toughest report on Islamism in a…
The problem with funky vicars
The Reverend Kate Bottley, the celebrity vicar who came to fame on Gogglebox, has a message for the nation. ‘The…
