News and Opinion

A political commentator has delivered a blistering response to Tory MPs who called on Angela Rayner to apologise after labelling one of them a “scum” in the Commons. Tory backbenchers Chris Clarkson and Shaun Bailey were successful in getting an apology from Labour’s deputy leader after she was caught blurting out the insult during an MPs […]

We don’t worry enough about giant monster attacks. Granted, we have problems enough, what with pestilence and political tumult, to be fretting over things whose actual existence is, at best, disputed, but if this year has taught us anything, it’s that nothing can be dismissed as impossible. In lieu of more formal contingency planning, the […]

Think you’re on top of what’s been going on across Europe in the past seven days? Take The New European’s tricky quiz and find out just how much of a Europhile you are… 

I read that Dame Julie Walters, having recently turned 70 and survived a brush with cancer, has said that she’s considering retiring from acting, although she might be tempted back to do Mamma Mia 3 if it happens. What’s perhaps interesting about this announcement is the fact that it’s considered newsworthy at all… A woman […]

A party supported by Nigel Farage has just won millions of votes in a European election standing on a strongly Eurosceptic platform. However this party wasn’t UKIP or the Brexit Party but the Greens. And the year was 1989. The Green Party received 2.3 million votes in that election – including Farage’s – representing a […]

Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre was the biggest winner in the government’s cultural bail-out scheme in England, with a whopping £999,999 coming its way. This made it the envy of far more acclaimed, but less generously supported venues, such as the Bristol Old Vic, and, in London, the Almeida and the Kiln, where the great Indhu Rubasingham, […]

I work in a hut that stands on a floodplain on the edge of the Broads and I often see marsh harriers from my desk: wings in a shallow dihedral, balanced on the edge of a stall, a bird of prey and a virtuoso of slowness. They’ve been extinct once, almost twice as a British […]

LIZ GERARD on how the Daily Star became the voice of the people – while The Sun speaks for Boris Johnson alone. The Daily Star speaks for the nation. Who would have thought it? Fleet Street’s most downmarket tabloid is the country’s acknowledged expert on giant mutant rats, psycho seagulls and lager lout wasps. It […]

A Tory MP who defied her own party to vote in support of Labour’s free school meals motion has quit her government post. Caroline Ansell, the MP for Eastbourne and Willingdon, was one of five Tories who backed an amendment to provide children with free meals over the holidays. The MP quit her role as parliamentary aide […]

Given the low-level background dread that is life in 2020, picking out any individual source of anxiety can often be all-but impossible – but one obvious exception for many of us is looking towards the impending US presidential election, now less than two weeks away. In the pit of our stomachs, many of us have […]

As the election results came in from New Zealand I was lucky enough to be able to celebrate with a small (fewer than six!) group of Kiwis, close friends and former colleagues of victorious Jacinda Ardern. With so much bad news around, it was great to be able to enjoy a stunning Labour victory; a […]

A Tory minister has been labelled “shameful” after he defended a government memo attacking Marcus Rashford’s call for free school meals. A leaked memo has shown that Tory MPs are being ask to shift the blame for a failed vote to extend free school meals to children during the holidays onto Labour. The statement said MPs should […]

Lockdown is, for almost everybody, a new phenomenon that has created feelings of anxiety about a range of issues, particularly how to deal with the threat of the virus itself. Covid-19 is an invisible threat from which the best protection appears to be to hide – perhaps in the hope that it will go away.  […]

Did you hear the door slam on Britain’s post-Brexit trade negotiations with the EU27 after Boris Johnson declared them broken off last Friday night? No, neither did deaf old me. But nor did BBC One’s News at Ten which opted to lead its bulletin on Whitehall’s parallel standoff with Covid-hit Manchester, also going badly for […]

A quiet town perched on the banks where the Seine and Oise rivers meet, Conflans-Sainte-Honorine is not one of Paris’s notorious banlieues. Around 20 miles northwest of the capital, it is certainly in its orbit but the quiet streets and restrained, low-rise buildings mean it feels more provincial French than Parisian. Pleasant, and rather unremarkable. […]

Once anticipated as a key milestone on the road to an agreement, this month’s European Council and its aftermath have instead led to greater uncertainty about the prospects of a deal. The signs are not encouraging. With EU leaders standing firm, an expression of disappointment by the UK chief negotiator, Lord Frost, on Friday was […]

The latest phase of Brexit stumbles towards a predictably shambolic end. As with earlier episodes the familiar deluded posturing from the British government is part of the stumbling. After the EU summit, a deadline set by Boris Johnson for a trade deal, Number Ten proclaimed with the usual discordant swagger that the EU negotiators need […]

The government has come under heavy fire after more than 300 Tory MPs voted against extending free meals for hungry kids over the school holidays. The Tories voted down a Labour motion 322 votes to 261 that would have seen children provided with free school meals during the October half-term and Christmas breaks. This comes after Manchester […]

Question Time tonight features a virtual audience drawn from Sedgefield, birthplace of actor and screenwriter Mark Gatiss. But who will prove a screen hit like Sherlock – and who will be best forgotten like Sex Lives of the Potato Men? Here’s your guide to the panel… Nicky Morgan Who? Conservative peer A former education secretary who was […]

Trade talks between the UK and European Union will resume after Brussels’ chief negotiator Michel Barnier said both sides must be willing to compromise. Downing Street said Barnier and his UK counterpart Lord David Frost had agreed a set of principles for an “intensified phase of talks” starting on Thursday. Number 10 acknowledged that “significant gaps” […]

A Tory minister has suggested his government is not responsible for the rising number of children going hungry in the UK and deflected the blame on Labour instead. Paul Scully, a junior cabinet minister, provoked outrage when he said the government would not extend free school meals during the holidays because “children have been going […]

Imagine seeing some of the exchanges in today’s prime minister’s questions a year below. If we didn’t know what we know today, what would we have made of them? “If tier two regions are moving into tier three, tier two has not worked, because if tier two worked they should be going into tier one,” said […]

A German MEP has told Boris Johnson to “stop blaming others for your own actions” as she blasted the prime minister’s handling of the Brexit process. Theresa Reintke, an MEP for the Greens–European Free Alliance in the European parliament, accused Johnson of lying to the British public during a stinging assessment of his management of Brexit trade […]

Sir Keir Starmer has called on Boris Johnson to impose a nationwide “circuit breaker” lockdown after criticising the government’s three-tiered system. In a turbulent session of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), Sir Keir claimed the prime minister’s latest lockdown approach was ineffective. “Yesterday, the prime minister produced heat maps of the country showing infection rates going up in […]

MARTYN SLOMAN on the furore over an advert which revealed an underlying political issue. Rarely does an issue on skills training cause public controversy.  There has however been a recent exception.   A high-profile government-sponsored advertising campaign suggested that a young ballerina’s next job could be in cyber (“she just doesn’t know it yet!”). It […]

The contenders are… THE DAILY EXPRESS With fingers crossed and touching wood, the American election that is now less than two weeks away looks to be not going too well for Donald Trump. Unless, of course, you are a reader of the Express online, where recent headlines have included “Joe Biden on brink as Donald Trump […]

“I’m skint,” said Nigel Farage three years ago, blaming “20 years of spending more than you earn”. Who better, then, to launch a new service advising people on what to do with their money? With a characteristically breezy lack of shame, this is exactly what the nicotine-stained man-frog has done. Fortune & Freedom With Nigel […]

UK Business leaders on a call with the prime minister Boris Johnson and Michael Gove on Brexit have described the meeting as “pointless”. The virtual meeting to discuss how the government aims to support businesses after the end of the Brexit transition period on December 31 was scheduled on Tuesday morning for 3pm the same day. […]

The minister behind coronavirus negotiations with Andy Burnham and other Greater Manchester leaders was unable to say whether gyms would remain open under the region’s new restrictions. Communities and housing minister Robert Jenrick appeared to have no idea if gyms would remain open under Tier-3 restrictions coming into force on Friday, despite being involved in lockdown […]

The former head of Whitehall said there were “legitimate” questions about the government’s preparedness for the coronavirus outbreak while taking a swipe at Dominic Cumming’s lockdown-breaking trip to Durham. Lord Mark Sedwill, who stood down last month as cabinet secretary, said Whitehall did not have all the “exact measures” in place to deal with the pandemic. […]

A leaked memo has shown that government ministers are becoming increasingly worried about the rise in support for Scottish independence. An assessment by Tory advisers warned Boris Johnson against continuously blocking Holyrood’s demands for a second referendum on independence. The document, seen by Bloomberg, was written by Hanbury Strategy and complained of a “vacuum of leadership” within the […]

Peers in the House of Lords have rejected sections of Boris Johnson’s Brexit bill which would have allowed the UK to break international law. A majority of 226 peers backed a “regret” amendment to the internal market bill that condemned the disputed provisions. The final vote was 395 in favour and 169 against. Speaking in support […]