News and Opinion

Who is on Question Time tonight and where do they stand on Brexit? Here’s your guide… The BBC’s flagship current affairs programme tonight comes from London’s financial capital Canary Wharf, where the average salary is £100,000, the country’s biggest Waitrose has a temperature-controlled wine cellar and one restaurant, the Boisdale, boasts a cigar menu. But […]

European Council president Donald Tusk has used his latest speech to respond to comments made at Conservative party conference. Tusk criticised Jeremy Hunt’s remarks at the conference in which compared the EU to the Soviet Union. He said they were ‘unwise as it is insulting’, and also suggested that the conference only further hindered progress […]

Plain packaging on alcohol and fatty foods would make a very dull trip to the supermarket, says brand consultant RON CREGAN. If you fancy a civil servant or government minster stocking your larder shelves with indefinable labels, you may not have long to wait. With Brexit looming and a bill passed last week in Ireland, […]

Nissan has spoken out about the risk of a ‘no deal’ Brexit – but the company’s boss fears their warning won’t be heard. The car manufacturer warned that a hard Brexit will have ‘serious implications’ for the carmaker’s Sunderland factory. It said in a statement: ‘As a sudden change from those rules to the rules […]

MICHAEL WHITE on the wheat and the chaff. When the Conservative party organisers made that hash of the privacy settings on their Birmingham conference app (so that Philip Hammond’s mugshot was promptly tweaked to Eeyore’s), I finally wondered if the oldest political party in the world will have any post-Brexit energy left to resist Team […]

You don’t obstruct an investigation which you will believe will clear your name, says MITCH BENN Matt Damon on Saturday Night Live as Brett Kavanaugh. PHOTO: Fox News – Credit: Archant I’ve just finished watching the ‘cold open’ to the last edition of Saturday Night Live. The ‘cold open’ is a pre-opening credits sketch which, […]

Tory Remainer MP Anna Soubry has said that she feels ‘marginalised’ in the Conservative party and has warned that Theresa May is pitching for a ‘blindfolded’ Brexit. The MP criticised her party for banning a People’s Vote event from the conference arena and even the programme. ‘But Boris Johnson could have a blatant leadership bid […]

A chance to make a great escape. Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, until January 5 Bonnie Langford in 42nd Street. PHOTO: Brinkhoff/Moegenburg – Credit: Archant Musicals traditionally do well in bleak times so it’s no wonder that 42nd Street is doing a roaring trade. That grand old showman Michael Grade is behind this lavish stage version […]

With its dystopian visions and 16-bit images of Somerset pubs clad in UKIP posters, Not Tonight is no Sonic the Hedgehog It had to happen. Edinburgh this year was awash with Brexit-themed plays and stand-up comedy. James Graham’s TV drama on the referendum airs early next year. Even Arron Banks’ simultaneously bombastic and boring book, […]

Some viewed Theresa May’s Dancing Queen routine as a cynical attempt to distract the nation from a speech devoid of detail. https://twitter.com/Mr_LukeBenson/status/1047496636392464390 Certainly if you take a scroll through Facebook and Twitter you won’t escape seeing a version of that video at least once. But now the sense of disbelief has died down, what is […]

The assembled journalists in Birmingham gasped as Theresa May danced towards the podium for her conference speech. From a leader who answers questions with stock quotes and robotic phrases it was something of a shock. She did achieve something of course: She managed to get the nation talking about her conference speech, even if it […]

Trials for a new heart drug has been halted due to fears over Brexit. US-based research firm Recardio was due to begin a study of the drug dutogliptin on patients in Exeter, Leeds and Clydebank. But it has suspended the UK arm of the trial due to concerns over how new medicines will be approved […]

Tesco has followed Aldi in announcing that it will become the latest supermarket to consider stockpiling for Brexit. The supermarket’s chief executive Dave Lewis said ensuring uninterrupted transport of fresh food across borders was the ‘single biggest challenge’ for supermarkets if the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal. He said the group […]

Putin is not as powerfulas he pretends, says prominent critic OLIVIER VEDRINE. And there is a way to get him… Vladimir Putin represents a serious threat to liberal democracy, not only in Russia and in Ukraine but also in the EU. The use of a military grade nerve agent against the former Russian spy Sergei […]

Traditionally the newspapers would preview the prime minister’s big speech, but many of the column inches have been dedicated to her rival, Boris Johnson. The front cover of the Daily Mail reviews Boris’ speech – Credit: Archant Johnson, the former foreign secretary, packed a 1,500-seater hall on the fringe of the conference and delivered a […]

Twitter has reacted to Theresa May’s speech with humour and scepticism. Her entrance to ‘Dancing Queen’ was compared to the embarrassing work of David Brent, the entrance of wrestlers and football managers, and even a GIF from The Simpsons. The Twitterati were particularly cynical about the prime minister’s words about immigrants and abuse of politicians. […]

Prime minister Theresa May used her crucial conference speech to make a last ditch attempt to resurrect her hated Chequers proposal. The embattled leader – bruised by a gathering in Birmingham dominated by interventions from Boris Johnson – pleaded with her party that things would be better after the UK quits the European Union. And […]

As recovery from the war continued, a new era of individualism and hedonism was already on the horizon. SOPHIA DEBOICK reports Al Jolson was the biggest star of 1920, a Broadway sensation who was fast emerging as a dominant recording artist. The hit song of the year, Gershwin’s Swanee, only became so after Jolson put […]

Blustering, bumbling and bilious though it was, Boris Johnson’s Brexit broadside has ignited Tory conference. More than 1,400 delegates queued for up to two hours to get in and their hero received a rapturous welcome. But the truth is he offered little in the way of detail. In fact instead of outlining his plan for […]

The Twitterati have given their verdict on Boris Johnson’s big speech to Conservative party conference. Kevin Maguire from the Mirror claimed that Johnson had been spooked by Jeremy Corbyn ‘judging by the large number of name checks’, while The New European’s Steve Anglesey couldn’t help but pick up on the former foreign secretary’s claims about […]

A three-time UKIP leadership challenger who posed for a picture with a golliwog and had to deny endorsing Hitler has quit the party, citing its move to the right. Bill Etheridge, an MEP for the West Midlands who stood unsuccessfully three times for the party leadership, said the party was now seen by “large swathes” […]

​Insecurity over the ‘correct’ use of pronouns has led language in an unusual direction, says PETER TRUDGILL In normal native English, the personal pronouns I, he, she, we, they are only used when they appear as the subject of a verb: I am leaving now; he likes coffee; she would like some; we are coming; […]

Brexiteer Boris Johnson used his speech at Tory conference to make a clear bid for leadership denouncing the prime minister’s Chequers plan as an ‘outrage’. He told 1,400 delegates – some of who had queued for more than two hours to get in – that Theresa May’s plans for Brexit would leave the UK ‘locked […]

A deluded Nigel Farage has told the European Parliament in Brussels that the European Union now fears Britain. Farage made the claim while accusing the EU of ‘weaponising’ the Irish border to ‘ensure the United Kingdom stays with the European regulatory framework.’ He said: ‘The one thing Barnier has been scared of from the start […]

The European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt has hit out at Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and Jacob Rees-Mogg in a scathing speech in Brussels. Verhofstadt mocked Boris Johnson’s latest proposal for a bridge to Ireland saying that he was well-known for proposing plans for bridges, but was ‘better at burning them’. He also criticised Jacob […]

The life of ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev reads like a novel. As JASON SOLOMONS reports, every amazing chapter is captured in a new documentary film. Rudolf Nureyev unlikely partnership with Dame Margot Fonteyn is legend. Picture: Kalina Jones – Credit: Archant Rudolf Nureyev wasn’t just Lord of the Dance. He was an icon and a […]

News that Boris Johnson is considering stalling Brexit has angered the party’s Leave MPs. The Sun reports that Johnson is considering proposing an extended transition period to break the deadlock between the UK and the European Union. It would mean Brexit would not happen until at least October 2019. MORE: May proposes a £120m festival […]

His job at an investment bank gave Neil Fredrik Jensen a ringside seat when the 2008 crash. But the extraordinary turmoil also led to a chilling, life-changing experience. As various commentators and business folk muse on the ten year-anniversary of the banking crash, which laid low so many financial giants and left the world teetering […]

The leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has attended a ‘funeral’ for Brexit at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham. The stunt – organised by anti-Brexit group Our Future, Our Choice – was designed to symbolise that the political thinking behind Brexit had now died. It included a hearse and coffin, pallbearers, a gravestone, and an even […]

3.3 million Leave voters now support a People’s Vote with the option to Remain, a new poll has revealed. The research, from anti-Brexit campaign group Best for Britain and HOPE not hate, could deal a massive blow to Brexiteers who claim the British public definitively made up their minds in 2016, and adds to growing […]

An anti-Brexit protester has heckled Boris Johnson as he arrives at Conservative party conference for his big speech. Anti-Brexit campaigner Steven Bray, from Bridgend, used a loudhailer to heckle Mr Johnson through a security fence as he arrived at the conference hotel. MORE: May proposes a £120m festival celebrating Brexit Britain ‘Come and collect your […]

Three government ministers and plenty of other Tories back a People’s Vote, according to a senior Conservative. A People’s Vote demonstration taking place in central London. Photograph: Matt Crossick/EMPICS Entertainment. – Credit: Empics Entertainment Phillip Lee told a meeting of Conservatives for a People’s Vote on the fringe of the party’s conference in Birmingham that […]