All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
With the weather improving, small boat arrivals look set to increase in the coming weeks. So what better time for Zia Yusuf, Reform’s Home Affairs spokesman, to take a trip to the States to learn how the Trump administration has stopped illegal migration there? Yusuf is in Washington this week for meetings with congressmen, Senators
The Sudanese man arrested over a horrific knife attack in Belfast yesterday was granted leave to remain for five years by the Home Office, police have confirmed. He was given asylum by the Home Office in 2023, having travelled from Sudan to Paris, then to Dublin and then Belfast by bus where he immediately made a claim. The individual in question was arrested at 10.30pm on Monday on suspicion of murder. Distressing footage circulating on social media shows the migrant holding his victim, a man in his 40s, to the ground. The victim suffered ‘significant injuries to his eyes’. A kitchen knife was retrieved at the scene.
Per Sir Humphrey Appleby: ‘A basic rule of government is never look into anything you don’t have to and never set up an inquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be.’ It is in this spirit that John Swinney, Scottish First Minister and SNP leader, is resisting calls for a parliamentary inquiry into the SNP finances scandal. Peter Murrell, former chief executive of the Scottish Nationalists and estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon, recently pleaded guilty to the embezzlement of £400,000 in party funds, which he spent on £2,000 pepper grinders, £4,000 pens, and most famously a £125,000 camper van.
Kemi Badenoch is right to argue that the Public Sector Equality Duty should go – and I say that as someone who used to help police it. Her wider point in today’s speech at the Institute for Government is even more important: not every disparity in outcome is proof of racism, and we have built an entire bureaucratic religion on pretending that it is. On paper, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) looks innocuous. It tells public bodies that, when exercising their functions, they must have 'due regard' to eliminating discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations between people with and without protected characteristics such as race, sex, disability or religion.
Kemi Badenoch today threw her weight behind Idris Elba’s call for casting directors to avoid a ‘woke’ choice for the next James Bond. The British actor made headlines this week after denying decades-long rumours that he is among the runners and riders to take over from Daniel Craig. Speaking to GQ, the star said he was flattered by the suggestion, but that Bond ‘was written how he was written for a reason’ and ‘let’s not try and make it woke’. The Tory leader backed the comments at a press conference on the dangers of identity politics in Westminster today. She told a crowd of card-carrying Conservatives and the media: ‘I agree with Idris Elba that we should not make James Bond woke.
When Daniel Craig was finishing his run as James Bond in 2021, Sir Keir Starmer was asked who was his favourite 007. ‘I don’t have a favourite Bond…’ he replied ‘but I do think it’s time for a female Bond’. This from a man who, at the time, struggled to define what a woman even was and whose party has never elected a female leader. It is telling that Starmer couldn’t even name his favourite 007, but still felt the need to opine that the next one should be a woman But what the future prime minister’s response typified was a certain bien pensant belittling of Bond that goes back decades. Ian Fleming once described his creation as a hero for ‘warm-blooded heterosexuals’.
A report published this week from the Housing, Communities and Local Government committee, made up of cross-party MPs, has been withering in its assessment of stamp duty – the tax everyone has to pay when they buy a home. The report argues that it stifles aspiration, jams up the housing market and slows down social, generational and geographical mobility. There is no choice but to get rid of it. Many in Britain will agree with the committee's assessment. Someone, though, who is guaranteed not to is Rachel Reeves: just last year, the Chancellor lowered the stamp duty thresholds. Now, with even her own MPs turning on her, that tax raid is spectacularly backfiring. Stamp duty has turned into a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with the British tax system.
The England cricket captain, Ben Stokes, was involved in an altercation at a night club in the early hours of Monday morning. Also present was his team mate, Gus Atkinson. The players were celebrating England’s victory over New Zealand in the first Test match of the summer. Full details of what exactly took place are yet to emerge but since they were clearly in breach of the team’s new midnight curfew, both players seem likely to miss the second match of the series which starts at the Oval on Wednesday next week.
After their spectacular own goal over Eurovision, surely sulking Irish activists would think twice before launching yet another attempt to exclude Israel from apolitical spaces? Irish politicians and broadcasters boycotted the contest last month over Israel’s participation – only for the public vote to propel the Jewish state into a very respectable second place. The message beaming back to Dublin was unequivocal: fans of the world’s largest (and loopiest) music competition weren’t interested in importing anti-Israel animus into the ditzy absurdity of Eurovision. When it comes to Ireland’s near-hysterical obsession with ostracising Israel no platform is considered off limits Yet here we go, here we go, here we go again.
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Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch was interviewed last night by The Spectator‘s Political Editor, Tim Shipman, in front of a live audience at Church House in Westminster. They discuss her shadow cabinet, her plan to revive the Tories, and how she thinks we can get the country growing. To watch and listen to the full conversation you’ll need to be a spectator subscriber. Get three months for three pounds and access the full stream at spectator.com/kemi – your subscription isn’t just to this conversation: it also includes full access to The Spectator website and app, weekly delivery of the magazine, all our livestreams, daily newsletters and podcasts. We hope you enjoy.
Keir Starmer is using this morning’s cabinet meeting to underline the message he has been sending to more junior ministers over the past few days: he’s not going without a fight. Part of his argument is that he’s got loads to do, which must come as a surprise to anyone who read the King’s Speech. One of the big things Starmer wants to show his party he can do is address the hot-button issue of children’s access to social media, first with his threat to tech firms yesterday that they have three months to stop children being able to send or see explicit content.
Peak woke – like peak oil – is a moment always apparently on the horizon but never actually reached. The happy reality of our material world is that oil is still the new oil – we are discovering new sources of hydrocarbons every day and it will be many decades before the last well runs dry. Less happily, woke is still rampant, flowing through the boardrooms just as the Suez Canal was said to lap through Lady Eden’s own drawing room.
Kemi Badenoch is expected to reveal the Conservative party’s new approach to equality law in a speech today. Most prominent will be an announcement that the Conservatives will scrap the public sector equality duty (PSED). This is designed to ensure that when making decisions, public bodies consider the need to eliminate discrimination; advance equality of opportunity; and ‘foster good relations’ between people who have protected characteristics and people who do not. Critics have argued that the PSED has promoted divisive agendas. Badenoch is expected to say that it has ‘become a minefield that exposes almost every significant public decision to legal challenge’.
Britain does not have a world-class higher education system. We have a small number of truly world-class universities, able to compete in the top tier of global research. We have pockets of excellence elsewhere, as well as vocationally focused courses that equip people for jobs such as engineering and nursing. But we also have far too many courses that are poor quality, low value or simply not needed. In 15 subjects, more than a quarter of graduates earned less than the National Living Wage after five years A third of graduates are not in graduate jobs. At least 30 per cent of degrees do not deliver a total positive return.
https://twitter.com/itvpeston/status/2064095356451709170?s=46 What joy. Labour MPs have already begun publicly scrapping over the party leadership, even though a formal challenge is yet to begin. Last night, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and leftie backbencher Clive Lewis treated the country to a particularly enjoyable spat on ITV's Peston show. Lewis, an Andy Burnham die-hard, told Nandy that ‘the Labour Party is toxic in Makerfield’. An exasperated Culture Secretary, who actually lives in Wigan, pulled her colleague up on the fact that he hasn’t even been to the constituency. Doubling down, Lewis insisted he doesn’t have to have been to Makerfield to know Sir Keir Starmer is public enemy number one.
Kemi Badenoch was interviewed last night by The Spectator's Political Editor, Tim Shipman, in front of a live audience at Church House in Westminster. Much of what the Conservative leader said was a retreading over familiar ground. The Conservative party was a ‘distressed asset’ when she inherited the leadership, she said, but is now getting a second hearing. Badenoch said, of the economy, that the country must cut spending before it cuts taxes, and that it is time that the government gets out of the way of business. The Conservative party was ‘for the people who get up every day’, she insisted, and that what is needed in politics is more common sense.
The Greens have given a key post in their new ruling cabinet in the London borough of Lambeth to a man who has justified violence, condemned Remembrance services as ‘insidious’ and demanded a move away from ‘kinder, gentler politics’ to putting ‘heads on sticks’. Chessum is one of those people who make journalists’ lives worth living, with a long record of wild statements Not content with having two of their candidates arrested for stirring up racial hatred (they remain under investigation), Lambeth Greens, who have just taken power in the South London borough, can also bring you Councillor Michael Chessum, cabinet member for the ‘economy, cost of living and empowered communities’.
Keir Starmer, spooked by Andy Burnham, apparently wants to leave a legacy, in much the same way that a herd of buffalo, scenting a lion, leave a legacy on the prairie. The Prime Minister has settled on banning children from social media, and possibly also installing some yet-to-be-invented software that will prevent under-16s from viewing porn or taking and sending photos of their naked bodies. Childrens’s Commissioner Rachel de Souza has further mooted extending these provisions to include 16 and 17-year-olds. Labour is planning to give 16-year-olds the vote, while simultaneously forbidding them to scroll through Instagram So, Labour is planning to give 16-year-olds the vote, while simultaneously forbidding them to scroll through Instagram.
Negotiations between the US and Iran over an end to their conflict are ongoing, accompanied by occasional exchanges of fire. In Lebanon, the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah is engaged in daily clashes with Israeli forces. But whatever the outcome of these negotiations, it is possible to reach a conclusion regarding the war launched by the US and Israel on 28 February of this year: the Iranian regime has survived the attack on it and faces no danger of imminent collapse. This salient fact means that it is necessary to re-examine the basic building blocks of both US and Israeli policy regarding Tehran. It turns out that the Islamic Republic and its alliance of proxies possess greater durability than had been imagined.
Israel sure knows how to mark ‘Pride Month’. Tel Aviv’s annual celebration of gayness has once again turned into an opportunity to bomb one of the world’s most viciously anti-gay regimes, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has a dreadful record of abuse not only of homosexuals but also of women, non-Muslims, and of course Jews. Gay Pride has become a tiresome and hollow celebration of ultra-sexualised behaviour in public places Gay Pride has become a tiresome and hollow celebration of ultra-sexualised behaviour in public places. The once understandable movement, focused on achieving fair and equal treatment of homosexuals, has transformed into a counter-productive circus of debauchery.
AI has taken the world by storm, and few workplaces have been immune to its impact. In the House of Commons last year, Written Parliamentary Questions from MPs and peers doubled compared with 2024. The Department of Health and Social Care saw a 97 per cent increase, with the Home Office up 92 per cent, the Department for Education up 97 per cent and Housing a whopping 101 per cent. And who was blamed for the rise? Had MPs and peers discovered a new zeal for seeking answers from ministers in the name of democratic accountability? Not quite, according to Commons clerks. AI, apparently, was responsible. Now, Mr S can reveal Parliament has deployed a new AI mechanism to crack down on MPs over-reliant on the very same tech.
When he’s not ranting about Gaza, Zack Polanski is mostly to be found despairing about the cost of living. And aren’t we all? The Green leader has made a series of economically illiterate suggestions about how he would bring down prices for struggling Brits and improve the dire state of the economy. Which makes his intervention on food prices today all the more bizarre. The intrepid Green leader, in all his glory, has called for the cost of supermarket goods to rise. That’s right: Polanski fumed that the likes of veggies are far too cheap.
Today marks a hundred days since America and Israel began launching strikes on Iran on 28 February. The very next day, Donald Trump told the Atlantic that Iran’s leaders ‘want to talk’, saying they should have made a deal sooner and that ‘they played too cute’. Three days after Trump said this, Iran announced that the Strait of Hormuz was closed. Since then, we have been told dozens of times that we are on the brink of a lasting deal between Iran and America, often in the President’s statements on Truth Social. At the end of last month, Axios reported that US and Iranian negotiators had reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum which would reopen the Strait, which simply needed Trump’s sign off.
Where could the government possibly find the money to fund its defence investment plan (DIP)? That question has been the major factor behind the extraordinary delay in publishing it – and we now seem to have an answer, if not the plan itself. That answer is precisely the kind of thing that Keir Starmer and his Labour comrades would have railed against when in opposition: cutting capital spending. Around £6 billion-worth of projects are reportedly due for the chop in order to fund the DIP. That's potentially hospital rebuilding projects, transport infrastructure and housing improvements delayed or abandoned.
The police are rightly under intense scrutiny at present for their rejection of the Peelian principle of enforcing the law impartially between ethnic groups ‘without fear or favour’, thanks to their wholesale acceptance of DEI and critical race theory. There is another body of fundamental importance whose original principles demand equal treatment of people regardless of race: the Church of England. However, it is little known just how much the DEI doctrine of treating people differently on account of their skin colour has also appeared in the most recent directives of church authorities.
You’d be hard pressed to find a member of the public who thinks the Labour government is doing a sterling job. Up and down the country, voters are furious at the lack of progress on all manner of issues, from the cost of living to the NHS, transport and immigration. But that’s not for want of trying to sell themselves… Taxpayers foot the bill for hundreds and hundreds of civil servants whose entire jobs are dedicated to spinning the government’s every move. Press officers clock on – frequently from the sofa – to Google the names of ministers and present them with a list of the media’s most recent coverage. They’ll also write up propaganda press releases gloating about Sir Keir Starmer’s latest genius idea, most often in time to clock off at 5 p.m.
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With the Makerfield by-election next week, Keir Starmer is in the business of legacy-building. In a speech this morning to coincide with London Tech Week, the Prime Minister announced a clampdown on social media usage among under-18s, and in particular on the circulation of naked images on smartphones and other devices among under-18s. The intention is to shift emphasis on to tech companies such as Apple and Google, requiring them to prevent children from seeing sexually explicit images on their phones and other devices. But, in true Starmer fashion, no new law was announced – only a deadline for big tech to change its ways, or else he will do … something. This is being read throughout Westminster as an attempt at legacy-building.
The Strategic Defence Review (SDR), published a year ago and meant to be the fundamental framework of the government’s defence policy, was not a faultless document. On one issue at least, though, it was very clear: the United Kingdom’s steadfast commitment to Nato should be the primary focus of its strategic posture. The primacy of the alliance was emphasised so often it almost felt like subliminal suggestion. Keir Starmer’s foreword promised Britain would 'lead in Nato'; the Defence Secretary John Healey said 'our defence policy is "Nato First’", referred to 'our unshakeable commitment to Nato' and pledged to 'provide leadership in Nato'. Meanwhile, the SDR's authors said that 'Nato is the bedrock of our defence' and 'at the forefront of the UK’s many valuable alliances'.
Back in November, the US State Department warned that 'mass migration poses an existential threat to western civilisation and undermines the stability of key American allies'. In February, in his address to the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio expanded on that theme. After the Berlin Wall fell, Rubio noted, many in the West thought that 'the end of history' had finally arrived. Utopia was nigh. Western nations opened their borders, forsook spending on defence in order to bolster the welfare state and 'outsourced' their national sovereignty. This was, Rubio warned, to ignore both human nature as well as the lessons of 'over 5,000 years of recorded human history. And it has cost us dearly'.
Over the past few months, there has been much prognostication over the flight of young American conservative women from the Republican party. Are young women leaving the 'new right'? Have they become 'disillusioned' – as one news outlet put it – with the politics of the second Trump administration? This weekend, the conservative organisation Turning Point USA hosted its annual women's leadership summit in San Antonio, Texas. There, I saw none of the rumoured divide between being 'Maga' and 'America First' said to be fissuring young supporters of the GOP. The summit represented the consolidation of a counter-counter-culture Far from abandoning Donald Trump, the conference-goers in San Antonio appeared to channel the defiant spirit of the fabled Texas cry, 'Remember the Alamo!
If you follow what’s been going on in recent days in the Middle East from only the BBC and Sky, it must seem as if Israel has broken a series of ceasefires in order to satisfy either some insatiable appetite for war or – as much coverage seems to imply – some sort of crazed bloodlust. Iranian military capability has taken a huge hammering Reality is, of course, very different. It’s a statement of fact that Israel’s overnight strikes on Iran were in response to yesterday’s Iranian ballistic missile attacks on Israel. But that doesn’t get us very far. So why did Iran attack Israel, when – in theory – it’s in the middle of negotiations for some sort of broader deal with the United States?
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Rent the man a spot on the river, and make him tick a box on a multi-thousand-word end-user licence agreement meaning that any fish he catches, ultimately, still belongs to you, and you stand to get very, very rich indeed. We live in an age where stuff we think we own is, really, stuff to which we subscribe This is the business model that now dominates the digital age. Neo-feudalism, technofeudalism, chokepoint capitalism: it gets called all sorts of things, but the basic idea it has in common is that the rules of property ownership, as we have tended to understand them for most of the history of capitalism, are shifting under our feet. We think we’re buying products.
June is a month most people anticipate for various reasons, it heralding the Isle of Wight Festival, the Summer Solstice and Wimbledon. It’s also a time many of us have come to dread, it being the occasion in which Pride Month is foisted upon a compliant and increasingly resentful population. This is why many gays regard the rainbow flag in its modern incarnation as a hostile symbol What began in San Francisco in 1981 as simply the International Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day Parade has evolved into an entire month of worldwide celebrations chiefly dedicated to the trans movement, and at the expense of actual gay people. This metamorphosis can be seen by the original, simple Rainbow Flag having been supplanted by the chevroned, omnicause standard of the Progress Pride Flag.
David Lammy: ‘I said Mr Vice President, you’re wrong about this’ The news cycle this week has been dominated by the murder of 18 year-old student Henry Nowak by Vickrum Digwa. Digwa and his brother falsely told the police they had been racially abused, and bodycam footage shows police handcuffing Nowak despite him repeatedly saying he had been stabbed. The murder has caused widespread outrage, including violent protests in Southampton. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage claimed the incident is an example of ‘two-tier policing’ and called for ‘pure, cold rage’. In the US, Vice President JD Vance blamed Novak’s murder on the ‘mass invasion of migrants’. On Sky News, Trevor Phillips asked Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy what he made of Vance’s comments.
