All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
26 min listen
The SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, MP for Aberdeen South, joins Lucy Dunn for a special episode to assess the place of the SNP in British politics as we approach the end of 2025. The SNP were ‘decimated’ to just nine MPs at the 2024 general election – yet, if polls are to be believed,
After a difficult year for No. 10, what better way to end it than by unveiling a nice package of feel-good animal welfare measures? Ministers have drip-fed a series of announcements over the past 48 hours, setting out plans and consultations for 2026. These include ending the use of hen cages, outlawing electric shock collars
If you want a miniature parable of British decline – a sort of Aesop’s fable for the age of the over-regulated state – allow me to present one and a half tonnes of perfectly good cod’s roe, currently trapped in a bureaucratic purgatory of our own making. My company smokes fish. We have done so
Harper Collins announced last week that it would no longer be publishing any children’s books by their one-time cash cow David Walliams. The Little Britain star has been accused of ‘harassing’ junior female employees at the publishing house – he has strongly denied allegations of wrongdoing against him. According to a new investigation, one member
The new naughty list just dropped, as the kids say these days. The pre-Christmas release of the Epstein files, or at least some of them – elves heavily redacted – has brought much-needed good cheer to all of us. Not every red face on Christmas afternoon will be down to port and brandy this year.
I am writing this article from abroad because I do not currently feel safe in Britain, the country of my birth and where I grew up. Why? Because I have written books and articles exposing and warning about the danger of Islamism in the UK. I am not alone in feeling threatened. Many of our
Could Labour, under a new leader, go into the next election with a manifesto promising to start negotiations to rejoin the EU? It is beginning to look like a real possibility given Wes Streeting’s assertion that Britain should rejoin the customs union. If Britain were to become part of the customs union, it would make
15 min listen
Father Robert Sirico joins Freddy Gray to discuss the imprisonment of Jimmy Lai – the British passport holder and Hong Kong media tycoon facing life in jail for opposing the Chinese Communist Party. Sirico reflects on Lai’s rise from poverty, his Catholic faith, the collapse of freedoms in Hong Kong, and why the West has
Britain doesn’t have a productivity problem. We have a productivity mystery. The financial crisis was 17 years ago but still output per hour remains stagnant. The UK economy is predicted to grow at a slower rate than previously expected from next year, according to a November forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility. It lowered its
I knew two of the people murdered at Bondi Beach. That beach has always felt like Australia distilled: sun-bleached, open, and unserious in the best way. It is where the country goes to exhale. You don’t brace yourself at Bondi Beach. You assume the day will end the way it began. My late father once
The phrase ‘the silly led by the sinister’ was originally used by the late, singularly great Christopher Hitchens to describe the ‘Not In My Name’ anti-war coalition of the early 2000s. But in the spirit of the ‘if you’re going to steal, steal from the best’ quote generally attributed to Pablo Picasso, I’ve used it
‘I still think New Zealand the most beautiful country I have ever seen,’ Agatha Christie marvelled in 1922. Evidently she’s not the only one. A century on, the great crime writer’s ‘astonishing’ verdict on the country in the South Seas echoes and re-echoes, most dependably in the familiar media rankings of the ‘best’ places in
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – but not, sadly, in Quebec. Or at least that’s what the provincial government would have us believe. As the region’s secularism minister Jean-François Roberge explained: ‘We can wish someone merry Christmas. We can sing Christmas songs. This is nothing but tradition. But we shouldn’t make any references to
That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou see’st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death’s second
Of the many political headaches Keir Starmer does not need right now, further American warnings that Britain is suppressing speech are pretty high on the list. Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, another prominent US public official has voiced concerns about a crackdown on freedom of expression in the UK – and a Supreme Court justice no less.
If you actually wanted to create a law that would genuinely transform animal welfare in the UK, the sane approach would be to follow the example of the organisation Compassion in World Farming. They call for farming practices that ‘enable animals to engage in their natural behaviours as identified by scientific research’ (not that we
What in Heaven’s name should we do about the benefit bill? And what on earth can be done about it? Both those questions were recently addressed by Kemi Badenoch’s thoughtful Wilberforce lecture on ‘The influence of Christianity on Conservative thinking.’ In the lecture, Badenoch asserted that ‘work is good for the soul as well as the
England’s cricketers have lost the Ashes, after being defeated in the third Test match in Adelaide by 82 runs. The Adelaide defeat follows humiliating routs by eight wickets in both Perth and Brisbane, leaving us 3-0 down; after barely 11 days of cricket, the five-match series is now a dead rubber. We lost the previous
This has been a week when Australia could no longer deny the dark stain of anti-Semitism on our national soul. When our Prime Minister, faced with the horror of Bondi and Islamic jihadist fanatics, failed to rise to the crying need for genuine national leadership. When all Australians, not just our Jewish brothers and sisters,
After months of turmoil, the chair and the terms of reference of the government’s national grooming gangs inquiry have at last been announced. The inquiry will be led by Baroness Anne Longfield, a Labour peer and former children’s commissioner. She will investigate the ‘systemic, institutional and individual’ failures to deal with these gangs and to
Happy Holidays, friends. Think about that word for a moment. Hold it in your sacred space. Surely that’s what the Holidays are all about? Friends. Like family – only better. Friends – the family we choose. People who are respectful and loving towards us. Like Oprah. (Hi, Oprah!) Or like people who are proficient at hair and makeup
The glitz and glow of the Christmas period, from gently twinkling lights to the fireworks of New Year, is something we look forward to every year. Yet through the years, the season seems to have lost a little of its magic. Things sparkle a little less than they once did. Is it just nostalgia to
What’s wrong with planning a once-in-a-lifetime holiday? Or dreaming of buying your first home? Nothing, of course – unless it hinges on the death of your elderly mother. Increasingly, it seems, many people’s future plans depend on such family tragedies. The sorrow of losing a loved one, soothed by an inheritance pay cheque. Friends speak
Shabana Mahmood’s plans to reduce migration hit a setback yesterday. It emerged that around 2,500 foreign national prison officers who no longer qualified to remain in the UK will have their visas extended. The officers, most of whom are from West Africa, were going to have to leave their jobs because the new skilled worker
‘The numbers are putrid, to say the least,’ harrumphed commentator Maura Ranallo at the start of the fourth round of last night’s fight between British boxer Anthony Joshua and American YouTuber Jake Paul. For the first three rounds, Paul skittered around the edges of the unusually large ring, evading Joshua’s every attempt at a setup.
In 42 months’ time we will be at the start of yet another summer that Andrew Clarke will never see. That’s the amount of time the law has decided Mr Clarke’s killer Demiesh Williams, convicted of manslaughter, should spend in custody before being released on license. Our sentencing guidelines and the judge interpreting them have failed
‘Macron is right’ is not one of those statements I honestly expected to find myself writing, but when the French president said, ‘I think it will become useful again to talk to Vladimir Putin,’ after the cup-half-full negotiations in Brussels over continued financial aid to Ukraine, he was spot on. ‘I believe that it’s in
Please remember not to talk about religion or politics over the turkey this Christmas. It can cause terrible rows. One of the functions of the BBC, especially Radio 4, is to host such discussions, so that we don’t have to. The Moral Maze is still worth a listen, from time to time. This week, some of the
When I was a boy, Friday nights were time for a new episode of The Rockford Files, a show about a hapless ex con PI, played by James Garner, who lived on a boat in a California marina. Fifty years later, Friday nights are for a different kind of files: The Epstein Files. Usually, the government saves
Much like Alan Partridge, Kemi Badenoch hopes to have bounced back. After an unsure start to her first year as Tory leader – hopeless interviews and PMQs showings, and a local election shellacking – she now seems to be on a roll. Her two recent set piece speeches at conference and responding to the Budget
It is a cherished myth among Oliver Cromwell’s many critics that our only home-grown military dictator ‘cancelled Christmas’. It gives the Ollie haters yet another reason to loathe the warty-faced old brute, alongside his notorious Irish massacres (of which more later) – but is it true? In fact, there is no evidence that Cromwell initiated
It’s hard to disagree with the verdict of former Australian cabinet minister Josh Frydenberg on the Bondi Beach attack. ‘Guns may have stolen the life of 15 innocent civilians,’ he said, ‘but it was radical Islamist ideology that pulled the trigger’. Despite that furious denunciation of Australian government inertia on antisemitism since 7 October –