All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Conservative party conference kicks off today in Manchester with a speech from Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. Michael Gove, Liz Truss and Jacob Rees-Mogg will also be taking part in panels on the main stage. Here are the highlights today: Main agenda: 14.00: Welcome to Conference James Cleverly and Pamela Hall 14.20: Building a Safe and Prosperous
Your latest challenge was to recast a famous political speech as a sonnet. Lots of you opted for Elizabeth I’s address to the troops at Tilbury, but James Aske got there first in 1588, the year she gave it, with a verse reworking that appeared in Elizabetha Triumphans, his celebration of the Armada victory. You
Amid the headline-grabbing antics of the Prime Minister this week, some stories coming out of Labour party conference got buried. The most significant of these was shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s surprising promotion of idling. McDonnell said that a 32 hour working week should become the norm in ten years and that we should “work to
I don’t usually get up early just for an appointment at a bank. Yet last Tuesday in New York, I lost sleep in order to slam a trove of savings into a certificate of deposit. Surely I could have delayed the quotidian chore for any old day. What was the hurry? I wanted to ensure
The Labour Party is buzzing about in Iain Duncan Smith’s constituency today, threatening both to unseat the former Conservative leader and scrap the reform he introduced: Universal Credit. Jeremy Corbyn made the promise, saying the changes to the benefits system have been an ‘unmitigated disaster’. The party will first get rid of the most controversial
The Conservatives head to Manchester for an unconventional party conference. After opposition MPs vetoed plans for a conference recess, the Tories will meet while parliament sits. No 10 is bullish that it will not let opposition MPs ruin its moment. Expect cars and helicopters on standby to ferry politicians at the last minute if a
There is probably now just a week or so from the end of the Tory conference for Boris Johnson to make a breakthrough on a Brexit deal, or for talks to end. Why? Well, government sources tell me the EU Commission has been told by British negotiators in no uncertain terms that Johnson will not quit
The Tory plan was to fight the 2017 election as a Brexit election. But that strategy was derailed by a disastrous manifesto that alienated the Tory base and allowed Labour to change the subject to domestic policy. One of the problems with that manifesto was that it was written by a very small clique, meaning
So what should Boris Johnson do now? Obviously the law officers are twitchy. They defer to judges and their later careers may depend on them. But as the Supreme Court judges make much of not impugning Boris’s motives before going on to savage him, he is perfectly entitled to employ the same technique. Boris can
David Cameron’s autobiography was supposed to be a chance for the former prime minister to settle scores and have his say on his time in office. But Cameron’s book is also something that he didn’t intend: a convincing case for Brexit. ‘For the Record’ is littered with examples of EU officials and council members undermining UK interests
No doubt there will be plenty of black humour at this year’s Tory party Conference — not least because it will be a kind of counter-cultural festival, taking place in the teeth of the Establishment’s attempts to cancel it. Who knew we were the real hippies? It’ll be like Woodstock for the over-65s. But if
Almost every word of criticism of the judgment of the Supreme Court this week has been, frankly, barmy. Headline after headline has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the court, as it stepped in to reverse the prorogation of parliament for a record-breaking five weeks. Most of the adverse comment has come from those with
Justin Trudeau found himself in hot water last week after pictures emerged of him ‘blacking up’ for a fancy-dress party. A week on, an unlikely supporter has leapt to the Canadian prime minister’s defence. Step forward, Desmond Swayne. In a blog on his website titled ‘Trudeau’s Turban’, the flamboyant Brexiteer said the only thing Trudeau
Labour MP Karl Turner took the opportunity to berate Boris Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings in a heated, and slightly bizarre, exchange in the House of Commons yesterday. Turner (whose staff just happened to be filming the MP’s grandstanding) approached Cummings in Portcullis House and attacked him for the ‘sort of language’ Boris Johnson had used
The Scottish National Party has come round to the idea that Jeremy Corbyn may shortly have to become temporary caretaker prime minister, in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit on 31 October and immediately afterwards hold a general election. A source close to the SNP leadership tells me that Ian Blackford, leader of the SNP
The left no longer exists as a coherent political force in France. Embarrassed in the 2017 presidential election, the Socialist party has continued to disintegrate, polling just 6.2 per cent of the vote in May’s European elections. That was marginally fewer votes than Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, which mustered a distinctly modest 6.3 per
This week, the Supreme Court gave its bombshell ruling – Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament was unlawful. With parliament resuming the very next day, Boris Johnson has been dealt a humiliating defeat. Yet, MPs still won’t trigger a general election, until Boris requests a Brexit extension. So is there any escape for the Prime Minister,
If President Donald Trump hoped the release of a memo detailing his July 25 telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was going to exculpate him from questions about misconduct in office, his hopes were dashed the moment the public read the transcript. Suspicions of Trump trading £323m ($400m) in military aid to Ukraine in return
The Supreme Court’s judgement is the latest constitutional perversion after the Benn act. But ironically it may assist the Government in achieving its objective of Britain leaving the EU by 31 October, without having to seek an extension to the Article 50 process. In paragraph 34, the Supreme Court states that its ‘proper function’ under
There is no love lost between MPs in the Commons today following last night’s fractious debate. But has one Labour MP gone a little too far in calling for her opposite number to say sorry? Shadow Commons leader Valerie Vaz took to her feet this afternoon to ask Geoffrey Cox to ‘come to the House
Rarely has there been such a flagrant display of hypocrisy and cant as there was in the House of Commons last night. Opposition MPs stood up one after the other to denounce Boris Johnson for his use of apparently toxic and dangerous words like ‘surrender’ and ‘sabotage’. Such language is polluting the public sphere and
Boris Johnson’s behaviour in the Commons last night was clearly part of his strategy to set up a ‘people vs parliament’ narrative ahead of an election. We can debate the rights and wrongs of telling MPs that the best way to honour Jo Cox would be to get Brexit done, but there are also political
It was never clear what this Parliament was going to do if it was no longer prorogued. For three years the UK Parliament has been unable to act on the 2016 referendum result. It was never clear what they were hoping to achieve if they got an extra three days, weeks or months. But the
The death today of the Fifth Republic’s fifth president, at the age of 86, is also the passing of its most romanesque character. Tall and debonair, Jacques Chirac’s charms worked their magic with the ladies at a higher rate than even the standard operating procedure for most French presidents. Chirac’s social and political ascension bears the
Ruth Bader Ginsburg likes her office. The US Supreme Court justice, a spry 86-year-old who trains twice a week with an ex-Special Forces soldier, is a liberal icon on America’s highest court. A decade ago, she gave an interviewer a tour of her chambers, explaining: ‘I like a quiet place and I am glad to
Now that more experts have had time to study the ruling, the legal validity of the Supreme Court decision on the prorogation of Parliament is unravelling with every passing day. The court cited two cases to justify its involvement in political decisions: the Case of Proclamations (1611) and Entick v Carrington (1765). The Case of
Speaker Nancy Pelosi may be a liberal from San Francisco, California and a diehard political opponent of President Donald Trump, but she is also an institutionalist at heart. Having gone through the saga of former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in the late 1990s, she has never been a fan of using the procedure to push
Something ugly has come out of the Supreme Court’s decision to change the law and our constitution yesterday. Instead of basking magnanimously in the fact that they won, there have been wholly unwarranted calls from Remainers for ‘heads on plates’. The cry has gone out for the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, to publish his legal
Scottish politics is stuck. As with Brexit across the wider United Kingdom, the 2014 independence referendum has permanently shifted attitudes of the majority of the population into Yes/No camps, with little room for compromise. The SNP government stumbles from one crisis of service delivery to another yet continues to consistently poll around 40 per cent.
The House of Commons has just turned very ugly indeed, after Boris Johnson dismissed a Labour MP who was complaining about the abuse and threats she and other colleagues are receiving as ‘humbug’. Paula Sherriff – who has had a particularly sustained campaign of abuse against her, including swastikas being left at her office – made
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have just clashed spectacularly in the House of Commons. Boris Johnson repeatedly goaded Jeremy Corbyn over his refusal to go for an election now. This was not a Prime Minister acting like one who had been chastened by the Supreme Court’s decision, but one determined to set himself up as
Boris Johnson wants a general election now. Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon both say they want an election but not till after they are sure that the provisions of the Benn Act have been effective and the UK is NOT leaving the EU without a deal on October 31. As far as I can see
On the face of it, the Labour party conference commitment to bring forward Britain’s net zero greenhouse gas emission target to 2030 is nothing short of reckless. ‘We need zero emissions,’ the economist Paul Johnson and member of the Committee on Climate Change tweeted. ‘Getting there by 2050 is tough and expensive but feasible and