When the small boats crisis began, it was seen by some in government as a positive sign. ‘It was an emblem of success,’ says Robert Buckland, who was solicitor general at the time. ‘If you remember, the previous mode of entry for migrants was on lorries.’ Heat scanners had been introduced at the Channel Tunnel
I always advise younger journalists never to use irony or make jokes on social media, so when I was effectively sacked for alluding to an edible fruit of the palm family, I should have known better. And of course I did know better. I deleted my three-word tweet within minutes. But screenshots live for ever.
It’s not hard to see why migrants come here. For those who make it across the Channel illegally, there is only a small chance of deportation. About 72 per cent of the predominantly young males who leave the safety of France can expect to have their UK asylum claims granted. The success rate is more
‘If you’re having a bad day at work,’ read the Twitter meme, ‘at least you’re not Harry Cole or James Heale.’ The inglorious collapse of Liz Truss’s government put paid to many plans, but none more so than the biography of the lady herself, which Harry and I have been writing for the past ten
This week Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, the 90-year-old retired bishop of Hong Kong, went on trial in Kowloon Magistrates Court as a punishment for supporting pro-democracy demonstrators during the mass protests in Hong Kong. He was arrested in May and, along with four other trustees of a humanitarian relief fund, charged with failing to register
When Rishi Sunak was elected as an MP, he swore his oath of allegiance in the House of Commons on the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism’s most sacred texts. Many – if not most – people think that Hinduism is a religion of peace: an idea that’s taken root thanks to Mahatma Gandhi and his
After last week’s revelation that James Corden was banned from a New York restaurant for being repeatedly horrible to staff, I’ve been considering the different way fat men and fat women are viewed. Fat men are invariably seen as jolly – who can imagine a thin Father Christmas? – despite the rollcall of porky evil,
‘In the digital age of cloud computing, the idea that steel and plastic pipes are integral to our life seems anachronistic,’ wrote Rishi Sunak. ‘But our ability to transmit confidential information, to conduct financial transactions and to communicate internationally all depend upon a global network of physical cables lying under the sea.’ And what if
At a recent dinner, an MP told me a story that reveals a great deal about the current state of feminism. One of her constituents had come to her surgery in some distress. She had children at a local primary school, she said, and had been alarmed to discover that the school’s sex education curriculum
Now that the final curtain has fallen on Liz Truss’s brief and tumultuous premiership, it is time for reflection. A chance to set the record straight and also to own up to mistakes – especially for those of us who tried to advise her. What went wrong? Yes, the tipping point was Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget.
It is the most remarkable turnaround in recent political history. On 5 September, Rishi Sunak lost the Tory leadership race to Liz Truss with 43 per cent of the vote. He was written off as another politician with a brilliant future behind him. Seven weeks later, the former Chancellor – whom, I should say, I
Towards the end of the summer, almost in a spirit of contrarianism, well-informed Americans started talking about President Joe Biden and the Democrats winning again. It had been a bad year, these pundits conceded, but Biden was suddenly on a ‘hot streak’ and, as the November midterms approached, the Democratic party finally had some political
‘Governments don’t control markets,’ the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, likes to say. But there are times when markets control governments. The market, or the fear of how the market might react, is now the driving force in British politics. It explains the dramatic developments of the past week and will determine the new Prime Minister’s
Thirty-five years ago, the late Christopher Hitchens published a book about the Elgin Marbles. Unsurprisingly, it was a polemical work; he was passionately campaigning for the return of the sculptures to Athens. But that was not the reason why I wrote a scathing review of it for The Spectator. Parts of it were plagiarised, as
Mark Zuckerberg is in a lot of trouble. He has turned away from the slog of running Facebook to focus almost entirely on his ‘metaverse’, a vision of the internet where people enter interactive virtual spaces using virtual reality (VR) headsets. He has pledged investment of at least $10 billion a year for a decade,
If you are a bird, any kind of bird, the current pandemic of avian influenza rampaging through your kind is far more terrifying than anything the hairless apes on the ground below experienced in 2020 and 2021. Britain’s seabirds – guillemots, gannets, gulls, kittiwakes and skuas – have been hardest hit because they breed in
The first time I went to Mongolia was in 2014, when I travelled across the country with the actress Michelle Rodriguez and a group of her friends, courtesy of the Mongolian-American conservationist Jalsa Urubshurow. Driving out of Ulaanbaatar at dawn, we stopped at a market on the outskirts of the city to buy caviar, blinis
The last King Charles was crowned in 1661. Samuel Pepys attended the ceremony. He was captivated by ‘the sight of all these glorious things… sure never to see the like again in this world’. He later became so merry, he told his diary, that ‘my head began to turne and I to vomitt…Thus did the
Liz Truss did not think that spending cuts would be a major part of her agenda. She and her first chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, were confident that markets, having lent Britain billions of pounds to cover the cost of the lockdowns, would be more than happy to do the same to transform the economy. Their argument
A 24th man has just been charged with the rape of a 13-year-old girl more than ten years ago in Bradford. Twenty-four men. One 13-year-old girl. It takes some absorbing. The case will come to trial in due course, but it prompts reflection on other cases of historic sexual abuse against girls where the victims
