James Hanson is a presenter on LBC and former host of Times Radio's Frontline series on the war in Ukraine.
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There’s a slight feeling of 1990 to the way the Tories are selling the early local election results. Back then, party chairman Kenneth Baker managed to spin victory into defeat. By concentrating the media’s attention on Conservative holds in Wandsworth and Westminster, he turned perceptions of a bad night for the government on its head.
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If I walked over Westminster Bridge in my birthday suit, I would almost certainly be arrested. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, thousands of stark naked cyclists are permitted once a year to bare all along the very same route. In June, London’s naked bid ride returns to the capital. Last year, more than 1,200
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I’ll say this for the RMT: they are, at least, a trade union that has long since given up the pretense of caring about the wider public good. While the insufferable junior doctors pretend their money-grabbing militancy is somehow an act of great benevolence towards patients, the rail workers’ union is so transparently a glorified
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If Sir Ed Davey’s stunts were ever funny, the joke has long since worn off. At the Lib Dem spring conference this weekend, he strode onto stage wearing sunglasses to the tune of Boney M’s ‘Daddy Cool’ in a lame attempt to parody Emmanuel Macron’s recent appearance at Davos. After a typically forgettable speech, Davey
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Not for the first time, Nigel Farage has hit a nerve. At a rally in Birmingham, the Reform UK leader took aim at an increasingly sacred cow in modern Britain: working from home. He called for ‘an attitudinal change to hard work rather than work-life balance’ and claimed ‘people aren’t more productive working from home,
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When hosting the Golden Globes in 2020, Ricky Gervais delivered a delicious demolition of Hollywood’s political pretensions, telling his A-list audience: ‘if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real
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The Tory defections to Reform are continuing to mount up, with former home secretary Suella Braverman the latest to cross the floor this morning. Braverman’s defection has been hailed as a coup by Nigel Farage, who pointed out she is ‘somebody who’s reached high office in the cabinet.’ But there is an important question the
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In the time honoured tradition of underwhelming Christmas gifts, surely none is quite so derisory as the government’s Christmas bonus for pensioners. Many recipients may not even notice it. A £10 payment by the Department for Work and Pensions, this tax-free bauble is sent to every state pensioner in the first week of December, plus
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‘Parents shouldn’t be out of pocket by setting their kids up for school’. So boasted Downing Street, as the government touts its expansion of ‘free’ breakfast clubs. Except, as with everything the state provides, they’re not ‘free’. They are paid for by taxpayers. Call me a selfish, hard-hearted miser if you wish, but why should
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‘Don’t let Donald Trump’s Britain become Nigel Farage’s Britain’. So spluttered a typically hyperbolic Sir Ed Davey during his Lib Dem conference speech yesterday. In a further sign that the Reform UK leader lives rent-free inside the minds of liberal Britain, Davey made a series of wild accusations about Farage – including that he wants
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You almost have to admire the RMT – they are a trade union from central casting. From Bob Crow to Mick Lynch, their leaders have been the baldest, the bolshiest and the most Bolshevik of the lot – and, credit where it’s due, the most effective. How else can you explain the insanity of a
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When I moved to London two years ago, my friends who already lived in the capital shared various warnings. From the cost of housing to the oppressive heat of the Central Line in summer – they tempered my excitement at moving to the big city with sober, sensible advice. But more than anything, the one
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Our economy is on the rocks, legal and illegal immigration remains out of control, public services are creaking, and a looming debt crisis is on the horizon. But fear not. Labour has announced its big idea for turning around Britain’s fortunes: votes for children. It is naive to assume that 16-year-olds will be more attracted
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Having already angered older voters with their controversial changes to winter fuel payments last autumn, Labour has now achieved a generational symmetry by angering younger voters with its subsequent U-turn. Rachel Reeves has today announced that more than three quarters of pensioners will receive the winter fuel payment this year. It means any individual with
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It just happened to be my birthday. A Friday lunchtime at the start of November. Broad daylight. I had left Oval tube station and was about to turn onto my road. But as I strolled along the pavement, airpods in, replying to happy birthday messages on WhatsApp, the inevitable happened. Snatch. My phone was lifted
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Hold the front page, sound the alarm, remember where you were – the Lib Dems have come up with a good idea for once. Reinforcing the old adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, Ed Davey’s party has announced a genuinely sensible policy: that playing music out loud on public transport
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Safety concerns around Notting Hill Carnival are nothing new. During last year’s event alone, 334 people were arrested and two people were killed, including 32 year-old Cher Maximen, who was stabbed to death in front of her young daughter during the festival’s ‘family day’. Forty-one year-old Mussie Imnetu was beaten to death during a separate
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As a UK-US trade deal moves closer, an age-old fear is rearing its head once more: that Britain will be forced to accept imports of American chlorinated chicken. Ever since Brexit, politicians of all parties have decried the prospect. The Labour manifesto ruled it out and even Rishi Sunak promised farmers in 2023 that there
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Very little surprises me about Sadiq Khan’s London anymore. It’s now a city in which low-level lawlessness is implicitly tolerated via the complete absence of enforcement. Where the fetid smell of cannabis pervades the streets, where phone-snatching is endemic and where shop-lifting goes unpunished. And now, people are smoking crack cocaine on the Victoria Line.
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The phenomenon of people living their lives vicariously through social media is nothing new. We’ve all got that friend who uses their Instagram story to post passive aggressive memes about their ex. Or the one who decides to document the repainting of their downstairs loo as if it’s an interior design triumph worthy of Architectural
