From our UK edition
Sir Keir Starmer remains dug in as Prime Minister, having told the cabinet: ‘Bring it on if you think you’re hard enough’. Most observers have concluded that someone will indeed bring it on, and Sir Keir’s days are numbered. But there is an almighty irony in Sir Keir’s desperate pleas to stay in the job.
From our UK edition
It’s now been two days since the Golders Green terror attack, so if the response to previous such incidents is anything to go by, it’s time for the political class to forget about it and move on to something else. In recent weeks we’ve had – as well as the low level ‘ambient anti-Semitism’ of
From our UK edition
It’s always the newspeak that lacerates. The Royal Academy of Music (RAM) has, admirably, set up a new foundation year for ‘talented young musicians who have previously faced significant obstacles’, specifically the decline in music education in so many secondary schools – and indeed, the total absence in some. The foundation course will start in
From our UK edition
My companion – my friend – Louie died suddenly on Tuesday. He was nine (his tenth birthday was due next month) which, in cat years, made him middle-aged. No one saw it coming – he’d had his six-monthly check-up a few weeks ago and was seemingly fit and well. If you don’t have a pet, you
From our UK edition
There are times when even the Guardian is beyond parody. The newspaper which recently published an article by Iran’s foreign minister – as Iranian propaganda does not get a sufficient airing in the West – can be relied upon to find the worst possible take on any subject, even the opening of a cake shop. Last month one
From our UK edition
Here we go again. Last February I wrote about the latest wave of ‘catphobia’ – my new word, do use it – prompted by a report (more accurately, an anti-cat rant) published by the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission. The report suggested the ‘compulsory containment of cats in vulnerable areas’ and the banning of cats altogether in
From our UK edition
Here’s a surprise. For over two years the Mayor of London has maintained a Trappist vow over the regular hate marches which have defiled the streets of his city. There’s been not a peep out of him criticising the anti-Semitic slogans, banners or chants. When people tell you who they are, as West has done
From our UK edition
Tucker Carlson is one of the most influential and popular podcasters in the world. He is, not to put too fine a point on it, a podcasting sensation, a master of one of the most important of all modern broadcast mediums. Millions of followers hang on his utterances and appearances. Carlson has 2.6 million YouTube
From our UK edition
Would you share a house with someone black? Even to pose the question, let alone to say no, is to invite – quite rightly – the accusation of racism. But it’s a different matter when it comes to Jews. The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has today published a report on campus anti-Semitism in Britiain. Of all
From our UK edition
It must be a comforting thought to those who oppose the military action against the Iranian regime that it is, to coin a phrase, a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing. It’s not our fight and not our war, they argue. The Iranians have plotted and planned the assassination
From our UK edition
In 1997 the doyen of Democrat political columnists in the US, E.J. Dionne, published They Only Look Dead. He argued that while the received wisdom was that the Republicans were set to dominate politics for a generation, there were underlying factors which pointed to a Democrat revival. Dionne was both completely wrong but also completely
From our UK edition
The latest set of antisemitism figures from the Community Security Trust covering 2025 are depressingly predictable. Last year, saw 3,700 instances of anti-Jewish hate across the UK, the second highest annual total ever reported – second only to the 4,298 antisemitic incidents in 2023. The figures have rightly been described as appalling by ministers. But
From our UK edition
The political focus is, quite rightly, now on Sir Keir Starmer. You hardly need me to point out how tenuous his hold on office now is, or why. But there is one key aspect to that ‘why’ which has been relatively unremarked on. Yesterday Kemi Badenoch scored a direct hit on the Prime Minister when
From our UK edition
It’s the fag end of January, so that means it’s time for Davos – the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) gathering in the Swiss mountains, when the world’s smuggest men and the occasional woman come together to play dinner companion one-upmanship. Davos has always enraged a certain type of equally smug leftist – and now
From our UK edition
Robert Jenrick isn’t often compared to Groucho Marx, but there’s something apposite about the latter’s line, ‘I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member’. Clearly Jenrick, who was sacked by Tory leader Kemi Badenoch yesterday before being unveiled as Reform’s latest recruit, does want to be a member
From our UK edition
The most important thing about Robert Jenrick’s sacking isn’t Robert Jenrick. It’s that it is yet another demonstration of Kemi Badenoch’s increasing stature as Tory leader. The Tory leader was presented with a gift – a sacking that was both necessary, obvious and politically useful to her, further cementing her standing as leader For most of her
From our UK edition
What is it going to take for the British government – any British government, of any party – to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood? It was revealed today that the UAE is now limiting the number of students it will enrol at British universities because of the prevalence of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) influence on campuses. The
From our UK edition
Hugh, meet Claire. Claire, meet Hugh. Claire has some guidance that might prove useful for you, Hugh. Should, that is, you not want to come across as any more of an ignorant buffoon than you do already. The problem for Bonneville is that details do matter. And there is a big issue with the detail
From our UK edition
Call me an old cynic, but I knew from the moment that the Alaa Abd el-Fattah affair blew up what the next stage would be. The single most predictable thing in the entire farce – a Whitehall farce indeed, albeit very much not in the old Brian Rix mould – was that when el-Fattah made
From our UK edition
Everyone is familiar with the old insult that you can tell when a politician is not telling the truth because his lips move. Be that as it may, a variation of this has emerged, but this time when someone from West Midlands Police is giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee. Did West Midlands Police
