News and Opinion

The composer’s actual association with the Hungarian capital was relatively fleeting. Yet the city has long laid a claim on him, says SOPHIA DEBOICK. Formed from the separate locales of Buda, Óbuda, and Pest in 1873, Budapest is a city with an enduring commitment to music. Historic venues like the Pesti Vigadó concert hall, built […]

The influence on English of the Old Norse language of the Vikings is still up for debate, says PETER TRUDGILL. When people are learning English as a foreign language, it is generally very useful for them to learn three main forms of every verb: the present tense, the past tense, and the past participle. Past participles occur […]

MITCH BENN on how Remainers are now accused of revelling in the adverse impacts of Brexit. There’s always an element of ‘preaching to the choir’ when it comes to print journalism in this country; pretty much every newspaper on the stands has, to varying degrees, a political standpoint of which its readers are aware and, presumably, endorse. So […]

WILL SELF on the mundanity of tech. Sympathetic magic is usually conducted using what the pioneering structuralist anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, termed “a symbol set”: bundles of herbs, fetish objects, dolls in the likeness of the relevant parties. Feelings are brought to a focus then beamed across space and time; remote and mystic causes create very […]

One month on, its obvious faults have already emerged. More worrying though is the way Brexit has consolidated its backers, says NICK COHEN. The comforting thing to say about Boris Johnson is that he is a laughable idiot. And not just a village idiot. But an idiot for all seasons, an idiot who bestrides the narrow world […]

SUNA ERDEM on how our clothing is contributing to the environmental scourge of microplastics, and what can be done about it. The Arctic is a forbidding place. The 24-hour winter darkness; sub zero temperatures;  treacherous floating ice sheets – it is barely accessible to all but the most dedicated scientist or explorer. Our clothes, however, […]

Baroness Buscombe has been compared to a Red Dwarf character and British pop band Queen following her “floating head” appearance during a Lords Zoom call. Buscombe, a Tory peer, gave a statement about the Covid vaccine roll-out, calling on the next batch of doses to be given to the clinically vulnerable under 70. But the statement drew […]

Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has said he halted a post-Brexit review of workers’ rights because it was not a “constructive thing to do”. Kwarteng took over as secretary of state from Alok Sharma, who has been appointed full-time president of the UN Cop26 climate conference, three weeks ago. He told the BBC’s Political Thinking that […]

A country estate used by Dominic Raab plans to spend £5 million to build 10-metre-high earth mounds on its land to block out the view of the M25 motorway. A massive landscaping project that would take five years to complete could be underway soon at the historic Chevening House in Kent, the MailOnline has revealed. The […]

Shola Mos-Shogbamimu is a lawyer, activist, political commentator and founder of the publication Women in Leadership. She’s also a mother-of-three (“my kids can’t wait to get back to school because they now prefer their teachers to me”, she tells me down the phone from her lockdowned South London home). And, naturally, a fervent Remainer. We’re […]

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said the bloc’s contracts with AstraZeneca – which produces one of several Covid jabs – contains binding orders and clear delivery quantities. AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot has said the contract was “not a commitment” and that the firm had only agreed to meet demand to its “best effort”. Von der […]

A clip of Boris Johnson laying out the case for the union has backfired spectacularly after Twitter users pointed out the ‘hypocrisy’ of his argument.  Johnson toured a vaccine facility in Scotland on Thursday where he said he “believed in the power of doing things together”.  The prime minister’s comment comes as he toured the […]

Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn are crowdfunding to create new video output to counteract Andrew Neil’s new GB News television service. Left-wing grassroots campaign group Momentum is currently appealing for financial support ahead of new television services from GB News and Rupert Murdoch’s News UK service – both due to launch in the spring. In an email to […]

Former chief Brexit negotiator David Frost has been appointed as the head of a new International Policy Unit in No 10, the prime minister has announced. Lord Frost had been due to be the new National Security Adviser, a role which will instead be filled by Sir Stephen Lovegrove – the permanent secretary to the Ministry […]

When the Yorkshire Post ran an accurate story about vaccines being diverted to other regions Tory ministers and MPs rounded on the newspaper. JAMES MITCHINSON, its editor, says their response raises several questions. You may not recall it. There have been so many, you may not even have seen it. Early June last year health minister […]

A government minister has defended the government’s decision to lock down when it did in March, despite saying that acting earlier “would have saved more lives”. Apprenticeships minister Gillian Keegan told Question Time that had the country locked down earlier and shut its borders then “we would have had a lower death toll for sure”. […]

A German MEP has warned the UK is acting like Donald Trump over the coronavirus vaccines. Dr Peter Liese was speaking to the BBC’s Newscast podcast when said the UK appeared to be echoing the former US president’s “US-first policy”. He said: “If it’s true what some say that the UK had a ‘UK first’ contract – […]

Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has been accused of ‘siding with the EU’ after she threatened to publish confidential data on the supply of coronavirus vaccines, despite Number 10’s plea for her to remain quiet. The first minister said she was revealing the figures in response to taunts from the Scottish Tories that she is […]

Priti Patel has denied that she was hypocritical for going on a work trip away from London after criticising social media influencers for using work as an excuse to travel. The home secretary defended the decision to leave London for a meet and greet with police officers, saying it was part of her “statutory duties”. She […]

It wasn’t only the English language that spread around the globe during Britain’s age of imperial expansion, says PETER TRUDGILL.   The three major surviving indigenous languages of the island of Britain are English, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. We are very familiar with the fact that, since the beginning of the 17th century, English has spread far […]

TIM WALKER on the latest in-house spending at the Treasury. Plus, how Steinway pianos have suffered from Brexit. With a £500 million-plus personal fortune and a father-in-law who’s a billionaire, Rishi Sunak inevitably seems to struggle sometimes to empathise with lesser mortals. Already in these straitened times, the chancellor has allowed annual running costs for his flat in […]

Prime minister Boris Johnson has been reported to police, accused of breaking lockdown restrictions, after making a trip to Glasgow against the advice of Nicola Sturgeon. The first minister questioned if his trip to Scotland was essential travel or not and advised he could work from home, however the PM made his one day trip […]

James O’Brien has warned the debate surrounding Scottish independence risked turning the UK “upside down again”. The LBC presenter’s comment comes as Boris Johnson visited Scotland on Thursday in a bid to “shore up” the union. Johnson defied advice from Scotland’s first minister that visiting the country would amount to breaking lockdown rules and that he should […]

Prime minister Boris Johnson said he had not seen alleged remarks made by Tory Brexiteer Desmond Swayne calling into question the veracity of official coronavirus statistics. The former minister has been accused by Labour and campaigners of spreading misinformation about the virus when he reportedly said that the infection and mortality figures had been “manipulated”. Cabinet minister […]

The UK government shut down the chance of continuing the Erasmus programme because it was “too European”, a Scottish minister has claimed. The education exchange programme was one of the casualties of the Brexit process, but Scotland and Wales are continuing to push for access to it. The UK government has announced a replacement scheme, […]

Piers Morgan has hinted that he could run for parliament after turning his attention to politics during the coronavirus pandemic. The Good Morning Britain presenter has been ranked by bookies 10/1 favourite to become an MP this year, and a 20/1 chance of becoming prime minister within the next decade. In an interview with The […]

A review of worker’s rights post-Brexit, which unions feared would lower standards, will no longer be going ahead says business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng in an abrupt U-turn. The move has come as a huge surprise after he confirmed to MPs just last week that the government would be investigating how EU employment rights protections might change […]

The first inaugural meeting between the UK’s new diplomatic team in Brussels and senior EU officials since Brexit has been “postponed” in response to a spat over the bloc’s diplomatic status. Lindsay Croisdale-Appleby, formally appointed this month to represent the UK in Brussels, was due to meet the chief aide to the European council president, Charles Michel, […]

PAUL KNOTT on the reasons behind Brussels’ stuttering vaccine rollout. Alarm bells are ringing loud across the European Union about the slow rollout of its Covid-19 vaccinations. Brussels opted for a characteristically centralised vaccine process in order to reduce tensions between countries, but may have ended up inadvertently stoking them. The original decisions that partly caused this unsteady […]

Touring musicians and road crews have been “betrayed” by the government in the Brexit trade deal, the Lords has been told. Liberal Democrat Lord Strasburger urged ministers to apologise for having “screwed up” negotiations and come back with nothing. Leading musicians have criticised the government’s Brexit deal for not including visa-free travel for musicians, with […]

Yes, schools must return as soon as possible. But to reduce the damage their closure has done we must look far further into the future, says JAMES BALL. Almost 11 months into the battle with coronavirus the UK’s political and media establishment are agreed on one – and perhaps only one – thing: we need […]

The government has withdrawn a “stay home, save lives” poster following backlash over its apparently sexist depiction of women. The poster showed one picture of a woman reclining in a man’s arms on the sofa followed by three images of women looking after children and doing housework. Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said: “It has been […]