News and Opinion

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 […]

A Tory MP has told Nicola Sturgeon to “grow up” after she questioned the necessity of Boris Johnson’s trip to Scotland. Steve Brine said the first minister was acting “childish” and said she should focus on “better things to do than worry about Boris Johnson” visiting Scotland. Speaking on BBC 2’s Politics Live, Brine said: “To […]

Boris Johnson has been accused of “misleading” MPs by claiming a Labour frontbencher’s 200-day-old comments on quarantine measures were recent. The prime minister told the Commons that shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon had “only recently” said quarantine measures should be eased. His remark was made during Prime Minister’s Questions as he criticised Labour for repeatedly […]

Much maligned and under attack from ministers – but more important than ever. Media studies doesn’t deserve the ‘Mickey Mouse’ tag, argues Martin McQuillan. In last week’s New European Ian Dunt gave us 15 bold steps to fix Britain. Top of his list was making media studies mandatory in schools. He suggested that equipping school children to approach […]

Samantha Cameron has said her fashion label has faced “challenging and difficult” times since Britain left the EU on January 1. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Cameron said her company had experienced “teething issues” in trading with the EU and urged No 10 to speak with small businesses. “[We] definitely deal with having […]

Jacob Rees-Mogg has branded Nicola Sturgeon “Mrs Moan-a-lot” after she suggested Boris Johnson’s trip to Scotland this week would break coronavirus guidelines. Instead, Rees-Mogg said the first minister should be “proud” of the prime minister’s visit to a vaccine facility in Livingstone. Responding to the SNP’s Tommy Sheppard’s question on the matter, the Commons leader said: […]

An excursion to film a new BBC show provides some escape from politics… but not much. I virtually unplugged from politics for a whole day last week, and felt a lot better for it, until the day ended, and I caught up with what had been happening in my absence. Just another day in the […]

FIONA MILLAR on the devastating long term consequences of keeping schools shut. If only it were simple to calculate the impact of Covid on our young people. If we could say definitively that in five years’ time the gap in outcomes between the best and worst off children would be x, or in ten years’ […]

Question Time tonight features a virtual audience drawn from across the UK, the country best-known across the world for dealing with a deadly pandemic with all the command and aptitude of The Chuckle Brothers carrying a wedding cake across a frozen river. But who’s on the panel? Here’s your guide… Gillian Keegan Who? Well, quite. Junior minister […]

The Labour Party has attacked Jeremy Corbyn for “wasting time and money” after he lost a court battle to release documents relating to his suspension from the parliamentary party. On Wednesday, a judge dismissed Corbyn’s case, saying he had “sufficient evidence” to fight a High Court battle over the suspension. In a direct attack at Corbyn’s […]

Richard Hamilton eschewed the knockabout nature of other purveyors of Pop Art, says Richard Holledge, but his work packed just as much of a punch. Pop! Whaam! Blam. Exclamation marks!!! Technicolour explosions. That’s Pop Art for you. The comic book whizz-bangs of Roy Lichtenstein and a group of post-war artists typified the 1960s for many – […]

Tory MP Sir Desmond Swayne has refused to apologise for telling vaccine sceptics to “persist” with their campaign against lockdown restrictions, arguing he was unaware of their position on jabs. After being told to apologise by Cabinet minister Michael Gove, the New Forest West MP told the PA news agency: “I have always had a […]

Berlin has been long been seen as the European capital most understanding – and indulgent – of Russia. But that’s  changing, says CATHRIN SCHAER. For several years now, German newspapers have been proclaiming the next new low in the German-Russian relationship. There was 2015’s Russian hacker attack on the German parliament that started the decline. Then the assassination […]

Podcasts have been with us for a few years now. But during the pandemic something has happened with this genre – a paradigm shift. A sea-change of massive proportions. Lately, I’ve been trying  to  understand what exactly is going on. And if what is happening is a kind of paradigm shift. A sea-change of massive proportions is […]