United Kingdom

TIM WALKER on Michael Gove’s reverse Midas touch. Michael Gove – the man who assured British fishermen that Brexit would make them rich – appears not to have lost his reverse Midas touch. Since joining the board of trustees of Dorneywood, Rishi Sunak’s grace and favour country retreat in Buckinghamshire, the value of its investments has plummeted […]

There is a strong case for Britain to spend more on international aid, based purely on self interest… yet even that cannot convince the government Last month saw an announcement that could be UK’s most positive impact on the world in decades – a new vaccine, not to tackle Covid-19, but malaria. A team from the University […]

Geoff McDonald recently flew into the UK from South Africa. What he found was chaos, and conditions that seemed ripe for super-spreading Though I was born and raised in South Africa, Britain has been my home for more than 20 years. I have raised a family here, come to know the UK as a wonderful and […]

Campaigning in the Hartlepool by-election, Sir Keir Starmer said repeatedly that Labour had a “mountain to climb” if it was to regain power. Now that the votes are in and counted, that task looks every bit as formidable as the party seeks to chart a route back to No 10. It is hard to see […]

Hopes of a Labour revival under Sir Keir Starmer have suffered a blow after the Conservative Party comfortably won the Hartlepool by-election. The Leave-supporting North East constituency went blue for the first time in its 47-year-old history, as Boris Johnson demolished another brick in Labour’s so-called “red wall”. Voters in the town backed Tory candidate […]

The Civil Service has been weakened by Brexit and the growth of court politics. But a rearguard action is underway. Plucked from relative obscurity at the age of 41 to become cabinet secretary, Simon Case could hardly have imagined his present role as head of the Downing Street shovel brigade, clearing up mess largely of […]

Labour has all but conceded defeat in the Hartlepool by-election after a shadow cabinet member admitted the party was “not close to winning this”. Shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon, who led the opposition party’s campaign to hold the North East town, said it looked clear that Labour had not “got over the line”. Such a […]

The prime minister and his fiancee have got it badly wrong over their reported disdain for John Lewis. On contemplating the national orgy of curtain-twitching that’s accompanied Dominic Cummings’s revelations regarding the refurbishment of the prime minister’s flat in Number 11, Downing Street, Oscar Wilde’s valedictory bon mot comes to mind: days before expiring in […]

Agreeing a post-Brexit free trade deal between Britain and the United States will take “some time”, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has warned. Blinken said President Joe Biden’s new trade negotiator, Katherine Tai, would be taking time to review the discussions that had taken place with the Trump administration before progressing with the talks. […]

Britain is facing a post-Brexit “exodus of EU waiters and baristas” with “prospective foreign workers are shunning the UK because of tighter visa rules and higher entry costs post-Brexit.” It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, as reaction to the Line Of Duty finale reminds us of another long-running […]

Boris Johnson has not said whether key social care proposals, as promised when he was elected, will be detailed in next week’s Queen’s Speech. The prime minister said proposals for the long-term reform of the sector and its funding will be brought forward in the “next few months”. Care groups, charities and politicians have been […]

A new exhibition brings together the works of four artists who, in their very different ways, emerged at a time when female roles in British society were about to change forever.  They were among the most innovative and, at times, sought-after artists of their day, a quartet of painters who are celebrated together in an […]

Party leaders are preparing for a frantic last day of campaigning in the run-up to “super Thursday” as they bid to sway undecided voters before a bumper crop of elections. The prime minister is expected to make a final pitch to the electorate in England with time running out before polls open, while Labour leader […]

The European football super league is not dead – and you can bank on that The Super League, which rightly shocked and angered so many, came as no surprise to me. It was always hovering in the wings, waiting to burst on to the stage of world football like a 1,000-lb gorilla. There was no […]

New columnist MEGAN NOLAN on The Bold Type, a pleasing Netflix series which tries just a little too hard to hit the zeitgeist In late February, knowing we were still a substantial chunk of time away from being legally allowed to hang out with people again, I decided I needed just one more sustained volley […]

Thirty years after his death, a new biography of Steve Marriott, of the Small Faces, paints a bleak picture of rock excess. The 30th anniversary of Steve Marriott’s death at the age of 44 – he died in a house fire on April 21 1991 caused by his falling asleep with a lit cigarette – finds the […]

Sir Keir Starmer has written an open letter to the country ahead of this week’s elections, setting out his “burning desire to build a brighter future” for Britain. The Labour leader claimed it is “a changed Labour Party” in the letter ahead of Thursday, which will be his first electoral test since taking over from […]

A former aide to Boris Johnson advised him on new planning laws while being employed by two major property firms, a report claims. Industry insiders told the Mirror that Eddie Lister, who stepped down from No 10 over a conflict of interest, had been advising on the proposals. Whitehall sources suggested that Lord Udny-Lister had been […]

The new royal yacht named after Prince Philip is a waste of £200 million, says MITCH BENN. “SERIOUSLY GUYS, READ THE ROOM” MOMENT OF THE WEEK  This week brought the news our beleaguered nation has been waiting to hear. Yes, we are still fighting our way out from underneath the virus; yes, our economy is […]

A new poll has revealed the Tories could be on course to win the Hartlepool by-election after its candidate polled 17 points ahead of Labour. Tory candidate Jill Mortimer could win 50% of the vote with Labour GP Dr Paul Williams on 33%, if undecideds were removed, according to Survation. Independents Thelma Walker and Sam Lee […]

Best known as Grouty in Porridge, Peter Vaughan was an actor who seemed to get better with age The Seven Ages of Man speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It amounts to a career trajectory for all serious actors. The best and luckiest manage to grow old with their audiences, going from playing “the whining schoolboy, with […]

A new book shows how Christians are turning away from the Labour Party. Does it impact their chances? Labour, Harold Wilson once said, owes more to Methodism than Marx. Its founder, Keir Hardie – after whom its present leader is named – was a lay preacher. Its early leaders were devout men; Ramsay Macdonald, its first […]

Set in a Britain with zero-Covid and corruption is punished, is this why we love Line of Duty? SUDDEN EPIPHANY OF THE WEEK On Sunday night I was (like, apparently, 80% of the population of the United Kingdom) watching Line of Duty on BBC 1, when I had a sudden realisation: Line of Duty takes […]

There's reason for opponents of this Tory government to feel optimistic about Boris Johnson's changing fortunes

The owners of a supertrawler have hit out at the collapse of post-Brexit fishing talks with Norway, which has left hundreds of crewmen without work. The failure to reach a deal means fish and chip shops will be selling Arctic cod imported from Norway rather than landed in Britain, UK Fisheries said. Its giant vessel […]

Labour leader Keir Starmer has quipped he is going to start wearing boxing gloves at the despatch box as he campaigned for Labour in Hull. Starmer donned pristine red gloves sporting the logo “vote Labour” as he was shown the ropes at the Vulcan Boxing Club in the city on Friday. The leader of the opposition […]

David Cameron’s mates at Greensill Capital may not have been eligible for any of Rishi Sunak’s emergency Covid bailouts, but it turns out that a company in which the chancellor’s wife Akshata Murty had invested in heavily did qualify. Even though the educational publishing outfit called Mrs Wordsmith received a £1.3m cash injection from Sunak’s […]

The former deputy leader of the Conservative Party has claimed people are getting “worked up over nothing” over the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat. Talking to Times Radio, Lord Peter Lilley said: “We are unique in that people get worked up where nothing bad has happened. “In Russia, public money was used to […]