United Kingdom

Reform UK has announced it will not stand a candidate in the Batley and Spen by-election in a bid to boost the Conservative Party’s chances of taking the Labour-held seat. Leader Richard Tice said he hoped a blue victory would bring about a snap general election and “hopefully the final nail in Labour’s coffin”. With […]

TIM WALKER on one of the few pieces of ‘serious theatre’ to get going after lockdown Reasons You Should(n’t) Love Me Kiln Theatre, London ***** Don’t let anyone kid you that theatre is coming back in leaps and bounds. We’re talking at best about small, hesitant, faltering steps. There’s the occasional costly stumble, too, as […]

It will take decades for us to understand what has happened during this pandemic. What has happened to our brains and our minds. Just as we can now see that the Roaring Twenties were partly created out of the so-called Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919, our own Roaring Twenties will take us years to comprehend. […]

From The Ladykillers to The Elephant Man, Jason Solomons celebrates some of the best movies set in London When the pandemic stopped cinema in their tracks and the flow of new movies became an online trickle, many film fans took the time to look back and catch up on classics. In the UK, one of […]

Marcus Rashford has the power of appeal with voters that Labour’s leadership currently does not have

Covid has been characterised by the asymmetry of the suffering it has caused. So as the country opens up once more, how can it come together again? There have been two jarring stories in Covid news recently. The first was the testimony of Dominic Cummings, which crescendoed with the statement “thousands of people died who needn’t have […]

Britain is moving, in fits and starts, towards new political equilibrium between London, the devolved nations and the regions Is Britain becoming more like Europe politically? The question may seem preposterous in the immediate aftermath of Brexit and a tightening grip in England by an ultra-nationalist Conservative party. But perhaps not. Last month’s elections – Super […]

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove had to abandon a meeting with Nicola Sturgeon and other leaders of the devolved nations on Thursday after a coronavirus alert. The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was notified he may have come into contact with someone who had coronavirus on a trip to Portugal through the NHS app. The […]

Parliament’s sleaze watchdog must investigate prime minister Boris Johnson over the funding of the lavish refurbishments to his Downing Street flat, Labour has urged. Deputy leader Angela Rayner called for the Commissioner for Standards to probe whether he broke parliamentary rules by not declaring any donation in the MPs’ register of interests. The adviser on […]

Fleet Street reacts to Paul Dacre’s thwarted Ofcom ambitions Paul Dacre always kept a studiously low profile when he was editor of the Daily Mail, but his name appeared in the news pages of the Mail on Sunday over the weekend in a piece that savaged Sir Nick Clegg, the public face of Facebook, for allegedly trying to frustrate his […]

Prime minister Boris Johnson is all about theatre – and so is his revived Carrier Strike Group There’s something curiously out-of-focus about the Prime Minister, isn’t there? I mean, I’ve been up close and pretty personal with him on a number of occasions, and I still can’t help seeing him with a sort of fuzzy […]

A Tory donor who was made a peer against the advice of the Lords’ appointment watchdog made a half-a-million-pound donation to Boris Johnson’s party only days after taking up his seat. Electoral Commission records show that Lord Cruddas donated £500,000 to the Conservative Party on February 5 – three days after being bestowed with the […]

Liz Truss is a great cabinet survivor and darling of the Tory members. But will her controversial trade deal with Australia curb her ascent? Perhaps it’s a measure of misogyny in the parliamentary lobby that Boris Johnson’s main acknowledged successors are Rishi Sunak, Dominic Raab and Michael Gove. The choice of who replaces him as prime […]

PETER TRUDGILL picks apart another popular subject for pedants Are you alright? Or are you all right? Is alright one word or two? A number of people seem to feel rather strongly about this issue, and some of them are adamant that to write alright is totally not all right. They think that all right is the only “correct” way to write […]

British pubs are facing an “acute” shortage of staff, leading some to reduce capacity or close entirely, the sector has warned. Labour-intensive social distancing restrictions such as table service only are requiring more staff, while employees are finding the work physically demanding with some walking up to 15 miles a day on the job, the […]

The boss of pub chain JD Wetherspoon has denied reports that his pubs have been hit by staff shortages due to Brexit. Tim Martin, who was a vocal supporter of the UK leaving the European Union, told investors that a Daily Telegraph story “misrepresented Wetherspoon’s position”. He said it “clearly isn’t true” that the pub group […]

Former prime minister Theresa May has backed a growing bid by Conservative rebels to force Boris Johnson to reverse his widely-criticised cuts to foreign aid. His Conservative predecessor heaped pressure on the prime minister to avert a Commons revolt as the number of Tory MPs to back a rebel amendment doubled to 30. May’s former […]

The Conservative Party has been fined £10,000 for sending 51 emails in Boris Johnson’s name to people who did not want to receive them. In a breach of data laws the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) called “serious”, the emails, which addressed the recipients by name, were sent out over eight days in July 2019 after […]

The education recovery commissioner has resigned in a row over the government’s £1.4 billion catch-up fund on what school leaders deemed a “deeply disappointing” and “truly awful day”. Sir Kevan Collins has quit after just four months in the role as catch-up tsar as he warned the government’s package “falls far short of what is […]

Boris Johnson is facing a major Commons rebellion over his policy to slash foreign aid. Conservative former chief whip Andrew Mitchell is leading a parliamentary push to ensure new legislation makes up the shortfall left by the cut to the UK’s official development assistance. A further 14 Tory backbenchers, including former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt […]

The real divide in this country is between those appalled by the PM’s behaviour and those who just don’t care We keep being told everyone is angry. Hence the rage, abuse and hatred that biles its way onto social media, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. I am beginning to […]

Prime minister Boris Johnson made an honest – or at least an honestly mistaken – woman of the nation’s erstwhile first side-chick Ms. Carrie Symonds ACT OF WEAPONS-GRADE OPTIMISM OF THE WEEK In perhaps the most startling, last minute of stoppage-time victory ever scored by hope over experience, our beloved leader Boris Johnson finally made […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the woman behind an 80-year-old masterpiece, one of the most important books about Europe of the last century A couple of weeks ago a tweet by the American novelist Jake Wolff made me laugh out loud. It read, “Creative nonfiction writers be like: I first ate a hotdog when I was six […]

The Foghorn’s Lament focuses on an unusual subject that inspires a spellbinding book One of my earliest memories is of foghorns. It’s of my sister and I being wrapped in warm clothing and lifted into wellington boots, sleep-dozy because it’s nearly midnight, and taken by our parents out of the front door of our house […]

A rugby league international who has been selected to fight the Batley and Spen by-election for the Green Party says he feels “in tune with the attitudes, needs and wants” of the community. Ross Peltier, 29, is a prop forward with Doncaster Dons and has represented the Jamaica international team nine times as well as […]

Labour has called on the political party spending watchdog to investigate claims that the Tories accepted donations from companies that were defunct. Anneliese Dodds, chairwoman of the Labour Party, has written to the Electoral Commission asking it to “urgently investigate” two donations made to the Conservatives that “do not appear to comply” with the law. […]

An ‘oven-ready’ deal for social care exists – it’s time the prime minister delivered on his promise.

It has been another gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain – although sadly not gloomy enough for residents of Ashford, Kent. After voting 59.4% to Leave in the referendum, Ashfordians have been rewarded with a light show. Alas, rather than fireworks celebrating our independence from the EU, the nightly display comes from […]