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The African cardinal who terrifies Macron

Cardinal Robert Sarah from Guinea in West Africa has been named among the potential successors to Pope Francis and the prospect is sending a jolt...

yesterday 10

James Tidmarsh

Tory peer backs total nicotine ban

The generational smoking ban is (slowly) making its way through parliament, as part of Labour’s plan to ban nicotine purchases for anyone born after...

yesterday 10

Steerpike

Happy birthday to angry, Terfy Mumsnet

I learned recently that Mumsnet is 25 years old, and my immediate reaction was: who the hell is still using Mumsnet? And then I read that Mumsnet...

yesterday 9

Davina Smith

Jenrick: Give Kemi a break

Former Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick has caused quite a stir this week, after a recording leaked to Sky News suggested the frontbencher...

yesterday 10

Steerpike

Bunker mentality / Why won’t Hitler conspiracies die?

Eighty years ago, as Red Army shells rained down over Adolf Hitler’s Reich Chancellery garden, a group of his remaining friends and colleagues...

yesterday 10

Luke Daly-Groves

Kid gloves / Middle-class parents are creating a new breed of brat

I recently reconnected with an old friend; I went to his house and met his children for the first time. One of them looked up from his screen as we...

yesterday 20

Arthur Mann

The EU’s new travel rules won’t stop illegal migration

Like it or not, for ordinary people, Brexit is about to make itself felt in a way which it has not done so far. MEPs have finally given their...

yesterday 20

Ross Clark

Pope Francis had his priorities right

After Pope Francis emerged from the Gemelli hospital in Rome last month, a reflection attributed to him a few years ago returned to circulation. It...

yesterday 10

Melanie Mcdonagh

Four bets for Sandown tomorrow

The Dan Skelton versus Willie Mullins battle reaches its finale at Sandown tomorrow when one of these two brilliant trainers will be crowned...

yesterday 20

Penworthy

Anti-gender ruling MSP faces vote to sack her

All is not well in Holyrood. At the weekend Green MSP Maggie Chapman sparked outrage after she condemned the Supreme Court judgment that backed the...

yesterday 10

Steerpike

Are things beginning to look up for Rachel Reeves?

The Chancellor will meet America’s top economic official, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, today as she concludes her trip to the International...

yesterday 20

Michael Simmons

Milei freed the peso. Argentina’s economy survived

It was Argentina’s ‘liberation day’, Javier Milei proclaimed last week after meeting US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in the Pink House,...

yesterday 10

Sam Meadows

The welcome fall of Klaus Schwab

Hubris has a way of catching up to people. That was my first thought when I read that Klaus Schwab, founder and chair of the once-mighty World...

yesterday 10

Samuel Gregg

The secret behind Reform’s local election campaign

It is an irony of Brexit that, since we left the EU, British politics has become more European. The local elections on Thursday will put another...

yesterday 5

James Heale

Do young Australians still care about Anzac Day?

Today is Anzac Day, arguably the most solemnly sacred day in the Australian calendar. At dawn on this day in 1915, as part of an Anglo-French...

yesterday 5

Terry Barnes

Will India strike back after the Kashmir terror attack?

India is bracing for a potential military confrontation with Pakistan after a deadly terrorist attack on tourists in India-administered Kashmir...

yesterday 4

Samaan Lateef

Watch this space / We should be excited about signs of alien life

Last week, a team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge professor Nikku Madhusudhan announced that they had found tentative evidence for...

yesterday 3

Adam Frank

What Pope Francis got wrong about illegal migration

Migrants have been pouring into the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa this month. Over 100 on Monday and 344 on Wednesday; the previous week 269...

yesterday 3

Gavin Mortimer

Trump should be allowed to address Parliament

Labour MPs have been busy this week. No, not running the country – but voicing their opposition to Donald Trump’s state visit. Diane Abbott, Nadia...

yesterday 3

Eliot Wilson

The hypocrisy of Virgin Atlantic’s new flights to Saudi

I’m always a little perplexed when people say they wish they could travel through time. Because you can – nowadays, it’s never been easier. Hop...

yesterday 3

Gareth Roberts

Is Witkoff getting closer to a Ukraine deal?

US special envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Russia this morning to meet with Vladimir Putin, as Donald Trump ploughs ahead with his plan to secure a...

yesterday 1

Lisa Haseldine

We don’t need a crackdown on killer cyclists

Wayward cyclists watch out: Keir Starmer is coming for you. The government has announced a crackdown against bikers who kill pedestrians. The...

yesterday 0

Andrew Tettenborn

Is a Scottish visa the answer to Scotland’s workforce crisis?

There aren’t many politicians calling for a rise in immigration to Britain at the moment, but you can count on the SNP to be different. Today the...

yesterday 0

Lucy Dunn

Zelensky counters Trump’s surrender deal

I open the calculator on my phone to count how many civilians have been killed in Ukraine over the past five days. The number 38 stares back at me....

yesterday 0

Svitlana Morenets

Spain’s defence spending boost pleases nobody

Just a week after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Spain to spend more on defence, the country’s socialist prime minister, has unveiled a...

yesterday 0

Jim Lawley

No, Ed Miliband: zonal pricing won’t cut energy bills

Is Ed Miliband going to announce a move towards a zonal electricity market, where wholesale prices would vary between regions of Britain? It would...

previous day 10

Ross Clark

Siddiq hits back at Bangladesh over arrest warrant

Back to the curious case of Tulip Siddiq, Labour’s former anti-corruption minister who has been issued with an arrest warrant by Bangladesh over,...

previous day 10

Steerpike

Starmer’s trade deal vote hypocrisy

Well, well, well. While Rachel Reeves enjoys a week in Washington DC at the International Monetary Fund spring talks, back in the UK concerns are...

previous day 2

Steerpike

Newsnightmare / When will the BBC ever learn?

They say that death and taxes are the only certain things in this life. I would add BBC bias into that mix. It was probably about 20 years ago that...

previous day 10

Douglas Murray

The extraordinary scale of the crisis facing the next pope

At 9.47 a.m. on Easter Monday we heard the words ‘con profondo dolore’ from a cardinal standing in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta. Two hours...

previous day 10

Damian Thompson

Long live the long lunch!

I keep on my bedside table, where others might place religious texts, Keith Waterhouse’s seminal The Theory and Practice of Lunch. Waterhouse, that...

previous day 10

Kenton Allen

The case for replacing nurses with robots

Tending is a work of activism on behalf of the NHS. The script brings together the testimony of 70 nurses in a show spoken by three performers....

previous day 9

Lloyd Evans

Keir Starmer is a shallow man

Keir Starmer thinks ‘this is the time now to lower the temperature’ on the gender debate. To ‘move forward’. To ‘conduct this debate with...

previous day 4

Stephen Daisley

Swinney’s ‘anti-Reform’ summit didn’t achieve much

John Swinney’s cross-party civic gathering – or ‘anti-Reform summit’ – met in Glasgow on Wednesday, with political party leaders from across...

previous day 3

Catriona Stewart

Conservatives all over the Anglosphere are paying the price for Trump

It is the great good fortune of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to be united by a common language, and a misfortune of even greater...

previous day 3

Henry Hill

The polarising poet, sculptor and ‘avant-gardener’ who maintained a private militia

Not many artists engage in the maintenance of a private militia, and it seems fair to assume that those who do may be bound to polarise. The...

previous day 4

Digby Warde-Aldam

Middle-class parents are creating a new breed of brat

I recently reconnected with an old friend; I went to his house and met his children for the first time. One of them looked up from his screen as we...

previous day 5

Arthur Mann

Honest truth / The hidden violence behind the trans ruling

It is ten months since the then merely aspirant education secretary Bridget Phillipson addressed the important issue of where transgender people...

previous day 4

Rod Liddle

Farage plans ‘Minister for deportations’

Machinery of government is not the sexiest of subjects – but it is a useful way of signalling a politician’s priorities. Rishi Sunak used his first...

previous day 2