12 h. ago BORIS JOHNSON: In the week Labour announced plans to release rapists and killers early, there's one prisoner who poses no threat... FREE LUCY CONOLLY NOW

If this goes on much longer, I really think the great moderate mass of the British public will finally explode with irritation. This is not meant to be communist Albania. This is not Ceausescu's Romania.

Events

33 h. ago From the day Britain left the EU, this reset was inevitable. What a pointless waste of time, money and effort | Simon Jenkins

Keir Starmer is not blameless when it comes to Brexit, but he is moving in the right direction. Even the Tories attacking him know thatFor the Tories to attack Keir Starmer’s first step towards a Brexit reset is monumental hypocrisy. Their Brexit led to £4.7bn being spent on implementing post-EU border arrangements, according to the National Audit Office, including a vastly expensive “take back control” border post at Sevington in Kent. No other country in the world can have erected such ludicrous barriers against its biggest trading partners. All are now wasted. At least the nonsense can stop. Memorial plaques to Boris Johnson should be pinned to their gates and passersby invited to sign a 50-page customs form in his memory.Meanwhile, Starmer should hang his own head in shame. He was Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit henchman back in 2019, when Labour voted down Theresa May’s bid to negotiate a soft Brexit deal that would certainly have gone beyond what was signed this week. It was Starmer wh...

Politics

44 h. ago Johnson favoured ‘authoritarian approach’ to pandemic punishments, inquiry told

Lord Patrick Vallance was speaking to the seventh module of the Covid-19 Inquiry.

Politics

46 h. ago Tory veteran Gove who suggested Lords decamp to Stoke takes seat on red benches

Lord Gove was supported by close allies and fellow Conservative peers Baroness Finn and Lord Vaizey of Didcot.

Politics

68 h. ago Boris Johnson's embarrassing outburst shows why Brexiteers need to move on

To some arch-Brexiteers, even making it easier to bring your pet into the EU is an act of ‘betrayal’

Politics

3 d. ago Boris Johnson warns that Starmer's Britain is 'turning into a police state' after mother who tweeted about Southport murders fails in her bid to have lengthy jail term slashed

Lucy Connolly posted a vile message about migrants - but supporters point out that criminals found guilty of far more serious offences have been handed substantially shorter sentences.

Events

3 d. ago ‘I don’t have a relationship with my face’: Judi Dench models for a live sculpture

To raise money for lymphoedema research, the actor sat before an audience for artist Frances Segelman, who admired her youthful, ‘pixie-like’ face while rendering it in clayIt began as a blob: a 12kg lump of clay the size of a watermelon. Three hours later, it had become Judi Dench’s head, 50% larger than usual, twinkle-eyed even in terracotta.At Claridge’s hotel in London on Monday evening, Frances Segelman hosted her latest ticking-clock sculpt: paying guests watch as she kneads a celebrity bust on stage, the subject sitting quietly beside her. In the past, Segelman has done Simon Rattle, Joan Collins, Joanna Lumley, Boris Johnson, Mr Motivator and major-league royals, almost always for charity. Continue reading...

Culture

3 d. ago SARAH VINE: Brexit cost me my friends, my sanity and my marriage. Now the unelected elite have delivered a final insult to all of us who voted to Leave

The Eagles' 1976 hit Hotel California encapsulates the current situation of Brexit. You can say your goodbyes, pack your bags, pay your bill - but there's no escaping the tendrils of the EU.

Politics

4 d. ago Boris Johnson ridiculed over bizarre response to Keir Starmer's new UK

The former Tory leader Boris Johnson, who led the 2016 EU Leave campaign without a plan for Brexit, moaned the new UK-EU deal went back on the promise to voters

Politics

4 d. ago This new EU deal is great for Britain. Now, Labour, focus on the future, not on Farage | Polly Toynbee

Cheaper food, passport e-gates, youth exchanges – we are finally on a path to repair the colossal damage Brexit has doneCircle the wagons: Europe draws together confronting an enemy to its east and a rogue state to its west. “Everything has changed,” said the prime minister and chancellor, and so it has. Once nestled in the arms of Nato, now alarmingly alone, we have no choice but to embrace neighbours we shunned. Thanks to Vladimir Putin, (nearly) all Europeans now see clearly what was always the case. In danger we need each other, never mind fish or dynamic alignment.But talking about less important things was always the British way. So headlines and the Today programme bang on about the 12-year continuance of the fishing deal struck by Boris Johnson, allowing French boats into our waters. It’s hard on fishing communities, but not worse than before. The Brexiters used and cheated fishers. But a government has to weigh up winners and losers when fishing contributes just 0.03% to UK...

Economics

4 d. ago KEVIN MAGUIRE: Plastic patriots inflicted huge self harm as PM tackles Boris's bad Brexit

Keir Starmer is pragmatically ending a few of many nightmares created by lying Con man Boris Johnson’s bad Brexit. End of

Politics

7 d. ago BORIS JOHNSON: On Day One in office Starmer made a colossal goof for which we're all paying the price. It's time to bring back Rwanda

Yes, I suppose Keir Starmer looked pretty stupid when he went to Albania on Thursday...

Economics

9 d. ago Labour has denounced me as ‘deeply misleading’ on its planning reform. I wish that were true | George Monbiot

Even it now admits that brick by brick, these proposals will wreck habitats. This could be Starmer’s most damaging mistake yetThe precedent is uncanny, and the failure to learn from it downright mystifying. Keir Starmer is rushing gladly towards the catastrophe Boris Johnson inflicted on himself in 2020. Had he set out to stymie Labour’s chances of re-election, he couldn’t be doing it better.In 2020, Johnson promised “a whole new planning system” for England, which, he claimed, would promote “economic growth”. He said he wanted to see 300,000 new homes built every year. He sought to “build, build, build”, but falsely claimed that his plans were thwarted by newts, which he used as shorthand for environmental protections. He would sweep these protections away. Continue reading...

Politics

9 d. ago Leaked recording reveals top Tory admitting flaws in Boris Johnson's Brexit boasts

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said ministers realised that they 'can't any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum' after Brexit

Politics

1 week ago Margaret Atwood tells authors to be brave while ‘under threat’ after award win

The 85-year-old was presented with the award at a ceremony at Grosvenor House in London.

Events

1 week ago Boris Johnson reckons he could swoop in to rescue Tories when Reform 'self

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is waiting for Nigel Farage's Reform party to slip up, so he can swoop in and collect the advances made by the right wing group, according to close sources

Events

1 week ago Boris Johnson allies predict the former Prime Minister will swoop in to rescue Tories when Reform 'self destructs' in just a matter of years

Activists have started talking up his chances of a comeback after a poll last week found he was the only potential leader under whom the Conservatives would poll higher than Mr Farage's party.

Politics

1 week ago Boris Johnson allies predict the former Prime Minister will swoop in to rescue Tories when Reform 'self destructs' in just a matter of years

Activists have started talking up his chances of a comeback after a poll last week found he was the only potential leader under whom the Conservatives would poll higher than Mr Farage's party.

Politics

2 w. ago Conservative party is fighting for its life, says former Tory cabinet minister

Simon Clarke says ‘pipeline of future voters is dead’ as party figures warn Kemi Badenoch her job as leader is in dangerThe Conservative party is fighting to justify its existence amid concerns that its pipeline of future voters is “completely dead”, a former cabinet minister and leading thinktank director has said.Simon Clarke, an ally of Boris Johnson who backed Kemi Badenoch for the leadership last year, was among a string of former Tory ministers and serving MPs to tell the Guardian she faced removal by her party if she did not turn its fortunes around by next year’s local elections. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Boris Johnson says Tories in a ‘tough spot’ but will ‘recover’

The former prime minister said party leader Kemi Badenoch ‘just needs time to get going’.

Politics