34 h. ago QUENTIN LETTS: After Trump's tariffs, this was no time to dust down the gramophone and play Don't Let's Be Beastly To The Germans

We took a wallop from the USS Donald Trump; but as MPs emerged from shelters and the Speaker's secretary dispensed tin mugs of sugared tea, there was a consolation: the EU copped it worse.

Politics

62 h. ago QUENTIN LETTS: Reeves pranced in, her orbit tinkling with laughter. But on camera, she started sounding like a duck

With the economy smoking like a wonky Moskvitch, how was Rachel Reeves faring?Was she feeling under the cosh from Donald Trump's tariffs and the pratfall of her Budget?

Politics

63 h. ago QUENTIN LETTS: How those lawyerly, cocksure sentences rolled forth... was Lord Hermer's first word as a toddler 'heretofore'?

With the economy smoking like a wonky Moskvitch, how was Rachel Reeves faring?Was she feeling under the cosh from Donald Trump's tariffs and the pratfall of her Budget?

Politics

3 d. ago QUENTIN LETTS: Once Robert Jenrick locks on to you, it's like seeing a Sidewinder missile chaser a Tiger Moth

QUENTIN LETTS: Shabana Mahmood's Tory shadow, Robert Jenrick, has had her in all sorts of difficulties over the Sentencing Council's 'two-tier justice' gambit.

Events

4 d. ago QUENTIN LETTS: With all these summits, Sir Keir is becoming Westminster's answer to Sherpa Tenzing

QUENTIN LETTS: Summits were once rare events at which the leaders of the USSR and USA frostily shook hands.

Politics

4 d. ago With all these summits, Sir Keir is becoming Westminster's answer to Sherpa Tenzing

QUENTIN LETTS: Summits were once rare events at which the leaders of the USSR and USA frostily shook hands.

Politics

8 d. ago QUENTIN LETTS from Westminster: At last, she speaks! So that's what gnomic Whitehall operative Sue Gray sounds like

QUENTIN LETTS: Lady Gray of Tottenham (Lab) is better known as Sue Gray, the gnomic Whitehall operative who torpedoed Boris Johnson with her report on his lockdown birthday cake.

Events

9 d. ago QUENTIN LETTS: Wrists trembling, Reeves sounded shrivelled as she tried to blame 'the party opposite'...but everyone knows she has brought disaster on herself

The speech lasted 33 minutes, half the time of a real Budget. For all Labour's groans when Tories talked of 'an emergency Budget', this nonetheless felt like a big event.

Events

1 week ago QUENTIN LETTS from Westminster: One great oddity of the Assisted Dying Bill is that the MP with an undertaker's manner is pro

QUENTIN LETTS: Yesterday saw the Bill's last committee stages, that part of the legislative process when a small group of MPs chews over details of a proposed law.

Events

1 week ago Globalisation may have run its course in current form, says HSBC chair

Trade tensions in era of Trump tariffs create serious potential risk to global growth, warns Sir Mark TuckerGlobalisation “may have now run its course” in its current form, according to the chair of HSBC, as geopolitical tensions and US tariffs threaten to upend existing global trade.Speaking at the bank’s global investment summit in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Sir Mark Tucker warned that trade tensions created uncertainty that posed a “serious potential risk to global growth”, in remarks reported by the Financial Times. He predicted stronger economic ties would develop between regional groups and trade blocs. Continue reading...

Society

1 week ago QUENTIN LETTS from Westminster: In a different life, Heidi could have dreamed of call

QUENTIN LETTS: Despite jokes about the Chancellor being 'Rachel from customer complaints', the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, is a stronger candidate for that role.

Politics

2 w. ago Idleness is rotting Britain. The welfare budget is heading for £100BILLION. That's why it's our moral duty to slash benefits: QUENTIN LETTS

We could have done with Norman Tebbit in the Commons this week, if only for dramatic variety. MPs were discussing welfare cuts that turned out to be soggier than trailed.

Economics

2 w. ago Idleness is rotting Britain. The welfare budget costs £3,000 BILLION. That's why it's our moral duty to slash benefits: QUENTIN LETTS

We could have done with Norman Tebbit in the Commons this week, if only for dramatic variety. MPs were discussing welfare cuts that turned out to be soggier than trailed.

Economics

2 w. ago QUENTIN LETTS: Prof Powell was so tickled by her own remarks, she bared her gnashers like an Aintree winner

QUENTIN LETTS: A couple of days after Nasa 's stranded astronauts returned to Earth it fell to Lucy Powell, Leader of the Commons, to make an allusion to space travel.

Politics

2 w. ago QUENTIN LETTS: Words are used like cheap marge in supermarket sandwiches. No one means what they say

QUENTIN LETTS: Sir Keir Starmer called Israel's latest attacks on Gaza 'truly shocking'. When Sir Keir says 'shocking', which he does quite often, he keeps his lips rigid like a ventriloquist.

Politics

2 w. ago QUENTIN LETTS: I didn't hear one word of concern for the poor devils whose taxes pay for these benefits

QUENTIN LETTS: Savings could have been several billions more but the Government crumbled with concessions. Tony Blair would not have caved in like that.

Economics

2 w. ago QUENTIN LETTS: Liz Kendall clutched her Marje Proops specs and did a bit of shouting at the Tories. But she was meant to be whackin' her OWN side!

Field Marshal Grigory Potemkin (d.1791) was the toyboy of Catherine the Great who allegedly tried to impress his empress by erecting house facades on the banks of the River Dnieper.

Politics

3 w. ago QUENTIN LETTS on Keir Starmer's quango reform speech: As the blinky old sausage deserted his Centrist

Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney arranged for the Prime Minister to deliver his speech at a Hull firm that makes disinfectant and condoms.

Politics

3 w. ago QUENTIN LETTS from Westminster: Starmer looks less the startled bog

A PM active in international diplomacy may feel, on re-entering the Commons, that the national legislature is no longer sufficient for his grandeur.

Politics

3 w. ago QUENTIN LETTS from Westminster: The new Jenrick has been on Ozempic and now boasts a Russian model's cheekbones. And he's driving Labour ministers crazy!

Mr Jenrick, runner-up in last year's Conservative leadership election, is now the shadow justice secretary and yesterday spent a profitable morning baiting his opposite number.

Politics