11 h. ago STEPHEN GLOVER: Britain is broken. Wherever you look the State is failing. In many ways the mess is worse than in the 1970s

Nearly 40 years have passed since Norman Tebbit, who died this week, was a power in the land.

Events

14 h. ago Crystal Palace have become an easy target in a crisis of football’s own making

Comment: Palace’s demotion from the Europa League to the Europa Conference League is a mess that only highlights football’s failure to regulate multi-club ownership

Events

23 h. ago New £100 fines introduced for dog owners who fail to clean up mess

Councillors agreed to a public spaces protection order across the county which includes a £100 fine for not cleaning up dog mess

Economics

63 h. ago IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Britain's broken welfare system costs billions and traps claimants in long

Soon, the welfare system will pay £2,500 more to someone on benefits than the post-tax earnings of someone working full time on the national living wage.

Economics

3 d. ago Macron and Starmer talk Trump, boats and Ukraine – but Brexit is the ghost at the banquet | Rafael Behr

The prime minister has repaired broken relations with France, but Britain still looks perilously isolated in a world of shifting alliancesGilded carriages and royal banquets are not essential tools of modern diplomacy, but nor are they obsolete. In a digital age, when intergovernmental business could easily be conducted online, the analogue grandeur of a state visit feels potent as a bestowal of favour.This week Emmanuel Macron is the beneficiary. In September it will be Donald Trump. The sequence is not meant to indicate preference. Both relationships are special, say officials. There are enough champagne receptions and sleepovers at Windsor Castle to go around.Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnistOne year of Labour, with Pippa Crerar, Rafael Behr and more On 9 July, join Pippa Crerar, Raf Behr, Frances O’Grady and Salma Shah as they look back at one year of the Labour government, its current policies and plans for the next four years Continue reading...

Politics

5 d. ago Unless we live within our means, Reeves' teardrops will become a torrent

The Chancellor told the Guardian newspaper on Saturday that it was impossible to rule out tax increases, which is a politician's way of saying they'll have to rise.

Society

9 d. ago London’s lawless Underground is emblematic of Broken Britain

London’s lawless Underground is emblematic of Broken Britain  The Telegraph

Politics

9 d. ago Starmer is by far the worst PM of my lifetime. But having Angela Rayner installed in No 10 would be a new order of catastrophe: STEPHEN GLOVER

Will we one day look back at Sir Keir Starmer's disastrous prime ministership with something like nostalgia?

Politics

2 w. ago If Britain is broken, what is to blame – big money and big tech, or graffiti on your train? | Tom Whyman

A new cadre of agit-prop campaigners has been cleaning the London underground, but there is more to the political stunt than meets the eyeBritain, let’s face it, is crap. Crap, I mean, in quite a specific sense: we might not be teetering on the brink of civilisational destruction, as the post-Brexit right can often seem to think. But there nonetheless remains a vast, ambient sense of rubbishness. Everything is expensive but nothing works. Our streets are full of potholes; our houses are full of mould. All the shops are shut, except for a Tesco Express, where there are security tags on the eggs. It takes about a million years to build a railway line.Up to now, the response to Britain’s enshittification has, by and large, seemed remarkably fatalistic: Keir Starmer spent the first year in government repeatedly insisting that there just wasn’t any money, and so really nothing could be done. Thank God then, one might think, for Looking for Growth, a new campaign group led by young (well,...

Politics

2 w. ago STEPHEN GLOVER: Mock Jeff Bezos and Lauren if you wish. But he's one of the most dynamic entrepreneurs on the planet and the future lies with people like him

What are we to make of the wedding between Jeff Bezos - the creator of Amazon and said to be the world's third richest man - and Lauren Sanchez , due to take place here in Venice tomorrow?

Politics

3 w. ago ‘You’d never make Slumdog today’: Danny Boyle on risks, regrets and returning to the undead

In 28 Years Later, zombies maraud over a Britain broken by more than Brexit. Its director discusses cultural baggage, catastrophising – and why his kids’ generation is an ‘upgrade’The UK is a wasteland in Danny Boyle’s new film. Towns lie in ruins, trains rot on the rails and the EU has severed all ties with the place. Some residents are stuck in the past and congregate under the tattered flag of St George. The others flail shirtless through the open countryside, raging about nothing, occasionally stopping to eat worms. You wouldn’t want to live in the land that Boyle and the writer Alex Garland show us. Teasingly, on some level, the film suggests that we do.Boyle and Garland first prowled zombie Britain with their 2002 hit 28 Days Later. It was an electrifying piece of speculative fiction, a guerilla-style thriller about an unimaginable world. Since then we’ve had Brexit and Covid, and the looming threat of martial law in the US The story’s extravagant flights of fancy don’t feel s...

Events

3 w. ago From abortion to assisted dying, why does the Left seem so keen on killing people? STEPHEN GLOVER

Here is a contention that may rattle a few tea cups. It is that on the whole the Left is keener on killing people than the Right.

Events