What should we read into the fact that more than two million people have signed a petition demanding Keir Starmer call a general election? In one way, not very much. Since 2011 people have been able to voice their concerns via the petition.parliament.uk website. The government is supposed to respond to any petition with more than 10,000 signatures, while those with more than 100,000 “will be considered for a debate in Parliament”. Note: “considered”, not guaranteed. The petitions website is not a forum for a kind of direct democracy, more a cross between a litmus test for the mood of the country and a form of nationwide group therapy. The most successful (if you can call it that) petition was launched in ...

Much will be written about the late John Prescott’s political career but, for many, he will be remembered as “Two Jags”: a man who not only owned a Jaguar but also had the use of another in his capacity as a cabinet minister. That such an arrangement seemed so unusually extravagant in the late 1990s is indicative of the esteem that the marque was once held in. Today, few people would stop for a Jaguar parked in the street, let alone care how many a senior politician might own. And in seeming recognition of this popular indifference, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has decided it is time to reboot the brand. A rebrand is always a risky strategy, especially for a company ...

There have been many opportunities to foreground Israel’s cruelty in the past year, but the issuing of arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a milestone both serious and seismic. It means the political leaders of an alleged democracy cannot step foot in any of the 124 states – including Britain – that are party to the Rome Statute without risking arrest. It means they join Hamas commander Mohammed Deif (who is reportedly dead) on the list of individuals formally indicted for the kinds of offences humanity has collectively agreed are gravest of all. Yet today (22 November) the British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper refused to ...

The left needs to “build their own Joe Rogan”. As liberal America surveys the smoking ruins of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, and the mainstream media looks on bewildered at how they were outflanked by alternative new platforms, this is one rallying cry that has gained some momentum. If elections are now being won or lost on podcasts, perhaps liberals can build their own? The spark for this brainwave was clearly Trump and JD Vance’s appearances on Rogan in the days before the election – alongside the claim that Kamala Harris skipped the podcast for fear of a backlash from progressive activists for “amplifying” an anti-vaxxer meathead. Whether Rogan’s interview with Trump and his subsequent endorsement was that decisive in shifting the ...

It’s no exaggeration to say that there’s an air of panic around Scottish Labour at the moment. The party didn’t expect to find itself falling behind the SNP with just 18 months to go until the next Holyrood election. That really shouldn’t be happening when the governing party has been in office for 17 years – a duration that will have stretched to almost two decades by the time Scots go to the polls in May 2026. Regardless of that government’s performance – which has hardly been impressive – there should by now be an air of fatigue in the country and a desire for change. And yet recent polls put the Nats ahead, and on course to remain the largest party ...

“Shame on Putin!” As David Lammy sat in the chair of the UN Security Council for the first time, his voice reverberated through the ornate chamber. The Russian delegation had just vetoed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Sudan where one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises is unfolding. Lammy assailed Putin for “pretending to be a partner of the Global South while condemning black Africans to further killing, further rape, further starvation”.  Hostility towards Putin’s Russia – a “mafia state” seeking to become a “mafia empire” in Lammy’s words – is one of the defining strands of UK foreign policy under Labour. This week saw British-made Storm Shadow missiles fired by Ukraine into Russia for the first time. During ...

More than a week after the arrival of police at the front door of the Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson regarding a tweet she had written in 2023, debate rumbles on. Was this a threat to free speech and an example of police overreach? Or was it a legitimate enquiry into the publication of content which may have had real-world consequences? In November 2023, Pearson posted a photograph of police officers posing next to two men of colour holding a Pakistani political party’s flag. The picture had no connection to any of the protests in the wake of the 7 October attacks and Israel’s response. In a caption she labelled the men “Jew haters”. The tweet was later deleted. On 10 November ...

There is a hypothesis that I have set out before in these columns and now might be a good time to revisit it. The hypothesis is a simple one. Labour would fight the 2024 general election saying as little as possible about Brexit and its consequences but, having secured victory, the pressure would build for a more ambitious policy of moving closer to Europe. By the time we got to the next election in 2028 or 2029, I argued, Brexit would once again be a major issue. I was reminded of this when the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, used his Mansion House speech last week to point out rather tentatively that “the changing trade relationship with the ...