Nissan and Sunderland: Another blow for Project Fear
With Brexit negotiations intensifying, the carmakers’ decision to focus on Sunderland manufacturing gives David Frost great leverage.
Why the Cabinet Office will be in the dock for Covid failures when the inquiry comes. As will Sedwill.
The Treasury has been welded at the top to Number Ten. Now there’s a push to do more of the same to the Office.
The tragedy of Coronavirus death rates. And the problem of statistically selective narratives.
The FT claims the UK has the worst in the world. But that’s only if you ignore the other ways it can be measured.
Andrew Gimson’s Commons sketch: The Prime Minister did not stoop and could not conquer
He would not conciliate the Liaison Committee by promising to meet it three times a year, let alone by holding an inquiry into Cummings.
School re-openings. Williamson is making his case without a taranatula perched on his shoulder.
Enraged voters are not his target: he is zeroing in on the mass of questioning teachers and parents.
Cummings 2) The Church of England. People want guidance on God, not sermons about advisers.
Its bishops’ latest attack on Cummings will do nothing to enamour the electorate.
Cummings made a reasonable case yesterday, and his critics should accept it – and move on
Any fair-minded observer would think better of him at the end of yesterday’s press conference than he or she may have done at the beginning.
Cummings 2) He will hold a press conference at four o’clock. This is a calculated throw of the dice.
There can only be one explanation: that the internal polling is dire. If this event doesn’t move it, resignation inches a step closer.
Cummings. The Prime Minister is now gambling on what the ’22 does next.
Assuming no new revelations or his adviser’s resignation, he can either tough it out or order an inquiry.
Cummings 1) At a stroke, the row has weakened the authority of the lockdown
If so much, as Ministers suggest, depends on common sense, nuance, context and common sense, people will draw the inevitable conclusion.
Europe 2.0? How divisions over devolution could stall the Tories’ march on Cardiff
The Party is keen to keep a lid on the issue ahead of next year’s Welsh elections, but disaffected activists and challenger parties are putting it on the agenda.
The triumph of Whatsapp and trouble for the whips
Groups of MPs are able to beat their jungle drums into a frenzy. And the powers-that-be have limited capacity to quieten them.
The Government’s democracy commission, “legal tools” – and boats of illegal migrants
The nub of the matter is that without changes to the law the entrants will keep coming to Britain.
Universities have been in trouble for years. Ministers should seize the chance to reshape them.
With one of the Britain’s top educational institutions moving its courses online, there are big questions to ask about the future of the industry.
The middle way on free and fair trade (and the only practicable one)
People cannot simply be viewed as consumers or producers – there are other dimensions to policy, including the stewardship of the countryside.