Inheritance tax riles some Conservatives. George Osborne tried and failed to raise the threshold at which it’s paid. In certain circles, scrapping the tax is talked about wistfully, with an obligatory reference to Edmund Burke’s “partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born”. Many see it as an affront to property rights and a “double taxation” on hard-won wealth. Two weeks ago, the Telegraph and 50 Conservative MPs launched a campaign to scrap this “death duty”. The tax whiz Nadhim Zahawi called it “morally wrong”. And the public at large generally agree: around half of voters consistently think that inheritance tax is unfair, according to YouGov. However, a new report from the ...

As Donald Trump departed his luxury golf resort in the suburbs of Miami to surrender to federal authorities yesterday (13 June), US television networks interrupted their programming to carry live aerial footage of his motorcade. Heading towards the court where he would be arrested and arraigned on charges of mishandling classified documents and obstructing justice, the former president declared it on his social media platform “ONE OF THE SADDEST DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY”. The major cable news channels, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, which span the US’s partisan divisions, were broadcasting almost identical images. They showed Trump’s convoy sweeping into the underground car park at the court, the artist’s sketches of Trump with his lawyers inside the courtroom, ...

Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt were propelled into Downing Street last autumn by a story. The narrative went like this: Conservative Party members had elected Liz Truss as the new prime minister, and she and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, tried to impose US-style free-market economics on a country struggling to recover from the pandemic. The markets – those unseen gods who must be appeased – recognised Trussonomics for what it was, a badly microwaved bucket of leftovers, and threatened to devour our mortgages and pensions instead. Within weeks Sunak, a former hedge fund manager, was installed as Prime Minister, fiscal responsibility was reimposed and the markets were placated. The numbers returned to normal. Except they didn’t. The numbers in question are ...

Everything about the case of Carla Foster, the 44-year-old British woman who this week received a 28-month sentence for procuring drugs to terminate a pregnancy after the legal limit, is tragic. The facts of the case make difficult reading. The court heard how, in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Foster misled staff at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service during a remote consultation to prescribe abortion pills, suggesting her pregnancy was far less advanced than it actually was. The telemedicine scheme for abortion was introduced as an emergency lockdown measure for pregnancies in the first ten weeks; at the time she took the pills, Foster was 32-34 weeks pregnant. The legal limit for terminations in England is 24 weeks, ...

WASHINGTON DC – We are in uncharted territory. Again.   In 2021 Donald Trump became the first American president to be impeached twice by the House. Then, in March this year, he became the first former president to be charged with a crime when he was indicted in New York, accused of falsifying business records to cover up payments to the porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about their relationship. In May, he became the first former president to be found liable for sexual assault in a civil case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll. Now, Trump is the first former president in the history of the United States to face charges of committing federal crimes over his handling of classified documents after leaving office. The early information ...

The government’s white paper on artificial intelligence in March called for light-touch regulation to encourage AI firms to base themselves in the UK, as Google’s DeepMind already does. In the subsequent months, as some parts of the scientific community issued apocalyptic warnings and people panicked about ChatGPT, the government started briefing it would harden its approach to AI. Has it? In a speech yesterday (12 June) Sunak said that he wanted to develop “safe AI”. He pointed to his agreement with President Joe Biden last week, that the UK would host a summit in the autumn for countries to decide together what action could be taken to mitigate the risks of AI. This could end up with an overarching regulatory body and ...

By-elections take the temperature of British politics like no other measure. The three now expected – potentially on the same day – will be a pivotal test for the government and its opponents. They will show whether and how the UK’s progressive majority – our political system has one major regressive party and three major progressive ones (including the Greens) – can be effectively mobilised. Two of the by-elections are relatively straightforward. If Labour can’t overturn the Conservatives’ 7,210 majority in Uxbridge and South Ruislip – Boris Johnson’s former seat – it will destroy the party’s claim to be on course for a parliamentary majority at the general election. Selby and Ainsty is a bigger stretch (with a Tory majority of 20,137) ...

How many times can political careers die? Nicola Sturgeon was arrested yesterday (11 June), questioned for seven hours and then released without charge in relation to a police investigation surrounding the SNP’s finances (the former first minister denies any wrongdoing). I’ll make a strident prediction: whatever happens, this won’t help the party revive its flagging position in the polls (cue smiles in Labour HQ). Nor will it boost Sturgeon’s chances of swanning around the UN’s Geneva headquarters anytime soon. Meanwhile, the Privileges Committee will today finalise its report into whether Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament. The committee was reportedly going to suspend him for 20 days, exposing him to a recall petition and a possible by-election. He pre-empted this by resigning on ...