It sometimes feels like Rishi Sunak must be the unluckiest man in British politics. An instinctive small-state Conservative, he was forced, by the coronavirus pandemic, to be the chancellor who handed out money on an unprecedented scale. He describes himself as a tax cutter, yet – entirely against his will! – he found himself introducing what other Tories like to describe as “the highest tax burden in 70 years”. Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact he has more money than God you could almost start to feel sorry for him. And now poor, helpless Rishi has found himself doing the exact opposite of what he always wanted to yet again. He’s socially liberal and his pitch to be leader of ...

Victory, like revenge, is perhaps a dish best served cold. Fifty-six years after England last won a major footballing trophy – a time when, as May Robson observes, women were still banned from playing competitively – it is the nation’s women who have brought home the win. Just three years ago, at the 2019 Women’s World Cup, the women's game didn't take over the nation. Now, women’s football finally seems to matter. The revolution this represents is hard to overstate – and it has taken place virtually by stealth. The thing is that football – that mass worship of the male body and what it can do, that subject of conversation that cements bonds between men and often excludes others – has been infiltrated by women who dared to take up space. They didn’t picket or ask ...

Liz Truss’s proposal, announced over the weekend, to offer Oxbridge interviews to all triple A* students took me back to 2012 when I worked with her at the Department for Education (DfE). It has all the hallmarks of a classic Truss idea: bafflingly obtuse, poorly thought through, and impossible to implement. For a start, the potential beneficiary group is tiny. In the last normal year of exams around 3,000 students got three A* grades – around 1 per cent of candidates. Numbers have been inflated over the past few years due to Covid interruptions to proper exams, but by next year they should be back to that level. This is a far smaller number than those applying to Oxbridge – around ...

The idea that the UK is in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis is, as Donald Trump would say, fake news where the country’s wealthiest are concerned. While millions struggle to pay bills, energy companies are recording ever-greater profits, the rich are getting richer, and the Conservative government offers little more than patronising platitudes. We will do "everything in our power" to help people, Chancellor Nadeem Zahawi said last week, but analysts now warn that the British public could be hit with a £1,200 rise in energy prices this October, pushing up a typical energy bill to an estimated £3,244 a year. But none of Zahawi, Boris Johnson in his last days of power, or either of the candidates who will ...

Coleen Rooney might be the first person in history who has made getting sued look good – she emerges from the "Wagatha Christie" trial not just with her online sleuthing skills completely vindicated, but with her reputation burnished to a shine. She has also avoided incurring financial costs that would ruin all but the ultra-rich – if you lose a defamation case the usually tens of thousands awarded to your victim is the least of your problems. More serious is that you’re left on the hook not only for your own legal costs, but for those of the other party too. It is instead Rebekah Vardy who finds herself in that unenviable position, with costs that will likely exceed a million pounds. ...

Liz Truss’s Claire’s Accessories earrings: £4.50 (compared with Rishi Sunak’s £3,500 suit). Sunak’s net favourability among swing voters: -25 (compared with Truss’s -45). Unfunded tax cuts promised by Truss: £30bn (compared with Sunak’s £4.3bn VAT cut, which his team insists won't add to national debt). All numbers defining the Tory leadership election so far. All ignoring the three most important numbers of all: 9, 9 and 9. Try dialling those now, if you think you or a loved one is having a stroke, say, and you could be left waiting two hours for an ambulance to arrive. The target response time for suspected strokes should be within 18 minutes. Last month, the average wait after such calls was 51 minutes. [See also: “It’s every 999 ...

There’s good news and then there’s bad news that robs you of all the satisfaction of hearing the good. Last week the US House Select Committee on 6 January Capitol riot wrapped up its case to the American people that Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. As predicted, the hearings did little to change minds: Democrats are slightly more fervent in their belief that Trump is a threat to democracy and Republicans appear to have dug their heels in deeper in his defence. According to a recent CNN poll, only 36 per cent of Republicans say that the events of 6 January were a major problem, and 79 per cent say Trump’s statements did ...

Whether you agreed with Rishi Sunak's early leadership pledges or not – and it looks as if the majority of Conservative members did not – there was something a little noble about the initial stage of Sunak's campaign to become Conservative leader. Yes, there was his unfortunate tech-bro tone and characteristic lapses in judgement, such as when he mocked Liz Truss for previously supporting the Liberal Democrats and backing Remain. But you had to respect a candidate prepared to try and not pander to the party base. Right up until this week’s dramatic “Sun Showdown” on TalkTV, the former chancellor was making a dignified case for a solid Tory principle: that day-to-day spending (as opposed to investment) shouldn’t be funded through borrowing, ...