The US president Joe Biden signed an executive order on abortion rights today (8 July), two weeks after the Supreme Court decided to strip millions of their federally guaranteed right to an abortion. In those two weeks, clinics have shut. In Texas, a state court ruled that a 1925 law banning abortion could go into effect immediately. Clinics in states where abortion remains legal are in high demand from patients inside and outside those states, though in Montana, clinics are pre-emptively restricting access to abortion pills for out-of-state patients to protect themselves from lawsuits. The past two weeks have been a murky legal area, with state courts ruling on what bans can go into effect when; with hospitals making decisions in the interest of limiting their liability, rather than in the ...

It's finally over. Boris Johnson’s resignation ends three long, dark years of national shame and international ignominy. He will leave No 10 this autumn not because of some policy dispute or political gaffe, but as a victim of his own moral turpitude – the first prime minister in living memory forced to resign in disgrace. I, for one, feel not a shred of sympathy for the man. His tenure has been an unmitigated catastrophe for this country. He has wrenched the UK out of the European Union through lies, perfidy and the hardest of hard Brexits – one for which he had no mandate. Generations of Britons will suffer the baleful consequences. He has wrecked relations with Europe and the US. He ...

Since the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe vs Wade, I can't stop thinking about the things that are prioritised, and those that are not. I can't stop thinking about the things that are deemed to matter. That day, like many others, I watched speechless at the news that the right to legal abortion was no longer protected by the highest court in the US. I felt rage and incredulity. Something monumental had happened and it felt direct and personal. On my WhatsApp groups, female friends spoke of fear. We were watching this moment of regress in feminist progress like a car crash. No, the US is not the centre of the world. Yes, abortion rights have been rolled back in ...

No prime minister can survive this. A staggering 69 per cent of the public, including 54 per cent of Tory voters, want Boris Johnson to resign, according to a snap YouGov poll last night (5 July). His approval rating has plunged to an astounding -48 per cent. Roughly three quarters of his backbenchers (stripping out the ministerial payroll vote) supported the recent no-confidence vote in his leadership. Two months ago he presided over the loss of nearly 500 council seats. Two weeks ago he suffered the biggest ever by-election majority overturn in British history. And now his Chancellor, Health Secretary, party chairman and Solicitor General, plus a bevy of junior ministers and ministerial aides, have quit with excoriating attacks on ...

The 4 July massacre in Highland Park, Illinois offers yet another example of how US gun laws have allowed violence in the nation to spin out of control – but US media and political institutions appear disinclined to take a broader, systemic look at how we got to this point. The shooter, Robert Crimo III, is the focus of coverage. It’s a typical, and even understandable, response to a tragedy like the Highland Park shooting – especially when the shooter is white. Who the shooter is and what led him (it’s almost always a him) to murder – as of writing this – seven people and injure 25 can give people the illusion of an answer to the unanswerable. Thus Crimo’s background as ...

We have hit the stage of exhaustion with UK politics: most of us have given up expecting even the most basic of decencies from the Prime Minister, a man who is shredding the notion of them entirely. Until recently, it was more fashionable to condemn the people around him, who enabled his behaviour – first his advisers, then his craven cabinet, who humiliate themselves in media appearances by defending the indefensible, and then the civil service. Such is the state of the rot in government that it’s barely a surprise that the No 10 press office repeatedly and regularly lies, or at least puts out statements that are misleading. We cannot know in any individual briefing whether a particular staffer is aware ...

Last week, a cross-party review determined that MPs should not be allowed to bring babies into the House of Commons chamber during debates. Stella Creasy – the Labour MP for Walthamstow, who prompted the review – wrote in the Guardian that this decision shows how “out of touch” Westminster remains.  I get where Creasy is coming from on this, not least because I’ve taken my own toddler into Westminster a few times since he was born (though never into the House of Commons chamber) and have found it to be an awkward experience. Once, for instance, when he was five months old, a childcare crisis meant that I had no choice but to bring him along to a meeting in Portcullis House, only ...

Britain is facing a demographic time bomb. The total fertility rate in England and Wales fell to 1.58 children per woman in 2020, the lowest since records began in 1938; the number of live births was down 15.9 per cent since 2012. The latest census data, released last week, represents a starkly ageing population: fewer children being born, balanced by large rises in the over-70 age bracket. And that trend looks set to continue, prompting some obvious questions about how to support this ageing demographic if there are so few children being born? How will our society fund its pensions, health and care costs when the number of young people (that is, potential taxpayers) is falling at such a dramatic ...