Wherever I am in the world, I will usually find a way to watch the football, especially if Man Utd or Celtic are playing. There will almost always be a dingy bar showing the game. If not, the wi-fi in the hotel will hopefully be good enough. I’ve never managed to ring up an £11,000 bill while doing so, though. This is the bizarre case of Michael Matheson, the Scottish health secretary who is facing demands he step down after trying to claim said amount on expenses. Yesterday, after days of intense pressure, we finally got what Matheson says is the “simple truth”: his two teenage sons used his parliamentary iPad to watch football matches while the family were holidaying in Morocco last Christmas. He ...

Keir Starmer’s authority took a knock last night when 56 Labour MPs voted for an SNP amendment calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Ten frontbenchers, including Jess Phillips, resigned in the largest revolt since Starmer became leader. But the situation might not be as bad for him as it appears. When MPs break ranks they can get a taste for rebellion. Ask a Tory whip. If you are already classed as a rebel, and therefore less likely to get promoted, why not vote for what you believe in one more time? At the very least, the rebellion signals that Starmer’s grip over his parliamentary party is not absolute despite the appearance of control and unity since the expulsion of Jeremy Corbyn ...

WASHINGTON — During Richard Nixon’s famous visit to China as US president in February 1972, which opened the way to formal diplomatic relations between the two countries, the first lady, Pat Nixon, told the Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, how much she had enjoyed seeing the giant pandas at Beijing’s zoo. “I’ll give you some,” he promptly replied. Two months later, the first two pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, arrived in Washington, kickstarting what became known as panda diplomacy and seemingly symbolising a promising new era of engagement between China and the US. That era – and the optimism on both sides about the outlook for US-China relations – is now definitively over. So it is perhaps fitting that the pandas have also ...

The government has today, 15 November, lost its appeal at the Supreme Court over whether its plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is lawful. The court reached a unanimous verdict, agreeing with the ruling of the Court of Appeal in June that Rwanda could not be considered a safe third country. Reading the judgement, the president of the court, Robert Reed, noted that the UN Refugee Agency had presented compelling evidence that there was a risk of asylum seekers being wrongly sent back to their country of origin (“refoulement”) if they were processed in Rwanda. Suella Braverman, who last night published an explosive letter in response to being sacked as home secretary, will be rejoicing. In her letter, she accused ...

What does Scotland think of comeback king David Cameron?  In 2015, I interviewed him at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow, which had been purpose-built for the previous year’s Commonwealth Games. As I left afterwards, police outriders had stopped the traffic to allow the then prime minister’s motorcade to pass. A man in a van rolled down his window and bellowed at a policeman, “Heh you! Why are we waitin’ here?” When I told him who the VIP was, he snarled “f**kin’ Tories!” The jury, it might therefore be said, is out. And this was before Cameron called the Brexit referendum that saw the UK leave the European Union, despite Scotland voting for Remain by 62-38 per cent. As with most former PMs, ...

Never has the expression “the personal is political” held such meaning for me, until the weeks since 7 October. Overnight, my family and I found ourselves caught up in the horror and geopolitical catastrophe of the Hamas attacks on Israel and the collective punishment of Gazans inflicted by the Israeli government. My wife Nadia’s parents were well aware of the dangers in Gaza, where the elderly mother of my father-in-law, Maged, and other family members live. Conditions are always difficult given the ongoing blockade, but there was relative calm before 7 October. I remember getting the call from my mother-in-law, Elizabeth, that morning, saying how worried she was upon seeing hundreds of rockets in the sky heading towards Israel. She and her ...

Keir Starmer remains at odds with Labour MPs and shadow ministers who want the party to back a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict. The party splits could reach new heights tomorrow (15 November) when the SNP pushes for a Commons vote on a pro-ceasefire amendment to the King’s Speech. The Labour leadership is struggling to convince MPs not to rebel and support the party’s current stance in favour of “humanitarian pauses” rather than a full ceasefire. Seventeen frontbenchers have publicly supported a ceasefire and Starmer, having vowed to restore collective responsibility, may be forced to sack those who rebel. Meanwhile, David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has been attempting to win over MPs. Yesterday he issued a statement saying that “short pauses ...

A quiet revolution is happening in Western politics. Parts of the left are breaking with the liberal consensus, dominant for the past 40 years, that was built on an uncritical acceptance of globalisation, mass immigration and multiculturalism. Both centre-left parties and some left-wing populists are beginning to adopt an agenda of rebuilding the national economy, limiting inward migration and embracing patriotism. Where ultra-liberal economics and ultra-liberal culture previously prevailed, we are now seeing a paradoxical fusion of economic radicalism with social moderation; reindustrialisation and higher wages combined with greater support for families. "Left conservatism" captures the cultural facets. But the fundamental aspect of this turn is an increasing focus on constructive alternatives to the capitalist free market. While the right increasingly ...