Keir Starmer's resignation comes as little surprise. In truth, he always appeared ill-suited to the role of Prime Minister. He entered Downing Street with no clear governing project, no driving ideology and an over reliance on advisers and political management. He often seemed more comfortable responding to events than shaping them. Yet focusing solely on Starmer risks missing the bigger picture. When (as now seems all but inevitable) Andy Burnham walks through the door of Number 10, Britain will have had seven Prime Ministers in just ten years: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer and now, likely, Burnham. This is ...
Labour could have been honest in 2024. They claimed, (and still do, Duty Minister on Radio 4's "Today" this morning) an "extraordinary and emphatic victory" in that election, but it was nothing of the sort. Rather it was an emphatic rejection of the Tories after a decade of disasters. Labour itself had received only a third of the votes cast and, given the low turnout, this amounted to the support of only a quarter of the population entitled to vote. It was in no way an endorsement of Labour's programme or confidence in their ability to implement it. Labour could ...
Why are wealth taxes relevant in 2026? Billionaire wealth in the UK has skyrocketed since 1990. It represented 4% of GDP back then, growing to 22% of GDP in 2026. The trends of rising wealth accumulation for the super-rich and worsening living standards for working families is stark. Consecutive governments have pointed at GDP as proof of economic success and neglected the decline in living standards for the majority. Where families could once live off a single income, families can now struggle with two. Growing anger at the cost-of-living crisis is fuelled by the perception that government is not addressing ...
Monday Time for some more fluffiness. Did you miss me? Anyway, Mr Sir Kier Starmer has resigned. Great Britain will have another new Prime Monster. We are seeing a lot of people saying: "oh no, not another one," and talk of how many Prime Monsters we have had in the last decade, and is Britain UNGOVERNABLE. But it is actually a GOOD THING that a boss who is not performing can be asked to step down by people lower down the organisation. Something a LOT of British businesses might want to think about. So, Mr Andy "Crash and" Burnham - ...
John Harris's Guardian article on the resignation of Keir Starmer contains a key paragraph: So there it was: as well as a modern tendency to loathe politicians that regularly seems arbitrary, whipped-up and way over the top, a sense that Starmer's sheer blankness - his painful lack of clarity and the absence of a halfway coherent story about his own government - was making a lot of people dislike and mistrust him all the more. Harris is obviously a good judge, because that was very much what I was saying on Bluesky at about the same time. The fall of ...
And so, another Prime Minister is gone. Admittedly, it isn't entirely clear yet in terms of what will change apart from the personnel, even if we can be pretty confident who will be in 10 Downing Street at the end of the transition. The first question is, how long will this take? An effective coronation would allow the new Leader to take their place before the Summer Recess, whilst a contest might take us into, or close to, Conference season. But Government will falter whilst new ministers get a handle on their briefs and priorities adjust. From a personal perspective, ...
The Guardian wins our coveted Headline of the Day Award, but it took a concerted effort to convince the judges that the story beneath it is true. Britain in 2026, eh?
Given how popular (and lengthy!) my list of Reform councillor departures after the May 2025 elections turned out to be, here is a new list, this time for councillors elected under the Reform banner on 7 May 2026, or in by-elections after that date, who have already departed the party for one reason or another. Jay Cooper, Sefton: declared "not welcome" by Nigel Farage following reports of him calling the Holocaust a hoax and then resigned from the party (May 2026). Stuart Prior, Essex: expelled by Reform and resigned as a councillor after "he was accused the week before the ...
Having recently posted a video of Fergus McClelland with Leo McKern in Brecht's Gallileo, yesterday I had a look in the British Newspaper Archive to see if he had gone on acting for long. He did for a while, because here's a report from the Coventry Evening Telegraph for 14 March 1966, when he would have been 15: Duke of Edinburgh Introduces 'Nelson' Duke of Edinburgh has recorded an introduction for ATV's specially commissioned play by Terence Rattigan: 'Nelson: A Study in Miniature,' to be screened at 9.25 tonight. The play has a strong cast headed by Michael Bryant and ...
It has been frustrating to me, as a politics student from Wales, to see that coverage of the Senedd elections has been nationally overlooked in favour of local elections in England and the Holyrood elections. This is especially true for the Welsh Liberal Democrats, whose modest outcome of holding our only seat has hardly been discussed at all, both by leadership and its members. The poor performance is the latest stage in a two-decade pattern of contraction that the party has consistently failed to fix. At devolution in 1999, the Welsh Liberal Democrats won six seats and entered government as ...
Sun 21st
13:26
National politicians should keep their noses out of the decision-making processes of local councillo...
A statue of Queen Victoria stands before the Council House (1879) on Victoria Square in Birmingham, England. As someone who has had a minor interest in political developments in Birmingham over the past couple of months, I have been appalled at the way that national politicians in some parties have issued instructions to their local counterparts as to how to vote and what to do. I have been equally appalled that some local politicians have kowtowed to these bully boy tactics. The background is that the Labour Party went into the local elections with 61 seats out of 101 and ...
Last week Ed Davey gave a well received keynote speech advocating a new Growth and Defence Partnership ('Partnership') with the European Union (EU) at the European Movement UK's event marking the tenth anniversary of the 2016 Brexit referendum. For many members, having and making a clear overarching national message to complement our local strengths is long overdue. This became apparent in the 7 May local elections. Although we gained more council seats for the eighth time in a row, our national vote share was 2% down on last year's 16%. In my part of the world and elsewhere, it was ...
Iran The Iran War has forced American motorists to reconsider long road trips. At the same time a farmer in Kenya is facing a drastic drop in his $2,200 income and a Sri Lankan construction worker in Dubai is worrying about how his wife and children would survive without his remittances. The Iran War has been little more than an inconvenience for most people in the West. For those in the developing world it was—still is – a matter of life and death. The people in the developing world were already reeling from the effects of cuts in foreign aid, ...
"Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of right-wing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grown ups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be ...
This week, Lib Dem MPs raised some very good questions in Parliament. Andrew George: The Secretary of State says she is looking at options and that she wishes to work in partnership in the international sphere. She must accept that the UK has significant history and responsibility in this region. Does she not listen to the words of her Back Benchers? It is incumbent on her to take action now—not simply to look at things and to seek partnership—to have real effect on this appalling, continuing outrage. Calum Miller: The prospect of a two-state solution rests on at least two ...
Fire was included on The Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1967 album Are You Experienced. Under the title Let Me Light Your Fire, it was released as a single in 1970. Wikipedia, citing Harry Shapiro's book Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy, tells the story behind it: Despite its sexual overtones, the song had an innocuous origin. Noel Redding, bass player for the Experience, invited Hendrix to his mother's house on a cold New Year's Eve in Folkestone, England, after a performance. Hendrix asked Noel's mother if he could stand next to her fireplace to warm himself. She agreed, but her German Shepherd was ...
Economics and 'national security' often pull in different directions. This is especially true when we look at relations with China. Consider the strange case of the Scottish wind turbine project. At the end of March, the UK government blocked a planned Chinese investment in the Scottish Highlands to manufacture wind turbines on 'national security' grounds. The issue got lost in the fog around the Scottish parliamentary elections. But it hasn't gone away. The Chinese have indicated that they will switch the plant from Scotland to Spain. The British partners who spent years negotiating the project, in good faith, are furious ...