“This is gutter politics,” was Armed Forces Minister Al Carns’ reply when quizzed about the theft. “We’ve got two wars on, one in the Middle East, one in Ukraine, and we’re talking about someone’s phone.”

But like it or not, the theft of Morgan McSweeney’s work phone is a big political issue, said Alex Glover in The Spectator. In October, when he was still Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, McSweeney was walking down a street in Pimlico, phone to his ear, when a man on a bicycle snatched it from his hand and pedalled off with it. Or so McSweeney told the police.

But that phone held text messages to his friend Lord Mandelson, messages that could have cast light on how the latter got to be appointed our US ambassador, and which would now have to be disclosed as part of the inquiry into the Mandelson/Epstein scandal.

Holes in the tale

To many, the theft sounds too convenient to be true. Not to Starmer, though. As he puts it: “The idea that somehow everybody could have seen that some time in the future there would be a request for the phone is, to my mind, a little bit far-fetched.”

I don’t know the exact fate of the “stolen” phone, said Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail, but I know this: “Starmer is lying his posterior off about what happened.” The phone was reported stolen over a month after Mandelson was sacked as ambassador, by which time everyone, Starmer included, knew the huge significance of his chief of staff’s phone messages. Indeed, meetings were held in Downing Street to “game-out” how to proceed should the government be forced, as it now has been, to release documents relating to Mandelson.

Understandable reaction

And there are huge holes in the tale McSweeney told police, said Amy Gibbons in The Daily Telegraph. He did say that it was a “government phone”, but he never mentioned that he worked for Starmer and that it contained sensitive information. He even gave them confusing details about where the theft took place. Amazingly, the stolen phone wasn’t reported to the intelligence services, nor did No. 10 make any attempt to recover it.

I’m confused, said John Crace in The Guardian. For years, right-wing hacks have been going on about London being “a hellscape ... where simply using your phone is an invitation to be mugged”. Yet instead of cutting McSweeney some slack, they’ve convinced themselves that his is “the only phone in London not to have been nicked”.

Not getting details right just after you’ve been mugged is understandable behaviour for anyone in shock, but not in McSweeney’s case it seems. “After all, it’s a well-known fact that men with ginger hair and a beard can’t be trusted.”

Oil prices jumped last night after Donald Trump said the Iran conflict was “nearing completion”. Despite the US president saying the attacks on Tehran would end in “two to three weeks” and America doesn’t “need their oil”, the markets were not soothed.

“A word – or social media post” – from Trump “used to spark big moves in prices”, said the BBC. Investors would leap on “signs” that things “could escalate or come to an end”. But now traders seem “to be growing more sceptical about the value of his comments”.

What did the commentators say?

At the outset of the conflict, oil prices were “sensitive to Trump’s comments” but his view of the war “seems to change hour by hour”, said Tom Saunders and Eir Nolsoe in The Telegraph. “His stream of often contradictory statements” have made many wonder “whether they can trust the messaging” coming from the US administration, and some traders have drawn back from the market, “leaving prices increasingly untethered from reality”.

However many solutions to the current global oil crisis Donald Trump comes up with, the oil market isn’t listening anymore – “and the price of oil keeps rising”, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. There’s simply no point in Trump “trying to talk the price of oil back down again. It just won’t work.”

His “Persian Taco” tactic “may have run its course”, said Eduardo Porter in The Guardian. “Making extreme threats” and then walking them back may “provide Trump with the illusion of agency” but he “no longer has control of events in Iran”. The markets are “figuring out” that it will probably be Tehran, not the US, that gets to decide when the conflict ends.

What’s next?

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is today chairing a virtual summit with almost three dozen nations, to explore measures to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said his government is determined to find a solution to the energy challenges, although “it will not be easy”.

And yet, “after nearly three weeks of this conflict”, the global financial system is “functioning without panic or alarming signs of stress”, said Zachary Karabell in the The Washington Post. “It’s important to distinguish between price movements” and stability. “The smooth functioning” of the financial system, “in the face” of crises like the oil shock, “gets little attention, probably because stability is not news”. But central banks, financial institutions and governments have “improved at monitoring” risks, and that should “at least provide some relief in a world full enough of fears”.

With oil and gas prices soaring and supply severely disrupted by conflict in the Middle East, households fear a corresponding spike in their energy bills and calls are coming for the government to act.

Keir Starmer today outlined government measures to “bear down on costs”. The prime minister pointed to Ofgem’s new energy price cap, which amounts to a 7% decrease in energy bills, as well as increases to minimum wages. Starmer also pointed to the £1 billion-a-year Crisis and Resilience Fund that will help vulnerable households with heating oil prices. But the best way to bring down costs for families is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Starmer stressed. That means “pushing for de-escalation in the Middle East”.

The price cap resets at the end of June – and according to forecasts, the next is set to increase by 18%. The Conservatives have called on the government to remove VAT from household energy bills for the next three years, while the Green Party said ministers should increase the tax on energy firms’ profits. Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick accused Rachel Reeves of “acting like a bystander” and not the chancellor.

What did the commentators say?

“The prime minister seems to be suffering from a dangerous degree of complacency in the face of the mounting energy crisis,” said The Independent in an editorial. While other countries’ governments implement measures to conserve energy and support families, such as Australia making some public transport free and Ireland cutting fuel duty, Starmer “has merely urged the British people to ‘act as normal’”. The government is “silent” on any plans it might have to “ameliorate prospectively crippling gas and electricity bills later in the year”.

The soaring price of fuel oil and petrol is playing out against “stagnating living standards” and a “succession of tax rises on work and employment”, more of which kick in this month.

Charities say this month’s increases to council tax, water, broadband and mobile phone tariffs are also “threatening to stretch many households to breaking point”, said the Press Association.

Businesses aren’t protected by the price cap, either. They’re set for “painful increases in their gas and electricity tariffs” as the situation in the Middle East “sends wholesale prices soaring”. Electricity costs have already increased by between 10% and 30% since the conflict began, while gas prices have soared by between 25% and 80%, according to energy analyst Cornwall Insight.

This April 1st is “no joke” for millions of families and small businesses, said the Liberal Democrats in a statement. We need an “urgent cost-of-living plan”.

But we can’t afford more state aid in the form of energy bill subsidies, said The Times. Reeves talks of “targeted” help, but with millions of pensions and welfare claimants, “that could be a very big target”.

The “ruinous spending” of lockdown “crippled this country’s finances”, which Liz Truss ignored when she proposed a universal cap to blunt the impact of the Ukraine war. Gilts “went into freefall” and Truss “was toast”. Since then, the bond market has “consigned Britain to the naughty step”.

Our national debt is at a “crippling 96%” of GDP, the servicing of which will cost £112 billion this year. Inflation and interest rates are set to keep rising, and recession is a “distinct possibility” if the war continues. The government “dare not increase the debt with another universal handout”. The bond markets “will not wear it”.

What next?

Reeves told BBC Breakfast that any support for energy bills would be based on household income, targeted at those who need it most, unlike the universal support rolled out in 2022. “I want to learn the lessons of the past because when Russia invaded Ukraine, the richest, the best-off third of households got more than a third of the support,” the chancellor said. “That makes no sense at all.”

The chancellor said it was “too early” to say who would get help, as demand for energy is at its lowest in the summer. But she “hinted help might not come” until autumn, said the broadcaster.

The Bank of England published its financial stability report today, its first since the US-Israeli war broke out. Domestically, the “economic outlook has deteriorated”, but the UK banking system “has the capacity to support households and businesses”, it said, “even if economic and financial conditions were to be substantially worse than expected”.

It clearly tickled Donald Trump’s fancy. The debut episode of live sketch comedy “Saturday Night Live UK” went down so well with the US president, he treated his Truth Social followers to a clip mocking Keir Starmer for being scared to talk to him about the war in Iran.

But British reviewers were not so amused – and several were not afraid to find fault with the UK version of the long-running US show.

‘Tepid cosplay’

That “laughter-free yawn” was “not a patch” on the US original, said Deadline’s Baz Bamigboye. “What is it?! Painful, that’s what.”

“I do not want to condemn this whole endeavour outright,” said Charlotte Ivers in The Times. “But the spark is not there yet.” We and “our US cousins” have “wildly differing senses of humour”, and, watching this, you feel it “like a physical ache”.

No one “cried” or “fluffed their lines”, said Alison Rowat in The Herald, but “you could almost smell the tension in the studio”. There was “good” but also “bad” and “so-so”. Nothing was “hilarious”, but “some sketches raised a smile”, like the “movie junket interviewer who dares to tell stars their movie sucks”.

Saturday Night Live “represents the quintessence of the American comedic establishment” but its name doesn’t have “much Clapham omnibus cut-through here in Britain”, said Nick Hilton in The Independent. So “it’s a bit of a shame” that the team “plays it so safe” with the imported formula. It seemed like “tepid cosplay”.

British comedy shows used to be hammy and contrived like this, said Nicholas Harris in The New Statesman but they’ve become “more stylised, ironic”. I suspect the “failure” of “Saturday Night Live UK” has “more to do with the UK than ‘Saturday Night Live’”.

‘Stinging gags’

“It could have been a lot, lot worse”, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. And it’s likely to become “a lot, lot better” as it settles in over the coming weeks. It was “refreshing” that “an ambition/piece of madness like retooling a legacy US brand for this septic isle” was “even being attempted”, so “let’s hope it can build towards real success”.

The first episode was “competent, untroubled by either annoying American-isms or annoying Americans – and occasionally hilarious”, said Ed Power in The Telegraph. Guest host Tina Fey was “effortlessly commanding”, thanks to her “visible ease with the format” but the “real highlight was the Weekend Update section”, with its “stinging and completely non-woke gags” about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Trump and the Strait of Hormuz.

The schadenfreude with which social-media users were predicting it would “crash and burn” was “wide of the mark”. I’d say it “was off to a flying start”.

The British public was “expecting to be surprised” by the first tranche of the Mandelson files, said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman. Yet despite hopes for “damning correspondence” to be in the 147-page document, “there was very little I didn’t already know”.

As it turned out “the first drop of the Mandelson files contained neither a smoking gun nor bombshell revelation”, said Beth Rigby on Sky News. Details about Peter Mandelson’s severance payment after being sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US, and the “rushed” vetting process for his appointment have made the headlines, but the number of documents withheld, redacted or yet to be released mean the picture remains incomplete.

What did the commentators say?

Keir Starmer “must release all the Mandelson files”, said The Telegraph in an editorial. It appears some of the files “may not see the light of day for years” due to ongoing police investigations. The police are “entitled to do their job and proceed with their investigation without undue interference”, but “questions about the prime minister’s judgment on this matter are not going away. The public deserve to know just how credulous Sir Keir really was.”

The comment in the files by Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser who was also Tony Blair’s chief of staff, that the appointment of Mandelson was “weirdly rushed”, is a “quietly damning analysis that will haunt Starmer forever”, said Rea. And the decision to give Mandelson a “£75,000 payoff” after his dismissal, when his contract, also included in the release, showed that “he was owed precisely £0”, raises questions, too.

But there is undoubtedly a “missing piece of the puzzle”, such as the correspondence between the former No. 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and Mandelson. Reportedly, McSweeney asked Mandelson “three questions”, which Mandelson claimed he answered truthfully, a comment the government disputes.

It was clear from the files we have seen so far that due process was not followed in the vetting of Mandelson for the US ambassador role, said The Times in an editorial. The documents show Mandelson was “offered classified briefings” by government officials before he was granted appropriate security clearance: “it is hard to imagine this being granted to other ambassadorial appointments”. The government refuted allegations that the vetting process was “fast-tracked”, yet now it is claiming this was allowed “because Mandelson was a privy councillor, which does suggest due process was not followed”.

The files released in this first tranche “failed to include any interventions, comments or guidance from Starmer himself”, said Anna Gross in the Financial Times. “The prime minister emerges from this admittedly partial picture less as the main character in his own drama than as an oddly disembodied presence,” said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. We are left to wonder whether Mandelson’s appointment was the result of the PM’s readiness to “delegate” high-level decisions to McSweeney, or belief that the risk of having “his own personal Machiavelli” close to Donald Trump “was worth it”. Either way, as he was forced to admit this week, it was “his mistake”.

What next?

It will be several weeks at least before more documents are released, as they must first be examined by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. Senior government figures told The Guardian that Starmer “could suffer further resignations when ministerial WhatsApp messages are published in the next tranche”.

These files will include informal messages between Mandelson and government figures “for six months before his appointment, and during his time as ambassador”. These “could prove a powder keg for already inflamed tensions between Washington and London”, said Rigby. Only documents that pose “significant security concerns” will be withheld.

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”

That was Donald Trump’s assessment of Keir Starmer at an Oval Office press conference this week. The US president was “very disappointed” after the prime minister initially barred Washington from using the British-controlled Chagos Islands military base to launch the weekend’s strikes on Iran. It took the US “three or four days” to secure permission, Trump complained.

Starmer said he did approve a later, separate US request to use RAF bases for “specific and limited defensive” purposes, to target Iran’s missile facilities and rocket launchers to protect civilians from its retaliatory strikes. “We all remember the mistakes of Iraq,” he said. “And we have learned those lessons.”

But “is this a blip with Trump in a fit of pique”, said The Times’ Washington editor Katy Balls, or is it “the latest sign of a more permanent splintering in relations?”

What did the commentators say?

Officials in Washington and Westminster initially expressed surprise at how well Trump and Starmer “appeared to get on”. The pair don’t have much in common but still had “warm exchanges” – plus the UK “scored a trade deal before others”. But Starmer’s decision to deny the US request for UK help in Iranian strikes “marks a new, more fractious chapter in the so-called special relationship”. Trump “made clear that he sees relations as damaged”.

Clearly, Starmer is “no longer the Trump whisperer”, said The Independent’s political editor David Maddox. The “killer line” was Trump’s “almost wistful reflection that the relationship was ‘not what it was’”. Words like “disappointing” suggest “a certain regret”, rather than “his usual bombastic attack style”.

Trump’s tariffs on the UK and Starmer’s refusal to support his threats to Greenland had already “poisoned” the relationship. Then there’s the “collapse” of Starmer’s popularity. The administration is aware that Starmer’s days as PM “appear to be numbered”. The special relationship is over.

Rather than having broken down this week, the relationship was over the moment the US threatened its Nato allies for “resisting a land-grab” of Greenland, said James Schneider in The New Statesman. And good riddance: it was “never one of equals”; it was “a method by which Britain’s ruling class felt relevant by laundering US power with a clipped accent – and selling it to the public as shared values”.

What Trump does openly is what the US has long done in practice: “use access to its market, its currency, its intelligence networks and its military power to discipline friend and foe alike”.

Foreign policy is “the theatre in which the special relationship most reliably produces catastrophe”. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and now Iran: America's actions have “never commanded popular consent” in Britain.

Nevertheless, “reports of the death of the special relationship are greatly exaggerated”, said The i Paper’s chief political commentator Kitty Donaldson. Many times the two nations have “seemed on the brink of breaking off relations”, under Barack Obama and Joe Biden as well as Trump. Things might have gone “downhill” but the “underlying bedrock” of the “intertwined military and intelligence alliance” is unchanged.

Trump’s criticism is a “pattern of behaviour”, while his officials “crack on as usual behind the scenes”. Their British counterparts “eye-roll” at the claim that the special relationship is dead, said one source. The edifice is “far deeper than a spat”. We “partner more in defence and intelligence than ever before”. The UK and US are each other’s largest investors; each creates more than a million jobs in the other’s country, said Donaldson. As one British intelligence source put it: “It’s business as usual.”

What next?

Starmer is under pressure to “move leftwards” and many MPs and voters would “like a tougher line against Trump”, said Balls. In Trump’s camp, plenty of people would be “all too happy” to egg the president on in taking a “more aggressive approach with the UK”. Some are “already frustrated with the UK’s pivot closer to Europe”.

But there’s a personal aspect too. One insider describes an “ancestral yearning for the UK” in Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and the Maga movement more widely. Trump is invested partly because of his Scottish mother and “love of the monarchy”; he’s excited for the King’s visit to the US in April.

Starmer is “well aware of the scars Labour carries from Iraq, and the reluctance of voters to join another war in the Middle East”, said Donaldson. But there’s simply no “withdrawing from the special relationship, whatever temporary spat is taking place”.

The Greens’ first ever Westminster by-election victory has prompted further soul-searching for a listless Labour Party less than two years on from their landslide election win.

“By-elections seldom matter much once the circus packs up, but this one is existential” for Labour, said Patrick Maguire in The Times. The rise of Reform UK has been much talked about and the “essay question of British electoral politics remains how the left might beat them”. But now “nowhere in the country does the answer appear to be a vote for the Labour Party”.

But the Gorton and Denton result is as much about the Greens’ emergence as an electoral force as it is about the love Labour’s lost.

What did the commentators say?

The result caps six months in which Zack Polanski “has presided over a leap in his party’s poll ratings and sought to retool its message”, said Politico. In her victory speech Hannah Spencer, the party’s fifth and newest MP, followed the way Polanski has “tried to foreground cost-of-living concerns, at the expense of the Greens’ traditional eco message”. But the party has also faced claims that it is stoking division.

“The extent to which the party has campaigned in an unashamedly sectarian manner is shocking,” said The Times in an editorial. The party released a video in Urdu, appealing directly to the constituency’s large Muslim population, featuring Keir Starmer shaking hands with Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister of India, while Spencer said voters should “punish Labour for Gaza”. The win does nothing for “those who believe elections should be fought on issues, not religious identity or about conflicts far away”.

Nigel Farage claimed that there were high levels of “family voting”, an illegal practice which can include husbands instructing their wives how to vote. “Whether the vote was genuinely corrupt,” said Jake Wallis Simons in The Telegraph, “there is little doubt that we are witnessing the manipulation of tribal voting as a decisive power-play in our political system.”

But “in reality the result was not a victory for sectarianism or ‘cheating’”, said Adam Bienkov in Byline Times. Instead it showed the ability of “most voters in the Greater Manchester seat to reject the politics of Reform”. In Matthew Goodwin, Reform chose “an extreme and divisive candidate, with a history of dabbling in racist comments and discredited race science”, and he has been rejected by voters. “For now at least, in a battle between hope and hate, hope has won.”

What next?

The Green Party is now a “large, viable, organised electoral vehicle, aiming to replace Labour at the polls”, said Ben Walker in The New Statesman.

The result in Gorton and Denton “says to the one in three current Labour voters also giving thought to switching that a Green vote is no longer a wasted vote”. With the upcoming local and devolved elections in May, Green “gains in London and urban northern England, as well as Wales and Scotland, would embed the feeling that the Labour Party is no longer the pre-eminent party of the left”.

The Greens can now “position themselves as the ‘anti-Farage’ party in swaths of working-class Britain”, said George Parker and Jennifer Williams in the Financial Times. In 2024, they won 6.7% of the national vote and four seats at Westminster, “but the party came second in 40 constituencies, 18 of which were in London. In all but one of those seats, the party was second to Labour.”

The outcome of today’s by-election in Gorton and Denton, one of the most unpredictable in years, will be closely scrutinised as a political bellwether.

The southeast Manchester constituency was a Labour stronghold with a 13,400-vote majority until former MP Andrew Gwynne resigned. Now, polls have it as a three-way contest between Reform UK, Labour and the Green Party, whose candidate Hannah Spencer is a local councillor and plumber. Reform’s candidate, GB News presenter Matt Goodwin, has also painted the by-election as a referendum on Keir Starmer’s leadership. The prime minister blocked Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from standing as Labour’s candidate, selecting city councillor Angeliki Stogia instead.

But in an era of multi-party politics, by-election results are decided by increasingly tight margins, making turn-out and tactical voting significant factors. Last year, a split vote on the left meant Reform won Runcorn and Helsby from Labour by six votes.

What did the commentators say?

It can be “unwise to extrapolate from by-election results”, said The Economist in 2023. Turnout is poor and half the seats gained at by-elections between 1992 and 2019 were lost at the next general election. Some parties, like the Liberal Democrats, can “outperform” in them.

They are “awkward beasts and don’t necessarily follow the usual rules”, said Louise Thompson, politics lecturer at the University of Manchester, on The Conversation. Gorton and Denton is a new constituency, formed from parts of three others in 2024. There are “huge socio-demographic differences” between its predominantly white, working-class wards and areas with a “much higher student and Muslim population”.

The “likeliest split outcome is straightforward”, said Ben Walker in The New Statesman: Denton votes Reform; Gorton and its neighbours go Green. Yet that would “reveal little about the overall winner”. Forecasting site Britain Predicts has it as a “strikingly tight” race: Green on 31%, Reform on 30% and Labour on 29%. Based on expected turn-out, only “a few hundred votes separate first from third”.

There might also be a “squeeze” effect. In such contests, smaller parties “often underperform” because voters gravitate towards “perceived frontrunners, where their vote seems more likely to make a difference”. If the Greens are seen as the tactical voting preference, “they should win the seat emphatically”. If Labour is seen as the way to beat Reform, “they should eke out a narrow win”.

It’s therefore the system, not the outcome, that should be “receiving more attention”, said Ian Simpson of the Electoral Reform Society. First past the post is “not designed with more than two candidates in mind”. Where three or more parties are contesting a seat, candidates are increasingly elected with “fewer than a third of voters in their area”. More than two-thirds of ballots cast are “simply ignored”.

In a multi-party contest, the debate becomes dominated by tactical voting, around “which party is best placed to stop another party from winning”. In this case, both Labour and the Green Party tried to persuade voters that they were the only option to “stop Reform”.

But these claims have been “unsubstantiated”, said The Independent’s John Rentoul. To vote tactically, “you need to know how other people are planning to vote”. That hasn’t been possible here; people have already been voting by post. Stronger Green wards may have also been “over-represented” in polls.

Normally, this wouldn’t matter. By-elections exist to “register protest against the government”. Their history is “littered with sensational upsets” that nevertheless “left the governing party untouched and were reversed at the subsequent general election”.

But “Gorton and Denton feels different”. The government is “fragile”; MPs are “panicky”. Parliamentary politics is split five ways. “Will Reform or the Conservatives lead the right at the next election? Will Labour, the Greens or the Lib Dems lead the left?” Any outcome will “shape politics for months”. It could influence tactical voting calculations in the May local elections and even the general election. “Most by-elections do not matter. This one does.”

What next?

The results are due at 4am tomorrow. A Labour win would “embolden Starmer and prompt a thousand think-pieces about a corner turned”, said Rentoul.

A victory for Reform’s “divisive, hyper-online” Goodwin would be “the biggest sign yet” that Reform’s poll lead “represents real voter intentions” rather than just “dissatisfaction with the government”, said The Guardian’s Jessica Elgot.

But a Green victory might be “the most catastrophic result for Starmer’s leadership”. It would show that the Greens are “a serious progressive force, not a protest vote”.

Whatever the result, there are “big implications” for Starmer ahead of what are widely expected to be “disastrous results” for Labour in the local elections. But if this by-election has barely 1,000 votes between the top three parties, “each would be wise not to overanalyse the results – but that won’t stop anyone”.

Keir Starmer will ask his independent ethics adviser to investigate whether Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons breached the ministerial code, amid allegations he was involved in a smear campaign targeting journalists.

Simons was director of the Labour Together think tank when it allegedly paid a PR firm thousands of pounds to investigate the personal, religious and political backgrounds of journalists who were digging into how its undeclared funding bankrolled Starmer’s Labour leadership campaign.

“I have heard of black briefings, but never heard of anything like this,” former Labour MP Jon Cruddas, who helped set up Labour Together in 2015, told Democracy for Sale. “This is dark shit.”

What is alleged?

In November 2023, The Sunday Times reported that the pro-Starmer think tank Labour Together had failed to declare £730,000 in political donations between 2017 and 2020. It was headed at that time by Morgan McSweeney, who would later serve as Starmer’s chief of staff in Downing Street. The think tank attributed the discrepancy to an administrative error.

An investigation by Khadija Sharife and Peter Geoghegan, published on Geoghegan’s Substack site Democracy for Sale, revealed that Labour Together paid PR firm Apco “at least £30,000” for material on the journalists. At the time of the payment, the directorship of the think tank had passed to Simons, a former policy adviser to Jeremy Corbyn who was elected MP for Makerfield near Wigan in 2024. In September 2025, Simons became a Cabinet Office minister.

Apco’s report, codenamed “Operation Cannon”, divulged personal information about the journalists involved, including claims about the “faith, relationships and upbringing” of Sunday Times reporter Gabriel Pogrund, said the BBC.

Labour Together then passed “some of Apco’s material” on to the security services, “raising serious questions about whether public authorities were drawn into an effort to discredit legitimate journalism”, said Geoghegan in The Guardian.

What has the response been?

For a think tank so closely aligned to a political party to hire a PR firm to investigate journalists is “highly unusual”, said Sharife and Geoghegan, and the revelations have “sparked” a “furious response” both inside and outside Labour.

While not denying that Labour Together hired Apco, Simons has said he was “surprised and shocked” that the report included “unnecessary information” on Pogrund. “I asked for this information to be removed before passing the report to GCHQ.”

Starmer has said he “didn’t know anything” about the Apco report, and has asked the Cabinet Office to “establish the facts”. An investigation has since been launched by its propriety, ethics and constitution group, but critics claim this is the government effectively marking its own homework. More than 20 Labour MPs have written to the PM and Labour Party general secretary Hollie Ridley, demanding an independent investigation.

How deep does this go?

Simons is not the only Labour figure who is “either directly or indirectly connected to what is fast becoming another crisis threatening Sir Keir’s grip on power”, said The Telegraph.

Labour Together’s influence “goes deep into the heart of the government”. It provides a “crucial source of funding” for the party’s frontbenchers, “spending tens of thousands of pounds” to pay for assistants for the likes of Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper, David Lammy, John Healey and Shabana Mahmood.

Another connection is Kate Forrester, who at the time the report was commissioned in late 2023 was a director of Apco’s London operations, while also serving on Labour Together’s advisory board. She is married to Paul Ovenden, who was Starmer’s head of communications at the time.

“This scandal cuts to the heart of Number 10,” said Geoghegan in The Guardian, but it also “raises broader questions”. Chief among these is London’s position as “the global centre of the private intelligence industry”, which is worth a reported £15 billion a year and yet “remains almost entirely opaque”.

US tech giant Palantir has wrapped its tentacles around the British state, securing major contracts with the Ministry of Defence and the NHS in the last three years. However, many are questioning the transparency and procurement process of such deals, and asking whether the company’s ties to Peter Mandelson, Israel and Ice could derail the UK.

The company was criticised this week by hedge fund manager Michael Burry, played by Christian Bale in the film “The Big Short”. He claimed that the tech firm had “systematically unreliable” third-party language models.

In a 10,000-word essay on Substack, he said that the company’s $300 billion valuation will fall by more than two thirds once others realise that “Emperor Palantir has no clothes”.

What is Palantir?

Founded in 2003, Palantir is a technology company that sells software that “processes large sets of data” to help clients, including governments, “find patterns and make operational decisions”, said The Times.

Since it launched its “artificial intelligence platform” in 2023, it has recorded a “surge in sales growth”. The platform has allowed the integration of large language models created by the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic into customers’ datasets.

Since this pivot three years ago, it has become a “stock market darling”, rising to a valuation of around $300 billion. Last year it “reported annual sales of $4.5 billion, up 56% year-on-year”.

What is its relationship with the UK?

In December, Palantir signed a contract with the MoD worth £240 million to continue its data analytics relationship. The contract is believed to be worth “three times more” than a previous MoD agreement signed in 2022, said the Financial Times. In 2023, Palantir, as leader of a consortium, also won a seven-year £330 million contract to help manage patient data across the NHS.

In briefings to Health Secretary Wes Streeting in June 2025, Department of Health and Social Care officials feared that Palantir’s associations with the Israeli military and Ice’s operations in the US would hinder the roll-out of the company’s Federated Data Platform in the NHS, according to documents seen by The Guardian. This would mean the contract would not offer value for money for the UK government.

This has arguably materialised. According to NHS data, the number of organisations within the health service using Palantir’s technology has increased from 118 to 151 since June last year. However, this is “well short of the target of 240 by the end of this year”.

Doctors are now being actively told “how to limit engagement with the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP)” because of the “controversial” ties with Palantir, said the British Medical Journal. Given the US company’s “track record” with immigration enforcement and “risks to patient trust” and “data security”, there must be a “complete break” between Palantir technologies and the NHS, British Medical Association chair of council Tom Dolphin told the BMJ.

A spokesperson for Palantir said that its software is “helping to deliver better public services in the UK”, including “delivering 99,000 more NHS operations and reducing hospital discharge delays by 15%”.

What are the concerns?

This week, the government came under pressure to review the MoD contract, due to Peter Mandelson’s links to the company, said The Times.

Mandelson co-founded and held shares in the lobbying firm Global Counsel, which worked with Palantir. Mandelson, as the UK’s ambassador to the US at the time, helped arrange a visit by Keir Starmer to Palantir’s showroom while he was in Washington in February last year and accompanied the PM on the visit.

During the visit, Starmer met Palantir CEO Alex Karp and the company’s UK chief Louis Mosley. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told the FT that this should be “looked at very, very closely”, as the meetings “were not minuted” and she said that the MoD deal last year was a “direct grant of £240 milllion – not a tender, not a bid”.

Palantir has shown an interest in the British state in other ways, too. Last year it hired four ex-MoD officials, said openDemocracy, as part of its “revolving door” recruitment, where firms “appoint outgoing ministers, senior civil servants and special advisers to lobbying or advisory posts”. Mosley also joined the MoD’s Industrial Joint Council, which the government describes as its “main strategic mechanism for defence sector engagement”.

More broadly, the £240 million MoD contract has “renewed a debate about Britain’s dependence on American technology”, said Politico. Despite promises from the MoD that Palantir’s AI technology would accelerate decision-making and protection, the recent contracts raise “potential risks of technical dependence”, or “lock-in” with the US, especially at a time of “heightened trade and wider geopolitical tensions between the US and its traditional European allies”.

Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor are coming under renewed pressure to testify before US Congress over their links to Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson resigned his membership of the Labour party last night to avoid causing any “further embarrassment”. On Friday, newly released documents revealed a picture of the Labour grandee in his underwear, payments from Epstein to Mandelson, and email exchanges between the pair that appear to show Mandelson leaking confidential Downing Street documents to Epstein. The new batch of Epstein files also implicated Andrew, including a series of photos of the former prince kneeling on all fours over an unidentified woman lying on the floor.

Both men’s association with Epstein has wrecked their public reputation but, as the furore over the last few days has shown, they will find it hard to remain out of the spotlight.

What did the commentators say?

Keir Starmer has called on Andrew to cooperate with US authorities who are investigating Epstein. It is “rare for a prime minister to intervene on matters relating to the royal family”, said The Times’ editorial board, but “such is the anger and outcry” that – in an unusually “deft reading of the public mood” – Starmer hopes to pressure Andrew “into finally doing what he should have done" a long time ago. Unless he “fully explains his past actions and what he knew about Epstein’s lifestyle”, this will remain “a running sore for the royal family”.

A lawyer representing some of Epstein’s victims told ITV News that Andrew should be extradited and forced to testify. But US investigators “face a succession of legal obstacles which make” that “unlikely”, said Cahal Milmo in The i Paper.

US investigators may not have more luck with Mandelson. Congress is “poised to issue the peer with a demand to testify in Washington”, said Connor Stringer in The Telegraph, but it “cannot compel testimony from foreigners”, so “he is under no legal obligation to respond”. Of course, “he could be subpoenaed if he sets foot on US soil” and “if he were to ignore that request, he would be liable to arrest”.

What next?

“There will be a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill who want to exert as much pressure on this as possible,” The Spectator’s deputy political editor James Heale told Sky News. Some would like the US to invoke the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with Britain, under which each country can request cooperation to secure testimony, via court order if necessary, from witnesses abroad. But, given the Trump administration’s proximity to the scandal, few expect this to happen.

In Andrew’s case, what might eventually force his hand is not threats of legal action but rather “internal pressure from within the royal household”, royal historian and constitutional expert Ed Owens told The i Paper. “Prime ministers do not generally speak on these sorts of things without checking with the Palace first” so “I’m wondering whether, behind the scenes, there has been a changing of the wind”.

Keir Starmer’s much-criticised trip to China could not have come at a better time for the beleaguered prime minister.

Following another gruelling week in which one potential leadership challenger was seen off – for now at least – when Andy Burnham’s attempt to return to parliament failed, and another, former deputy PM Angela Rayner, declared “I’m not dead yet”, you could perhaps forgive the PM for wanting a few days away from the never-ending Westminster drama surrounding his future.

What is driving this new leadership speculation is Starmer’s dire unpopularity with voters: in a recent YouGov poll, 75% said they viewed him unfavourably; only Liz Truss has ever had worse ratings.

For Labour MPs, it’s the prospect of losing the next general election to Reform that has them “bordering on cold panic”, and “turbo-charges questions about Keir Starmer’s future as prime minister and so raises the profile of those seen by some as possible successors”, said BBC political editor Chris Mason.

What did the commentators say?

The threat from Burnham may have been thwarted but he still poses a fundamental problem for Starmer: that he is everything the PM is not.

It’s just one of those “unfortunate coalitions”, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian: “everyone who wishes a Labour government stood for something, and had a discernible sense of purpose, likes Burnham; everyone who has fond memories of the Blair years likes him, but everyone who hated the Blair years also likes him”. Plus, “everyone who doesn’t really concentrate on politics likes him,” while those who do are “exhausted by watching the discourse” as “the entire mainstream seeks to chase off Reform politics by sounding exactly like it”.

The “real winner” from the NEC’s decision to block Burnham’s return was undoubtedly Wes Streeting, said Ben Walker in The New Statesman. The health secretary, who has made little secret of his wish to one day take over the top job, is the “current front-runner” in the parliamentary Labour Party although among the rank-and-file membership, who he would need to win over, he is “more divisive”.

“Streeting would probably defeat Starmer in a head-to-head contest, but if he has to face off against another, more soft-left, candidate, it might be trickier.”

With Burnham out of the race, who could that other candidate be? Angela Rayner, who resigned as deputy PM in September after failing to get proper tax advice on a property sale, this week made clear to supporters her intention to return to the government. Allies told The Times she would have 80 MPs ready to back a leadership bid and would be “well placed to challenge” the PM “after what are expected to be a difficult set of elections in May”.

This still may be “too soon” for Rayner to stand against Streeting, said Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper. Instead, some Labour MPs have “talked up the prospect” of former leader and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband becoming the “choice of the soft left”.

“I know he has said he doesn’t want it, and I think he wants to be chancellor, but who knows, maybe we can bring him round?” one left-learning MP told the paper.

What next?

The “pathway to a coup is still unclear” and Starmer’s team “cling to the hope that something may turn up” before the crucial 7 May local and devolved elections, or that his rivals will “lose their nerve”, said the Financial Times.

But barring a better-than-expected result, which few if any see as likely based on current voter sentiment, the pressure on the PM from his own MPs to make way following an electoral bloodbath could become overwhelming.

Even if Labour did decide to ditch Starmer, “they haven’t a mandate for such a departure”, said Danny Finkelstein in The Times. There is “no point” changing leader “unless they also embark on a new course” so whoever replaces him as PM “should call an election and present a new programme for government”.

For now, all the mooted candidates have denied they are plotting a run for the leadership, and Starmer told Bloomberg on Monday that the public had given him a personal mandate to lead Britain for five years and vowed to complete a full term.

“But as anyone in Westminster would tell you”, said Politico’s London Playbook, “it gets harder every week to find many Labour MPs who truly believe he will.”

When Keir Starmer touches down in Beijing on Wednesday he will become the first UK prime minister to visit China since Theresa May in 2018.

Against the background of the Chinese “mega embassy” controversy, the conviction of British citizen Jimmy Lai and tension over Hong Kong, Starmer says there are “significant opportunities” for British businesses, said Bloomberg.

In a sign of the wider implications of the visit, Starmer dismissed suggestions that he was “seeking stronger ties with China at the expense” of his closest allies.

What did the commentators say?

Starmer will have to “play it tough” in China if he wants his “ambitious” agenda to materialise, said Michael Kovrig in The Times. In diplomatic discussions with Beijing’s “autocratic” leader Xi Jinping, Starmer’s success will rely on three key areas: “resetting” bilateral relations between the two countries, “boosting” trade and investment deals, and “securing” visa and embassy “reciprocity”.

This will not be easy, especially considering the last decade of relations between the two countries. “Times have hardened, as has the CCP [Chinese Communist Party].” With China’s “abrogation” of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, and with Starmer approving the new embassy in London, it has become clear that Britain and other Western countries have “accommodated Xi’s agenda in the vain hope of economic lifelines and competitive coexistence”.

As a result, Starmer is on the back foot, having already implicitly and explicitly ceded to China’s agenda. The only way his visit can be deemed a success is if he achieves “substantive outcomes, avoiding concessions and controlling the narrative”. This is “not easy”.

For China, the visit presents a “prime opportunity to draw another critical US ally closer” and out of Donald Trump’s orbit, said the Financial Times. China craves “greater access to UK markets”, an example being Ming Yang’s proposed £1.5 billion investment in Scottish wind turbines, a move the Trump administration has criticised on security grounds.

If Starmer’s trip is successful, China will hope this can “lay the groundwork” for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s arrival in February, as Beijing seeks to “repair strained ties with the EU”, as well as “further exploit growing divisions between the US and its Western allies”.

Continuing in his “international statesman” vein, Starmer is “racking up” the air miles, said Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. As he heads to Beijing, it is clear that he is the spearhead of a “massive coordinated attempt to cultivate stronger” diplomatic ties abroad, but he should not forget the “deep freeze” of how relations have been recently.

He should remember the ongoing friction between the two nations, brought about by “Beijing’s cyberattacks, espionage” and the conviction of British citizen Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong. There is also the recent “sudden arrest” of senior People’s Liberation Army figures, underlining how Beijing “operates under its own rules” and is notoriously “hard to predict”. For Starmer, this should be at the “top of his mind” as the long-awaited talks begin.

What next?

Starmer and his delegation – which includes Business Secretary Peter Kyle and senior executives from among other companies HSBC, Diageo, Octopus, Brompton and Jaguar Land Rover – will visit Beijing and Shanghai, before making a brief stop in Japan.

Though the meetings are bilateral, Trump’s looming presence over geopolitics means that Starmer has a “three-body problem”, a source told Politico. The PM does not want to strain relations with the US president and, unlike his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney, Starmer is “desperate not to paint this as a rupture from the US”. In a nutshell, “he doesn’t want any drama”, while “trying to ride three horses at once, staying friendly – or at least engaging – with Washington D.C., Brussels and Beijing”.

European leaders will be watching closely too, said The Observer. For months, they have been “beating a path to Beijing’s door”. China’s size and scale – a population of more than 1.4 billion and a “consumer class of about 900 million people” – make it an attractive market for European businesses.

Keir Starmer has called the threat of further US tariffs on Europe “completely wrong” and “not the right way to resolve differences within an alliance”. But, as he played down talk of retaliatory tariffs and stopped short of criticising Donald Trump personally, he continues to walk a difficult tightrope between the Europe and the US.

The prime minister held an emergency press conference this morning, following a weekend of diplomatic turmoil as Trump ramped up the pressure on the UK, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden by threatening to impose 25% tariffs if they continue to oppose his proposed takeover of Greenland.

“There is a principle here that cannot be set aside because it goes to the heart of how stable and trusted international cooperation works,” Starmer said. Any decision about the future status of Greenland “belongs to the people of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark alone”.

The PM’s tactic has always been to pursue “calm discussion” in the face of “the crash and noise of Trump’s second term”, said James Heale in The Spectator. Once again, he “just has to hope that speaking softly in private will mean more than sounding off in public”.

What did the commentators say?

In spite of their “obvious differences”, Starmer has “invested huge political capital and personal energy in building a personal connection” with Trump, said Amanda Akass on Sky News. This has, his supporters argue, protected the UK from the worst excesses of the Trump administration and been crucial in keeping the president onside with Ukraine.

It was a “shrewd” move to position himself as Trump’s “most dependable and closest ally”, said Tom Harris in The Telegraph. But now that the US president’s expansionist global ambitions have stretched to include “the enforced purchase” of Greenland, this “carefully cultivated relationship” has become “an embarrassment”.

Having “assured voters” that the special relationship was “as strong as ever”, Starmer has “had to accept that, when push comes to shove, America lumps Britain with the EU” – and that is “painful”, said The Economist. Worse, said Harris in The Telegraph, the man who was “once seen as the conduit between Trump and Europe” is now “regarded with suspicion by both the White House and Brussels”.

Starmer’s “secret hope”, said ITV’s Robert Peston, is that moderate Republicans “will be so shocked by Trump’s attempted demolition of the so-called special relationship with the UK that they will urge the President to think again”. But “that may be naive”. If there is one thing we know about Trump, it’s that he “doesn’t respond well to being told he is wrong, even by his friends”.

What next?

These are “unprecedented developments and the options open to European powers are limited”, said the BBC’s Chris Mason.

For those European leaders who want to “send a warning to America, the simplest response is trade retaliation”, said The Economist. But while Germany has thrown its weight behind Emmanuel Macron’s call to consider a “trade bazooka”, Starmer has so far maintained a less confrontational stance, saying today that a trade war was in “nobody’s interest”.

That said, in the face of widespread international and domestic anger at Trump’s threat to take over Greenland and punish Nato allies who get in his way, there’s no doubt that Britain’s PM is now taking a stronger line with the US. It is “hardly a ‘Love Actually’ moment of brave UK defiance in the face of a domineering US president”, said Sky’s Akass, “but Keir Starmer has clearly decided it’s time to start pushing back”.

Ofcom has launched an investigation into X over reports that the social media platform’s AI chatbot Grok is generating deepfake nudes of people without their consent, as well as sexualised images of children.

Under pressure to act, X last week limited access to Grok’s image generation tool to paid subscribers. This was criticised by Downing Street as merely turning “the creation of unlawful images into a premium service” but, said No. 10, it proved X could move quickly to address the problem if it wanted to.

Now the UK media regulator could follow Malaysia and Indonesia in blocking Grok, or go one step further and recommend suspending access to X altogether.

How serious is the problem?

“The ‘put her in a bikini’ trend began quietly at the end of last year before exploding at the start of 2026,” said The Guardian. “Relatively tame requests by X users to alter photographs to show women in bikinis” quickly turned into “increasingly explicit demands for women to be dressed in transparent bikinis, then in bikinis made of dental floss, placed in sexualised positions, and made to bend over so their genitals were visible”.

Analysis by the newspaper found that, by the end of the first week of January, as many as 6,000 bikini demands were being made to the chatbot every hour. Some requests “asked for white, semen-like liquid to be added to the women’s bodies”.

“None of this should come as a surprise,” said Clare McGlynn in The New Statesman. Elon Musk’s AI chatbot was “designed to have fewer ‘guardrails’ than its competitors”.

While images of naked, non-consenting women had been “circulating with impunity on the platform for weeks”, the final straw, and what appears to have finally prompted Ofcom to act, was when Grok generated images of the Princess of Wales in a bikini.

What action could Ofcom take?

Ofcom will investigate whether X is in breach of the Online Safety Act, specifically whether non-consensual undressed images of people “may amount to intimate image abuse or pornography” and if sexualised images of children “may amount to child sexual abuse material”.

Under the law, the regulator can fine businesses up to £18 million, or 10% of their global revenue, as well as take criminal action. It can order payment providers, advertisers and internet service providers to stop working with a site, “effectively banning them, though this would require agreement from the courts”, said The Independent.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has said the regulator would have her “full support” to block access to X in the UK if the platform was found to be in breach of the law and refused to comply.

“Other parties want Ofcom to move faster, or get out of the way,” said Politico. The Liberal Democrats have urged the National Crime Agency “to take charge”, arguing that “the situation went well beyond Ofcom’s remit as communications watchdog”. It comes after the Internet Watch Foundation warned that criminals have used Grok to create child sexual abuse imagery.

“We cannot wait for a far off verdict,” the party’s tech spokesperson Victoria Collins said, calling for Ofcom to immediately block X from operating in the UK while a full investigation takes place.

What has the reaction been?

Billionaire X owner Elon Musk said the UK government “wants any excuse for censorship”. A ban would also “cause uproar in Washington”, said The Telegraph. The White House has “become increasingly hawkish towards attempts to censor American companies and its citizens”.

There is a “chance” that blocking X in the UK could lead to the US sanctioning British officials, starting with those working at Ofcom, said The New Statesman’s US correspondent Freddie Hayward. “These threats are sold to Americans as free speech protections, but they are also designed to force the British government to change course.” Depending on the outcome of the Ofcom investigation, Keir Starmer “might have to accept that protecting free speech has become an issue of national security”.

The UK and France have agreed to deploy troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace deal with Russia, as part of a broader package of security guarantees aimed at preventing a repeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion nearly four years ago.

After talks in Paris, Keir Starmer said both countries will, in the event of a ceasefire, “establish military hubs across Ukraine” and build protected weapon facilities “to support Ukraine’s defensive needs”.

Their agreement – along with wider security guarantees from the Coalition of the Willing – has the backing of the Trump administration. Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it a “huge step forward”. But Russia has previously rejected any idea of a “reassurance force” in Ukraine.

What did the commentators say?

The announcement from Starmer and Emmanuel Macron is “not a magic wand”, said Bel Trew in The Independent. “But it is a key moment.” France and Britain have, according to Zelenskyy, already “worked out in detail” the “force deployment”, including numbers, weapons components required.

Perhaps to reassure a wary French public, Macron said that “these are not forces that will be engaged in combat” but rather deployed “away from the contact line” to provide the necessary “reassurance”.

“This does seem at first glance to be a well-developed framework for ending the conflict in Ukraine,” said Eliot Wilson in The Spectator. But one of the most “obvious problems” is that “it is not at all clear that the UK and France have the military resources available to do what they say”.

There are “deep divisions” over increased defence spending in France and “the British army is the smallest it has been since the 1790s”. About 7,500 UK personnel are already deployed internationally and “resources for our leadership of the Nato Multinational Battlegroup in Estonia are stretched”. Given this, “where will we find ‘boots on the ground’ for Ukraine?”

Then there is the lack of public appetite for a prolonged military intervention overseas. On this, Starmer “begins from a stronger position than almost any of his counterparts” in the EU, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. UK voters are “among the most pro-Ukraine in Europe”: a recent YouGov poll of voters in six European countries found 56% of Brits support sending peacekeepers to Ukraine, compared to 40% in France and Italy and 36% in Poland. That “speaks to the strength of this consensus – albeit one yet to be tested by events”.

What next?

Of all the wider security guarantees agreed in Paris, the “binding commitment to support Ukraine in the case of future armed attack” is the one most “riddled with questions”, said Euronews. Each Coalition of the Willing government “would have to convince their parliaments, many of which are paralysed by political deadlock, to agree to an exceptionally consequential commitment”.

Then there is Putin, who has shown “no sign” that he is “willing to countenance any of this”, said Politico. This week’s potentially game-changing breakthrough does, however, “thrust the ball further into his court”.

Any US attempt to seize control of Greenland by force would be the end of Nato and “post-Second World War security”, Denmark’s prime minister has said.

Mette Frederiksen issued her warning as Donald Trump reiterated his desire to take control of the semi-autonomous Danish territory, saying “we need Greenland from the standpoint of national security”.

European leaders, including Keir Starmer, have issued a joint statement saying that “it is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland”. But the “mildness” of their words “illustrates the bind Europe finds itself in”, said Politico. The fear of “potential retaliation from Trump on trade or Ukraine if he perceives harm to US interests” means Europe has “mostly pulled its punches in responding to his sabre-rattling”.

Nato is also walking a “fine line to avoid antagonising the US president”. But, while many Nato countries have, up till now, “brushed off an all-out Greenland incursion as implausible, Trump’s comments are beginning to stir anxiety – and defiance – within the alliance”.

What did the commentators say?

Since Trump returned to office and made his designs on the island clear, Greenlanders and Danes have been imagining scenarios in which the US succeeds in annexing the territory. Trump could go for “force, coercion, or an attempt to buy off the local population of about 56,000 people with the promise of cutting them in on future mining deals”, said Shane Harris, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic. In fact, “because neither Denmark nor its European allies possess the military force to prevent the US from taking the island”, all it may take in practice is a Truth Social post announcing that Greenland is now an American “protectorate”. Given America’s status as Nato’s leading military and financial guarantor, such a development would “paralyse” the alliance.

Few, if any, expect a Venezuela-style raid on Greenland, said Sam Ashworth-Hayes in The Telegraph, because the US “has no need to” fire shots in anger. If Trump “really wants the territory”, he “can apply deeply painful leverage until he gets his way”.

Denmark – and Europe – “have few cards to play in the world of might-makes-right that Trump is ushering in”, said Marc Champion on Bloomberg. Their “entire economic and security postures” have been built “around the rules and alliance-based order that the US created for its friends” after the Second World War. “Now they’re too dependent on US arms to resist as he tears it down, with a strong assist from the likes of Vladimir Putin.”

Today Starmer joined other European leaders for a “coalition of the willing” summit at France’s Elysée Palace, during which “Europe will again seek US security guarantees for Ukraine”, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. For those wondering why Europe has been so cautious in their criticism of Trump’s Greenland claims, here is a “key part of the answer”.

What next?

I would wager that Trump will use his leverage “to get what he wants in Greenland through some means short of outright annexation”, said The Telegraph’s Ashworth-Hayes. He could look to trade America’s continued support with Europe’s eastern defence for a greater US security presence in the Arctic. In this case, “the diplomatic side will be smoothed over” but “the fault-lines will still exist”.

There is a belated acceptance in European capitals that they need to be less reliant on Washington. At the same time, there is still some wishful thinking that Trump’s new-found expansionism is a temporary aberration. “We know who our allies no longer are. It’s just we are still hoping we are wrong and the problem will go away,” a senior EU official told the Financial Times. “We know what needs to be done, we just need to bloody do it.”

“Overall, it feels like last year was the prologue and this year is the first chapter, one in which the storylines can really get some momentum behind them,” said Russh.

The magazine was describing horoscope forecasts for the coming year, but it could just as easily have been talking about how politics and the global economy will be shaping up in 2026.

Last year, The Week accurately predicted Donald Trump’s tariffs, the first signs of an AI stock market bubble, the rise of the far-right in the UK and Europe, and a ceasefire in Gaza. So what could 2026 have in store?

Politics

UK local and devolved elections in May are being seen as a make-or-break moment for Keir Starmer and the Labour government.

Squeezed from the right by Reform UK and from the left by a revived Green Party and the new Your Party (as well as Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland), it is already looking like being a torrid night of results for Labour. Across the board, the party faces “potential collapse” and, for the first time in a century, losing control of its Welsh heartland, said Parli-Training. Were that to happen, Starmer could be forced out of Downing Street by the summer, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood among the favourites to replace him.

US midterm elections are also looking pretty bleak for the incumbent Republicans. With Donald Trump’s approval ratings continuing to fall, Democrats have opened up a double-digit lead in voting intention for the congressional races in November, said the Marist Poll.

“Everywhere Republicans look, they see big political trouble,” said Axios, with poll after poll showing support among swing voters down “on just about everything Republicans do, other than fighting crime and shutting the southwest border”.

In Europe, all eyes will be on the Hungarian parliamentary election in April, where Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule could end. Elsewhere, global research firm BMI sees a “greater likelihood of victories by the centre-right/right-wing opposition” in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, “while Israel could also see a political shift”.

The opaque process to select the next UN Secretary-General also takes place over the coming year, with the successful candidate formally taking up their post on 1 January 2027. Among those already declared or expected to throw their hat in the ring is Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jacinda Ardern, former PM of New Zealand, and Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Economics

Following a bumpy year in which Trump’s tariff war played havoc with trade but markets continued to post record returns driven by AI investment, the outlook for the global economy in 2026 remains “dim”.

That is the assessment of the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, which “makes for sobering reading”, said Love Money. Growth is forecast at 3.2% next year, with “much of the drag” stemming from “US tariffs and the wider shift towards protectionism, which is sapping international trade, undermining confidence, and rattling markets”.

Interest rates (in the US, UK and elsewhere) are expected to continue to fall, however, while fears persist that this is the year the AI bubble could finally burst. Analysis from financial services firm Wedbush, reported by Investing.com, predicts tech stocks will be “up another 20% in 2026 as this next stage of the AI Revolution hits its stride”.

“Don’t count on the AI bubble popping immediately – but don’t count it out, either,” said Mashable, with chip maker Nvidia’s next quarterly earnings report, due in January, being a key moment to watch out for.

Conflicts

Despite repeated attempts to agree an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine, fighting continues to rage in what is now Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Second World War.

With Kremlin forces making slow but steady gains but at a terrible cost to life, the “arithmetic of attrition suggests that 2026 will bring either glacial progress, a conflict frozen from exhaustion, or some sort of deal”, said The Economist. “Two other scenarios are possible: a Ukrainian frontline or political collapse, aided by Kremlin subversion; or Russia’s economy buckling as aerial attacks shut down its oil industry”, but “either of the two would have massive consequences for Europe, and the world”.

Other conflict hotspots include India/Pakistan following a deadly skirmish in 2025, Congo/Rwanda, and the ongoing civil war in Sudan. Tensions are mounting between China and Taiwan, although 2027 is seen as the more likely date for an invasion as it marks the centenary of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

Donald Trump continues to threaten conflict against Venezuela but if he is persuaded to back down, manages to maintain the Gaza ceasefire and negotiates an end to the war in Ukraine, he could be in the running for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize announced in October.

On the pitch and out of this world

Fresh from winning the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize, Trump will be looking to use the 2026 men’s football World Cup – this year jointly hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico – to push his Maga agenda even further.

Sixteen venues across the continent will host the biggest-ever edition of the tournament, with the number of teams increasing from 32 to 48 and the tally of games upped from 64 to 104. While it is still six months until the first ball is kicked, sports statistics platform Opta Analyst has crunched the numbers and predicted that Euro 2024 champions Spain are the most likely to win the Jules Rimet trophy, followed by France, England, Argentina and Germany.

Before that, there is the small matter of the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics taking place in February.

A little further from home, the Nasa-led Artemis II mission will attempt the first manned orbit of the Moon in over half a century. The four-person crew will embark on a 10-day flight to “explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars”, said the BBC Sky at Night Magazine.

Originally planned for April 2026, the mission could now launch as early as 5 February. And while it “won’t land on the lunar surface” it will take astronauts 5,000 nautical miles past the Moon and “further into space than any human has gone before”.

Keir Starmer is facing calls to strip Alaa Abd el-Fattah of his UK citizenship, days after the British-Egyptian dissident touched down in the UK following his release from an Egyptian jail.

In the latest of his string of prison sentences, el-Fattah had been convicted in 2021 of “spreading fake news” for sharing a Facebook post about torture in the country. On Boxing Day, Starmer said he was “delighted” by the return of the 44-year-old, a leading voice in Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising. “Alaa’s case has been a top priority for my government since we came to office,” the prime minister said on X.

But the celebrations ground to a halt as old tweets resurfaced in which the activist appeared to endorse the killing of Zionists and the police. In a statement today, el-Fattah apologised “unequivocally” for the “shocking and hurtful” posts, most of which were written between 2010 and 2012 – but said some had been “completely twisted”.

What did the commentators say?

His posts were “disgusting and abhorrent”, said Kemi Badenoch in an op-ed for the Daily Mail. He should have been given a “free and fair trial” in Egypt, but “there ends my sympathy”. It’s one thing to work to secure someone’s release from prison when they have been treated unjustly, but “quite another to elevate them, publicly and uncritically, into a moral hero”. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood must now consider options including whether el-Fattah’s passport should be “revoked and he can be removed from Britain”. Given the “real-world harm” that has resulted from “antisemitic rhetoric” in recent months, “calls for violence against Jews cannot be brushed aside”.

“There is no excuse for what he wrote,” said Chris Philp, who was immigration minister under Priti Patel when el-Fattah was granted citizenship in 2021. People expressing these types of extremist views “have no place in the United Kingdom”, Philp told BBC Radio 4’s “Today”.

Downing Street sources claim Starmer was “unaware” of el-Fattah’s comments, said The Telegraph in an editorial. “Really? These were hardly secret.” Surely a dossier would be compiled by the Foreign Office or MI6 “about an individual the state was investing so much time and effort into being released. Did he not read his briefs?” There is also the question of why the last Conservative government granted him citizenship in the first place.

The “blithe expressions of delight” by three secretaries of state about el-Fattah’s recent release reveal how “stupid” they are, said David Shipley on The Critic. “These people have spent years not bothering or not caring to check el-Fattah’s social media, an exercise which took people on Twitter less than a day.”

“There’s no way this is just a Labour thing,” said Dan Bloom on Politico’s London Playbook. “Tory and Labour ministers pushed for el-Fattah’s release for years.” Yet “it’s hard to imagine a trickier situation” for Starmer following his enthusiastic reaction. Labour ministers are among the voices now calling for el-Fattah to be stripped of his citizenship. The fiasco is a “kick in the face” following the recent antisemitic attacks at Bondi Beach, said an unnamed senior Labour MP. And while aides are insisting Starmer didn’t know about the tweets, said Bloom, “the question is… who did?”

What next?

Revoking el-Fattah’s citizenship would likely be a “pretty big headache” for Mahmood, said Bloom. The home secretary can take away people’s passports on terrorism and national security grounds, “but only rarely”. Doing so “could end up in the courts”, which “might look dimly on a government welcoming el-Fattah only to boot him out a few weeks later”.

The UK must “balance the tension between security and prosperity” in its relationship with China, the parliamentary intelligence watchdog has warned, after the prime minister called for a “more sophisticated” approach to its dealings with Beijing.

At a speech in the City of London, Keir Starmer recognised that China posed “national security threats”, but stressed that it was also “a defining force in technology, trade and global governance”.

The Intelligence and Security Committee’s annual report acknowledged the need for “dexterity” in dealing with Beijing, but found the government has been “reluctant to prioritise security considerations”. This despite renewed scrutiny of Chinese interference following the contentious collapse of a spying case, the ongoing row over the London super-embassy and reports connecting a recent cyberattack on the Foreign Office to Chinese-affiliated hackers.

What did the commentators say?

This was “typical Starmer, pursuing a balancing act amid overwhelming imbalances”, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. It is “true Britain’s stagnant economy badly needs foreign investment” but “doing business with this predatory authoritarian regime” for nothing more than the “uncertain hope of future dependency-creating economic, financial and tech benefits” is a price simply ”too high” to pay.

Like previous governments, Labour has “found it difficult to come up with a clear answer” as to whether China “should be regarded as a UK national security threat”, said The Sunday Times.

The Intelligence and Security Committee report accused the government of “dragging its heels” over whether to add China to the “enhanced tier” of its threat regime. Under the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, which came into force in July, only those working for Russia and Iran are required to register and declare their activity in the UK, even though many experts agree China poses a greater threat to national security.

And the threat is “very real”, said Luke de Pulford, co-founder and executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, on UnHerd. It includes industrial espionage, cyberattacks and spying on politicians by Chinese operatives in the UK. It is all “part of a broader effort to shape UK institutions to be less resistant to the aims of the Communist Party, and to help Beijing assert its dominance by all and any means necessary, lawful or illicit”.

Make no mistake, China has “the means, manpower and intent to reshape our way of life” but we have chosen to fight “a house fire with a syringe filled with lighter fluid” – in this instance, “the syringe being the resources available to contain the threat, and the lighter fluid being the UK government’s seemingly irrepressible desire to make things worse”.

What next?

Early next year, Starmer will become the first British prime minister since Theresa May in 2018 to visit China. The aim, said The Independent, is to “strengthen economic and diplomatic relations with the state”. As a show of good faith, the government is expected to give the go-ahead for China’s controversial new “mega embassy” in London, despite concerns from the security services.

If he must go, Starmer should use the China trip to push for the release of Jimmy Lai and the “200-odd political prisoners in Hong Kong”, said Melanie McDonagh in London’s The Standard. Both the decision about the Chinese embassy in London and any future trade deal “should be conditional on Jimmy Lai’s release”. This is about “Britain’s honour, if we can still talk in these terms”.

Yet trying to separate politics and security from business and trade is “a naive approach”, said Tisdall in The Guardian. “In navigating the world, Starmer should follow a simple rule: hug friends close – and know your enemy.”

Reform UK has received a record £9 million donation from Christopher Harborne, a British-Thai cryptocurrency mogul, according to the latest quarterly declarations to the Electoral Commission.

It’s the largest-ever single donation by a living person to a British political party. News of the gift comes at a time when Reform is leading in the national polls, but has been forced onto the defensive over a series of other, less welcome, stories.

‘Toxic’ and ‘divisive’

Last week Nigel Farage denounced what he called “a false story” in the Financial Times, which reported that he had told donors that he expected “a deal or merger” between his party and the Tories ahead of the next general election. “The idea I’d work with them is ludicrous,” he said. Reform also faced more questions about Farage’s alleged behaviour at school.

Twenty-eight former pupils and teachers now claim to have witnessed racist or antisemitic behaviour by him at Dulwich College in south London. Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, said Farage’s accusers were peddling “made up twaddle”.

Farage has admitted that he was “offensive” at school, but insists he never made comments “with malice”. He angrily accused the BBC of “double standards and hypocrisy”, saying it should apologise for all the politically incorrect programmes it broadcast during the same era, such as “The Black and White Minstrel Show” and “It Ain’t Half Hot Mum”.

Farage faced separate accusations of racism last week over a campaign video in which he lamented the “cultural smashing of Glasgow”, citing the recent finding that nearly one in three school pupils in the city speak English as a second language. The comment prompted Keir Starmer to call Farage a “toxic, divisive disgrace”.

This week, it emerged that Farage had been reported to the police over claims of falsified election expenses. A former member of his campaign team, Richard Everett, says the Reform leader exceeded the £20,660 local election spending limit during his successful bid for the Clacton constituency last year by about £9,000, because some costs – including the refurbishment of a Reform-themed bar in the campaign office, and the loan of an armoured Land Rover used in a rally – weren’t declared. A Reform UK spokesman denied any wrongdoing.

European leaders have agreed to look at how the European Convention on Human Rights is applied, in a way that takes into account the challenges posed by unauthorised migration.

Alain Berset, secretary general of the Council of Europe, said Europe’s leaders had taken an “important first step forward together” to agree a political declaration on migration and the ECHR, and support a new recommendation to deter smuggling of migrants “with full respect for human rights”.

Keir Starmer had earlier called on European leaders to modernise the interpretation of the ECHR. The “current asylum framework was created for another era” and should “evolve to reflect the challenges of the 21st century”, he said in a joint article with Danish PM Mette Frederiksen in The Guardian.

What did the commentators say?

“Human rights campaigners, Labour peers and some MPs” had condemned the government for calling for changes, “arguing they could open the door to countries abandoning some of the world’s most vulnerable people”, said Pippa Crerar and Rajeev Syal in The Guardian. The PM, they said, “should not be diluting protections that pander to the right”.

“Closing our borders to refugees is undoubtedly a crime. But worse than that, it is a mistake,” Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, told Strategic Europe. The combination of “dubious deals, pushbacks at sea, and draconian deportation policies may look like success” but “every analysis tells us that Europe’s ageing population and shrinking workforce mean we need new workers” to “help generate the economic dynamism we so desperately lack”.

But there is growing consensus across Europe that something needs to be done. Both critics and supporters of the ECHR, which came into force in 1953, acknowledge that it is “woefully outdated” and “does not reflect today’s reality of people-smuggling gangs and the weaponisation of migrants by rogue states”, said James Rothwell, Joe Barnes and James Crisp in The Telegraph.

“While there is no suggestion that EU leaders will scrap the ECHR”, as some parties on the right, including Reform UK and, latterly, the Conservatives “dream of doing”, a growing number of member states have called “for it to be ‘reinterpreted’ to address current migration challenges”.

What next?

Berset told reporters that the “living instrument” is possible to adapt, and work will begin next year.

The key parts of the ECHR that have been identified as in need of an update are Article 8, the right to family life, and Article 3, the right not to be subjected to torture or inhumane treatment. Both are often cited – some would say abusively – in court by asylum-seekers looking to overturn their deportation orders. And restrictions on the application of Article 8 are crucial to the government’s radical asylum reforms, set out by Shabana Mahmood last month.

There has been some outcry at moves to tighten up interpretation of these articles but, “to put it bluntly”, Europe would not be plunged “into a dark age of injustice”, said Daniel Thym, a professor of European law at Germany’s University of Konstanz, on Verfassungsblog.

It is a sign of how high Starmer sees the stakes on this issue that he sent both Justice Secretary David Lammy and Attorney General Richard Hermer to Strasbourg today to make the case for updating the convention. Starmer’s two closest allies have “one task in mind”, said Andrew McDonald on Politico’s London Playbook: “securing reforms to the ECHR to save his Labour government and the 75-year-old treaty from those on the right who want to ditch both entirely. No pressure!”

Hotels housing asylum seekers became a lightning rod this summer for political and community tensions over illegal migration, and over the dramatic increase in the number of migrants arriving in Britain on small boats. Large numbers of people are still being housed in these hotels, though the government has promised to end the practice by the end of this parliament, in 2029. As of June 2025, 32,059 asylum seekers were being accommodated in hotels. That’s 8% up on last year’s level (though actually down from a peak of 56,042 in September 2023).

One council, Epping Forest, has argued in court – unsuccessfully – that using hotels in this way is a breach of planning laws. The government has also been criticised by the Home Affairs Committee of MPs for its general failures in its management of asylum accommodation, and for squandering billions on hotels.

What is the context to all this?

The number of asylum seekers coming to the UK has risen sharply in recent years, because of small-boat crossings. In the year ending December 2024, a record 108,138 people claimed asylum (84,231 main applicants plus 23,907 dependants). The figure for 2019 was 44,494. When asylum seekers have been processed, if they are judged to be “destitute”, as most are, they are eligible for accommodation and subsistence while their claims are being assessed (most are not allowed to work).

New arrivals are placed in “initial accommodation”. Then they are moved to longer‑term “dispersal accommodation” – flats or houses of multiple occupation, often in areas such as the North West, where housing is cheaper – until an asylum decision has been made. But when this is not available, “contingency accommodation” is used: usually hotels. All this accommodation is provided by private contractors: in 2019, the Home Office gave 10-year contracts to three companies: Serco, Clearsprings Ready Homes and Mears.

Why are hotels being used so much?

Until 2020, they were used only in very limited circumstances. But when the pandemic struck, the contractors began placing asylum seekers in hotels – partly for public health reasons, and partly because empty hotels were a useful place to house growing numbers of people. This was only ever intended as a temporary measure, as a response to the pressures of the pandemic. However, it soon became a major part of the asylum accommodation system: at one point, 400 hotels were being used.

After the pandemic, demand continued to grow – because of rising numbers, and because of Boris Johnson’s decision to stop processing asylum claims as his government pursued its Rwanda policy, meaning that more people were stuck in the system. Around a third of the total are now housed in hotels.

Why is it seen as a problem?

Firstly, asylum hotels are poor value for money. The average daily cost of housing an asylum seeker is about £145 per person – compared with £23 in “dispersal accommodation”; catering, laundry, onsite security and so on raise costs. As a result, the expected cost of those three 10-year contracts has risen from £4.5 billion to £15.3 billion, according to the Home Affairs Committee.

Hotels are also unsuitable for asylum seekers themselves: some spend years living in hotels. Bored and unable to work legally, asylum seekers have little to do but stay in their rooms or loiter in the local area; some have committed crimes. Residents living near these hotels often complain that they feel unsafe; The Bell Hotel in Epping, along with others, have become flashpoints for protests and violence.

Are there any alternatives?

There are few easy solutions. From August 2023, some 500 male asylum seekers were moved to the Bibby Stockholm barge docked off the Dorset coast; but that prompted protests and legal challenges, and within 16 months it had been emptied. At present, two large former Ministry of Defence sites are being used to house them: Napier Barracks near Folkestone – found by the High Court in 2021 to be “filthy” and overcrowded – and a former RAF base at Wethersfield in Essex. Napier is due to close by December.

Another option, proposed by the Refugee Council, would be for ministers to grant time-limited leave to remain in Britain to all asylum seekers from five countries (Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan) whose claims are almost certain to be successful, which would allow asylum hotels to be closed within six months.

What’s the government doing?

It wants to tackle the problem by reducing the number of people in the asylum system: speeding up the processing of claims; reducing irregular arrivals by cracking down on criminal gangs; stepping up returns of those who have been rejected; and perhaps tightening up the rules in general. Keir Starmer has said that he wants asylum hotels “emptied as quickly as possible”. Labour wants to open asylum camps on disused Army bases and on government land, including barracks in East Sussex and Inverness. It’s also trialling a plan to give asylum seekers £100 per week so they can live with family or friends.

Will the hotels be closed?

The PM has told ministers that he hopes to be able to end the use of hotels next year. By then, the government aims to have readied military sites, and made progress in cutting the asylum backlog (which Labour says has fallen by around 20% since it took office). Still, plans to house asylum seekers on government land are likely to encounter local opposition and legal challenges. It’s likely to be expensive, too: such sites often cost more even than hotels. The Home Office’s record does not inspire confidence: the Home Affairs Committee described it as “chaotic”. It had failed, for instance, to claw back millions in “excess profits” owed by contractors to the public purse until prompted by the Committee.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has abandoned plans to increase income tax in the Budget on 26 November, and will instead focus on a range of smaller tax-raising measures.

The U-turn – leaked mere days after briefings about a plot to challenge Keir Starmer – comes after new Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts decreased the size of the economic “hole” Reeves needs to fill. This means she no longer feels under pressure to break Labour’s manifesto and put up income tax rates.

What did the commentators say?

The OBR told the chancellor that the hole in the public finances is now “closer to £20 billion than the £30 billion originally expected”, said Steven Swinford and Mehreen Khan in The Times. Reeves promptly ripped up the manifesto-busting plan she knew would “aggravate mutinous” Labour MPs and “fuel anger among voters”.

Downing Street officials “insisted” the Budget re-write was not a “response to the leadership crisis that has engulfed Keir Starmer” this week, said George Parker, Anna Gross and Sam Fleming in the Financial Times. But the chancellor’s about-turn has had an immediate effects on the markets, with gilts having their “worst one-day sell off since September” when the news broke.

When Reeves finally delivers the Budget, she will probably favour a “smorgasbord” approach, raising money from multiple avenues, including levies on gambling and taxes on expensive properties. She is also expected to “extend a freeze on personal tax thresholds” for a further two years, pushing more people into higher tax brackets as their wages rise.

“Rachel Reeves is Queen of the U-turn,” said Harvey Jones in the Daily Express. “She was forced to backtrack” on scrapping the winter fuel payment” and “caved on” over proposed cuts to the “ballooning” benefit bill. In fact, she has been made “to correct everything from her CV and childhood chess achievements to claims she didn’t know she needed a licence to rent out her property”.

“It is a mess,” said Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph. The Budget is “turning into a shambles”. In a week of “in-fighting, plotting and leaks”, the chancellor is being “buffeted” by political events, instead of controlling them. The proposed “series of minor tax rises” to try to stay within the fiscal rules shows that her preparation has “descended into a farce”.

What next?

A gap of £20 billion is “still a big number”, said Pippa Crerar in The Guardian. In addition to freezing income tax thresholds, we should expect “taxes on salary sacrifice schemes” and even a “fuel duty equivalent for electric vehicles”.

Talk of a new “exit tax” on entrepreneurs leaving the country has dwindled somewhat, said Swinford in The Times, but, if it is brought in, it could have a “significant impact on investment and growth”, particularly “in the artificial intelligence and broader tech sectors”.

“Make no mistake, this is a major moment for the government – and quite the twist on the usual cheery breakfast telly,” said Sam Blewett in Politico. With less than a month to go until her Budget announcement, Chancellor Rachel Reeves made a televised speech with the aim of “setting the context” for what is to come on 26 November.

Reeves refused to confirm whether the Labour government would reverse its manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, stoking speculation that her blueprint for balancing the books could come at the cost of public opinion.

What did the commentators say?

The chancellor’s claim that “each of us must do our bit” was the “clearest indication yet that broad-based tax rises are coming”, said James Heale in The Spectator. Her 25-minute address had “echoes of Mrs Thatcher’s famous TINA: There Is No Alternative” speech. The question is whether Reeves “has a solution to stop this vicious cycle from repeating again in another 12 months’ time”.

The prolonged trailing of the sacrifices to be made in the Budget could well be a tactical ploy, said Politico: “setting expectations so low that the budget doesn’t sting as much as people fear”. This “by no means typical” televised speech proves that “senior strategists are trying to handle this make-or-break fiscal statement with the utmost caution”.

Reeves’ expected pledge to prioritise the NHS in the Budget is a “gamble” to leverage national support, said Kate Devlin in The Independent. She is banking on the fact that the public sees the health service “as a kind of religion”, and looking to fulfil the commitment of reducing waiting times – one of the consistent themes of the Starmer government – to curry favour. She hopes that those who are “hit” by reported National Insurance rises “will prefer to be able to see their GP than have some extra money in their pockets”. Whether this will pay off, “time will tell”.

“Households will not be fooled” by Reeves’s tax “wheeze”, said Adam Smith in The Telegraph. Labour is already in a situation that “no amount of communications spin will be able to fix”. The heart of the matter is that, if the rumours are true, “the government will have increased income tax after repeatedly promising not to”. No. 11 will be “kidding themselves” if they believe the public will think otherwise.

What next?

Reeves will claim that Trump’s tariffs, increased defence spending, and a dire fiscal inheritance from the Conservatives, have all affected her decisions, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. This cannot work forever: by next autumn, Labour will have been in office for more than two years and “memories” of their “economic inheritance will be even less fresh than they are today”.

While the “politics of raising tax remain fraught”, another potential pitfall for the Labour government is the “perception of inaction”. Reeves can only gamble that the road she chooses for the country “leads somewhere better”.

“Labour promised not to increase income tax, not to increase National Insurance and not to increase VAT. Does the prime minister still stand by his promises?” That was Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s opening salvo at Prime Minister’s Questions this week.

The answer from Keir Starmer was eyebrow-raisingly non-committal, stating only that the government would “lay out” in the Budget its plans to “build a stronger economy” and “deliver a better future for our country”.

That Budget is still a month away but there are widespread reports that Rachel Reeves is considering a manifesto-busting move to increase the top 45p rate of income tax rate or to lower the threshold at which people have to start paying it.

What did the commentators say?

Come the Budget, the Chancellor faces “a terrible choice”, said Martin Wolf in the Financial Times. Either she must “cut spending that people want and raise taxes that people feel they cannot afford” or she has to “allow explosive rises in public debt”. That, in short, is “the plight of Rachel Reeves”.

With the Office for Budget Responsibility expected to deliver a further £20 billion-plus blow to public finances by downgrading its productivity forecast, the chancellor has limited options. She is under pressure from many within her party to increase spending, rather than cut it, and has already confirmed she will not borrow more to balance the books.

To avoid breaking Labour’s manifesto pledge, Reeves could impose some wholly new taxes. She has been “holding discussions over a raft of” possibilities, said David Maddox and Caitlin Doherty in The Independent. These are said to include a 1% mansion levy on properties worth over £2m, a gambling tax and a bank profits levy. There is also talk of further capital gains reforms, and “ending tax relief on pensions”.

But raising money in this way risks causing “unnecessary amounts of economic damage” and adding “needless complexity to the system”, Isaac Delestre of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, told the paper.

There is a “persuasive case for ignoring the Labour manifesto”, said Adam Smith in The Telegraph. Raising income tax will “demonstrate that the government is serious about getting a grip on public finances” and it will be rewarded by the bond markets with a “multibillion-pound fall in government borrowing costs”. It will “be less damaging to GDP than any further raids on business taxes” and the increased revenues will “help the Bank of England tackle inflation”.

What next?

Economists and Treasury mandarins may be lining up to agree that there’s a “powerful case” for a small income tax rise, said Smith in The Telegraph, but it would be “a misjudgement so grave, it would destroy Reeves’ career and this government”.

“Promises made” must be “promises kept”, said The Guardian’s editorial board. If not, “it will be terrible for politics”, said Lewis Goodall on his Substack. “Backtracking on one of the only promises about which voters might be aware” would mean it’s “game over for the party”.

Breaking the income tax manifesto promise would “come with a colossal political hit”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason. But such is the state of the economy, “some within the party” are telling Reeves “to go for it” anyway.

V levels will become the “only pathway” for young people aged 16-19 to gain vocational qualifications equivalent to an A level, the government announced yesterday.

The new level 3 qualifications “simplify” students’ decisions, and “streamline” the 900 existing vocational qualifications, allowing them to mix and match education options more easily.

They will sit alongside A levels, which have an “academic” focus, and T levels, suitable for those who are “confident about working in a certain occupational area”. V levels will offer those less sure of their career pathway more flexibility, the government’s “Post-16 education and skills” white paper said.

How would they work?

V levels will replace BTecs, which have been around since the mid-1980s. While A levels are geared towards university entrance, and a T level (a two-year course equivalent to three A levels) offers training for a specific career, V levels are designed for young people to keep their options open, said FE Week. They are tied to “rigorous and real-world job standards” and mix theoretical learning with developing practical skills.

As an example, after finishing their GCSEs, a student could study a V level in finance and accounting in conjunction with A levels in environmental science and geography. This student might then go on to an apprenticeship in the renewables sector.

Why are they needed?

V levels represent one of the first steps towards Keir Starmer’s target for two-thirds of young people to go to university, or pursue a “gold-standard apprenticeship” or equivalent qualification.

Last year “roughly one in seven” people aged between 16 and 24 were not in education, employment or training, said the Financial Times. Worryingly, the trend appears to be on the rise, with the 2024 figures representing a 1.5 percentage point increase on 2023.

Will they work?

“If you’re feeling a bit confused by it all, you’re not alone,” said HuffPost. “We’ve all heard of A levels” but they may have to “budge up” with the government’s addition of V levels. Aimed at reducing uncertainty over students’ futures, this flexible hybrid approach may inadvertently fail to direct them towards a clear end goal.

While the announcement is a “big step forwards” for level 3 education, it is “not everything we would want, of course”, said David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges. Though the plans are “ambitious and exciting”, the white paper highlights the “lack of support and funding” within post-16 education, which is plagued by “low pay in colleges” and an “absence of collaboration”.

“It is not yet clear when V levels will be introduced, how they will be rolled out, or which subjects will be on offer,” said the BBC. The government will now launch a consultation to “support the introduction of V levels”, said HuffPost.

Keir Starmer has met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mumbai as the pair attempt to emerge from “the shadow of tariff turmoil” brought forth by the US.

On a trip meant to promote business opportunities between the UK and India – two of the world’s largest economies – Starmer said he is hoping to implement the previously signed trade deal as soon as “humanly possible”.

In July, Starmer and Modi signed a trade agreement in the UK, “sealing a deal to cut tariffs on goods from textiles to whisky and cars, and allow more market access for businesses”, said Reuters. But projections, which predict an increase in trade of more than £25 billion by 2040, are ultimately “a floor, not a ceiling, to the ambition of the deal”. This week’s visit provides opportunities to further that partnership, said Starmer.

What did the commentators say?

“This trip has a big first,” said Sky News. Taking more business leaders along than on any previous such visit, the UK government’s “enthusiasm to take advantage of the signed, though not completed, free trade deal is clear”. Business leaders said that they’ve joined the tour to boost business in India, and also to “raise their profile with the prime minister”.

Overseas markets like India are more important to domestic businesses than ever. But the bosses’ enthusiasm might also be “a response to the nervousness about a £20 billion – £30 billion black hole Chancellor Rachel Reeves will have to fill” in the upcoming Budget.

Even so, “the visit had some awkward undertones”, said Bloomberg. Just before Starmer arrived in India, Modi wished Russian President Vladimir Putin a happy birthday. Starmer, who has been vocal in pressuring Putin to end his invasion of Ukraine, “deflected a question while on the plane to India” about the exchange. “Just for the record, I haven’t sent birthday congratulations to Putin, nor am I going to do so. I don’t suppose that comes as a surprise.”

And despite blossoming trade relations with India, “tensions over migration are expected to linger”. Indian and British businesses had reportedly pushed for more visas for highly skilled workers moving from India to the UK when the two countries were formalising their trade deal over the summer. But Starmer said that “the visa situation hasn’t changed with the free trade agreement”, adding that the visit was more about “business-to-business engagement and investment and jobs and prosperity coming into the United Kingdom”.

What next?

Starmer’s visit to India has already coincided with some developments that promise continued cooperation between the two countries.

British Airways has “announced a third daily flight” between Heathrow and New Delhi starting next year, and it plans to look into further opportunities in India as trade “expands”, said The Hindu. The new flight, which also includes the announcement of a New Delhi-Manchester route operated by India’s IndiGo, is expected to generate tens of millions of pounds in exports and tourism income, as well as 450 new jobs.

Starmer “also used the visit to announce that three Bollywood films will be made in the UK” by major film studio Yash Raj Films starting in 2026, said the BBC. Bringing Bollywood back to the UK after an “eight-year hiatus”, the move is expected to bring thousands of jobs and “pour millions into the economy”.

Plus, the prime minister – having praised India’s digital ID system as a “massive success” – is to look into how the UK can take inspiration for its own implementation of widespread digital IDs, said The Guardian. “Starmer defended the introduction of a similar measure in the UK, saying he believed the rollout of a voluntary system could be expanded to school applications, mortgages and driving licences.”

People who have been granted asylum in the UK will no longer be given automatic settlement and family reunion rights – as part of a government effort to “reduce the pull factor for small boat crossings”.

To “make the system fairer”, Keir Starmer has announced changes to asylum policy that end a refugee’s so-called “golden ticket” rights to bring their family to the UK and earn settled residency status after five years. Automatic family reunification will end, and migrants granted asylum will have to wait 10 years and meet new “contribution-based” conditions before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain.

With Nigel Farage announcing his party’s intention to scrap all indefinite leave to remain, the government’s announcement “marks the latest hardening of Labour’s immigration policy in an attempt to stymie the popularity” of Reform UK, said The Times.

What is the current process?

People who have been granted asylum used automatically to gain the right to petition for their spouse and children to join them in Britain. In early September, the government temporarily suspended applications to this family reunification scheme.

Refugees are also currently given the right to stay in the UK for five years, during which they can study, work and apply for benefits. When the five years are up, they can apply for indefinite leave to remain, which gives them the right to apply for a British passport.

The government has said it wants to “continue to play its role in welcoming genuine refugees” but this current system is “not fit for purpose”. It is therefore making the “route to settlement” longer. “There will be no golden ticket to settling in the UK,” said Starmer. People will have to earn it “by contributing to our country, not by paying a people smuggler to cross the Channel in a boat”.

How will things change?

The suspension of automatic family reunification rights will now become permanent – meaning refugees must meet the same requirements for family reunion as any other migrant.

Refugees will still be “entitled to a package of core protection” but will not be able to apply for indefinite leave to remain until they have been in the country for 10 years. Additionally, there will be new “contribution” requirements for indefinite leave to remain. These include being in work, making National Insurance contributions, not taking benefits, learning English “to a high standard”, having a “spotless” criminal record, and “giving back” to the local community.

Refugee advocates have expressed their concern. “Blocking our chance to settle or to reunite with family members still at risk of harm keeps people like us, and our children, on the outside, never really allowed to feel secure or like we truly belong,” Kolbassia Haoussou, a refugee and a director at the charity Freedom from Torture, told The Guardian. These measures “are taken straight from the populist playbook the government itself has condemned”.

There are also concerns that restricting legal paths to family reunion “only pushes more desperate people into the arms of smugglers” in an effort to reach their loved ones, Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at The Refugee Council, told the paper.

How many people have arrived in the UK through the family reunification scheme?

Numbers have been rising. Between 2010 and 2020, refugee family reunion consistently accounted for 30% to 40% of the 10,000 to 20,000 people granted asylum-related permission to stay in the UK each year, according to the University of Oxford’s The Migration Observatory. By 2023, that total number had jumped significantly to 63,000, “partly due to family reunion”. In 2024, 19,700 people were issued with a family reunion visa – a “likely knock-on effect” of the government’s efforts to clear the backlog in asylum applications.

The trial of two men accused of spying for China was due to start at London’s Woolwich Crown Court today. Instead, charges against parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash and teacher Christopher Berry were dropped last month in controversial circumstances.

Both men – who maintain their innocence – were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, which meant prosecutors would have had to prove that they had acted for an “enemy” state. But, according to The Sunday Times, Jonathan Powell, Keir Starmer’s influential national security adviser, said the government’s “star witness” in the case would have to base his evidence on the National Security Strategy 2025 – which describes China as a “geostrategic challenge”, rather than an “enemy”. And so the trial was “doomed”.

What did the commentators say?

In order “not to upset” Beijing, with whom it is pursuing closer ties, the government “fatally undermined” Scotland Yard’s investigation into the suspected espionage, said David Sheppard and Helen Warrell in the Financial Times.

Viewing the situation in the “most generous” light, the “thawing relationship” between China and the UK could have “undermined the case”, said Caroline Wheeler and Gabriel Pogrund in The Sunday Times. But more cynical critics might say it demonstrates the government’s willingness to “prioritise closer economic links to China over matters of national security”.

The collapse of the case has sparked discontent across “both sides of the political aisle”, said David Hughes in London’s The Standard. Powell is under “renewed pressure to submit to a grilling” over this, and over the national security strategy, said James Tapsfield in the Daily Mail. If he refuses, “he could be held in contempt of Parliament”.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood “insisted there was no ministerial interference in the collapse of the case”, said Tara Cobham in The Independent. Asked if China was an “enemy of the UK”, she told the paper: “China is a challenge.”

What next?

Conservative ministers have “tabled written parliamentary questions” about the matter, “including to Sir Keir directly”, said The Telegraph. These are likely to centre on what role Powell and other ministers “played in the decision” not to proceed to trial.

Tensions around Chinese espionage still loom large. Rumours that the government is considering targeting “parts of China’s security apparatus under foreign influence rules” have triggered a warning from Beijing that it would “retaliate” if that happened, said The Guardian. So far, ministers have “refused to apply stricter foreign influence rules on lobbyists acting for China”.

Keir Starmer’s announcement that the UK will introduce mandatory digital ID for all citizens has sparked furious debate about their use, effectiveness and threat to privacy.

In making its case, the government has promised to take the “best aspects of the digital identification systems that are already up and running around the world”. The plans would require each person to have an electronic ID, stored in a digital encrypted “wallet” on their smartphone. This would prove people’s right to live and work in the UK, which the PM says will help crack down on illegal migrants and benefit fraud.

Where are digital IDs used?

There are plans to roll out a Digital Identity (eID) Wallet to all EU citizens by the end of 2026, but many European countries already use a national electronic ID system. Last month, Switzerland became the latest to approve such a system, with voters narrowly backing plans for optional and free-of-charge electronic identity cards.

Outside of Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea all offer citizens a way voluntarily to verify their identity online and access some services digitally.

The UK government has also studied India’s Aadhaar system, which provides all citizens with a unique 12-digit number that has “saved around $10 billion annually by reducing fraud and leakages in welfare schemes”, said Gov.uk. Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims the system, which includes facial scans and fingerprints, is India’s ticket to the future.

China first introduced national ID cards in 1984. A new “internet ID” that lets the state, rather than private firms, verify the identity of website and app users “augments China’s radically different approach to managing and surveilling the digital lives of its citizens”, said The Economist.

What can they be used for?

The e-Estonia platform, which contains legal photo ID and provides access to all of Estonia’s government services, is “by far the most highly developed national ID-card system in the world”, said Sky News.

In Denmark, “life online is almost impossible without MitID”, said The Guardian. Introduced in 2023 as a public-private partnership between banks, insurers and the digitisation ministry, the app is needed to pay taxes, book a health appointment or apply for college.

Poland’s mObywatel has 10 million active users and allows people to check points on their driving licence, look up local air quality or change their polling station. Ukraine’s DIIA app is used by the majority of citizens to access more than 70 online services, as well as to track drone attacks.

Have they caused problems?

Cyberattackers have targeted e-Estonia on multiple occasions over the past two decades. In 2021, a hacker obtained around 300,000 document photos “through a security vulnerability in the state portal”, the country’s government said.

Other arguments against digital ID centre on privacy. Civil rights campaigners worry that the huge amounts of information “could be amalgamated, searched and analysed to monitor, track and profile people” and “shift the balance of power towards the state”, said The Guardian's UK technology editor Robert Booth.

In India, mass collection of data from 1.3 billion citizens has left civil libertarians “horrified”, said The New York Times. Enrolment in Aadhaar is now “mandatory for hundreds of public services and many private ones, from taking school exams to opening bank accounts”.

“You almost feel like life is going to stop without an Aadhaar,” one woman told the newspaper.

Has there ever been a “more delicious, predictable, pathetic” political spectacle than the unravelling of Jeremy Corbyn’s new party, asked Stephen Pollard in The Daily Telegraph. Corbyn and his Your Party co-leader, Zarah Sultana, fell out on the day that it was launched in July. They fell out again, in even more spectacular fashion, last week, when Sultana invited people to become paid-up members via an online portal.

Hours later, Corbyn sent out an “urgent” message telling prospective members to cancel their payments: the portal was unsanctioned; he was taking “legal advice”. In a fury, the Coventry South MP then claimed she was being sidelined by a “sexist boys’ club” made up of Corbyn and the party’s four other male MPs. Even by the Pythonesque standards of the far-left, it was farcical, said John Rentoul in The Independent. Before it had even properly come into existence, the party had split into factions that were ferociously denouncing each other.

Your Party ‘couldn’t organise a mailing list’

Corbyn’s opponents are delighted, said Zoë Grünewald in The i Paper, but for those of us on the Left, it’s an incredibly depressing situation. Some 600,000 people had originally registered interest in Your Party. There is a genuine appetite for a socialist movement that would make the case for reducing inequality, take a stand on Palestine, and call out the anti-migrant politics of the Right. “Yet while Tommy Robinson could summon up to 150,000 citizens onto London’s streets in defence of white nationalism, six independent MPs couldn’t organise a mailing list.”

Still ‘tripwires’ ahead

Corbyn and Sultana have now apparently made up, said Jonny Ball on UnHerd. But Your Party’s problems appear to be terminal – not least because Corbyn’s “merry band” of independent MPs remain divided over crucial issues such as trans rights and Ukraine. If they can’t even decide on a name (Your Party is provisional), then it’s hard to see how they’ll navigate those “tripwires” in the coming months. If their woes continue, Keir Starmer won’t be the only one laughing. The Your Party shambles leaves a big gap – and right now, the Green Party’s charismatic new eco-populist leader Zack Polanski is “emerging as the only viable Leftist alternative” to fill it.

Nigel Farage has announced Reform UK's tough new proposals for dealing with the “Boriswave” of migrants which, he claims, could end up costing the British taxpayer hundreds of billions of pounds in benefit payments.

The liberal immigration policy overseen by Boris Johnson after the UK left the EU was, said Farage, “the biggest betrayal of democratic wishes in anyone’s living memory”. He’s not alone in his criticism. Keir Starmer has also called it an “experiment in open borders, conducted on a country that voted for control”.

What is the ‘Boriswave’?

The term refers to the sharp increase in migration to the UK after January 2021, when new post-Brexit points-based visa rules came into force.

The then home secretary Priti Patel vowed the new system would slash immigration numbers and cherry-pick only “the best and the brightest” but, by the end of 2022, net migration reached 873,000: four times more than it had been before Brexit. The numbers did drop to 431,000 in 2024, according to Office for National Statistics data, but they are still higher than they were in the 2010s.

What happened?

There are differing views within the Conservative party of what went wrong, said The Telegraph. Some say the system Johnson designed was "flawed”; some say the “myopic and incompetent Home Office let Johnson down”, and others say “Johnson was mostly mugged by circumstance”. But the “most damaging accusation” is that Johnson and his top team “knew what they were doing and what the consequences would be” but “consciously opted to ramp up net migration for economic reasons”.

Speaking on The Sun’s podcast last year, Johnson said he was forced to keep the migration policy loose to ensure there were enough workers to “stack the shelves and fill the petrol stations with petrol”. Everyone was “freaking out” and “saying we need more pairs of hands to get things done”, said the former PM. Under pressure to fill labour shortages, especially in lower-paid sectors such as care, his government lowered the qualification and salary thresholds needed to get visa points – and the number of visas issued to lower-skilled workers ballooned.

A recent report from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee found the “insufficient” intra-governmental collaboration on “workforce strategies” meant the Home Office lacked a “full understanding of the potential consequences” of its immigration policy changes. To put it more bluntly, said Michael Simmons in The Spectator, the Home Office “didn’t think about how a flood of new working-age migrants (and their dependants) might affect salaries, services or housing”.

And now, with millions of Boriswave migrants close to having spent five years in Britain and therefore able to apply for indefinite leave to remain (and the means-tested benefits that come with it), there is concern that they will end up taking more from the British state that they contribute.

What is Reform proposing?

Farage has promised to abolish indefinite leave to remain status, which, once granted, allows migrants the permanent right to live, work and study in the UK, and access the health and benefits system. It would be replaced with a renewable five-year visa for those who meet certain criteria, and those who currently have settled status would be forced to re-apply.

His plans would “save British taxpayers at least £234 billion over the lifetime of these migrants”, said Farage, citing a report by the Centre for Policy Studies think tank. The Centre for Policy Studies has since said, however, that the fiscal data contained within its report was the “subject of dispute”.

Labour, which is already consulting on plans to increase the waiting criteria to apply for indefinite leave to remain, has said Farage’s forecasted savings “have no basis in reality”.

"How do you excite people about moderate positions?"

“In the clamour of politics in 2025” that is the “quandary” facing the Liberal Democrats, said Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC.

Leader Ed Davey’s answer up to now has been to try to cut through with a series of attention-grabbing stunts. These have proved surprisingly successful electorally, winning his party 72 seats at the last general election, a record number.

That is all well and good, said Charlotte Henry in The Spectator, but “at a time at which there is a horrendous, and horrendously unpopular, Labour government”, as well as a Conservative Party “in seemingly terminal decline”, the Lib Dems “should be offering more”.

What did the commentators say?

Those hoping this weekend’s party conference would usher in a new, more serious Lib Dems were quickly disappointed after Davey entered the Bournemouth venue at the head of a marching band. It was undoubtedly “eye-catching”, said The Independent’s editorial, but ultimately another “vacuous video-opportunity”.

“This is the perfect time for the Lib Dems to take it to the next level, presenting themselves as a serious alternative to the rise of Reform,” said UnHerd. Unfortunately, the decision “to march into conference at the head of the world’s most embarrassing parade – while his party had a deeply stupid row over trans issues” showed that “these are not serious people”.

The public, it seems, is also growing weary of the endless stunts. Polling conducted by More in Common and presented to members gathered in Bournemouth showed more than 60% of voters think Davey’s campaign antics make the party look less serious. This also extends to nearly half of Lib Dem supporters. Perhaps more worrying is that many voters are still unsure what the party stands for.

Despite the criticism, Davey remains in a “strong position, with a largely happy party behind him”, said Kuenssberg. He will, however, “need to think through how to sell a set of moderate ideas to a voting public that appears to be eager for more drastic solutions”.

It is true they “need a harder edge to their policies, but they should focus on issues on which they could influence a government in a hung parliament, which ought to be the only point of people voting for them”, said The Independent. Social care and sewage “should not be the limit of Lib Dem ambition” when they could offer a “more forward policy on integration with the EU, a more compassionate approach to immigration and a more genuinely liberal attitude to the cause of equal rights”.

What next?

With two-thirds of constituencies where the Lib Dems are behind by less than 10,000 votes held by the Conservatives “winning over disillusioned Tories is the focus”, said The Telegraph.

This explains Davey’s decision to “lay out his pitch” in The Telegraph before the conference. In the article he denounced the “divisive politics being peddled by the likes of Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage” and promised to “provide a home to the millions of former Conservative voters repulsed by the extremes of both the right and left”.

The Lib Dems hope this strategy could result in them gaining more than 100 MPs at the next general election, according to The New Statesman, making them a serious force if, as the current polls suggest, no party emerges with an overall majority.

This still requires “hefty qualification”, especially given that “we are still a long way from knowing how willing people are to vote tactically around Reform”.

Tory woes, however, mean that “the Lib Dems need only stand still for the next three years to profit from the decline and fall of Britain’s oldest party”.

For all the political difficulties inherent in President Trump’s state visit, the deluge of high-profile deals accompanying it was enough to put a spring into even the most care-worn chancellor’s step, said Reuters. Before Trump and his entourage of tech bros sat down to dinner at Windsor Castle, Rachel Reeves and the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, had already announced a “transatlantic taskforce” to deepen links between the City and Wall Street.

Taking some of the sting out of “a challenging Budget in November”, is news that Blackstone, the giant US alternative asset manager, could invest £100 billion over the next decade, said Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian. Bank of America, meanwhile, will create up to 1,000 new jobs in Belfast.

Sod’s law, said The Times, that the bank’s monthly fund manager survey – published on the same day – reports that “institutional investors are dumping shares in UK companies at the fastest rate in more than 20 years”, amid anxiety over tax rises, borrowing costs and the stagnant economy.

Big numbers

Rolls-Royce’s shares jumped ahead of the visit, said the FT. The company, a pioneer of small modular reactors (SMRs), is a clear beneficiary of a joint $100 billion nuclear deal, involving speedier regulatory approvals and secure nuclear supply chains, and the aim of getting new reactors online by the mid-2030s.

Still, “the centrepiece” of the visit, business-wise, is a “technology partnership” involving greater cooperation with Silicon Valley on AI and quantum computing, said James Landale on BBC News, which the sacked US ambassador, Lord Mandelson, called his “personal pride and joy”.

The numbers are certainly big, said The Daily Telegraph. Microsoft plans to invest a record £22 billion on infrastructure, including Britain’s most powerful AI supercomputer; Google has made a further £5 billion investment; Nvidia is pumping £11 billion into the UK AI ecosystem; and OpenAI plans to open a “Stargate” AI hub in Newcastle.

Tariff deal shelved

It’s glitzy stuff and “a nice vote of confidence in the UK”, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. But are these “gigantic warehouses stuffed with chips” really “the saviours of capitalism”? Siting data centres within our own borders in theory gives us more security over AI. But “don’t expect them to generate myriad high-skill, high-paid jobs”: the average data centre employs 54 people.

Therein lies the rub, said Andy Haldane in the FT. Successful industrial strategies need to focus on more than a set of “superstar” sectors. “The bulk of UK jobs are in the everyday economy” – and on that score this visit hasn’t delivered. Hopes of slashing tariffs on UK steel, from 25% to zero, have been quietly shelved.

Andy Burnham has made no secret of his desire to one day lead the Labour Party. The mayor of Greater Manchester has twice run for the leadership – in 2010 and 2015 – and just two years ago reaffirmed his aspirations for the top job, telling The Telegraph: “If the party thinks well maybe it is your time, I wouldn’t turn away from that.”

That naked ambition “has always made him an anxiety-inducing blot on the landscape for the incumbent leader”, said The Guardian, “but the road to No. 10 is a very difficult one”. Burnham may have a vision for his path to the leadership – “but he doesn’t have complete control of how to make it a reality”.

What did the commentators say?

After a disastrous two weeks, “Starmer’s premiership is on its knees”, said Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper, “with his own internal critics now publicly putting a timeline on how long it can last”. Some are warning he could be ousted after May’s elections.

The “despondent mood among his MPs isn’t limited to his left-wing critics”. Mainstream figures and grassroots Labourites are “questioning whether the chaotic departures of Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson are fundamental markers of Starmer’s political judgement, his vision for the country, and even his basic competence”.

By contrast, Burnham has been consistently chosen as the next PM in polls of Labour members and his appeal extends to voters who backed Labour in the last general election. Last week, the man dubbed “the King in the North” by supporters launched a new soft-left campaign group, Mainstream, which “many expect to become a Trojan horse for a leadership bid”, said The Telegraph.

Backing calls for wealth taxes, nationalising utility companies and ending the two-child benefit cap, Burnham “would want to lead a government with a strikingly different tone – more sympathetic to dissent, more open to the Liberal Democrats and to the Green Party – a soft-left administration with strong appeal to many Labour members”, that would also be “better at combating Reform”, said The New Statesman’s Andrew Marr.

He has already called for a “reset” at the Labour conference later this month, and No. 10 is “braced for Burnham to pop up in Liverpool as a rallying point for a change of direction”, said Donaldson.

What next?

Under current rules, 20% of the parliamentary party (80 MPs) would be required to challenge Starmer by nominating an alternative candidate, “and it’s far from agreed who that could be”, said Politico.

Burnham faces an even greater obstacle than most candidates as he would first need to fight and win a parliamentary seat in order to stand in any future leadership race. One obvious option would be Gorton and Denton in south Manchester, where suspended Labour MP Andrew Gwynne has applied to retire on medical grounds. But that seat, along with many in and around Manchester, is vulnerable to Reform, according to the latest forecast from Election Maps UK.

“The harsh reality is that there is no realistic route for him to become leader” in the near future and attempting to do so could “hand Farage a huge opportunity in a genuine showdown”, said The Independent. “Even if the Labour Party needs saving, trying to bring back Andy Burnham would be a gamble too far.”

“In the end Angela Rayner had to go,” said Steven Swinford in The Times. Her tax affairs and her living arrangements were complicated, but the case turned on a point that was “remarkably simple”. She had, she admitted, underpaid £40,000 in stamp duty by wrongly claiming that her new £800,000 flat in Hove was her only home. And though she’d tried to blame her failure to pay the second-home surcharge on bad legal advice, that defence started to unravel when the conveyancing firm she had used told the press that they were being scapegoated, and that they had not given her any advice on her tax position – which was not straightforward.

‘Catnip’ to voters

Rayner, it transpired, had sold her 25% stake in her former marital home, in her Ashton-under-Lyne constituency, to a trust she and her ex-husband had set up for their severely disabled son, with the funds that he’d got from a settlement with the NHS in 2020. They’d wanted, she said, to safeguard their son’s future in the house, which had been adapted to cater for his needs. She seems to have thought that, as a result of this sale, she no longer had a legal interest in the property. But Sir Laurie Magnus, the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards, found that she had been twice advised to get expert advice to clarify this, but had not done so. As a result, he concluded that she had breached the ministerial code. Having defended her for days, Keir Starmer had little choice but to accept Rayner’s resignation as housing minister and deputy PM.

How her enemies on the right must be crowing, said Ros Wynne Jones in the Daily Mirror. Ever since Rayner arrived at Downing Street, wearing a spearmint trouser suit from Me+Em, they’d been gunning for her. Her suit, we were told, was “ghastly” – “too bright, too baggy and too expensive for a working-class woman”. Having attacked her in 2022 for going to Glyndebourne (“above her station”), they attacked her again when she went to a rave in Ibiza. Newspapers pored over her affairs, in the hopes of finding that she’d dodged taxes during the sale of her council house in Stockport (she was vindicated); and smeared her as “Three Pads” when it emerged that she had moved to Hove – though for normal intents and purposes, that flat was the only home she owned. The third “pad”, a flat in London, came with the job, and she has now lost it. It reeked of classism, but it was also tactical: as one of the few working-class people on the Labour benches, and charismatic and relatable to boot, Rayner was “catnip” to voters, and a huge asset to the Government. She had to be brought down.

A major blow to Starmer

Yes, her backstory resonated with many, said George Chesterton in The Daily Telegraph: she grew up on a council estate in Stockport, where she cared for her bipolar mother. She fell pregnant at 16, left school with no qualifications, having been told she’d “never amount to anything”, and trained as a care worker, before becoming a union rep. That she should have risen, from this background, to deputy PM is impressive; but what matters is not how ministers reach high office, it’s what they do when they get there. Rayner has long courted controversy (she had to apologise for referring to Tories as “scum”); she is not viewed as a “policy heavyweight” (her department has made little headway towards its target of 1.5 million new homes); she has seemed overfond of expensive freebies; and her vote share was reduced at the last election. Now we discover that she is also careless with her taxes.

Her middle-class supporters like to refer to her as a working-class hero, said Paul Burke in The Spectator, but her own “ilk” see her as a “chancer” – a woman who claims not to be interested in money while feathering her nest, who calls for higher taxes while not paying her own. She may feel as if she has been hounded by the press, but if it hadn’t been for journalists asking questions, she’d never have paid the tax, said John Rentoul in The Independent. She seems to have made a genuine mistake, and no doubt there are many right-wing politicians who deliberately avoid taxes – but Labour ministers always pay a heavier price for their financial transgressions because they are so “sanctimonious” about such matters. Rayner herself was brutal in her denunciations of Tory ministers who seemed to have not paid their taxes. Now, to many, she looks no better than her Conservative predecessors.

This saga is a major blow to Starmer, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. It has not only undermined public trust in his Government, it has deprived him of a minister who served a vital function in it. Much like John Prescott did for Tony Blair, Rayner acted as a bridge between the PM and the Labour Left. She embodied Labour’s promise of social mobility; and she conveyed that rare thing in politics: authenticity. Rayner was able to connect with voters like few others. Her departure leaves a very big gap.

There are two things Donald Trump seems to value that money can’t buy. One is the Nobel Peace Prize; the other a chance to hobnob with royalty.

As the US president prepares for an “unprecedented” second state visit to the UK, all eyes will be on Keir Starmer and King Charles as they look to perform a potentially perilous diplomatic dance.

The PM will be hoping the “gilt-edged reception” laid on by the King “will help to deliver the UK’s message on awkward issues such as Ukraine and trade tariffs”, said the BBC. “And if anyone can get the US president’s attention and influence him, surely King Charles III and the Royal Family can.”

What did the commentators say?

To call Trump divisive would be an understatement. A YouGov poll published in July found the British public were split about whether this week’s state visit should even go ahead.

Those opposed to the trip accuse the government of “legitimising a leader they say has fuelled division, weakened democratic norms and dismissed the urgency of climate change”, said The Independent.

“Others argue that diplomacy requires pragmatism” and “whatever one thinks of Trump personally”, he remains “a critical ally for trade, defence and global security”.

With tensions already running high, the events of the past week have transpired to make the president’s visit even more politically fraught.

The fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk has fuelled Trump’s attacks on the left, ramped up rhetoric about free speech and “intensified the consideration of potential threats”, said The New York Times. Then there was the massive far-right rally in London on Saturday, when protesters clashed with police and Elon Musk called for the effective overthrow of the government. The “Unite the Kingdom” rally was condemned by Starmer, who is under pressure to do more to tackle rising nationalist sentiment, which is being driven by US figures with links to the president.

But it is the sacking of UK ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein that is “especially awkward” and “threatens to overshadow the proceedings”, said The Guardian.

“All three major figures involved in the trip are embarrassingly tangled in the Epstein web, and have no wish to be reminded of it,” said Sean O’Grady in The Independent; Trump “because of past association”, Starmer “via Lord Mandelson”; and the King through his brother Prince Andrew.

“The uncomfortable chill that will descend at the mention of Jeffrey Epstein from the media will be unbearable for those present and tangible even to a television audience. It will be quite the moment.”

For all the focus on palace pomp and political psychodrama, it is easy to forget the bigger picture. “The primary objective of the state visit is to shore up the emotional connection the president holds with Britain, and the secondary objective is to demonstrate a modern geopolitical underpinning for the special relationship,” said Sophia Gaston, an analyst at the Centre for Statecraft and National Security at King’s College London.

In practice, said Liam Byrne, chair of the Commons Business and Trade Committee, on Politico, this means convincing Trump that “for all his unhappiness with America’s trade deals of yesterday, the future is the greater prize – and by working together, our countries can build a deeper partnership that helps keep the West safer, stronger and richer at a pivotal moment in world history”.

What next?

Because of the many potential pitfalls, this will be an especially “unusual and carefully crafted” state visit, said the BBC, with Windsor Castle “being used like a royal theme park”.

Trump is scheduled to arrive in London on Tuesday evening for a whirlwind one-and-a-half-day visit, packed with a series of events involving Starmer and the royal family. This means he will spend little time in the capital itself and, with Parliament in recess, will sidestep any awkward interaction with hostile MPs.

Despite these efforts to keep the US president away from the British public and unscripted moments to a minimum, it is impossible to predict what will happen when “the tangerine tyrant/saviour of Western civilisation, touches down”, said O’Grady.

“For all concerned, it could just as easily turn out to be a triumph as a disaster, with a mixture of both the more likely outcome. It should certainly be eventful.”

Candidates in Labour's deputy leadership race face a frantic few days to secure enough support to make it on to the final ballot sent out to party members.

In a truncated contest to replace Angela Rayner, MPs have until 5pm on Thursday to get the support of 20% of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) – that is 80 Labour MPs. They also need the backing of three affiliates, of which two must be affiliated trade unions or 5% of constituency Labour parties.

"Such a high bar will certainly be difficult for those on the left of the party to meet," said The New Statesman, with left-wing MP Richard Burgon describing the proposed timetable as "the mother of all stitch-ups".

Those who meet the threshold will then go forward to a preferential vote of Labour members, with the winner announced on 25 October.

Many expect the contest to come down to a favoured candidate of the government versus someone from the soft left who has the support of backbenchers and unions. There is general consensus that whoever it is, they cannot be an MP from London and should probably be a woman – to serve as a counterweight to Keir Starmer and his new deputy PM, David Lammy.

So who is expected to throw their hat into the ring?

Emily Thornberry

The chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee was quickest out of the gate to canvass potential support among MPs and has emerged as an "early frontrunner", said The Telegraph. Disappointed to have missed out on a cabinet post despite a long history on the shadow front benches, she has "established a reputation as a fiery Labour grandee", criticising the PM's position on the war in Gaza. One MP said she was the "yin to Starmer's yang", and "someone who has that charisma and communication if we are going to turn those polls around". But like another rising star, Tooting MP Rosena Allin-Khan, Thornberry has one big problem. Both represent London constituencies, "putting them at a disadvantage" as the "consensus grows" that Labour's new number two should come from outside the capital, said Kitty Donaldson in The I Paper.

Lucy Powell

The former Commons leader, who was sacked in Friday's reshuffle, would be "an interesting candidate", said Politico, in part "because she is (or was until Starmer fired her last week) close to the leadership – but that same sacking means she can also present herself to the membership as no No. 10 patsy". She ticks the requisite boxes in that she is a woman and from the north of England, and has already received the backing of Andy Burnham, the influential mayor of Manchester. Powell, the Manchester Central MP, has also "emerged as the front-runner among colleagues in the PLP", said Donaldson.

Bridget Phillipson

The education secretary "would be seen as a de facto Downing Street choice, potentially pitting her against Thornberry, who would position herself as a voice for backbenchers", said The Guardian. Conveniently, the Sunderland MP is due to address the TUC Congress in Brighton later today, where she is expected to draw on her personal story "steeped in the proud working-class tradition of learning, of self-improvement" that took her "from a tough street of council houses to the cabinet", said Politico. Phillipson "is a rare member of Starmer's top table who might get a decent amount of support from the unions". She is probably the closest fit to Rayner.

Alison McGovern

The former employment minister, who was moved to the housing and communities department in Friday’s reshuffle, "would also be seen as acceptable to Downing Street", said The Guardian. One union ally told Politico that McGovern, "a big fan of Gordon Brown, has the potential to be a compromise candidate for No. 10 backing: she's a minister but she doesn't have the toxic baggage".

Anneliese Dodds

The former development minister "bolstered her integrity credentials inside the party" after resigning "over principles and not in disgrace after the international aid budget was cut", said Sky News. Starmer's first shadow chancellor, she also has "a forensic knowledge of the internal workings of the Labour Party and, as a former women and equalities minister, has broad appeal within the party". But while well respected, "some MPs may want someone more brash", more in the mould of Rayner, said Politico.

Keir Starmer's year-two reset could not have got off to a worse start after the resignation of his deputy Angela Rayner plunged the government into chaos.

In a bid to try to turn crisis into opportunity, the prime minister has carried out a wide-ranging cabinet reshuffle, signalling he intends to adopt a much harder line on key issues such as immigration and welfare. Hailed by some, criticised by others, the shift represents a "great Rightwards gamble", said The Telegraph.

What did the commentators say?

After the government's "most disastrous week in office, one thing above all is clear", said The Sun: "Keir Starmer has a massive credibility problem."

The PM must "act urgently to stop the rot" in three main areas. First, Shabana Mahmood, the new home secretary, needs enhanced powers to stop migrants illegally crossing the Channel. Second, the PM must resist the urge to raise taxes in November's Budget and "instead force through massive cuts to our obscene £300 billion welfare bill". Lastly, he should scrap the government's "unachievable, unrealistic and unaffordable" net zero targets.

Immigration is "fast becoming Britain's most combustible issue", said Bloomberg. Only by adopting a "more responsive agenda" will Labour be able "to respond to growing public frustration" and halt the Reform UK surge. Starmer needs to "acknowledge legitimate public worries; make a robust economic case for managed levels of legal immigration; and offer credible reforms to secure the border and bolster public services".

The appointment of Mahmood is "a clear attempt to address these problems, signalling a shift to the Right in both policy and rhetoric", said The Telegraph. She is on record as criticising Britain's "maximalist" approach to the European Convention on Human Rights and is believed to support the idea of using disused military barracks to house those waiting for their asylum claims to be processed – the latter being "strikingly similar to Reform's policy of custom-built detention centres".

For progressives, though, this lurch to the right on immigration and welfare "isn't the answer to a haemorrhaging of hope, trust and electoral support", said The Mirror's associate editor Kevin Maguire. Instead, the PM should focus his efforts on "funding a fairer country". "Security at work, fatter wage packets, a healthy NHS, lifting kids out of poverty" – these are the "prizes that win Labour hearts, minds and, of course, votes".

What next?

With many Labour MPs already "deeply anxious" about the direction of the reshuffle, No. 10 is "braced for a deputy leadership contest in which candidates publicly criticise Starmer's first year in government", said The Guardian.

In a taste of what is to come, one potential contender, Emily Thornberry, said that "domestically, things just don't seem to be working". She warned that further "mistakes" from the PM could lead to Labour having to "hand our country to Farage".

The fate of the workers' rights bill currently before Parliament will provide a good indication of Labour's new direction of travel. Overseen and pushed by Rayner, many on the left fear her departure could lead to it being watered down or scrapped altogether under the direction of key Starmer ally Pat McFadden, now in charge at the Department for Work and Pensions.

Justin Madders, who was removed from his post as employment minister in the reshuffle, warned on Sunday that it "would be really, really foolish for the government to row back on key manifesto commitments that are popular with the public and will show what a positive difference a Labour government can make".

If Labour does change tack on employment rights, "Starmer would sign the government's death warrant", said Maguire.

Keir Starmer has often been accused of lacking core beliefs, said George Eaton in The New Statesman, but there's no doubting his earnest commitment to human rights law. He wrote a book on the subject back in 1999, and once claimed: "There is no version of my life that does not largely revolve around me being a human rights lawyer." Which is awkward given the current furore over irregular migration and the mounting calls for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

These calls are no longer just coming from Nigel Farage and the Tories. Two former Labour home secretaries have pitched in as well: David Blunkett says we should suspend parts of the ECHR to speed up the deportation of failed asylum seekers; Jack Straw has warned that "the convention – and crucially, its implementation – is now being used in ways which were never, ever intended when... it was drafted".

Britain's departure from the ECHR "is starting to feel inevitable", said Daniel Hannan in the Daily Mail. The only question is whether the PM accepts it, or is "swept away by the tide". Withdrawal wouldn't be such a big deal. The UK was an open, liberal society long before the ECHR came into force. Claims that leaving it would somehow destabilise the Good Friday Agreement are nonsense.

Yet there's no good reason to suspend our commitment to these universal rights, said Sean O'Grady in The Independent. For all the talk of an "emergency", irregular arrival numbers are lower today than they were in 2022 – and small in relation to the numbers settling here through legal migration. It's not as if leaving the ECHR will stop people trying to cross the Channel.

The ECHR is not the main problem with our overwhelmed asylum system, said Fraser Nelson in The Times. "Legally, Strasbourg only has as much power over our law as Parliament wishes to give it." If, for instance, politicians feel our judges are being too generous in their interpretation of the right to family life, they can legislate to tighten guidance. In practice, the ECHR's impact is modest. Although critics claim the convention stops ministers expelling foreign criminals, data from 2016-2021 shows that just 3.35% of successful appeals were on human rights grounds.

More troublesome than the ECHR is the Refugee Convention, which obliges Britain to settle everyone with a "well-founded fear of persecution" – a definition that "covers much of the world's population". This treaty doesn't present such a "juicy" political target "as it doesn't include the word 'European'", but it's the one the small-boat arrivals are mainly relying on – and the one that most needs updating.

Donald Trump has promised to step in and "save" the British-Hong Kong businessman Jimmy Lai, who is facing life in prison for his vocal opposition to the Chinese regime.

Lai, who arrived in Hong Kong from mainland China at the age of 12, made his fortune in retail. In 1995, he founded Apple Daily, an independent pro-democracy tabloid, soon known for its searing criticism of the Chinese Communist Party. He became a British national in 1996 and, over the past decade, has backed opposition protests against Beijing's draconian suppression of democracy and free speech in the former British territory. He has become a "symbol of Beijing's sweeping national security crackdown" on Hong Kong, said CNN.

Since December 2020, Lai, now 77, has been in a maximum-security prison, mainly in solitary confinement. (Apple Daily was shut down in 2021.) He is now on trial again, accused of two counts of colluding with foreign forces and a separate sedition charge.

What did the commentators say?

Lai is "in poor health, and the risk of his dying in prison" is real, said Jodie Ginsberg in The Independent. "If he does, Britain's shameful inaction will mean it is, in part, responsible."

Britain's "inertia" on Lai's behalf is "strange", given that our government is led by a former human rights lawyer, and supported by "his close friend from chambers, the Attorney General, Lord Hermer", said former Tory home secretary Suella Braverman in The Telegraph.

Keir Starmer did publicly raise Britain's concerns over Lai's case in his first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last year. But since then, said Braverman, the British attitude has been "appeasement" and "not diplomacy". The government "seems unwilling to stop Beijing from constructing its gargantuan embassy complex in central London", while the PM "refuses to list China as a threat on the Enhanced Tier of the Foreign Influence Register". And Foreign Secretary David Lammy, "once a great orator against Beijing's crimes, has now retreated into virtual silence".

Lai's latest trial has also "drawn attention to the continued role of judges from the British Commonwealth who sit on Hong Kong's highest court", said Richard Spencer in The Times. Last year, Lord Neuberger, a former UK Supreme Court judge, was part of a panel that upheld unlawful assembly convictions and prison sentences against Lai and others, including Martin Lee Chu-ming, the former leader of Hong Kong's Democratic Party.

"This wasn't how it was supposed to be after Britain passed Hong Kong back to China in 1997," said The Economist. "China promised to preserve freedoms", and allow Hong Kong "to keep a common-law legal system, which set the bar high for putting dissenters in jail".

But a new National Security Law in 2020 "transformed the legal landscape", creating "sweeping, fuzzy categories of crime that Hong Kong had not known before, such as secession, subversion and the collusion of which Mr Lai is now accused".

What next?

Britain needs to signal that "any normalisation of the relationship with China must be conditional" on Lai's immediate release and return to the UK, said The Independent's Ginsberg.

And then there's Trump's apparent willingness to fight Lai's corner. In a recent interview on Fox News Radio, the US president said he was "going to do everything I can to save him. You know, he's a respected guy, a good guy. You can also understand, President Xi would not be exactly thrilled by doing it," so "we'll see what we can do".

A guilty verdict – expected to be handed down in the next few weeks – will "test Trump's resolve to make good on his pledge while trying to clinch a trade deal" with Xi Jinping, said CNN.

When Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets Donald Trump today, Keir Starmer and the other European leaders who are in Washington to support the Ukrainian leader will be keen to "avoid a repeat" of the two men's "spiky" Oval Office encounter in February, said the BBC.

That clash came just a day after a "diplomatic triumph" for the UK, when Starmer met the US president for the first time, said The Telegraph. Since then, Britain has made a concerted effort to "teach the Ukrainian leader how to 'speak Trump'". And the key figure behind this strategy is Jonathan Powell, Starmer's national security adviser, "one of the most influential figures in British foreign policy".

What did the commentators say?

Powell was appointed to his post in November 2024, and "has been central to everything Labour has done on the global stage" since then, said Chris Smyth and Aubrey Allegretti in The Times. As well as helping to shape UK efforts to bolster Ukraine, he was also "at the heart of a delicate diplomatic balancing act that saw Britain shift towards recognising a Palestinian state".

His decade of previous experience as Tony Blair's chief of staff and his role as chief negotiator in the Northern Ireland peace talks, in particular, have given him a deep feel for high-level diplomacy. "He is a world class operator," a government source told the paper. He has "made a career out of always being in the right room, but never at the centre of attention".

Powell's appointment was seen as "controversial". Traditionally, the role of national security adviser is filled by a civil servant; as a political appointee, Powell has been able to "evade the scrutiny put on his predecessors, with the Cabinet Office refusing to let him be grilled by Parliament's joint committee on national security".

First brought in to oversee the handover of the Chagos Islands, Powell is now "a near ubiquitous figure in UK diplomacy", said Lemma Shehadi in the UAE-owned The National. In the Middle East, his reputation "borders on the mythical". It's said that "he persuaded the PKK to dissolve" and that he "whispered the values of western governance" to Ahmad al-Shaara, now the president of Syria, when he was still an "obscure Islamist rebel". Powell "is like a foreign minister," a Turkish source told the paper. "In the Middle East, Powell plays a more important role than David Lammy."

Those who have worked closely with him say Powell can be "blunt and even abrasive, and sometimes talks like a machine gun", said The Economist. But he is also calm under pressure, "often persuasive", and, crucially, "prepared to sit through lengthy negotiations".

In Northern Ireland, Powell learned the importance of "shuttle diplomacy", keeping up constant personal contact with key figures on both sides of a situation. He has been travelling back and forth to Washington to keep in close touch with Trump's national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and to Kyiv to meet Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. "If a ceasefire deal is eventually agreed over Vladimir Putin's initial objections, it will bear Mr Powell's fingerprints as much as anybody's," said the magazine.

What next?

Powell is also likely to play a key role in the next round of diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. He shared an eight-point peace plan, quietly drawn up by British diplomats, among European nations last month. "A day after Mr Powell began circulating the British plan, 22 Arab nations signed on to a declaration that mirrored its main goals at a United Nations conference", said The New York Times. That declaration "included for the first time a demand from the Arab League that Hamas disarm and give up power in Gaza".

Israel's decision on Friday to allow planes to airdrop aid into Gaza are an attempt to whitewash "a policy of deliberate starvation" and will do little deal with the growing humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

Even with an additional daily "pause" in military action now allowing UN agency lorries through on the ground, the aid delivered in the past two days is a "drop in the ocean", said UN aid chief Tom Fletcher.

After months of food shortages caused by Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, a quarter of the two million people living there are "facing famine-like conditions", said the UN's World Food Programme, with "almost 100,000 women and children suffering from severe acute malnutrition".

What did the commentators say?

There appears to be "near unanimity" among aid agencies that airdrops will not do enough to meet the growing hunger in Gaza, said BBC correspondent Joe Inwood. It's a "grotesque distraction from the reality of what's needed on the ground" right now, the International Rescue Committee's Ciarán Donnelly told the broadcaster.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, posted on X that they were "a distraction and smokescreen".

There are also risks involved in dropping thousands of tonnes of food onto the densely populated Gaza Strip. Last year, 12 people drowned trying to collect airdropped aid that had landed in the Mediterranean Sea. And, on Sunday, 11 Palestinians were injured when a pallet "fell directly on tents where displaced people are living", said Al Jazeera. Even when they land safely, airdrops often lead to chaotic scenes as people rush to grab as much as they can.

Airdrops are "nearly impossible to regulate", said the BBC's Inwood, and therefore the supplies could get diverted by Hamas and other armed groups – an issue Israel said was its "primary objection" to UN aid efforts and the reason behind its recent aid blockade.

There is consensus among both humanitarian and military analysts is that airdrops "should be used only as a last resort, in areas that are otherwise inaccessible", said The Washington Post. This is a view shared by UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy who said yesterday that, "whilst airdrops will help to alleviate the worst of the suffering, land routes serve as the only viable and sustainable means of providing aid into Gaza".

What next?

Although Israel's military insists it will not be limiting the number of supply trucks that can enter Gaza on "secure routes" during the daily 6am to 11pm window, it is unlikely that full resumption of aid will happen until a ceasefire is agreed.

Donald Trump has said the situation in Gaza "is one of the main reasons" he's meeting Keir Starmer in Scotland today. And Starmer has today called the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza "an absolute catastrophe".

"News that Israel will allow countries to airdrop aid into Gaza has come far too late", Starmer wrote in The Mirror, "but we will do everything we can to get aid in via this route".

The clamour within Labour to introduce a wealth tax in a bid to balance the books is continuing to grow ahead of a make-or-break autumn budget.

Keir Starmer and other senior cabinet ministers have repeatedly refused to rule it out following recent comments from the former Labour leader Lord Kinnock, who proposed a 2% levy on assets over £10 million.

Pro: raise revenue

"Estimates vary" about the impact of imposing an extra levy on the super-rich wealth, said The i Paper, but economists are in broad agreement that a "carefully targeted" wealth tax could raise around £10 billion a year, or possibly more, "with minimal impact on the wider population".

A Wealth Tax Commission report in 2020 calculated that "after accounting for non-compliance and administration costs, a one-off wealth tax payable on all individual wealth above £500,000 and charged at 1% a year for five years would raise £260 billion; at a threshold of £2 million it would raise £80 billion."

"If it were unexpected and credibly one-off – a major challenge in practice – this would be an efficient way to raise revenue and could be used to address existing wealth inequality," said the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank.

Con: capital flight

"In virtually every country where it has been tried, a wealth tax has failed to raise anything like the extra revenue which was envisaged," said veteran investment banker Ken Costa in The Telegraph. The reason is that it "encourages the fight of existing wealth and discourages the creation of new wealth. Therefore, there is less wealth to tax."

Only four countries have actually "retained a wealth tax”, said ThisisMoney: Norway, Spain, Colombia and Switzerland. Other nations have tried but failed as the wealthy avoid them and the levy raises "little revenue", creating "high admin costs".

Pro: tackle inequality

"Britain's wealth gap between the richest and poorest is now the second largest in the world behind the US," said Green MP Sian Berry in The Argus. "Two thirds of Britain’s entire wealth" is owned by the richest 10% while "over four million children are living in poverty".

The thing a wealth tax does, Kinnock told Sky News, "is to say to the country, 'we are the government of equity'."

Critics often point to a combined income and investment tax rate of 98% on the highest earners imposed by Labour in the mid-1970s as proof that levying the rich to the hilt does not work. "Less remembered", said The Guardian's Andy Beckett, is the fact that "Britons were more financially equal" in this period than "they had ever been before, and ever have been since".

Con: reduce competitiveness

Opponents of a wealth tax argue it is unfair because it "taxes assets regardless of the return", which "penalises those who hold low-return assets and could put people off saving and creating wealth", said The Times. This in turn reduces competitiveness, deters investment and stifles innovation – all things Labour in particular are looking to foster in their push for economic growth.

This is why "a Kinnock-style wealth tax isn’t going to happen", said George Eaton in the New Statesman. "It would make the UK a distinct outlier at a time when Reeves is striving to maintain international competitiveness."

Pro: public support

Public attitudes show a "clear desire for wealth to be taxed more, relative to labour", said the Wealth Tax Commission.

A recent YouGov poll, of more than 4,000, claimed that 49% of the public "strongly support" the idea of a wealth tax along the lines of that suggested by Kinnock, with 26% saying they "somewhat support" it. Only 6% said they were "strongly opposed".

This is playing out across many countries, where populism "has familiarised voters again with the idea that elites have too much and the majority too little", said Beckett in The Guardian. This corresponds to the British Social Attitudes survey, which shows the number of people who believe "government should redistribute income from the better off to those who are less well off" has risen slowly but steadily over the past 20 years.

Con: impossible to administer

Most countries that have tried to introduce a wealth tax over the past 50 years have found they "raised relatively little money and were nearly impossible to apply fairly", said The Times.

Putting a value on assets – be it real estate, art or private businesses – is incredibly complex, time-consuming, expensive and prone to legal challenges or loopholes.

This leads to a situation where the state will "tax different people's wealth differently," said Arun Advani, a professor of economics at Warwick University. With millions of assets to value, "you have to take shortcuts", and that means "people are not paying the wealth tax in the same way".

Germany, for example, abandoned its 1% tax on net wealth in 1997 after the courts ruled it unconstitutional because it treated property more favourably than other assets.

This is another reason why a wealth tax is a non-starter in the UK, said The New Statesman. "HMRC lacks the data on property and pensions required to introduce a general wealth tax (and it would take several years to establish a new system)."

Emmanuel Macron has arrived in Britain for the first state visit by an EU leader since Brexit as the UK seeks to reset its ties with the bloc it left in 2020.

The French president and his wife Brigitte were welcomed by the Prince and Princess of Wales at RAF Northolt today, before meeting the King and Queen in Windsor.

A state banquet this evening is expected to be the "highlight of the trip", said the BBC, with a host of glamorous guests, a "showcase menu", and a message from the King about the "shared history and culture between our two peoples". He will urge the UK and France to stand together against a "multitude of complex threats" and warn of dangers in defence, technology and climate change. King Charles will also highlight risks "emanating from multiple directions" and challenges "that know no borders" from which "no fortress can protect us".

"Our two nations share not only values, but also the tireless determination to act on them in the world," the King is expected to say at the banquet, which will be held at Windsor Castle.

What did the commentators say?

"Few scenes convey British pomp and soft power more than the King and Queen in a carriage procession through the picturesque streets of Windsor," said the BBC.

With the Prince and Princess of Wales in attendance, a royal salute planned, and Macron set to inspect a guard of honour, there will be much pomp and ceremony. But at a time of "jeopardy" in Europe, this visit promises "much more than ceremony"; it brings "genuine hope" that it will strengthen both nations.

The UK and EU agreed less than two months ago to "reset" relations, and ties with France have warmed "considerably" since. The two countries have much in common: both are nuclear powers, permanent members of the UN Security Council, and keen to update the 15-year-old Lancaster House treaties, which established a 10,000-strong Combined Joint Expeditionary Force, which they now hope to expand with other Nato and European allies. It was not so long ago that Boris Johnson "accused France of wanting to punish the UK for Brexit". That "difficult chapter" now "appears to be over".

Defence cooperation "is the most significant aspect of this rapprochement", said Le Monde. Since Brexit, Europe has "shifted into a new era: that of large-scale war waged by Russia against Ukraine". It is Britain and France who are leading a "coalition of the willing" in Europe, "seen as capable of guaranteeing Ukraine's security in the still distant event of a peace agreement". And as the only two nation states with nuclear weapons and the two European permanent members of the UN Security Council, Keir Starmer and Macron have "a particular responsibility" – that of "taking a leading role in strengthening Europe in the face of an increasingly aggressive Russia and a decreasingly supportive US".

But while Starmer will play a role, the three-day visit is "very much the Charles and Macron show", said Politico. The King, a known Francophile with a "long-standing and close relationship" with Macron, shares the French president's passion for "climate diplomacy".

The full royal household is now being deployed to celebrate "how much Britain and France have in common", and the King's banquet speech will be "watched for hints about where he thinks the two allies have further to go".

Only a few years ago Boris Johnson sent Royal Navy frigates to Jersey during a dispute with France over fishing rights, and Liz Truss "declined to say whether she considered the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to be a friend or foe to Britain", said The Guardian. Now, at a time of "acute geopolitical instability" it is "overwhelmingly in the interests of both countries", as well as Europe, "that a fully functioning entente cordiale is restored".

What next?

Before tonight's state banquet Macron will address MPs in the Palace of Westminster's Royal Gallery, before taking part in a UK-France summit with Starmer on Thursday.

Defence, growth, security, migration and French tactics on tackling small boats are likely to be discussed, with the two leaders also expected to dial in to speak with other allied leaders looking to support any future peace deal in Ukraine.

Tonight's expected rebellion by backbench Labour MPs could be the first of many as Keir Starmer struggles to keep control of his party in power.

The government was forced into a U-turn on the welfare bill last week and offered a number of concessions, but No. 10 still fears it could have a major rebellion on its hands as many MPs are saying the changes do not go far enough.

Starmer and his No. 10 operation are caught in a perfect storm. A large number of marginal seats, better organised backbench operations and a desire to be seen to be representing their constituents means MPs are becoming harder to control.

What did the commentators say?

"Attempting to defuse a backbench rebellion is not something that's meant to happen, one year into government, with a working majority of 165," said the BBC's political editor Chris Mason.

There is speculation that as many as 40 to 50 Labour MPs could rebel, but "things remain fluid". Given the size of the Starmer's majority, around 80 MPs would need to vote against the government to defeat the bill, with a key factor potentially being how many choose to abstain from the Commons vote this evening.

This latest backbench campaign comes just weeks after another "embarrassing climbdown" over means testing the winter fuel allowance, said the Institute for Government. These U-turns have set a "dangerous precedent" for Starmer's government so early in its first term – and this challenge from his MPs is "unlikely to be the last" he faces.

That's because backbenchers these days are "less inclined to be loyal to party leadership". Many MPs are "keener now to be seen to be representing the concerns of the constituents (who are jamming their inboxes with worries about losing their winter fuel subsidy or PIPs) than to help Rachel Reeves balance the books". And the significant rise in the number of marginal seats at the last election also means the incentive to prioritise their constituents is "even stronger for MPs who feel insecure about their chances of holding their seat at the next election".

Today’s backbenchers are also very well organised, having learnt from the likes of the European Research Group. They also benefit from having modern tools such as WhatsApp to help them. It means that "even a substantial majority is no longer a guarantee that a government can get its business through if its own backbenchers are opposed and have worked out how to work together".

Rebellions are "rarely a one-time thing", said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman. Indeed, the data shows that rebelling "gets easier with practice". Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart, from the University of Nottingham, analysed rebellions in the 2001 parliament under Tony Blair "and found a worrying trend of MPs who had previously been obedient getting a taste for revolt". And "once Theresa May had lost one vote on Brexit", she subsequently "suffered 10 defeats on Brexit votes in nine months".

Yet there is "nothing inherently politically significant about large backbench rebellions", said Cowley in The Times. "How many people can remember the details of the largest backbench revolt suffered by John Major?" Or James Callaghan? Or Gordon Brown? It is not the size of the rebellion that should cause concern, but whether the issue "alienates significant elements" of the party, and whether the issue is "one which is central to government activity, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future".

What next?

Ministers say they have offered the rebels "everything possible to back down" in the hope they will avoid defeat in the Commons vote, said The Times.

Starmer could now remove the whip from "the sizeable group of backbenchers still intent on voting against the government". Or he could suffer a "further blow to his authority, which has already been severely undermined by the row".

And with the PM now looking "politically weakened", he could face yet another rebellion as MPs demand he "ditches the hated family farms tax", said The Express.

Keir Starmer could be facing the first serious challenge to his authority, after more than 100 of his own MPs have signalled support for an amendment that would effectively sink his government's welfare-reform bill.

Thirteen Labour committee chairs have tabled what's known as a "reasoned amendment" to the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, calling for a pause in reforms that would make welfare savings of £5 billion a year by tightening the rules around disability benefits. So far, 108 Labour MPs – enough to overturn Starmer's majority – have signed the amendment, which would, if voted through next week, halt the passage of the entire bill through the House of Commons.

Why are so many Labour MPs rebelling?

The recent partial rowback on winter-fuel payments was seen by Labour backbenchers "as a sign that the government is listening to their concerns", said LabourList. But many are far "more concerned" about the proposed eligibility restrictions to personal independence payments (PIPs) for those with disabilities, and the effect they could have on their constituents – and their party's election prospects.

Dissent among backbenchers has been growing since the plans were first announced earlier this year. Last week, The Guardian reported signs of a swelling rebellion against the reforms and, on Thursday, Lewisham MP and government whip Vicky Foxcroft resigned her frontbench post in protest.

Things then "came to a head" on Monday evening in a "fiery meeting" between the Parliamentary Labour Party and Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, said The Independent. Several MPs are apparently "privately claiming it could end up with Sir Keir being forced out as leader".

What do the rebels want?

Rebels have "coalesced around two points", said PoliticsHome: "a full impact assessment" of the PIP cuts, and "movement" on the tightening up of the scoring system used to evaluate whether claimants qualify for PIP support or not.

The problem for many Labour MPs runs deeper, however. There's confusion and anger at the government's seeming "all pain, no gain" approach to balancing the books, choosing to spend "political capital" in places that cause "maximum pain" but "generates the least return", said The Economist.

The proposed £5 billion cut to welfare benefits are "deep enough to upset a base which sees any reduction in disability benefit as a sin" yet "nowhere near enough to placate bearish investors who see welfare spending going up for ever".

What will happen?

Cabinet Office secretary Pat McFadden told BBC Breakfast today that the government would "keep talking to people between now and the vote", but that "there is no escaping the need for reform of the welfare system".

Starmer seems to be preparing to "clamp down on the rebels by forcing them to show up" to next week's vote, said The Telegraph. Backbenchers opposed to the bill will not be allowed sit out the showdown by arranging to be absent from Parliament.

It's thought that MPs who are considering voting against the government have been "threatened with losing the whip and even, according to two sources, deselection", said The Independent.

It's a "complete nightmare for Starmer, who is facing quite a remarkable challenge to his authority after just 12 months in power", said Politico London Playbook. "If the government can't get these cuts through with a 156-seat majority, particularly with loads of young MPs hungry for a ministerial career, then what hope does it have for future fiscal consolidation efforts?"

In the space of a few days, two of the biggest social changes in a generation have been voted through by MPs in free votes, calling into question the legitimacy of the practice when it comes to so-called "matters of conscience".

On Tuesday, the House of Commons voted to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales, and today, MPs voted to legalise assisted dying. In both cases, MPs were told they can vote however they wanted, free from the usual pressure to follow the party line through the whips.

While "idealists might say these votes are the perfect example of what MPs used to be: free-thinking independent decision makers", said The Times, "the truth is a little murkier".

What did the commentators say?

Votes of conscience are a "quasi-religious hangover" and "one of the most unthinkingly overrated elements of the British constitution", said Lewis Goodall on his Substack. "If a change is worth doing, it’s worth the government driving the change itself and arguing for it accordingly." It is not clear either why topics such as abortion and assisted dying are "any more or less inherently a matter of morality than any other sphere of political decision making".

Free votes on issues of conscience, while uncommon, "have defined our society", said Simon Griffiths on The Constitution Society. The late 1960s is "often seen as a golden age of social reform, and free votes were instrumental to this". Male homosexuality was legalised, capital punishment abolished, and laws relating to censorship, divorce and abortion all liberalised.

But on nearly all the main "conscience votes", party affiliation "remains the strongest indicator of how a representative will vote". In November, during the first vote on assisted dying, Labour MPs largely voted in favour while the Conservatives voted overwhelmingly against reform.

And in reality, both the changes voted on this week "would not have been possible without tacit support from the top of government", said The Times. "Parliament is geared to work around whatever the government wants, and mostly whenever the government wants it."

What next?

Keir Starmer has "done his best to stay out of these debates to avoid influencing his colleagues, and yet his support for both policies is still pretty well known", said the BBC. A free vote puts "some distance between the government and the legislation, meaning any political heat focuses on those debating the changes", said The Times.

In that way it "could be claimed the use of free votes demonstrates not a respect for issues of conscience, but rather a strategic decision by governments to free themselves of accountability", said Griffiths.

But Starmer will know that "however distant he seeks to be from the action in parliament", said The Times, these moments in social history "will form a central part of his legacy".

"One thing is abundantly clear; we as a society owe these women a debt."

That was Louise Casey's assessment in her audit of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, published yesterday. Keir Starmer commissioned the audit in January after Labour "came under extreme pressure to hold an inquiry into the grooming gangs scandal", said The New Statesman.

The government had "repeatedly refused to hold a national inquiry", arguing that councils should investigate "at a local level instead". But yesterday, Starmer "quietly let slip that the government had changed its mind".

There will be a full statutory inquiry into the way the grooming scandal was mishandled by authorities – as Casey's report "directly recommends". But critics have argued that another inquiry does not necessarily mean society's debt to the victims, to use Casey's language, will be repaid.

What did the commentators say?

"The report is damning," said Megan Kenyon in The New Statesman. The strength of its findings has "forced Starmer's hand".

Casey described a "collective failure to address questions about the ethnicity of grooming gangs". Institutions like the police, social services and councils "shied away from" these questions for fear of appearing racist; "two-thirds" of perpetrators did not have their ethnicity data recorded. But such data as there was identified "clear evidence of over-representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani heritage men", Casey wrote. "It is not racist to want to examine the ethnicity of offenders."

Among the audit's many recommendations, said The Guardian, is a time-limited national, independent inquiry, co-ordinating "a series of targeted local investigations".

But there has already been a "comprehensive, seven-year" Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by child protection expert Alexis Jay, said Emma Norris and Cassia Rowland at the Institute for Government.

The "more serious charge on institutional failure to tackle child sexual abuse" is that even now, three years on from Jay's final report, none of her 20 core recommendations have been implemented in full. A "better alternative to a new inquiry", and the best way to help the victims of child sexual abuse, would be to "listen to and act on" the inquiry that has already taken place.

But this new inquiry isn't quite the same, said Isabel Hardman, assistant editor of The Spectator. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs yesterday that it would not be "another overarching inquiry" like Jay's, but one with a purpose "to challenge what the audit describes as continued denial, resistance and legal wrangling among local agencies". This, said Hardman, allows ministers to "claim they are taking grooming gangs as seriously as the row at the start of the year demanded".

But whether or not it counts as a U-turn is "beside the point", said The Independent. It has "been long apparent" that what has been achieved on this issue hasn't been enough. The country needs an "accurate and balanced accounting" for how these unspeakable crimes were committed just a few years ago, "almost in plain sight, with something like collusion in parts of local government and the police".

Perhaps "even more heartening" than the announcement of a new inquiry is Casey's recommendation for "a nationwide policing operation", led by the National Crime Agency rather than "sometimes discredited" local forces. This new model of investigating these gangs "will help prevent future shortcomings". The victims "deserve nothing less than this".

What next?

Cooper said the inquiry would take about three years, and that further action would be taken to implement the recommendations of Jay's previous inquiry.

Many victims will "welcome" Starmer's quick acceptance of Casey's audit, said Sky News. They will want the inquiry to "probe" into who the perpetrators were and how they were connected, as well as "clear accountability of the people and organisations who failed to act" when vulnerable girls reported their abuse.

But, said Hardman in The Spectator, "there will need to be quite a sustained storm to ensure there is real change in policy".

It remains to be seen if Starmer, Cooper and colleagues will ever be "given political credit", said The Independent. But they are "delivering a measure of justice and restitution". Britain is at last "doing the right thing by the victims".