“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.”

Public satisfaction with the NHS has increased for the first time since 2019.

But although 26% of British adults questioned in the British Social Attitudes survey were satisfied with the health service – an increase of 6% from 2024 – the majority, some 51%, said they were dissatisfied with their experience. That “sounds more like a cause for concern than celebration”, said The Guardian in an editorial.

Puzzling findings

“The public appears inclined to accept the government’s narrative of a broken system being painstakingly put back together.” But hospital waiting lists are “still huge”, NHS dentistry has “probably never been in a weaker state” and there’s “justified impatience” on lagging social care provision. So “having pronounced the NHS ‘broken’”, Wes Streeting and his Department of Health and Social Care colleagues must “hurry up with their repairs”.

Still, the survey results, published by The King's Fund think tank, suggest the health service is “finally on the long road to recovery”, said The Mirror. The “gold standard assessment” found that the Labour government’s first full year in power “saw the greatest fall in dissatisfaction” in the NHS since “New Labour’s first full year in power in 1998”.

“Puzzlingly,” said Joseph Freer, from Queen Mary University of London, on The Conversation, “overall satisfaction rose”, but there was “no corresponding rise in satisfaction with each individual NHS service: GPs, A&E, dentistry and hospital care”.

This might be because services “did genuinely improve”, but the survey “simply did not poll enough people about each individual service to reliably detect small improvements”. Or perhaps the “political context” has “shifted”: a European study found that how people “feel about” the health system is now “influenced by things outside it”, such as “the political climate and what they see in the media”.

Skill shortage

While “debate” on the NHS “typically focuses on funding, waiting lists and plans for reform”, said Chris Day, chair of the Russell Group, in The Times, the system’s “most fundamental constraint” is that it “does not have enough skilled people”.

There are more than 100,000 vacancies across the wider “health ecosystem” and “demand for staff is rising faster than the system is able to meet”, thanks to “an ageing population, rising chronic illness and growing expectations”. So the “real solution” to improve the NHS experience is to increase “training capacity” and support a “range of alternative career paths into healthcare”.

Everyone should care, because the fate of the NHS is “a question that matters even to those who rarely use” it, said Chris Smyth in the Financial Times. Its budget of £200 billion “dwarfs any other public service” and will hugely “determine” whether Rachel Reeves imposes more tax rises.

The issue is also “central” to Labour’s “tenuous hopes of political recovery”; if Labour can’t convince voters it’s “fixing the NHS”, it “will have little else to offer”. But if it can “demonstrate tangible improvement” it will have a “powerful argument” against Nigel Farage, who has “repeatedly questioned whether the NHS funding model can survive”.

“Angela Rayner is no longer ‘on manoeuvres’,” said Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday. The former deputy PM is now targeting Keir Starmer “with live rounds”. In a speech last week to the soft-left Momentum group, she said that Labour was fighting for survival and “running out of time”. She also condemned the PM’s plans to make it harder for migrants to gain settled status, calling them “un-British” and a “breach of trust”.

A leftward change of tack

Rayner is clearly setting herself up to replace Starmer after Labour’s expected hammering in May’s local elections – and she may succeed. She’s popular with the Labour movement, and her fellow MPs are desperate. Prior to Labour’s catastrophic by-election loss in Gorton and Denton a month ago, they were “prepared to tolerate a strategy that focused on neutralising Reform UK”. But they now regard the Greens as an existential threat.

A leftward change of tack – whether under Starmer or Rayner – makes electoral sense for Labour, said Andy Beckett in The Guardian. Analysis shows that its loss of support to the Greens, Lib Dems and other parties is “larger and more reversible” than its loss of support to Reform. With today’s fragmented electorate, fortune will favour parties that get their vote out. Securing as little as 25% of the electorate could win a lot of closely contested seats.

‘Power over process’

But is Britain ready to accept Rayner as PM, asked Jason Cowley in The Sunday Times. There’s no doubt that she’s a deft operator with a great life story and considerable charm. “Watch her when she is with the King,” an MP told me. “Now imagine her in the Oval Office with [Donald] Trump. It would work.” Rayner would lead in a different way to Starmer – “not least because, unlike him, she relishes power over process”. With the row over her tax affairs expected to be settled before May, she is ready to join the fray.

But while her attacks on immigration reform may cheer some Labour MPs, they won’t go down well with many voters. Targeting that policy is a “strange decision”, said John Rentoul in The Independent. If, as Rayner claims, Labour must “show the British people whose side we’re on”, it makes little sense to make “soft on immigration” one’s signature policy.

“Keir Starmer is no longer really in charge of this government”; we are ruled by Ed Miliband, said Michael Gove in The Spectator. The man who “messed it up” as Labour leader a decade ago now has “real power and popularity” within the cabinet, the unions and the wider party membership, said Will Lloyd in The New Statesman.

The energy security and net zero secretary may be facing huge pressure as the Iran war sends price shocks through the global energy market but he seems to be doing so from an unassailable position in British politics.

‘Ventriloquist’s dummy’

“Almost everything terrible that could be said” about Miliband has been said already, said Lloyd in The New Statesman. Now I hear “the confidence of someone who had been torched so many times” he can no longer feel fire. “His beliefs have deepened, not changed” and they have “influenced his colleagues, too, perhaps without them realising”. If Andy Burnham or Angela Rayner were to become Labour leader, they wouldn’t “deviate from the script Miliband has written”. Nigel Farage has even “told friends privately” that he expects Miliband himself to become prime minister by 2027.

I have news for anyone who fears such a development, said Gove in The Spectator: this is already Miliband’s administration. Starmer’s foreign policy, economic policy, “political positioning” and “very quest for meaning” are “All. Ed. Miliband.” He has his hand up Starmer’s back “where a spine should be, controlling the ventriloquist’s dummy”.

We all know that in last autumn’s reshuffle, Starmer tried to move Miliband from his current brief, but Miliband said no “and that was that”, said Tom Harris in The Telegraph. Starmer “dare not even ask” Miliband about his role in “deciding whether to exploit new oil and gas fields in the North Sea”. Doesn’t he know his job is to lead the government, not to wait for Miliband to tell him what to do?

‘Clown prince of the soft left’

Miliband was the “leader who broke Labour – and in doing so, broke Britain”, said Sarah Ditum in The i Paper. “He entrenched” the party’s “worst habits of self-loathing and internal schism”, lost one general election, and “set the stage for even worse”. His “miserable tenure” promptly ushered in the Eurosceptic Jeremy Corbyn, and Labour put up “only a vague shrug” of opposition to Brexit.

But by appointing him to the cabinet, Starmer has “treated Miliband as an elder statesman, rather than the clown prince of the soft left”. Handing the energy brief “to a man whose history as leader is a catalogue of incompetence” may well ensure a “catastrophic swing back to fossil fuels under a Reform government”.

The departures of Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney mean Miliband has “finally won” the tussle between New Labour/Blue Labour and the soft left, said Daniel Finkelstein in The Times. Starmer is “still quite likely to fall”, and any subsequent leadership battle “can only be held or won from the Ed Miliband position”. What Labour’s “lost leader” stands for is “irresistible within the party”. Miliband “will be its most important political force, whatever his formal job”.

Wales goes to the polls on 7 May but 58% of Welsh voters don’t know how their votes will be counted. In the hugely important Senedd election that could topple Welsh Labour’s 27-year grip on devolved power, there will be a new voting system – but that’s news to all but 7% of the electorate, according to polling by YouGov/Cardiff University.

Labour has “topped” elections in Wales for years, said Politico, but now looks headed for defeat. Some even predict a rout so heavy, the party could be “fighting for a reason to exist”.

How will Senedd voting work now?

The elections to the Welsh parliament – which can raise local taxes and has the power to make laws on healthcare, education, local transport, social services and culture – will be held under a new closed list proportional system.

From 1999 until now, the Senedd was elected using the additional member system that is also used in Scotland. Voters would cast two votes: one for a constituency candidate, and one for a party. The constituency votes were counted on a first-past-the-post basis, and a special formula was applied to the count of party votes to select 20 additional members of the Senedd, each representing one of five regions.

But this year, voters will cast one vote only – and for a party (or an independent), rather than an individual. Each political party will prepare a list of up to eight candidates for each constituency, and MS seats will be allocated on the share of votes that each party (or independent) receives. The number of MSs will increase from 60 to 96, and the number of constituencies will decrease from 40 to 16.

One of the advantages of the new system is the end of by-elections: if an MS seat becomes vacant during a Senedd term, it will be filled by the next candidate on their party’s list. Or, if the departing MS is an independent, it will be left vacant until the next election.

But as well as potentially confusing voters, as the YouGov/Cardiff University polling suggests, the closed list system also “reduces voter choice”, said the Institute for Government think tank. Voters can no longer “express a preference” for a particular candidate, which could be said “to reduce the direct accountability between voters and MSs”.

The new system may also “benefit emergent parties in Wales, to the detriment of more established parties, whose candidates are more likely to have a strong personal profile”. Many think this will help Reform, “who are recognisable at a national level but lack a well-established local party presence or well-known candidates across Wales”.

Who will win and which issues will decide it?

Three key issues will decide the outcome of this election, according to a Savanta poll for the BBC: the cost of living; the performance of health and social care services, and the level of immigration. There is some demographic variation: health and social care is “particularly important” to older voters and women, while immigration is the key issue for those who voted Reform at the 2024 general election. Younger voters also singled out “a fourth issue: housing”.

Reform and Plaid Cymru are currently neck and neck, said Wales Online, and projected to be tied on 28 seats each”, with Labour “just behind on 26”. The Greens and the Conservatives are each projected to get 10% of the vote – meaning the Greens could win MS seats for the first time – with the Liberal Democrats on 7%. The most common prediction is a Plaid minority government propped up by Labour, “blowing a hole in Labour’s status as the default governing party”, said Politico.

What does it all mean for Keir Starmer? 

Nigel Farage said yesterday that the Senedd vote “doubles up as a referendum on Keir Starmer’s premiership”. He claimed Labour’s “dominance in Wales and, in particular, the Valleys” would end on 7 May, and, if we get this right, “we will get rid of the worst prime minister any of us have seen in our lifetime”.

Labour’s Eluned Morgan, First Minister of Wales, has said this is not a time for a protest vote against the prime minister, and voters should “wake up” to the prospect of two pro-independence parties – Plaid Cymru and the Greens – ending up in power when so much is at stake for the economy and public services.

British businesses are to be offered a £3,000 state bonus for hiring a young person who has been out of work for six months as the number of economically inactive young people nears one million.

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said it was part of the government’s plans to “back Britain’s young people” after youth unemployment hit its highest level in more than a decade.

How bad is it?

According to the Office for National Statistics’ latest labour market overview, 14% of Britons aged 18 to 24 were unemployed in the final quarter of 2025, compared with 12.7% in the same period in 2024.

This growth has largely been driven by young people who are “economically inactive”, meaning those who are out of work and not seeking it. The most recent data from the ONS says the number of young people not in employment, education or training (Neet) between October and December 2025 reached 957,000, up from around 800,000 in 2019.

Why is it so hard to find work?

For many of those not in employment or training, “the challenge is not so much a lack of skills or visibility as the dearth of openings in a stagnating labour market”, said the Financial Times. “Young people say they lack work experience and something to talk about to employers,” said Sareena Bains, chief executive of charity Movement to Work. “Those opportunities are becoming few and far between.”

The tough labour landscape has been made worse by the roll-out of AI, which threatens to erase many entry-level jobs.

Business groups have also criticised the government’s decision to raise employer’s national insurance contributions and the youth minimum wage, as well as changes to workers’ rights, all of which could make companies less inclined to take a risk on a newcomer to the workforce over an experienced worker. In February, Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, told the Commons Treasury Committee that changes around tax and the national living wage have had a “particular effect on those aged 16 to 18, and 18 to 21”.

Having analysed the effects of setting minimum wage rates by age, Alan Manning from LSE concluded that the evidence is “too weak” to blame youth unemployment on the minimum wage.

What else is to blame?

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has identified a “toxic cocktail” of “rising employment taxes, perverse incentives to claim benefits and a broken migration system”. The think tank’s Wasted Youth report found that businesses are turning to non-EU migrants while a growing number of young Britons are claiming benefits.

Health is another major factor. The share of Neet young people who report having a health condition that limits their ability to work rose from 26% in 2015 to 44% in 2025 – a 70% increase, according to The Health Foundation. This “mirrors trends among young people generally”, said the think tank. “Regardless of whether they are in work or education, 16–24-year-olds today are much more likely to report having a work-limiting health condition than they were in the past”. This increase is “driven primarily by mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions”.

What is being done?

As well as the £3,000 incentive for firms to hire young people out of work for six months, the government has also announced small and medium-sized businesses will get a £2,000 bonus if they take on a young apprentice, and jobs with training subsidised by the state are to be expanded to 22- to 24-year-olds.

Current policies to help Neet young people and expand apprenticeships were “not stacking up to the scale of the challenge”, Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning & Work Institute, told the FT.

A more radical proposal, backed by former home secretary David Blunkett and former chancellor Jeremy Hunt, is a Future Workforce Credit, a £670 million effective tax cut for employers hiring Neets that would cover 30% of their salary. CSJ modelling based on similar interventions suggests the approach would get 120,000 young people into jobs while saving £765 million in tax and welfare spending.

“Every now and then, world events take a turn that exposes Britain’s decades of self-deception” on the subject of defence, said Fraser Nelson in The Times. On 1 March, the RAF’s main base in Cyprus was hit by a drone apparently launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon. It caused only minor damage; what was shocking was that the UK seemed unprepared for such an event, although Lebanon is just “a short drone-hop away”, and an attack like this had been anticipated for years.

Our response was to dust down HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer then undergoing maintenance at Portsmouth. (With a fair wind, she’ll arrive next week.) In a panic, Cyprus turned to Greece and France, “asking to be protected from the risk Britain’s bases had exposed them to”. Greek frigates and F-16s were on the scene within hours. A French warship and air defences followed. “Quite the humiliation” for Britain. And proof that “our commitments far outpace our resources. Holes are showing, in shocking places.”

‘Point of maximum weakness’

The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, the attacks on the Gulf states, where around 300,000 British citizens live: this is exactly the kind of emergency that “would once have found the Royal Navy in its element”, said David Blair in The Telegraph. But for the first time in centuries, Britain does not have a single warship in the Persian Gulf or the eastern Mediterranean. Three of its six destroyers and both its aircraft carriers were out of action, undergoing repairs or refits.

After years of slow decline, the Navy has “reached its point of maximum weakness” at a moment when a crisis is exploding in the Middle East “and Russia threatens the whole of Europe”. Both Bahrain and the UAE have reportedly expressed concern about the UK response; Cyprus voiced its disappointment publicly. Britain could also only send a few extra fighter jets to the region because the RAF, too, has been “cut to the bone”, said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. It has 130 active jets, down from 850 in 1989. The Army is “in no better shape”, with just 70,000 active personnel, a third of the number it had in 1990.

Our current malaise “is the result of politicians from all parties trying to outrun” the same question for decades, said Matt Oliver in The Telegraph. How can Britain be “a great military power” if it won’t pay for it?

At the start of the 1990s, Britain’s health and defence budgets both hovered at 4% of GDP. Today, health accounts for 8% and defence just over 2%. New Labour was often accused of failing to invest in the forces. But the “squeeze” was harder during the Coalition years: the budget fell by 22% in real terms from 2010 to 2016. Yet even today, the Ministry of Defence has one of the largest military budgets in the world, at £66 billion per year.

So taxpayers may wonder what has gone wrong. The answer lies in part in “a string of procurement disasters”, for which civil servants and top brass must share the blame. We have expensive platforms – aircraft carriers, F-35 jets, nuclear subs – but insufficient manpower, weapons stockpiles and all-round resilience. As ex-defence secretary Ben Wallace recently put it, our forces have been “hollowed out”.

End of ‘peace dividend’

The challenge is formidable, said Larisa Brown in The Times. Al Carns, the Armed Forces Minister, has said that, by 2029, “Europe could be at war with Russia”. Former senior military chiefs warned in a letter to the prime minister this month that Britain “is facing its 1936 moment”. Assuming that funding can be found, the UK and Europe’s defence industries will have not only to ramp up production, but also to cope with the transformation of the modern battlefield already seen in Ukraine – by drone technology, robotics, cyberwarfare and, increasingly, autonomous weapons.

Add to that the likelihood that Donald Trump’s America would not “fight for us”, said Edward Lucas in The Times – or certainly cannot be relied upon to do so. “Europeans may loathe Trump, but they’re not ready to fill the gaps... They lack the hi-tech weapons, high-end intelligence, logistics expertise and ‘mass’ (quantity) that the Americans have provided since D Day.” Filling these will be costly and difficult, “if we manage at all”.

Yet politically, defence remains a hard sell, said The Independent’s editorial board. Among voters, there is no clamour to build “new cyber-defence units in the way there is demand for, say, cutting NHS waiting lists”. Keir Starmer and his cabinet know that the era of the “peace dividend” is over, said George Eaton in The New Statesman – that Britain and Europe “need to go faster on defence”, as the PM put it last month. But nothing much is happening. Labour may or may not increase defence spending from 2.4% of GDP to 3%, as the Ministry of Defence wants, by 2029 – the year that Carns thinks we could be at war with Russia. The government shows no willingness to confront voters with the fiscal trade-offs that come with higher spending. Britain remains “in denial on defence”.

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.

As counter-terrorism police arrest four people today on suspicion of spying for Iran on London’s Jewish community, political focus is intensifying on the spread of Tehran’s tentacles of power across the Western world.

A group of Labour MPs have already written to the government asking for a clampdown on charities that could be operating an Iranian “influence network” in the UK. They warned that a web of such organisations appears “to be actively promoting the Iranian regime’s ideology and interests”.

Iran’s nerve centre in the UK

One of the charities cited by the MPs is the Islamic Centre of England. “Based in the affluent north-west London suburb of Maida Vale”, it has been “accused of being an outpost of the Iranian regime” and has been under investigation by the Charity Commission since 2022, said The Telegraph.

At the centre this week, mourners lit candles in front of photographs of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader of Iran who was killed in US-Israeli air strikes on Tehran last weekend. Chants of “We will obey you, Khamenei” were heard, said The Times.

“These are vigils for a man who had British blood on his hands, who ordered terror plots on British soil,” said Kasra Aarabi, of United Against Nuclear Iran, who has been monitoring the activity. “That is deeply concerning.”

The Times revealed last year that the Islamic Centre of England was broadcasting daily religious messages from Khamenei during Ramadan. The paper called it “Iran’s nerve centre” and it was described by the think tank Policy Exchange in 2024 as “sitting at the heart of a network of institutions that project influence”.

The centre has said it does not endorse extremism or unlawful activity and was focused solely on religious, educational and community services. A spokesperson added: “The centre does not represent, promote, or advocate for the political views or agendas of any state, figure or regime. Its religious guidance is confined to matters of faith, ethics, and spirituality. The centre promotes religious peace, and harmony between different faiths.”

‘Seeds of suspicion’

The Tehran regime’s intelligence services “have long targeted Jewish and Israeli people, along with dissidents living in Britain, frequently using criminal proxies as part of their operations”, said The Telegraph.

More than 20 “potentially lethal Iran-backed plots” were identified by MI5 in the year to October 2025, said the intelligence service’s director general Ken McCallum last year.

Research published last June by the National Union for Democracy in Iran, a US-based think tank, found Britain had become a “flashpoint” for Iranian influence. It warned that education was at the “front line” of the Islamic regime’s efforts and it has been “ushering in a generation of radicalised, ideological based zealots”.

The think tank said the regime “has effectively created a life-long, Islamic Republic-centric curriculum for children of all backgrounds in the United Kingdom” and claimed it was “planting seeds of suspicion (against their own British government), and establishing historical falsehoods as reality”.

During his 13 years “at the apex of British politics”, Gordon Brown was often perceived as a “Shakespearean protagonist”, said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. “He was the Scot who would be king, consumed by vaulting ambition.” Yet the Brown depicted in this “illuminating” biography is “closer to the hero of a Victorian novel”: a man “driven onwards by a moral purpose”, but beset by misfortune and tragedy.

While James Macintyre doesn’t skirt over his subject’s flaws (chiefly his “volcanic temper” and “talent for grudges”), he suggests that these are “vastly outweighed” by his “immense” achievements – which include overseeing massive reductions in child poverty as chancellor, and preventing the collapse of the entire financial system as PM through his decisive leadership after the 2008 crash.

Brown emerges as someone who defies “easy categorisation”: fiercely ambitious, he was uninterested in the “trappings of office”; famously lacking in emotional intelligence, he could be unexpectedly kind. What isn’t – or shouldn’t – be in doubt is his status as “one of the towering figures of recent British history”.

Inevitably, Macintyre devotes considerable space to the “simmering tensions” with Tony Blair, said Nicola Sturgeon in The Observer. At times, the book seems as much “an account of the New Labour project” and the “rupture” with Blair as a portrait of Brown himself. Macintyre suggests that a basic misunderstanding lay at the heart of the infamous 1994 Granita “deal” between the two, said Ethan Croft in The New Statesman. When Blair said that he would “do ten years”, Brown thought he meant ten years as Labour leader – which would have meant stepping aside in 2004. Blair “thought it meant ten years as PM” – which is what he ended up serving. Whatever the case, after Blair resigned, the crown “proved heavy” for Brown. Gripped by a new indecisiveness – most evident in his dithering over whether to call a snap election in 2007 – the “Iron Chancellor” turned into “Brown the Bottler”.

But rather like former US president Jimmy Carter, Brown has “found the respect that eluded him in his prime in his ever-active retirement”, said Patrick Maguire in The Times. Instead of seeking “unfathomable riches on the consultancy circuit”, he has devoted himself to “tireless charity work, sermons from the moral high ground and exhortations to ministers on the plight of the poor”. While Macintyre’s cataloguing of these efforts doesn’t make for especially riveting reading, a “sympathetic treatment” of Brown is “probably overdue” – and that is certainly what he has given us.

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”.

Minerals are a hot topic in 2026. Lithium, the crucial ingredient in batteries that power smartphones and electric vehicles, is in particular demand. While most of the discussion has been around the potential treasure troves of Greenland or Ukraine, Cornwall is believed to sit on the largest lithium deposits in Europe.

Mining company Cornish Lithium made a “major production breakthrough” last October, said The Telegraph: it produced lithium hydroxide, a raw material required to make lithium-ion batteries. “It is believed to be the first time lithium hydroxide has been produced in Britain outside of a laboratory.”

Cornwall’s ‘roaring future’

If the world is ever to get close to net zero, lithium will be at the centre of it, said The Times. It can store more energy than most elements and is ideal for rechargeable batteries. That means it is playing an “increasingly important role” in the energy system. When “hooked up to a grid”, batteries can “absorb renewable energy when it is abundant and release it when scarce”.

The world has developed a “sudden and ravenous appetite” for lithium. That demand is expected to triple over the next decade as the green transition accelerates, said the International Energy Agency.

“Lithium is now among the most important mined elements on the planet,” said The Guardian. Most is extracted in Australia, the so-called lithium triangle in South America (Chile, Argentina and Bolivia), and China. The latter also “processes and therefore controls a majority of it for use in batteries”.

Cornwall doesn’t compare in scale but it is “probably the largest lithium deposit in Europe”. Cornish Lithium and another company, British Lithium, are “leading the way to tap into it”. And as the race to secure critical minerals intensifies, “there’s renewed enthusiasm for domestic exploration projects for critical minerals”, said Jamie Hinch on The Conversation.

In September, the National Wealth Fund announced a £31 million commitment to Cornish Lithium. And last month, the government released its critical minerals strategy, which could be a “watershed moment” for Cornwall, said Cornwall Live. The promised funding could be a “huge boon for the Cornish economy not seen since the heyday of tin mining”.

‘Supply chain dominated by China’

The “reshoring of mining” back to Britain can mitigate the “decline of employment opportunities” through the loss of industry, said Hinch. Cornish Lithium said it will create more than 300 jobs over the Trelavour Lithium Project’s 20-year operation, and 800 during construction. There is a “tempered optimism” that lithium could “rejuvenate” the county, which has some of the most deprived areas in the UK.

Cornwall’s “mining renaissance” extends beyond lithium, said The Economist. Britain’s last tin mine, South Crofty, near Redruth, has been dormant for nearly 30 years. It is now “being resuscitated by Cornish Metals” and is scheduled to resume operations in 2028, as the only mine in Europe that primarily extracts tin. The Trump administration said this month it was willing to loan up to $225 million (£165 million) to support the reopening, for some of its output in return.

Cornwall’s mineral deposits also present political opportunities, said Politico. Labour MPs are “betting” that local development of lithium mines – not to mention copper, tin and tungsten – will “help them keep their seats” at Westminster.

But China still looms on the horizon, said Politics Home. The superpower “produces more than 50% of 17 of the top 27 critical mineral groups, and refines 90% of the world’s rare earths”. It controls “critical mineral extraction on five different continents”.

Though the UK could initially bypass China by refining lithium “on home soil”, it would still be “entirely dependent on a global supply chain dominated by China”, said The Times. Once lithium has been refined, it needs to be turned into a battery cathode, and “almost 90 per cent of cathodes are made in China”.

But if Britain found a way to circumvent this step, such as piggybacking on “plans for several” commercial cathode facilities in Europe, it could capitalise on the manufacturing of battery cells on its own shores. To that end, processing gigafactories are expected to open in Sunderland and Somerset next year.

Keir Starmer has appointed Antonia Romeo as his new cabinet secretary, following the departure of Chris Wormald. The prime minister said that since he came into office, he has been “impressed by her professionalism and determination to get things done”.

Romeo will be the first woman to serve as the UK’s top civil servant in the role’s 110-year history. Despite investigations into her leadership style resurfacing, and criticism of the vetting process to fast-track her into the role, some believe Romeo could be the spearhead of Labour’s long-called-for cultural reset.

Who is Antonia Romeo?

Romeo has risen through the ranks of the civil service and spent “nearly a decade leading economic, public services and security departments”, said a government statement. She has been permanent secretary in three major government departments: the Department for International Trade, the Ministry of Justice and, most recently, the Home Office, a role she has held since April 2025.

Seen as “unorthodox and unconventional”, she is certainly “anything but the traditional stuffy Whitehall mandarin”, said Sky News. It is thought that she was instrumental in easing the overcrowded prisons crisis, instigating the Sentencing Review, among other initiatives.

During her career, and particularly as the UK’s consul general in New York in 2016-17, Romeo faced “multiple bullying complaints” and an expenses-related allegation, said the BBC. However, following investigations, government sources said there was “no case to answer”.

What has the reaction been?

In early February, Lord McDonald, the former head of the Diplomatic Service, launched an “unprecedented attack” on Romeo, “inviting Downing Street to go looking for bodies in Romeo’s resume”, said Politics Home. In a televised interview on Channel 4 News, McDonald said that “due diligence was vitally important”, and it would be an “unnecessary tragedy to repeat” the mistake of the appointment of Peter Mandelson.

“The underlying rumours around her are an example of sexist, misogynistic culture,” said Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union. McDonald’s speech is “nonsense” and she has been “vetted within an inch of her life already”.

Amid the “vicious briefing war” surrounding Romeo’s appointment, the cabinet secretary’s allies have accused Foreign Office mandarins of preparing “misogynistic” briefings against her, said The Times. They “focused on her unapologetically ambitious personal style, charm, outgoing personality and her physical appearance”.

What now for the ‘Labour boys’ club’?

Starmer’s government has “faced accusations of being a boys’ club long before the Mandelson affair”, said Politics Home. “At the same time, Downing Street has been accused of overlooking women to give senior jobs to men.”

Now that former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and Wormald are out of Downing Street, the PM is “surrounded almost entirely by female advisers”, said The Observer. Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson are acting chiefs of staff, Amy Richards is his political director and Sophie Nazemi is acting head of communications. “The boys’ club may be over but what will determine whether Starmer survives is not the rise of girl power but the ability to get stuff done.”

After the “political horror show” surrounding the appointment of Mandelson and then of Matthew Doyle to the House of Lords, there is “hope in Labour circles that the ‘boys’ club’ might have gone”, said Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC. Though Romeo is only one change to the advisory panel aiding the PM, it “matters profoundly that one half of the population” is “fairly represented”, and that there are “different perspectives in the rooms where decisions are taken”. There is the prospect that, “at least for now”, there is a “determination that things will change”.

The government has abandoned plans to delay some of the May local elections in another screeching U-turn.

Labour had postponed 30 council votes until 2027, partly because of the cost of running elections for authorities that will be abolished in a reorganisation of local government set to be complete by 2028. Opposition parties argued that the decision disenfranchised 4.5 million voters, and Reform UK launched a legal challenge against the “undemocratic” delay.

Now, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said all local elections will go ahead, citing “new legal advice”. Steve Reed, the MHCLG secretary, said the government would provide up to £63 million to help fund councils’ reorganisation costs.

When are the local elections?

Millions of voters across England head to the polls on Thursday 7 May for the biggest ballot since the 2024 general election. Devolved elections will also take place on the same day. In Scotland, voters will elect representatives to Holyrood, the national parliament, and Wales will hold elections for the Senedd. (In Northern Ireland, local council and Assembly elections are expected in May 2027.)

Where are the local elections?

On 7 May, about 5,000 seats across 136 local councils will be “up for grabs”, said the BBC. These include:

Six county councils: East Sussex, Essex, Hampshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and West Sussex.

Fifteen unitary authorities: Blackburn with Darwen, Halton, Hartlepool, Hull, Isle of Wight, Milton Keynes, North East Lincolnshire, Peterborough, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Reading, Southampton, Southend‑on‑Sea, Swindon, Thurrock and Wokingham.

Fifty-one district councils, 32 metropolitan borough councils (out of the total of 36) and all 32 London borough councils.

On the same day, six directly elected mayoral contests will also take place in Watford and the London boroughs of Croydon, Hackney, Lewisham, Newham and Tower Hamlets.

Who is eligible to vote in local elections?

About 42 million people in England are eligible to vote, according to the Electoral Commission. These include British citizens, qualifying Commonwealth citizens and those with citizenship of an EU member state – although specific rules vary according to which country you are from. The registration deadline is mid-April, after which the exact number of electors will be published.

The commission has a postcode tool for voters to find out whether elections are coming up in their area and where to find their nearest polling station. You can apply to vote by post and receive a postal vote ballot pack, or you can apply to vote by proxy and nominate someone to vote in person on your behalf.

What ID do you need to vote?

After changes brought in under the Conservative government, voters in England now need to show photo ID at polling stations (you do not need this for a postal vote). This is the list of accepted forms of identification. The document does not need to be in date as long as the photo is recognisable. If you don’t have photo ID, you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate before the deadline on 28 April.

What are the results likely to be?

Councils now face an “unnecessary race against time” to organise ballots and book polling stations and staff, said Richard Wright, chair of the District Councils’ Network (a cross-party group that represents 169 English councils) in a statement. Voters will also be “bewildered by the unrelenting changes”.

Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit, told The Guardian that parties will now be “scrabbling around to find candidates they didn’t think they needed”.

Local councils are “experiencing whiplash”, said Matthew Hicks, Conservative leader of Suffolk County Council.

“Firstly, we got brickbats for trying to delay elections,” one Labour strategist told the Financial Times, “and secondly, we are now bound to lose a load of seats, so there’s no pretending this is great for us.”

What impact will the U-turn have?

Labour and the Conservatives are both braced for heavy losses at the hands of Reform and the Green Party. The postponement was “never going to enable the party to hide from the potentially adverse judgement of the electorate”, said politics professor John Curtice in The Independent.

London, where 1,800 seats are at stake, is “prime Labour territory” – territory that is now, “given the party’s dire position in the polls, potentially under threat”. The Green Party has “a track record of performing well in local elections”, and in English cities such as “heavily Leave voting Barnsley and Sunderland”, Reform has a “potential breakthrough in their sights”.

In both Scotland and Wales, polls currently point to Labour “ending up in third place”. In Wales, where the party has not lost an election since 1931, such a defeat would be “cataclysmic”.

According to Curtice, the biggest impact of Labour’s U-turn will be on the four county councils, Norfolk, Suffolk, East and West Sussex – three of which are currently controlled by the Conservatives. “Those are large councils where all the seats are up for grabs, and these are the type of areas that should mimic where Reform did well last year,” he told the FT.

Ministers may delay plans to equalise the minimum wage for all ages, as promised in the Labour manifesto. Keir Starmer today insisted the government will stick to its pledge but he didn’t commit to a timeline for the change.

The government’s aim is to bridge the minimum-wage age gap, so that 18- to 20-year-olds are paid the same hourly rate as older people. But it’s facing strong pushback from business groups, who say this would make it too expensive to hire young people.

Rising youth unemployment has become an increasingly pressing issue: one in six 18- to 24-year-olds are without a job, the highest level in just over a decade, according to Office for National Statistics figures released yesterday. The national unemployment rate is 5.2%, higher than it’s been for five years.

What did the commentators say?

The government already announced an increase in the minimum wage for younger workers in last year’s Budget and there are fears that raising levels further would “result in businesses cutting the number of younger workers they employ”, said Oliver Wright in The Times.

“Labour has been its own worst enemy,” said the Financial Times’ editorial board. While global economic uncertainty, advances in AI and higher interest rates have all played a part in cooling the job market, “own goals” by the government, especially on national insurance contributions, are “adding insult to injury”. Britain’s latest jobs numbers, with “losses concentrated” in “sectors that disproportionately employ the young” look “grim” for a “party that prides itself on serving ‘working people’”.

Let’s not forget how AI is affecting the job market for young people, said City A.M.’s Saskia Koopman. “Hiring freezes” have now “overtaken mass layoffs”, making it difficult to get a foot on the employment ladder. If hiring – particularly in “AI-exposed areas” – continues to “stall”, the current “cyclical cooling could turn into something more persistent”.

It is particularly young men who are “bearing the brunt” of our “slumping job market”: “19% of men aged 16 to 24 are now unemployed, the highest rate since 2014”, said Tim Wallace in The Telegraph. For women of the same age, it's 13.1%. Hiring downturns, which always “fall hardest on the young”, also tend to affect the private sector, where men are more likely to work, more than the “female-dominated public sector”.

“The time has come for the brutal truth,” said Chloe Combi in The Independent. “Young people are being, and have been, failed.” Something has gone “profoundly wrong”, and it’s not young people’s fault: that lies “with the generations before them that created this no-hope landscape”. If changes aren’t made to give young people “a fighting chance”, they are in “serious danger” of being a lost generation.

What next?

In April, the minimum wage increases announced in the Budget will come into effect, raising the hourly rate for 18- to 20-year-olds from £10 to £10.85, and taking the National Living Wage for over-21s to £12.71.

Whether the government delays its promised age-band equalisation or not, it needs to act in other ways to help young people, said Combi in The Independent. We should be “pooling money into professional training and learning programmes”, which “would be an investment on so many levels”. Young people also desperately need a “sense of community” after the “catastrophic” Covid years: “affordable sports clubs” and “youth clubs” would help re-ignite “IRL socialising” and get the young “invested in the world around them”.

Following a “tsunami of pressure” from Labour MPs, Keir Starmer has lost his right-hand man and the architect of his rise to become prime minister, said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper.

“Outraged” by the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite his known links with Jeffrey Epstein, as well as a broader “autocratic culture in No. 10”, the MPs’ ire was directed, in part, at Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.

Following his resignation yesterday, McSweeney has been replaced by his former deputies, Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, on an interim basis.

“In the end, the PM had little option,” said Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby. Starmer has “lost the backbone of his operation” but many MPs are now calling for his head.

What did the commentators say?

Starmer will be “disorientated” after McSweeney’s departure, said Patrick Maguire in The Times. Arguably, the Irishman “remade” the Labour Party, leading the charge against the confrontation-shy “Librarian Labour” stereotype, and his departure has left Starmer “adrift”. It is unclear what a post-McSweeney Labour Party stands for, apart from an “unreconstructed, middle-of-the-road progressivism” embodied by Starmer.

McSweeney’s resignation could offer a “new beginning” for the PM and his government, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. If the party wants to change public opinion, and recover from a series of major policy U-turns, Starmer had “better grab it”.

The former chief of staff had become the “punch bag for everything that has gone wrong” for Labour since the 2024 election. “Now it can change tack.” The PM’s change in personnel could “signal” a moment of “new purpose” for his struggling government. One thing is for sure: “there are no more excuses”.

No. 10 is in “full-blown survival mode”, said Rigby on Sky News. Starmer will be clinging to the hope that McSweeney’s departure will “go some way to satisfying some of his MPs who were demanding a reset”. Ultimately, however, “it might only serve to weaken him further now that his key ally and fixer has gone”. The operation is in “freefall” and if history is to be believed, “it’s near impossible to stabilise” in this situation.

Labour’s crisis “won’t be fixed by a sacrificial resignation”, said Neal Lawson in The New Statesman. Starmer is the face of a “deep-rooted and systemic crisis” of identity that has “dominated” Labour for decades. “In every sense – morally, politically and electorally – Labour has been brought to its knees.” If Starmer wants to drag the party towards success, he needs a “total reset of the Labour project”.

“What could a Starmer government possibly achieve now?” said Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. McSweeney’s departure will buy a little “extra time” for the PM, “like a patient bargaining for expensive life-extending drugs”. However, that “doesn’t change the diagnosis: this is a government that no longer works”.

What next?

Downing Street’s communications director, Tim Allan, stepped down from his role this morning, saying it would allow a “new No. 10 team to be built”. So the “second high-profile exit” from Starmer’s “crisis-hit team in less than 24 hours” leaves him looking for his fifth comms chief since he took office, said Politico.

Just six weeks ago, McSweeney told a group of special advisers that the government had “turned a corner”: indeed, it was “down a blind alley to oblivion”, said Maguire in The Times. Fast forward to today and it is “likely that Starmer will leave office – soon – having changed neither” Labour nor Britain.

If it was right for McSweeney to resign for recommending the appointment of Mandelson as US ambassador, then “why is it not also a resigning matter to act on that advice?” said John Rentoul in The Independent. “Advisers only advise; ministers decide.” Starmer is “running out of things to throw overboard to try to keep himself afloat”.

Frankly, sacrificing McSweeney “won’t work” and only “desperate measures” are now left. Starmer could follow Tony Blair’s “gambit” in 2006, when, undermining a leadership coup, he announced that he would be stepping down within a year to “buy himself” time.

If Labour comes third in the Gorton and Denton by-election on 26 February, “as seems likely”, this could “trigger the final moves”. With his “penultimate line of defence” breached, “we enter the endgame of Starmer’s premiership”.

A by-election is due at the end of this month, which “could have profound consequences for the future of both the Labour Party and British politics”, said John Harris in The Guardian.

It’s being held in the Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton, an area once regarded by one and all as a Labour stronghold. And had Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, been allowed to stand, the party would have enjoyed pretty decent odds of retaining the seat. But now that Keir Starmer and his allies have blocked Burnham from taking part, there’s no certainty what might happen. Labour might still succeed in keeping the seat – it has “a formidable get-out-the-vote machine, and droves of activists” – but it’s facing a dissatisfied electorate and strong competition.

Mixed messages

The threat this time is not just coming from Reform UK, said John Rentoul in The Independent. Labour also needs to worry about the Greens, who have selected a promising candidate in Hannah Spencer, a no-nonsense 34-year-old plumber who lives in the constituency.

By-elections are unpredictable at the best of times, said Louise Thompson on The Conversation; what makes this one even more so is that Gorton and Denton is “a bit of Frankenstein’s monster”. The Gorton half has a high proportion of students and Muslim voters, while the Denton end is predominantly white working class; messages that work for Reform and the Greens in one area won’t go down so well in the other.

That’s especially true for Reform, which has selected academic-turned-GB News presenter Matt Goodwin as its candidate, said Alan Rusbridger in The Independent. His controversial views – he has argued that British citizens born abroad and their children aren’t really British – will be a liability on some doorsteps. Indeed, the one thing the Greens and Labour agree on privately, said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman, is that Reform messed up by choosing Goodwin.

‘Machiavellian considerations’

There are a lot of Machiavellian considerations at play in this contest, said Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday. Many Labour MPs are secretly hoping their party loses the by-election, as that defeat might enable them to replace Starmer with a better leader. Reform, for the same reason, wouldn’t be unduly upset if Labour won and Starmer were able to stagger on.

We’re in for “a fascinating contest” in any case, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. It could turn out to be a re-run of the Caerphilly election for the Welsh Senedd in October. Everyone assumed Reform would win that contest, but Plaid Cymru ended up pipping it to the post after siphoning votes from Labour. In Gorton, the Greens may likewise end up as the beneficiaries of an anti-Reform vote. The result will provide some clues about how the general election might go, “with an electorate polarised between those who wish to show their love for Nigel and those who would swallow any sort of political idiocy to stop him”.

As storm clouds gather over Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour party, there’s one headwind that could worsen the outlook: his relationship with the trade unions.

Although they no longer wield the political clout they once did, they can still exert significant pressure – particularly on Labour, a party founded as their political arm and still reliant on their funding. Relations with the government have deteriorated, with two key union leaders openly hostile to Starmer. Some have withdrawn their support in response to poor poll ratings and rightward shifts in policy.

The head of the Fire Brigades Union warned last week that all 11 trade unions formally affiliated with Labour could come together to tell the prime minister to step down, if the May elections “are as painful for the party as predicted”, said PoliticsHome. Starmer is on his “last chance”, said Steve Wright.

What did the commentators say?

“There have been a lot of own goals,” said the FBU’s Wright in an interview with The House magazine, citing the government’s initial refusal to scrap the two-child benefit cap (now being lifted in April). He also criticised the decision to block Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from standing in the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election. “I want to see Labour in a position to fight” off the “real threat” from Reform UK. “And I’m not sure who’s best to do that at the moment.”

The FBU leader’s words are just “the latest threat to the prime minister’s position before make-or-break elections” in Scotland, Wales and for English councils this May, said Max Kendix in The Times. Labour’s relationship with its two largest affiliated unions, Unite and Unison, had already hit a new low, with both now “run by general secretaries hostile to Starmer”.

Unison’s Andrea Egan, elected last year, has “publicly criticised Starmer, and attacked him” for blocking Burnham. Unite was, until recently, the Labour party’s biggest donor but its current general secretary, Sharon Graham, has been on a “tireless crusade” against Starmer, said Stella Tsantekidou on The Critic. Many a Labour member “raised an eyebrow” last summer when Unite voted to “re-examine” its relationship with the party. Graham has said voters could feel “duped” after the government scaled back plans to ban zero-hours contracts and introduce ‘day one’ workers’ rights. Labour has “one year to get this right because Nigel Farage is on their tail”, she told The Guardian.

Any formal disaffiliation by Unite would mark “the biggest rupture between the party and the trade union movement in recent history”, said Camilla Turner in The Telegraph. Sources say there is “intense frustration” with Starmer, from the top of the union down to the grassroots.

Should they be a leadership contest, the union vote will play a key part, said Morgan Jones in The New Statesman. The Labour electorate comprises party members and affiliate supporters. Who this means and how they vote has been “the subject of much change and controversy in the party’s recent history”. But, since 2021, any paid-up member of a Labour-affiliated union can vote, whether they are a member of the party or not. After a year of policies that “seemed designed specifically to upset” them, party members will “certainly” be fewer than they were, making affiliate votes more relevant. It could be trade union members, not Labour Party members, who “decide the outcome of the next leadership contest”.

What next?

Wright has promised to fight any attempt to disaffiliate his union from the party, if that is proposed at the FBU’s next conference in May. “I’m still of the view that we are best placed within the Labour Party,” he said.

As for Starmer, Wright sees a “benefit to keeping someone in position”. “No one liked the ever-revolving door of No. 10” when the Tories were in power, he said. “There’s hope. We’ll see what happens in May, won’t we?”

The House of Lords is, in many respects, an anomaly. Most mature democracies have a second parliamentary chamber, but relatively few of these are, like the House of Lords, unelected (though Canada and Jamaica, for instance, have appointed second houses).

It is by far the world’s largest second chamber: the Lords has around 844 sitting members; the French senate, the next largest, has around 348. With its 24 Lords Spiritual (bishops of the Church of England), it is, with Iran, one of two legislatures in the world that reserves seats for religious leaders. There are also the 85 remaining hereditary peers; only Lesotho, Tonga, Zimbabwe and a few other nations have hereditary legislators.

Why does the UK have the House of Lords?

Though its origins lie further back, the division of Parliament into two houses, Commons and Lords, dates from Edward III’s time, in the 14th century. Originally, the Lords were more powerful, but the balance of power shifted under the Tudors. After the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell abolished the Lords; Charles II restored it. As the franchise expanded in the 19th century, the primacy of the Commons became accepted in principle. But legally, until the early 20th century, the two houses had equal powers of legislation.

Then, in 1911, after a long struggle between David Lloyd George and his Liberal Party and a Conservative-dominated Lords over his “People’s Budget”, the Parliament Act was passed. It stopped Lords having any powers over bills (draft laws) concerning money, and replaced its right of veto over other bills with the ability to delay them for a maximum of two years.

What reforms have been made since?

After the Second World War, the Marquess of Salisbury helped to develop a set of conventions designed to help the Labour government pass its programme, despite having only 16 Labour peers in a house of 761. The Salisbury Convention commits the Lords not to oppose the second or third reading of any government legislation promised in its election manifesto. Another major change came in 1958, when the Life Peerage Act allowed peers to be appointed on the basis of legislative expertise – including women, for the first time.

The next major reform came in 1999, when Tony Blair’s Labour government excluded 667 hereditary peers. Although it had pledged to eradicate them, it had to make a deal allowing some to stay. When one of these dies or leaves, a by-election is held among hereditary peers of their party to select a replacement. Oddly, these are now the Lords’ only elected members.

How does the Lords work now?

Its main role is to scrutinise legislation passed by the Commons. It spends more than half its time considering bills. Peers examine each bill over several stages and suggest revisions, before it becomes an Act of Parliament. Between November 2023 and May 2024, for instance, the House of Lords considered 2,377 changes to 67 bills, debating for more than 780 hours. Much of this scrutiny takes place in select committees – appointed to consider specific policy areas. Recent changes made to laws by the Lords include making both non-fatal strangulation or suffocation and threats to release intimate images specific offences. Other committees monitor the affairs of government departments, or specific policy issues.

And does it work well?

In many respects, yes. Its supporters argue that an unelected – and less-politicised – upper house functions as a useful brake on under-debated or kneejerk legislation; it is a vital constitutional check, opposing poor law-making. Some suggest the quality of debate in the Lords is higher than that of the Commons, since peers, unlike MPs, do not also have to make time to perform constituency duties, and few serve in government departments.

Moreover, the Lords is an “expert house” comprising many who have excelled in a wide range of disciplines, unlike the Commons, which is dominated by career politicians. Peers, some say, feel the weight of responsibility bestowed upon them by a lifetime peerage, making them more measured policymakers than MPs. Some even defend the hereditary principle, as part of Britain’s historical fabric.

What are the arguments against it?

That it is an unelected body with great power to undermine democratic mandates. Bills the Commons has passed but which the Lords is currently opposing include the assisted dying bill, which has wide public support, and the Crime and Policing Bill. Even if you accept the principle of an appointed expert house, the way Lords are selected is opaque and politicised.

Prime ministers have effectively unlimited power to appoint; most peerages are handed to former MPs, party officials and donors. Notorious recent examples include Boris Johnson’s ennobling of Charlotte Owen, then 29, who had worked briefly as his special adviser. There are regular lobbying scandals: two Lords were suspended late last year.

And it is unrepresentative: around a third of peers are women; just 6% come from a minority ethnic background; at least 50% attended private schools; over 40% are from the Southeast.

What are Labour’s reform plans?

The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill proposes to remove all remaining hereditary peers, though amendments allow current hereditary peers to remain until they leave the House. This is a “first step” in a series of proposed reforms, including a mandatory retirement age of 80; and establishing a new participation requirement to ensure active membership.

It also wants to strengthen rules for removing disgraced peers and reform the appointments process, to “ensure the quality of new appointments” and improve the “national and regional balance” of the Upper House. Lords reform is notoriously slow and complex; but a Lords committee is due to report on the proposed reforms before 31 July this year.

Who are the Lords?

Of the 844 peers, 282 are Conservative, 230 are Labour, 75 are Liberal Democrats, one is from Reform UK, and 177 are crossbench (non-party political). Although the Tories are the largest group, no party has a majority. The House of Lords Appointments Commission recommends individuals for appointment as crossbench peers – and vets all nominations on the basis of “propriety”, meaning that a person should be in good standing generally and not have past conduct that could bring the House of Lords into disrepute. It can only make recommendations and cannot veto.

From 2010 to 2025, 56% of life peers appointed were either ex-politicians, former advisers or major donors. The average age of members is around 71. In the last available accounts, for 2023/24, the House of Lords cost the taxpayer £143.8 million. Peers are not paid a salary, but can claim a tax-free daily attendance allowance of £371 (they can also claim £185, or nothing, if they think appropriate). In 2017, it was reported that one unnamed peer had “left the taxi running” while he popped in to record his attendance. Over the last Parliament, just 10% of all peers made more than half of all debate contributions; 28 Lords never attended at all.

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.”

The old “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” premise, that “men and women are from different worlds when it comes to relationships”, has been robustly “rebuffed”, said Eir Nolsøe in The Telegraph. “But when it comes to politics, it may no longer be such an outlandish conclusion.” In the UK, “gender is emerging” as the new political “dividing line”, particularly among younger voters.

British women are increasingly leaning left, according to a new report by the National Centre for Social Research. Recent YouGov polling also suggests that 44% of women aged 18 to 24 intend to vote Green, compared with 30% of men in the same age group. Nearly a quarter of women aged 25 to 49 intend to vote Green.

Post-Brexit shift

In the UK, women have always been more likely to vote Conservative than men – until the 2017 general election, when women suddenly became more likely to vote Labour. In 2019, support for Jeremy Corbyn among women aged 18 to 24 was nearly double Labour’s overall share of the votes. That shift “is not because women’s values have changed”, said politics professors Rosie Campbell and Rosalind Shorrocks on The Conversation. It seems “more tied to changing events”: gender differences in attitudes towards Brexit, in particular, are “a potentially more powerful explanation”.

In the 2024 election, nearly a quarter of women aged 18 to 24 voted for the Green Party – roughly double the number of young men who voted for Reform. Yet, “predictably”, it was the young men voting Reform that “got all the attention”, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Now, though, there’s a “growing consensus” that, as the worldviews of young men and young women become “ever more starkly polarised, the driving force behind that split is women becoming sharply more liberal, not men becoming radically more right-wing”.

One factor could be higher education: polling suggests that university graduates are more likely to support left-wing parties, and 57% of Britain’s students are female. But academics like Campbell believe “young women’s radicalisation also has a lot to do with Brexit and its unfolding consequences”, said Hinsliff. Women are “noticeably more anti-austerity and pro-Remain than men”. When “the two biggest parties fell over themselves to embrace Brexit and then to rule out big wealth taxes, these women are likely to have been pushed further and further out to the political fringe”.

‘Alienated’, young and female

“British politics is more volatile” than ever, said the BBC, with traditional party loyalties in decline. But one “clear trend” is the gender divide: in a 2025 UK Youth Poll survey of 16- to 29-year-olds, 20% of women said they were left-wing, compared with 13% of men.

We’ve had “countless opinion pieces, documentaries and dramas” about young men “moving to the populist right”, said Scarlett Maguire in The New Statesman. But at the last election, “young women moved to the populist left considerably more”. Recent elections in Germany and Portugal show similar movements; this trend is “becoming more pronounced”.

Britain’s young women “seem to feel more alienated from their country than their male peers”, as well as “more pessimistic” and “isolated”: a 2025 Onward poll had 53% saying they feel lonely, which is “substantially more than the proportion of young men saying the same”. Young women also have “an astonishingly low net economic optimism score”. Social media consumption and even relationship status “all seem to drive” these “increasingly different political outlooks from young men and women”.

“This crucial gender divide will not only continue to shape our politics but could also alter our social fabric,” said Maguire, “as women increasingly feel they have less in common” not just “with older generations” but with “men their own age”.

Council elections will be postponed for at least a year in 29 areas across England, the government has confirmed.

The “vast majority” of the 139 local elections in May will go ahead as planned, said Local Government Secretary Steve Reed. But opposition MPs say that the delayed ones are disenfranchising four million voters, and Reform UK is threatening legal action.

Which elections are being delayed?

On 7 May, elections are due to take place for over 4000 council seats in England but polling will now be delayed for city councils in Exeter, Lincoln, Norwich, Peterborough and Preston; for district councils in Cannock Chase, Adur and Harlow; for borough councils in Ipswich, Cheltenham, Redditch, Basildon, Burnley, Thurrock, Chorley, Crawley, Blackburn with Darwen, Hastings, Hyndburn, Rugby, Stevenage, Tamworth, Worthing, Welwyn Hatfield and West Lancashire, and for county councils in West Sussex, East Sussex, Suffolk and Norfolk.

This means that about 650 councillors will no longer face election this year and will have their terms extended, probably until 2028. Of those, 238 are Conservative councillors, 206 are Labour, 81 are Liberal Democrat, 39 are Green, 26 are Reform, 7 are Your Party and 59 are independent. All four county councils affected are currently led by the Tories, but most of the other councils affected are controlled by Labour.

Why are the elections being delayed?

There’s a “major shake-up of local government” underway, which will abolish some local authorities altogether, said the BBC The “rejig” will mean the old “two-tier system of district and county councils” in many parts of England will be replaced with new “unitary” councils.

Some local authorities have therefore concluded that postponing the upcoming ballot is necessary, either because they are “concerned” about their ability to “run the polls alongside the overhaul of town halls” or because they want to save “the cost to taxpayers” of holding elections for councils that are due to be abolished.

All this means that, where councils are going to be “folded into” new unitary councils in 2027 or 2028, we have a curious situation: either polls are going ahead in May and councillors who are elected will only serve for a year or so, or polls are being postponed and current councillors, elected for four years, will end up serving up to seven.

Why has the delay been criticised?

Labour is “running scared of the electorate” and “denying millions of people a voice”, said Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey. Starmer’s government is “moving seamlessly from arrogance to incompetence and now cowardice”, said Tory shadow local government secretary, James Cleverly.

Reform, which had a run of success in local elections last May, winning more than 600 seats and taking control of 10 councils, has also spoken out. Tory defector Robert Jenrick said that delaying local council elections is “almost certainly illegal”. Party leader Nigel Farage said he would be “fighting this denial of democracy in the High Court”. A hearing is scheduled for 19 February.

The Electoral Commission, the body that oversees elections, said it “recognises the pressure on local government” but does not see “capacity constraints” as a “legitimate reason for delaying long-planned elections”.

The government is dropping plans to require workers to sign up for its digital ID card scheme, and allowing people to use other digital forms of ID to prove their right to work in the UK.

The scheme, originally framed by Keir Starmer as part of a “crackdown on illegal working”, has been watered down out of concern it “could undermine public trust and lead to a cabinet revolt”, said The Times.

Following the concessions on inheritance tax thresholds for farmers just before Christmas, this is the second major U-turn within a month, and the 13th since Starmer came into office. Here are some of the other major rowbacks since the 2024 election.

Winter fuel payments

Mere months after their election victory, Labour announced plans to reduce the number of pensioners receiving up to £300 in winter fuel payments by restricting eligibility to those receiving pension credit. This would have cut claimant numbers from 11 million to one and a half million, and saved the government about £1.5 billion a year.

Less than a year later, the government backtracked on their winter fuel policy, restoring the payments to pensioners with an income of £35,000 a year or less, meaning that around three quarters of pensioners (about 9 million) in England and Wales will still receive the payment.

The debacle was an “administration-defining mistake”, said the Financial Times. What was meant to be a fairly innocuous cost-cutting measure, and arguably “the right thing to do politically”, snowballed into protests and endless media coverage. It “dealt a blow to the government’s popularity from which it has yet to recover”, and then the rowback set the perception that “the government retreats under pressure”.

And, since the U-turn, even the revised expected savings have “evaporated”, said The Times. The wall-to-wall media coverage has increased awareness of pension credit, meaning 46% more pensioners now claim it, costing the Department of Work & Pensions millions more than before.

National insurance

Famously, the 2024 Labour election manifesto promised not to “increase taxes on working people”, with a pledge not to raise VAT, national insurance or rates of income tax.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said, as she delivered her first Budget in October 2024, that “working people will not see higher taxes” and “that is a promise made and a promise fulfilled”. However, in that same Budget, she increased the rate of national insurance contributions from employers – not employees – from 13.8% to 15%, in a move that “risked indirectly hitting workers”, said The Telegraph.

That decision looked a “fairly clear violation of the pre-election promise”, said The Guardian. Paul Johnson, then director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, called it a “straightforward breach” of the manifesto.

Welfare reform

In March 2025, Labour unveiled plans for sweeping changes to the benefits system that it said would save £5 billion a year by 2030. The new “pro-work system” would make it harder for those with “less severe conditions” to claim disability benefits, said the BBC. It would also freeze extra health-related payments for current claimants and nearly halve the number of successful new claims.

But this “tweak of the assessment criteria” was met with “fierce opposition from campaign groups” and many Labour backbenchers, said The Independent. It was undoubtedly the “biggest rebellion” of Starmer’s premiership, said Sky News. More than 100 Labour MPs signed a “reasoned amendment” in opposition to the government's proposals, which would effectively have killed the legislation if it went forward as it stood. The main concerns of the mutineers were that the cuts were “too harsh” and would “penalise” the “most vulnerable”.

Starmer made a “dramatic climb-down”, hollowing out much of the bill’s “central planks”, and leaving his “political authority badly damaged”, said The Guardian.

Grooming gangs inquiry

At the start of 2025, the grooming gangs scandal was a “point of fierce political discussion”, said ITV’s Maya Bowles, as the government “repeatedly insisted” there was no need for a national inquiry, launching five “locally-led” investigations instead.

Widespread public interest in the scandal had been “sparked in part” by X posts from tech tycoon Elon Musk, as well as repeated calls for a national inquiry by both the Conservative Party and Reform UK, said the BBC. Musk shared a series of posts on X accusing Starmer of failing to prosecute the gangs and also called for safeguarding minister Jess Phillips to be jailed.

In response, the prime minister argued that those in favour of a national inquiry, instead of locally-led investigations, were “jumping on a bandwagon” and “amplifying” the demands of the far right.

Then in June, after “resisting calls for months”, Starmer launched a national inquiry – after a review of the whole issue by crossbench peer Louise Casey.

Anne Longfield will now lead the £65 billion three-year inquiry, after other leading candidates pulled out. Since June, four women have resigned from the inquiry’s survivors committee.

‘Day-One’ workers’ rights

One of the big promises of the Labour manifesto pledge to improve workers’ rights was reducing the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from two years’ employment to the first day of employment.

But in November, Business Secretary Peter Kyle announced that the qualifying period would be reduced to six months instead.

Labour’s Employment Rights Bill had become caught in parliamentary “ping pong” between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, slowed down by persuasive resistance from business owners. The government was forced to compromise to get the bill passed into law.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told Sky News that “sometimes you do have to adopt some pragmatism if you want to make sure that you get the wider package through”.

Keir Starmer once said “there is no such thing as Starmerism, and there never will be”. It was meant to signal his preference for pragmatic progressivism over ideological purity, but it has, for many, come to encompass all that is wrong with the current Labour government.

As it ditches part of yet another policy this week – on plans to make its digital ID scheme mandatory for UK workers – Downing Street faces a “political challenge”: its vision for the country looks less and less clear as “the climbdowns, dilutions, U-turns, about-turns, call them what you will, are mounting up”, said BBC political editor Chris Mason.

What did the commentators say?

A change of heart can be “strategic”, showing flexibility and “sensitivity to public opinion”, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. But “too many” of Starmer’s U-turns look like “the product of incoherent thinking and inadequate preparation”. The watering-down of the digital ID plans follows about-turns on changes to inheritance tax for farmers, business-rate relief on pubs and the winter fuel allowance, not to mention the reversals on welfare reform and a grooming gangs inquiry.

Successful governments have a defining purpose and message (think the push for privatisation under Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair’s public sector reforms) but, under Starmer, “missions, milestones and foundations have come and gone”. The U-turns “are ultimately a symptom of the government’s woes, rather than their cause”. Instead of moving “towards a clear destination”, Labour looks “as if it is merely going round in circles”.

U-turns are “rarely” down to “anger in the country”, said The Independent’s political editor David Maddox. They happen when a government doesn’t “have the strength to push through their agenda”. The “latest climbdown” on digital IDs suggests a prime minister in “survival mode”, lacking “the authority to get his policies through and to keep his backbenchers in line”.

Starmer is turning into the “Grand Old Duke of York”, one unnamed Labour MP told Dominic Penna in The Telegraph, and that is “building up resentment”. Hull MP Karl Turner, who is leading a backbench rebellion against jury reforms, said he and his colleagues now have to “think very carefully before defending policy decisions publicly” as any subsequent U-turns leave them “looking really stupid”.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, a likely leadership contender, has said it is important the government “gets it right first time”. To “put it very politely”, said the BBC’s Mason, “this is a work in progress” for the prime minister.

What next?

Future government reversals could be on anything from private landlord rental income to employment rights, said Matthew Lynn at MoneyWeek. “The one thing we know for certain about this government is that, as soon as it runs into any serious opposition, it quickly changes its mind.”

Keir Starmer has told UK voters that the coming year will bring “positive change in your bills, your communities and your health service”. People across the country will “once again feel a sense of hope”, the prime minister said in his New Year message.

But a new Ipsos poll offers little evidence of faith in Starmer as the architect of change: fewer than half of those quizzed believed he would still be in No. 10 by the end of 2026.

What did the commentators say?

Pollsters have been “surprised” by the “level of apparent hostility” shown by respondents both towards Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves, said George Parker, political editor of the Financial Times. But the PM’s allies believe he can “turn things around”, in part through renewed emphasis on reducing living costs.

There is “near-universal acceptance” among both Starmer’s “cheerleaders” and his “detractors” that the government must improve how it explains itself and defines its purpose, wrote the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason. Downing Street is expected to launch a “blitz of public-facing activity” to this end. But the “key challenge” will be deciding what message they want to put out there, and, crucially, whether the government can stick to it. Core themes are likely to be “change”, “stability” and the cost of living

Starmer needs to carry out a “fundamental reset”, said former New Labour advertising guru Chris Powell in The Guardian. In 1995, Tony Blair’s team “planned scrupulously for a complete reorientation” of the party, involving “new strategy, new branding, new policy, new presentation and new organisation”. Starmer needs to embrace that same kind of “no-holds-barred thinking”, if he is to “win the daily war for attention”.

That could be easier said than done. Illegal migration is expected to “continue to dominate political debate”, said Sky News political correspondent Amanda Akass. Starmer hopes his tougher policies will “stop the boats”, but if progress is not made, “the pressure will only intensify”. “The moment of maximum jeopardy will come during May’s elections”: a poor showing “could lead to an open revolt against the PM”.

What next?

There are “good reasons to believe” Starmer may not last the year, said Patrick Maguire in The Times. But while many Labour MPs are attracted to the idea of a leadership change, there is far less enthusiasm for a full leadership contest. Even those “prone to silliness and self-indulgence” recognise that months of internal wrangling would be difficult to justify to the public.

That leaves only the possibility of a “bloodless coup and coronation”. But “Labour history suggests inertia is the most powerful force of all” and with no obvious alternative candidate, the question remains: who would replace Starmer? In the likely event that “the cabinet can’t agree on a challenger” after the May elections, it will be no surprise if the embattled PM survives the year.

Adults have often struggled to know how to treat teenagers, said The Mail on Sunday. But today the problem seems particularly acute.

An increasing number of adolescents and younger children are being told, while still at school, that they suffer from “conditions” that require therapy or pills. “With surprisingly little resistance or opposition, treatments such as the prescription of stimulant drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have become normal and uncontroversial for children as young as five, and much more so in higher age brackets.”

It seems that everyday problems, such as anxiety, disappointment and exam stress are increasingly being medicalised. “Is this really justified? Is it at least far too widespread?”

‘A national sport’

The Health Secretary Wes Streeting certainly seems concerned: he has ordered an independent review into the reasons for a rising demand for mental health, ADHD and autism services in England, in particular among young people. So Streeting has jumped on the “overdiagnosis” bandwagon, said John Harris in The Guardian.

“Questioning other people’s needs” seems to have become almost “a national sport”: those with mental health or neuro-developmental conditions must be malingerers and spongers. But there are reasons why more people, and particularly the young, are being diagnosed with anxiety and depression. There are the “still-overlooked” effects of the pandemic; the fact that work is increasingly precarious and hard to come by for the young; help is very hard to find on the NHS.

As for diagnoses for autism and ADHD, which are entirely different conditions, they have also risen, but also for good reasons. The definition of autism was widened in the 1980s and 1990s: it is now universally accepted that it exists on a spectrum. ADHD, meanwhile, is something we are only starting to understand. The accusation of overdiagnosis offers a simple solution to rising cases: just tell people “to be more resilient, and wave them away”.

‘Devastating’ rise

Come on, said Hadley Freeman in The Sunday Times. About 15% of the working-age population now reports a long-term mental or behavioural condition. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of 16- to 34-year-olds off work with mental health conditions rose “by a nationally devastating, and socially tragic, 76%”.

Between 2019 and 2021, there was a 3,200% increase in the number of British women taking online ADHD tests. Obviously, some overdiagnosis is going on, with worrying results. Dismissing the idea out of hand makes no sense. It’s good that society “has become kinder to those with mental health conditions” – but it’s also clear that some “have forgotten” what these actually look like.

The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, accused Rachel Reeves of lying to the public so that she could fund increased welfare spending with tax rises in last week’s Budget. Reeves faced calls from the Conservatives, the SNP and Reform UK for her resignation.

In a speech on 4 November, the chancellor had raised expectations of tax rises by warning that the UK’s productivity was weaker “than previously thought”, and that this would have consequences for the public finances. But it emerged last Friday that the Office for Budget Responsibility had told the Treasury on 31 October that the downgrade in productivity would be offset by larger tax revenues from higher wages, meaning that Reeves was actually on course to meet her fiscal targets with £4.2 billion to spare.

Downing Street rallied to Reeves’s defence, insisting that there had been “no attempt to deceive in any form”. She also denied the charge, arguing that she had needed to put up taxes to increase her buffer against unexpected costs. On Monday, the OBR’s chair, Richard Hughes, resigned over his organisation’s accidental early publication of its analysis of the Budget.

Reeves is guilty of “staggering mendacity”, said The Daily Telegraph. In the run-up to the Budget, she spun a “tale of doom and gloom” while neglecting to mention the OBR’s forecast about tax revenues. There was no urgent need to raise £26 billion in taxes; she just pretended there was so that she could buy off Labour MPs with an extra £16 billion in welfare spending. It’s outrageous that the OBR chief Richard Hughes had to resign after this “Budget fiasco”, rather than Reeves, said the Daily Mail. Polling shows that Labour is now even less trusted with the public purse than the Tories were under Liz Truss. If the chancellor “had an ounce of honour”, she’d stand down.

“Liar” is a strong word, said The Independent, and not one that can be fairly applied to Reeves in this case. While she could have been more transparent and perhaps overdid “the gloom”, she didn’t utter any falsehoods. What’s more, Reeves was right to point out that she needed to increase her fiscal headroom, and that the OBR’s £4.2 billion surplus didn’t take account of U-turns on the winter fuel allowance and disability benefits. A more valid charge against the Budget is that the combination of tax hikes and higher welfare spending is “not what Labour said it would do, nor was elected to do last year”.

Justice Secretary David Lammy has unveiled a watered-down version of his plans to dispense with jury trials for all but the most serious offences.

Under his original plan, offences carrying a sentence of less than five years would have been heard in new judge-only courts. But following “cabinet feedback”, this has been scaled back to offences with a penalty of less than three years.

The current crown court backlog stands at around 80,000 cases, said the Ministry of Justice, and without urgent action could exceed 100,000 by 2028. “We must be bold,” Lammy said today in setting out the government’s plans, to rectify a court system on the “brink of collapse”.

What did the commentators say?

Trial by jury is one of the “central reasons” Britain’s legal system has “garnered such high levels of trust and respect around the world”, said The Times in an editorial. Lammy is correct that the “status quo cannot go on”, but “fundamental changes” towards a system of “secrecy” would face “grave public apprehension”.

Even if Lammy drives through his proposals, “scrapping jury trials alone might not be enough to clear the backlog”. If less serious offences could be overseen by a judge and two magistrates, as recommended in Brian Leveson’s judicial review, trial times could be reduced from “two days to a few hours”.

“Destroying jury trials because everything else is broken is a terrible idea,” said Tristan Kirk in London’s The Standard. Lammy’s proposal is an “act of pure desperation” from the Labour government. There is a “serious risk” that overhauling the system will cost “huge amounts of money and time” for “limited benefit”. Jury trials are “worth nourishing and investing in, instead of being constantly eroded”.

Had this come from a Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage government, Labour would “say we were on a rocky road, with something like fascism at the end of it”, said a Sunday Times editorial. Once gone, it is likely juries will “never come back”. Departing from centuries of tradition exposes the deputy prime minister’s “short-term” thinking, abandoning what many Britons see as a right “in the interests of expediency”. “Trial by jury is sacrosanct. Scrapping it is an affront to justice.”

This is out of character for Labour, said an editorial in The Telegraph. It “beggars belief” that a party “so obsessed with the artificial construct of the ECHR” would abandon such a “long-standing right”. The answer should be to “address the problems of capital and funding” in the criminal justice system, instead of “dispensing with the core principles of English justice”.

But “David Lammy is right to slash the use of juries”, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. “Archaic” and “inefficient”, they are “quaint relics of medieval jurisprudence”. We are falling behind many of our European neighbours, where judge-only courts have long been standard. Per 100,000 citizens, England and Wales imprison 145, compared to 71 and 54 in “jury-free” Germany and the Netherlands. “I do not believe that Britons are twice as criminal as Germans, or three times as Dutch.”

Labour’s reforms could be revolutionary for rape cases in particular, said The New Statesman. Currently, “women are being retraumatised for far too long” with delays of up to “half-a-decade” to have their cases heard in a system that “lets them down so badly”. Trying lower-level offences more efficiently will free up crown court time to make sure “the most serious crimes are heard quickly and fairly”. If reform isn’t enacted we risk perpetuating a system that “denies timely justice” and “fails to deter crime”.

What next?

Under the current proposals, magistrates will be allowed to hear cases with potential sentences of up to 18 months – as opposed to the current 12 – and this could still rise to two years, said The Telegraph.

The next stages of proposals aim to “create a new part of the crown court where there are no juries”, for sentences up to three years, said Sky News. This departs from the Leveson review, which proposed a panel of a judge supported by magistrates. Cases involving crimes that carry sentences of five years or more will still be heard in front of a jury.

Labour has been accused of breaking another manifesto pledge after a last-minute U-turn watering down a key protection in its flagship Employment Rights Bill.

Changes to the proposed legislation included the government ditching plans to give workers the right to claim unfair dismissal from day one of a new job. The decision has been described as a “complete betrayal” by one Labour MP and leaves the bill as a “shell of its former self”, according to Unite general secretary Sharon Graham. But it is hoped the compromise will be enough to win over sceptical peers in the House of Lords and get the bill passed into law by next April.

What protections does the bill offer now?

Protection against unfair dismissal, which currently only comes into effect after two years in a job, will now kick in after six months – in line with most European countries. A compensation cap on successful unfair dismissal claims imposed by the Tories will also be lifted.

Other rights, such as the right to claim sick pay and paternity leave, and to apply for flexible working, will be enshrined from day one, and zero-hours contracts will be banned. The threshold for calling a strike will also be lowered, with a union requiring only a simple majority of members who voted rather than at least 40% of those eligible to vote as the current law dictates.

The enforcement of employment rights will be overseen by a new Fair Work Agency, which will have the right to inspect workplaces, issue fines and bring legal action on behalf of employees.

What has the reaction been?

The TUC’s general secretary Paul Nowak said the bill is “essential to better quality, more secure jobs for millions of workers across the economy”. But opposition politicians and business leaders have warned the new provisions are likely to have the opposite effect.

With unemployment already at a near five-year high, “employers have stopped hiring, in part because a rising living wage and steep rises in their national insurance charges have made it too expensive, but also because the looming legislation makes it too risky”, said Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph.

“The measures could cost firms £5 billion a year and risk being passed on to staff through smaller pay rises and hidden taxes which reduce wages over time,” said The Sun.

“No company can plan, invest or hire with this level of uncertainty hanging over them,” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said. Even the tweaked legislation is still “terrible for economic growth” – a key mission of the Labour government.

What happens next?

Despite anger in some parts of the party over the changes, the focus among Labour MPs is “keeping the rest of the package intact”, particularly the end of zero-hours contracts, said The New Statesman.

Former deputy leader Angela Rayner, who led the passage of the bill through Parliament before she was forced to resign, reportedly plans to lay an amendment tomorrow to speed up the bill so it can be implemented as early as next year.

Several Labour MPs told The Guardian that they “fear that the climbdown by the government will embolden peers and critics of the bill to push for further changes”. “This can’t be the thin of the wedge and we won’t let it be,” said one.

Your Party has established its foundations, with members voting on the party’s name, leadership structure, membership status and a party constitution at its inaugural conference in Liverpool. But by the end of the weekend cracks were already beginning to show.

The group was established by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn to present a “full-blooded left-wing challenge” to Labour, said Politico. However, if the antics at the conference were anything to go by, it is “mixing deep idealism with the kind of factional splits that would make Monty Python blush”.

What happened at the launch?

Members of Your Party confirmed its formal name will remain the same. Just over 37% voted to make the placeholder name permanent, with other shortlisted options Popular Alliance (25%), For the Many (23%) and Our Party (14%) being overlooked. Sultana had complained that her preferred option of “Left Party” was not included in the options.

Members also voted in favour of dual membership – where individuals can hold active membership of two parties – by 69.2% to 30.8%. Another takeaway from the conference was the introduction of a collective leadership model by a narrow margin of 51.6% to 48.4% of votes. Sultana had previously championed the move as enabling “maximum member democracy”, whereas Corbyn called for a party structured on sole leadership.

On the eve of the conference, Sultana and Corbyn held separate rallies. Sultana’s comprised of two events at a Holiday Inn in Bristol, and welcomed speakers from Bristol Apartheid Free Zone, Stand up to Racism, the National Education Union and refugee charity Borderlands. Meanwhile at Corbyn’s rally, “there were squabbles and four people were evicted”, said Tanya Gold on UnHerd.

Co-founder Sultana had boycotted the first day of the conference in protest against an expulsion of members from the Socialist Workers Party. She described the decision as a “witch-hunt”. Party officials had said that entry was contingent on attendees not being members of other parties.

The left-wing party had aimed to attract around 13,000 people to the event, said the BBC. This was revised down to around 2,500, “which made the cavernous halls of the conference centre feel much emptier”.

Who won between Corbyn and Sultana?

The two co-founders have been at loggerheads since the party was launched in July, but their relationship hit new lows at the conference. “There would have been more chance of Ted Heath and Maggie deciding to be co-leaders of the Conservative Party than of this pair even being in the same room together,” said Stephen Pollard in The Spectator

Leadership disagreements aside, Sultana undoubtedly came out on top, said The New Statesman. Her “fiery remarks” about the exclusion of the Socialist Workers Party members on day one were well supported, and she “appears to have triumphed in every major debate about Your Party’s future except its name”.

But perhaps neither Corbyn nor Sultana emerged as the true leader of the political left, said James Heale in The Spectator. “Zack Polanski is the real winner of the Your Party conference”, as the “acrimonious affair” in Liverpool was on “display for all to see”. Polanski’s Green Party has seen membership rise sharply since he took over as leader in September. The frustrations within Your Party “are likely to only intensify” as it seems “it is Polanski, not Corbyn or Sultana, who is likely to dominate the British left for the near future.”

Will collective leadership work?

Your Party will be run by an executive committee of 11 elected members. This will include a chair, deputy chair and spokesperson to provide “public political leadership”. However, the collective model will exclude MPs from the top roles on the executive committee. Regional elections will take place in February, geared to choose the executive. Until then a “caretaker” committee of members will take on the leadership.

By establishing a collective leadership style, and also allowing members of rival parties to join, Your Party has “paved the way for maximum infighting in the months and years ahead”, said Heale in The Spectator. And it “runs the risk of repelling enthused members, who do not wish to partake in rancour and recriminations”.

Net migration in the UK has fallen to its lowest level since 2021 after the “single largest outflow of people in a century as a proportion of the UK population”.

In the year to June, 693,000 people – 1% of the UK’s population – left the country. This was “the highest proportion of the population to leave the UK since 1923”, said The Times.

Overall, net migration stood at 204,000, down by more than two-thirds on the previous year’s 649,000, according to the Office for National Statistics. The provisional figures show 70,000 more EU nationals left the UK than arrived, while 109,000 more British nationals left than arrived.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood spoke last week of the “unprecedented levels of migration in recent years”. “That will now change,” she said. “In fact, it already has,” said The New York Times, but not in the way Mahmood and the government may want, as the “number of people who claimed asylum in the year to September 2025 reached a record high of 110,051”, said the BBC. That figure is more than half of the net migration total.

What did the commentators say?

The Conservatives are “keen to claim credit” for the “sharp fall” in net migration, said Michael Simmons in The Spectator. They say that stronger visa rules and restrictions on dependents introduced under Rishi Sunak are only now “feeding through” into the data.

Labour, on the other hand, can “claim progress” as these official migration statistics cover almost all of its first year in government. But ministers should “tread carefully”, however. The “underlying picture is far less clear-cut” and there is no evidence yet that the fall in migration can be maintained.

The exodus of young people in particular should “trigger alarm bells about the UK’s demographic conundrum”, said City A.M. Around 91% of British nationals who left the country were of working age, “scuppering” the idea that it was mainly pensioners leaving for Europe. If anything, this suggests that younger people are “ditching the country to boost living standards”.

The numbers themselves aren’t at the forefront of most people’s minds, but the optics of the government’s “handling of illegal migration and related issues” are, said UnHerd. To date, ministers have made “little progress” on delivering tangible results, and “show no sign yet of making any more”.

A mere “promise” to end the use of migrant hotels – such as the Bell Hotel in Epping – will “pay no political dividends” and save no money, if the government resorts to social or privately rented housing. If the government wanted to make a difference, it could change the “state’s legal obligation to house asylum seekers”: no such move has been made.

What next?

We must look at these figures in a wider context, especially if the government is considering applying arbitrary migration targets, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times.

The influx of people entering the UK is not a standalone issue, but an “outgrowth” based on other decisions. Instead of jumping to “targets” – “the kind of thing that states tend to do badly” – answering the questions over housebuilding, university funding, or economic advantages is the way forward. “Trying to work backwards” by reverse-engineering the problem and starting with migrant controls, “is a fool’s errand”.

Small boats will continue to be a thorn in Labour’s side, especially if the UK remains “incapable” of stringent deportation systems, or an Australian method of “offshore processing”, said UnHerd. That being said, if Mahmood avoids another “Boris-wave” of high net migration, or prevents migrants becoming a “permanent burden on the British taxpayer”, then “she will deserve real credit. But if Labour ministers hope that will be enough to neutralise immigration as an electoral issue, they are surely mistaken.”

The pressure on Rachel Reeves that has been “building all year” culminated yesterday in her much-anticipated autumn Budget, said Ailbhe Rea in The New Statesman. The chancellor stepped up to the despatch box with her “political fate” tied to Keir Starmer’s: “they went into it together, fighting for their political lives”.

The “extraordinary spectacle” of the Office for Budget Responsibility accidentally publishing details of the Budget before Reeves announced them “simply added to the already heightened sense of Labour having a bumpy ride”, said City A.M.

‘Narrow interests’

The Budget itself was “Labour to the core”, said City A.M. From scrapping the two-child benefit cap to raising the minimum wage, the announcements were “very much in line with the party’s history of combatting poverty” – and Labour MPs “seemed to love it”.

However, there is a “gulf between the relatively narrow interests of 405 Labour MPs and voters more broadly”, said The Times. To pay for welfare, the NHS and higher wages for low earners, Reeves is bringing in “more than a dozen tax rises on workers, pensioners and savers” that will be felt just as Labour is gearing up for the next election.

She “clearly hopes” the economy will have improved by then, and she can potentially scrap planned income tax freezes or offer other incentives to the public. But if “global uncertainty continues to weigh on the UK economy”, there is a risk that Labour will go into the next election with many voters “feeling poorer than ever”.

‘Scandinavian’ tax levels

The chancellor is “trapped by the same problems that plagued her predecessors”, said UnHerd. Improving public services requires “significant tax rises” that are “the quick route to political death“. But “letting services continue to atrophy is the slow one”. Reeves and Starmer may have “bought off their most immediate opposition” by “pleasing the parliamentary party” but the unpopularity of the announcements outside of Westminster “could still cost them”. This “timid” Budget risks falling into “the regular trap of indecision: half-measures that please no one”.

It was billed as the “smorgasbord” Budget, and it will “certainly” bring Britain closer to “Scandinavian levels of taxation”, said the Financial Times. This may well be Reeves’ “last Budget as chancellor” but “if all else fails, there should be an opening in the OBR’s IT department”.

Speculation of a Labour leadership contest has gathered pace after Andy Burnham stopped short of saying he won’t stand against Keir Starmer. The mayor of Greater Manchester told “BBC Breakfast” last week that he hadn’t “launched any leadership challenge”, but he couldn’t “rule out what might or might not happen in future”.

No Labour prime minister has been “ousted by his party” or even “faced a formal leadership challenge from MPs” while in office, said The Guardian. But dire approval ratings have raised questions about Starmer – and his “potential successors”.

Andy Burnham

The mayor of Greater Manchester is the media favourite for a tilt at the leadership – he’s been at the epicentre of speculation about a move against Starmer since Labour’s autumn conference.

But there would be obstacles for him to overcome: he’d have to step down as Manchester mayor, win a Commons seat in a by-election and then be nominated by at least 80 Labour MPs. Clive Lewis has said he is willing to step down as MP for Norwich South to pave the way for Burnham to return to the Commons, but Burnham has insisted he is “fully focused” on his mayoral duties.

Wes Streeting

The health secretary is a “prime suspect for a hypothetical coup” and “suspicions” over his “ambitions may have been prompted by him appearing to rise above his brief in recent months”, said The Telegraph.

Earlier this month he was forced to deny he was plotting a challenge. He told the BBC he could “not see any circumstances under which I would do that to our prime minister”. Widely seen as a “more charismatic version of Starmer”, his “weakness is that he is seen as too right wing” by progressives within the party, said The Independent.

Angela Rayner

Rayner, who quit the front bench in September after a report concluded she had broken the ministerial code by underpaying stamp duty on a property purchase, is “often considered as a potential successor” to Starmer, said The Guardian, and has “declined to rule out running for the job”.

The “socialist firebrand” would probably be a leading choice of the Labour left, which has “felt frozen out” by Starmer’s “centrist government”, said The Telegraph. As she’s currently away from the front bench, she could brand herself as the “clean break” candidate, said The Independent.

Shabana Mahmood

The home secretary already “speaks like a leader”, said The Spectator. Mahmood has shown “much-needed leadership” on migration, said The Independent, but this may work against her; she “may be considered too right-wing for the tastes of many in the party”. In the event of a leadership contest, “it may become a choice between her and Streeting not to split the vote”.

Ed Miliband

The Sun reported in September that the energy secretary was “on manoeuvres” – “plotting against his former pal” and trying to “destabilise” Starmer.

As a former party leader who “lost his bid for No. 10” in the 2015 election, Miliband “might fancy a stab at the job he never got to do”, said The Telegraph. With his CV, he “can claim to have a strong understanding of how to manage MPs”, but his bruising loss to David Cameron 10 years ago will “probably go against him”.

As the festive period approaches, it’s fair to say the season of goodwill has not reached Downing Street yet, with reports over the weekend of a “very shouty” row between Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.

Streeting demanded to know whether No. 10 was the source of an apparent pre-emptive strike accusing him of leadership plotting, said The Sunday Times.

Starmer was forced to tell the House of Commons last week that he had full confidence in his chief aide, saying: “Morgan McSweeney, my team and I are absolutely focused on delivering for this country”.

But Starmer has been urged to fire McSweeney by former Labour home secretary David Blunkett, who said he should be replaced by someone who can “manage people well”.

Darker sequel

McSweeney “derives his power and influence from his track record as a political strategist”, said the BBC – he masterminded Labour’s landslide 2024 general election victory and Starmer’s 2020 Labour leadership bid.

But this isn’t the first time he has been the subject of the story rather than the conduit. Back in September the “heat” was on him because of the “furore” around the failure of his Labour Together campaign group to declare donations to the Electoral Commission, said The New Statesman.

But “the sequel is more serious, darker even”. Although the “picture is murky”, the “subject is clear: a lack of control at the centre”.

After this fresh crisis “roiled” Downing Street, talk has “inevitably turned” to how long McSweeney can “cling to his job”, said The Telegraph. There’s a “broader dysfunction within the Downing Street regime”, with insiders saying a “toxic atmosphere is paralysing the government and contributing to a collapse in support for Labour”.

Brain dead

But while “critics” say McSweeney has “lost control” of Downing Street, “allies” say he has “become a scapegoat when chaos strikes” in No. 10. They say that the “graveyard of Westminster careers is littered with the CVs of former Downing Street ‘svengalis’ who paid the price for the failures of their administrations”, such as Alastair Campbell and Dominic Cummings.

“The barbs against McSweeney are a modern twist on the words that have echoed down English history from dissidents who don’t want to go after the principal: ‘God save the King and damn his accursed ministers’,” said The New Statesman.

There is “a hope, possibly a vain one,” that McSweeney’s exit would make Labour “cuddly and nice again”. But what would it “actually bring”? Would Starmer, the “north London luvvy and former human rights barrister”, come “out of his shell”, or would his premiership be left “essentially brain dead” and “living on borrowed time”?

A Labour minister told The Independent that Starmer should “bring in someone that actually knows what they are doing” and who understands the parliamentary Labour Party. That might mean that McSweeney is replaced or someone is brought in to work alongside him, “but it can’t go on like this”.

But asked about McSweeney’s future, one senior Labour figure said he was: “Toast.”

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has denied leading a plot to oust Keir Starmer, saying “whoever’s been briefing this has been watching too much Celebrity Traitors”.

Streeting fiercely condemned the Downing Street aides behind the briefings, saying their attacks on him betrayed the “toxic culture” around the prime minister, and those responsible should be sacked.

After ruling out any involvement in a plot to oust the prime minister, the health secretary told Sky News: “Nor did I shoot JFK. I don’t know where Lord Lucan is, had nothing to do with Shergar, and I do think that the US did manage to do the moon landings. I don’t think they were faked.”

What did the commentators say?

Mounting anxiety about the vulnerability of Starmer’s position exploded into the open last night as Downing Street launched an “extraordinary operation” to protect the prime minister, said The Guardian’s political editor Pippa Crerar. Senior figures at No. 10 “said they had been told that Streeting had 50 frontbenchers willing to stand down if the Budget landed badly and the prime minister did not go”.

This is not “one wayward briefing“ from a special adviser “after too many pints”, said Andrew McDonald and Bethany Dawson on Politico’s London Playbook. “It all seemed rather co-ordinated”, with “multiple quotes variously attributed to cabinet ministers, senior officials and other allies or friends of the PM”.

The prime minister’s critics, “who are getting louder, you may have noticed”, think “the whole thing is an attempt to flush out Streeting and anyone else they suspect of plotting”. Others thought to be “on manoeuvres” include Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Defence Secretary John Healey and former Labour leader Ed Miliband. “No. 10 has gone into ‘full bunker mode’” and is “turning on their most loyal cabinet members for absolutely no reason”, one source said.

“A challenge against Starmer is not imminent,” said The i Paper’s Kitty Donaldson, although “conversations around his future have stepped up a gear in recent weeks”. There’s a “generational split” in the Parliamentary Labour Party. New MPs elected last year “fret that Starmer’s mistakes will see them booted from office at the next election”, while “the Cabinet and other senior party members consider the long-term”. To those who “experienced the Jeremy Corbyn years in opposition”, the “dangers of changing leader are obvious”.

What next?

Starmer is “alive to the growing threat to his position”, said Patrick Maguire in The Times, and he is already focusing on “outreach to backbenchers”.

But, “rather than shutting down speculation”, these co-ordinated briefings have “fuelled it”, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. Instead of “uniting the party around the PM”, this has risked “only achieving the reverse”.

Whatever the denials from suspected plotters of any plans to move against him, Starmer should be wary, said The i Paper’s Donaldson. “As anyone who watched ‘The Traitors’ knows, it doesn’t matter what they say when you’re in the room.”

The impartiality row that led to yesterday’s dramatic resignation of BBC Director General Tim Davie and his head of news, Deborah Turness, is part of a “strategy by the hard right to replace the truth with propaganda”, said Lib Dem leader Ed Davey.

As the fallout continues today, the BBC board is facing questions about “what exactly led to such a nuclear outcome behind the scenes”, said Politico’s London Playbook, amid “angry claims of a complete institutional failure from some, and a right-wing ‘coup’ from others”.

What did the commentators say?

Given the BBC’s “fraudulent editing of a Donald Trump speech”, it was only right that Davie took “responsibility for an organisation riddled with liberal bias”, said The Sun’s editorial board. Only “new leadership can change its DNA to reflect the opinions of its viewers – not just a liberal metropolitan elite that sneers at concerns about mass immigration, Brexit and the cost of net zero”.

“The ‘Panorama’-caught-lying scandal is as embarrassing, and enjoyable, as the discovery that a puritanical pastor is an alcoholic gambler with a Catholic mistress,” said Tim Stanley in The Telegraph. The recent “litany of errors” at the BBC has been “so great as to indicate a cultural rot from the head down”.

The BBC is “very much a co-author of this story”, said Sonia Sodha in The Times, but that has not stopped many wanting to “lay the blame wholly at the door of dark forces running an organised campaign” to bring the corporation down.

Insiders, and many on the left, are talking of “coup”, said The Guardian’s Michael Savage, blaming Turness’ resignation in particular on “a campaign by political enemies of the BBC” to shift the corporation to the right.

It’s “a national disgrace”, said David Yelland, former editor of The Sun, on X. “The corporation’s board has effectively been undermined, and elements close to it have worked with hostile newspaper editors”, Boris Johnson and “enemies of public service broadcasting”.

“It’s clear that there is a genuine concern about editorial standards and mistakes,” presenter Nick Robinson said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation.” And “both things are happening at the same time”.

What next?

A story is now emerging “about the functionality and make-up of the BBC board, and its role in what has happened”, said the BBC’s Katie Razzall. The weekend’s resignations have laid bare “a rift between the board and the news division”, with the board apparently preventing Turness from putting out an apology.

All this could not have come at a worse time for the BBC. It is about to begin negotiations on renewing its charter, due to expire in 2027, and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has already refused to rule out scrapping the licence fee altogether from 2028.

Continued BBC funding goes “hand in hand” with the question of “erosion of trust”, Caroline Dinenage, chair of the House of Commons Culture, Media & Sport Committee, told Playbook. “It’s all about the public having faith that the BBC is a trusted broadcaster that they’re happy to pay the license fee for.”

The BBC is “caught in political and economic headwinds”, said Jane Martinson in The Guardian. The corporation should have stood up to the attacks from The Telegraph and Donald Trump. Now, it simply looks “weak and cowardly, just when it needs to be robust and brave”.

“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”.

“We have to seize back the political megaphone, set the agenda more strongly and show that Labour is making a difference to people’s lives.” In her acceptance speech after winning Labour’s deputy leadership contest, Lucy Powell wasted no time in saying where she thinks her party has gone wrong.

Powell was recently sacked from her cabinet post as Leader of the House of Commons, and has suggested it might have been because she had given “feedback people didn’t want to hear”. Now, the Manchester Central MP has the power and profile to push Keir Starmer towards her vision of “bold policies, rooted in progressive Labour values”.

What did the commentators say?

Powell has “long been seen as more of a challenger to the current status quo” than her rival for the deputy leadership, Bridget Phillipson, said The Independent’s political correspondent Millie Cooke.

The contest was hardly a ringing endorsement of either candidate, with turnout at just over 16%. But Powell’s victory is being seen as “a call from the Labour membership for a new direction amid growing unhappiness” with Keir Starmer’s government.

“Openly critical” of the government’s “unforced errors” on welfare reform and the winter fuel payment, Powell has also called for an end to the two-child benefit cap and taken issue with the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance on trans issues. These clear points of policy contention “mean she is likely, at least at first, to be a thorn in Sir Keir’s side.”

Her campaign was “shrewdly calibrated”, said The Observer’s associate editor Andrew Rawnsley. “Rather than throw bricks and bottles at everything the government has done”, she has made the case that Starmer “needs a ‘course correction’ and that too much ‘group-think’ at the top has led to electorally disastrous decisions”.

While the prime minister clearly favoured Phillipson for the role, he quickly claimed to be “delighted” to work with Powell. And there may be room to turn potential “peril” into “opportunity”. Powell could be deployed as a “punchy advocate of the party’s values and achievements and a facilitator of constructively critical conversation about where it is going wrong”. She has said she wants to “speak truth to power” but “her chances of being heard greatly depend on whether power is willing to listen”.

What next?

Powell is expected to remain on the backbenches, from where she will adopt a “submarine approach” to interventions around government policy, “rather than offering a running commentary”, said Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby. Choosing her battles carefully will make her “harder to ignore”. But she could, in time, “become a lightning rod for discontent should the party’s fortunes remain as parlous as they are now”.

Next May’s elections for the Welsh Senedd are already being seen as a moment of maximum danger for Starmer, and the point when Powell’s influence could really matter.

If Labour loses its century-long dominance in Wales, then Starmer, “already a beleaguered figure, will undoubtedly face some calls to stand down”, said Morgan Jones in The Guardian. “It’s hard to picture Powell as the smiler with the knife – but equally difficult to imagine her being hugely energetic in any endeavours to keep Starmer in No. 10.”

In Washington DC last week, Rachel Reeves “started laying the groundwork for a painful Budget”, said Hugo Gye in The i Paper.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, the Chancellor “adopted a strategy of doom and gloom”, confirming that both tax rises and spending cuts are on the table for 26 November, to help reverse an estimated £22 billion black hole in the public finances. Reeves blamed a likely growth downgrade by the Office for Budget Responsibility on Brexit, and warned that “those with the broadest shoulders should pay their fair share”.

‘Sitting on their assets’

Having already gone after non-doms and private schools, Reeves clearly believes the wealthy can be squeezed a bit more before the pips squeak, said Fraser Nelson in The Times. Problem is, we currently have a tax system “where the top 100 super-taxpayers contribute almost as much as the North Sea oil industry; where the top 0.1% pay more income tax than the entire bottom 50%”. The wealthy are already contributing their fair share – “and the fair shares of many others”.

Actually, in some ways the well-off are criminally “untaxed”, said Vicky Spratt in The i Paper. The UK’s vast property wealth – which has increased by almost £3 trillion in a decade – is hardly touched by the taxman. Homeowners who rode the historic house-price inflation wave through the 2010s have become “incredibly rich”. Reforming property taxes is the obvious answer. What’s wrong with asking them to contribute a small amount of the wealth they attained simply “by sitting on their assets”, when those on lower incomes are struggling to choose whether to “heat their homes, eat or pay rent”?

‘Electoral suicide’

A property tax is one option; Reeves is also reportedly looking at targeting pensions and cash Isas. But even if the Chancellor does choose to soak the better off, it still won’t be enough, said Andrew O’Brien on UnHerd. The Treasury now “needs huge amounts of cash”: the NHS alone has a £37 billion capital shortfall; we need another £17 billion just to fill potholes. It would be quicker and fairer to “stick this all on income tax”, where an extra 4p would raise around £30 billion a year. Unfortunately for Reeves, that would break a manifesto pledge, so it would be “electoral suicide”.

All options are painful, said Chris Blackhurst in The Independent, but the worst situation is the one we have now: a Treasury with a “tin ear” that feeds us a “drip, drip” of threats about November’s Statement – while also claiming to be kickstarting economic growth. In reality, businesses are putting decisions on hold, and the wealthy are eyeing the exits; “Britain is at a standstill”. All of this, and “the Budget is still over a month away”.

Plaid Cymru’s triumph in the Caerphilly Senedd by-election is a “reset for Welsh politics”, said the party’s leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth.

The Welsh nationalists got 47% of the vote in a record turnout of 50%. Reform UK came second on 36% and Labour a distant third with 11%. Here are five things we learned from a historic night in south Wales.

UK politics is evolving 

The result was terrible for the “two big beasts of Westminster politics”, said political editor Chris Mason on the BBC. Labour was “humbled, pummelled, crushed”, while the Tories got just 2%. “Yes, you read that right,” – they “managed just 13% of the vote between them”.

So the “key lesson” from Caerphilly for “every political leader” is that UK politics is “moving at speed, with voter loyalties shifting and atomising in unprecedented ways”, said The Guardian. “Those who cannot adapt will be crushed.”

Bad headlines ‘hampered’ Reform  

Reform UK “threw everything at the campaign”, said Sky News. Nigel Farage “visited three times” and his party was expected to win, but when the result was declared at 2.10am, the party leader was “nowhere to be seen”.

The outcome “represents a clear disappointment for Reform”, said The Guardian, and it’s “possible the party’s chances were hampered” by reports that its former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, had admitted to taking bribes to make pro-Russia comments in the European Parliament.

In-fighting harmed Labour

Labour “had a horror of a start to this campaign”, said Wales Online. Its council leader “quit”, explaining that he “couldn’t support” either Keir Starmer or the "Johnny-come-lately" by-election candidate, Richard Tunnicliffe.

The Caerphilly “drubbing” could reinforce the “ongoing narrative” that Labour is going to do badly in the full Senedd elections next May. Canvassers “might now think twice” about "whether it is worth their effort” to go door-knocking over the winter.

Reform’s regional obstacles 

Reform coming second with 36% of the vote is a “solid performance for an upstart”, said Mason, but “insurgencies remain insurgent by winning – and they were easily beaten”. It’s “clearly not easy for them to be the first choice ‘none of the above’” alternative to Labour and the Tories when there’s “another party also claiming that mantle”.

So this could continue to be "a challenge for them in Wales, as it is in Scotland with the SNP, in a way that it isn’t in England”.

Labour faces threat from left

Much has been made of the threat to Labour from the right, but “the road to a Labour recovery does not simply lie in winning back voters from Reform”, said polling expert John Curtice in The Times. “The party is losing ground to its left as well as its right.” In Caerphilly it was Plaid who “were able to do most of the damage”.

Welsh Labour is clear where the blame lies for its poor performance. It “remains supportive of and loyal to first minister Eluned Morgan”, said Tom Harris in The Telegraph, but there is “simmering resentment towards Keir Starmer” for the “party’s unpopularity”.

“It has all the makings of a gripping spy novel,” said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. Two young men – one a parliamentary researcher, the other a teacher – are accused of passing secrets to China; but amid “swirling political intrigue” the case mysteriously collapses weeks before going to trial.

The government has been forced to deny that it intervened in the case to appease China, after the Crown Prosecution Service accused it of failing to provide the necessary evidence to prosecute both Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry. The two men had been charged under the Official Secrets Act, accused of passing parliamentary information to Beijing between 2021 and 2023. The current government and the last one have blamed each other for failing to officially designate China a threat to national security – without which, it is argued, the case would have been thrown out.

Yesterday, No. 10 released three witness statements from Keir Starmer’s deputy national security adviser outlining the UK’s handling of espionage allegations that led to the case collapsing. These clearly state that China has been carrying out “large scale espionage” against the UK, but stressed the need for a “positive economic relationship” with Beijing.

‘Who knew what?’

“Key questions remain,” said The Telegraph, including “why did Starmer do nothing to prevent the case collapsing?” and “did the Chinese government make any representations to the UK about this case?”

Another “crucial question”, said Tom Peck in his political sketch for The Times, is “who knew China had become a threat and by when?” That matter “took over Prime Minister’s Questions” yesterday despite MPs admitting privately that they “don’t actually understand” the issue.

‘More confidence needed’

“You don’t need to be George Smiley to know that Beijing is doing everything it can to compromise our security,” said Michael Gove in the Daily Mail. Its spies “bribe, bully, honeytrap and eavesdrop” in order to acquire state secrets and intellectual property.

As well as a profound threat, China is also a crucial partner, said Josh Glancy in The Sunday Times. So Labour’s balanced policy makes sense: engage, but “proceed with extreme caution”. What seems to be lacking is “confidence” in our values; there’s “an undue fear of ruffling China’s feathers”. Look at Germany. Its trading relationship with China is three times larger than ours, and yet last month a German national was imprisoned for spying for Beijing, without any trade bust-ups. Engagement is well and good, but with a nation as ruthless as China, “it works best in tandem with strength”.

“The impact of Brexit is severe and long lasting,” said Chancellor Rachel Reeves yesterday. The economic fallout from Britain’s decision to leave the EU is, she indicated, one of the main reasons that tax rises and spending cuts are on the table for next month’s Budget.

This is a clear shift in strategy from a government that has long tiptoed round Brexit, for fear of losing its Red Wall supporters. Putting the issue front and centre of its economic analysis, and using it to attack Nigel Farage and Reform, has been welcomed by many in the Labour Party, including cabinet ministers. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “I’m glad Brexit is a problem whose name we now dare speak”.

What did the commentators say?

“Economically, Brexit has not been good for us,” Jonathan Brash, MP for Leave-voting Hartlepool told Kitty Donaldson in The i Paper. We should “look at the facts”. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that Brexit has reduced “long-term productivity” in the UK economy by 4%.

As Reeves talks of “undoing some of that damage”, the marked shift in messaging from fellow government figures is “part of a larger Labour strategy to take on Reform” over Farage’s role in Brexit, said The Spectator’s Steerpike column. Keir Starmer wants to argue that “Farage used ‘easy sloganeering’” during the referendum campaign but “didn’t have a plan” for afterwards. With this “attack line”, he can say Reform offers “quick fixes rather than thought-through policy proposals” and, he hopes, “persuade voters to come back to the reds”.

“Farage is as guilty as fellow Leaver Boris Johnson,” said The Mirror’s associate editor Kevin Maguire. He and Reform “these days rarely talk about Brexit” because he “mis-sold” it “as El Dorado”, and “no Brexit champion, particularly Farage, is worthy of high office after proving so conclusively wrong on such a seismic issue”.

Blaming Farage is “effectively attacking the largest democratic decision ever made by the British electorate”, said former Tory MP and Reform supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg in The Telegraph. “Too scared to accuse the voters themselves of getting it wrong, Labour attacks one of Brexit’s main protagonists, implying that he gulled foolish voters into doing something that was not in their interest.”

Pointing the finger at Farage “also risks re-energising the two-fingers to Westminster attitude that swung the Leave vote in 2016”, said The i Paper’s Donaldson. Reform will say that Farage may have campaigned for Brexit “but it was the Tories who implemented it” and it’s now Labour seeking to undermine it. “I don’t think voters in places like mine see Brexit as a mistake at all; they see it as unfinished business,” Reform’s deputy leader of Durham County Council Darren Grimes told Donaldson.

What next?

“Brexit was only ever going to be a blank canvas,” said Ross Clark in The Sun. “Of itself, it promised neither economic success or failure” but simply gave Britain the chance to “make its own economic policies and negotiate its own trade deals”.

But the Brexit benefits are hard to see, and increased export costs and new EU border checks for travellers mean that even those without an “emotional connection” to the European project “experience a sense of irritation at barriers to their pleasures or their profits having been erected against their will”, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times.

The latest YouGov poll on Brexit shows that just 31% of the public now believe it was the right decision to leave the EU.

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.

Migrants will have to prove they are contributing to British society to earn the right to remain in the UK, the new home secretary has told the Labour conference.

Shabana Mahmood wants to draw a “clear dividing line” between the government and Reform UK, said the BBC, as she takes the fight to Nigel Farage’s party on immigration.

What did the commentators say?

In her new role, Mahmood has “been placed in the centre of the storm”, said Jonathan Rutherford in The New Statesman. If she can “stop the boats, restore trust in policing and reduce levels of immigration”, Labour “has a fighting chance” of winning the next election. She’s “perhaps the most astute and able politician of her generation”, with a strong understanding of this “new era”, in which “culture and identity are as much sources of intense emotional and political conflict as the failing economy”.

Her move to the Home Office feels like Labour’s “last chance to stave off" Farage, said John Rentoul in The Independent. Her “record suggests that she would not be squeamish about trying policies” on immigration "that may have once seemed unthinkable”.

“As things stand”, said Fraser Nelson in The Times, Labour will “lose the next general election" to Reform, but Mahmood can “puncture Reform’s main selling point: that only an insurgent party will say what ‘ordinary people’ are thinking”. Keir Starmer is “surrounded by too many bad angels whispering bad advice” but, with Mahmood, he “has someone on the other shoulder, advocating the kind of policies that appeal beyond the confines of Labour’s tribal politics”.

Her “task is really to save Starmer’s skin”, said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper. This “raises the question” of whether she might one day decide “that her own future might lie" in being Labour leader, rather than “just acting as its emergency callout service when things fall apart”.

Not so fast. It’s “extremely unlikely” that Mahmood’s immigration measures will be enough to “restore Labour’s fortunes”, said Peter Franklin on Unherd. Shutting the migrant hotels will only boost public opinion if the plan for replacement “purpose-built accommodation” works. Finding a solution to the issues with the European Convention on Human Rights is “another uphill struggle” and the one-in, one-out deal with France “won’t satisfy the none-in, all-out mood of the Reform-voting electorate”.

The “rupture" between Labour and its “traditional voter base” is “fundamental” – even Mahmood’s own seat of Birmingham Ladywood is “under threat”. Against this backdrop, “half-measures and token gestures aren’t enough”.

What next?

Mahmood's proposals on tightening the criteria for indefinite leave to remain – which include, alongside evidence of giving back to society, having a high standard of English, not being on benefits and not having a criminal record – will go out for consultation later this year.

She's voiced her vision of "an open, tolerant, generous country" where "integration can be shown to work", said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. It remains to be seen, said Sky News, whether that vision wobbles as “the first of the so-called ‘Boriswave’” of immigrants qualify to apply for indefinite leave to remain next year.

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.

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.