There is a hypothesis that I have set out before in these columns and now might be a good time to revisit it. The hypothesis is a simple one. Labour would fight the 2024 general election saying as little as possible about Brexit and its consequences but, having secured victory, the pressure would build for a more ambitious policy of moving closer to Europe. By the time we got to the next election in 2028 or 2029, I argued, Brexit would once again be a major issue. I was reminded of this when the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, used his Mansion House speech last week to point out rather tentatively that “the changing trade relationship with the ...

Keir Starmer wants you to know that he cares about immigration. Last week he named border security – alongside economic growth – as his top priority when abroad. Yesterday he signalled that he favours Italian-style migration deals with third countries to reduce Channel crossings.  It’s tempting to view this renewed activity as a response to the Democrats’ electoral cataclysm. Illegal immigration across the US southern border – which reached a record high under Joe Biden – was one of the issues that doomed Kamala Harris.  But put this point to Labour figures and they note – with some justification – that they moved into this political space long ago. Indeed, Starmer’s former director of strategy Deborah Mattinson has complained that the Democrats ...

The notion that Britain, being a former European colonial power, owes reparations to those it formerly enslaved and colonised has now reached the top of government. At the recent Commonwealth summit in Samoa, it was agreed that the “time has come” for a conversation on reparatory justice, a joint statement the UK reluctantly also signed. It is the culmination of a campaign that dates to at least the early days of postcolonial theory. “Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn from our territories,” Frantz Fanon wrote in his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth. “The wealth of the imperialist nations is also our wealth. Europe is literally the creation of the third ...

When the Chancellor sat down after delivering her first Budget speech, she probably didn’t expect to find herself in the crosshairs of Jeremy Clarkson. Never shy of miring himself in controversy, he has suggested that, by reducing the scope of agricultural inheritance tax relief, “Reeves and her politburo” have declared “all out-war on the countryside”. The more sober and much more powerful National Farmers’ Union (NFU) is no less incensed, and is also now campaigning strongly against what it dubs the “family farm tax”. A noisy tractor-led demonstration in central London is planned for next week, and some farmers’ groups are also threatening to block ports and withhold non-perishable produce to disrupt supermarket supplies. In another failure of communication, the government ...

The upside of idolising dead people is that you can go through their things. It’s not creepy – you’re an amateur historian, reconstructing the material culture of a lost age. With some luck, the whole pursuit will gain the cachet of a primordial religious ritual. Virtually every major star from Hollywood’s Golden Age is gone, and many of them have since been transmuted into transcendent icons. The things they touch and the places they visit become sacred by proximity. This doesn’t get any clearer than at “Marilyn: The Exhibition”, a rare showing of 250 of the actress’s most intimate possessions at an incongruous venue near London Bridge Station. There has never been anything like this before in Britain; it provides the ...

What does Stephen Flynn want? The decision by the SNP’s Westminster leader to put his name forward as a candidate for Holyrood 2026 is some kind of answer.  Flynn is, according to his colleagues, and based on the evidence of his own actions, fiercely ambitious. No crime, that. The idea that he intends to take a seat in Edinburgh and sit quietly on the backbenches is not one that holds much water.  He has already performed a form of regicide, effectively taking out Ian Blackford as Westminster leader in a coup a couple of years ago. He did so against the advice of a number of his fellow MPs, which only added to his reputation for ruthlessness.    Flynn is among three of his ...

Did WrestleMania win Sadiq Khan his third London mayoral election? That’s the biggest news line from his appearance on the High Performance podcast, on which titans from the worlds of sport, entertainment, and politics share their secrets for success. And Khan puts his down, at least in part, to energising younger voters in May with the pledge to bring a blockbuster wrestling event to the UK capital. Other revelations in this hour-long chat, with hosts Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes, veer towards the chirpy platitudes of a motivational self-help guide. Their guest – who calls himself “an optimist who worries a lot” and “an Average Joe who’s mayor of the greatest city in the world” – stresses the value of hard ...

The resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday, Tuesday 12 November, was communicated to the world by a written statement posted on the Lambeth Palace website. It begins by referring to the “long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth”. The following two sentences reveal that the relatively new Archbishop, on hearing that the police had been notified, wrongly drew the conclusion “that an appropriate resolution would follow”. The statement then moves forward to refer to “the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024” for which the Archbishop says that he “must take personal and institutional responsibility”. That is the mea culpa. A reader might think that Justin Welby is not so much an actor in this ...