Surreal: I was listening intently to every syllable of Olly Robbins’s evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee on 21 April as I walked through sunlit central London, dodging cyclists, to a growth conference, featuring Ed Miliband and other ministers. This is a war of words and credibility that is just getting started. Very brief summary at the time of writing? Starmer tells the Commons he’s incredulous he wasn’t told about the Mandelson briefing; Robbins says, in effect, that’s because he wasn’t interested and had rammed through the decision already.
It seems that a “dismissive” Prime Minister has therefore sacked a diligent servant for doing his job. This is not what anyone voted for. The overall impression is of arrogant clique politics getting its comeuppance. Talking to Labour MPs in the immediate aftermath of the Robbins evidence, I found a mood of despair. They have lost faith in their leader but see no one available to replace him soon. There is a frozen, silenced atmosphere which is more dangerous than anger. I fear we are moving closer to an upending not just of Labour, but of British social democracy.
The Prime Minister tries to relax not with a good book like Harold Macmillan, who remarked that he liked to go to bed with a Trollope, or with brandy and cigars like Harold Wilson, but by watching Arsenal and playing five-a-side football with old friends at Chequers. But once he’s cleaned up, and he’s looking in the mirror, does he genuinely think things can go on like this?
Put to rights
Over lunches and dinners, I’ve been exploring the likelihood of a Reform-Conservative coalition government after the next election. While it’s true that Tories and Reform-ites often loathe one another with a tribal passion you more often find on the far left, there’s a network of friendships that could become important. Reform’s Danny Kruger, for instance, retains strong ties with the likes of Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former adviser, and the Tory rising star Katie Lam. (Robert Jenrick, it’s safe to say, does not.) I was talking to one Conservative who is both close to Kemi Badenoch and, as it turns out, a genuine friend of Nigel Farage’s – whom they regard as being, essentially, a libertarian Thatcherite, albeit with “ethnonationalist” instincts.
Behind the public animosity there’s a group of Tories who would go over to Farage to form a future government. But here is their trouble. Over another meal – I am getting fat – a polling guru showed me the latest maps of the UK colour-coded by party allegiance. It was clear that Labour and the Liberal Democrats could both do a deal without sacrificing many safe seats. But the Tories and Reform are fighting for the same areas. My companion concluded that the likeliest outcome of the next general election will be a Lib-Lab coalition – perhaps led, he thought, by Andy Burnham.
The new dark ages
The Times columnist James Marriott (who occasionally writes for this magazine) has a cracking book coming about our decline in reading. The New Dark Ages will be reviewed elsewhere, but I was struck by its mention of the former US congressman and right-wing provocateur Newt Gingrich. A US historian whom Marriott quotes wrote that Gingrich understood “that chaos plays better in front of the cameras than order. The serious business of government, negotiating agreements and passing legislation, makes for boring stories. Good old-fashioned fights, verbal or otherwise, attract eyeballs.” Isn’t that the best analysis of what’s gone wrong for modern democracy you have read?
The generation game
It isn’t full of venomous pen portraits or unpublishable gossip, but I do keep a daily diary. In quiet moments I like to check up on previous years. Last Easter’s entry reminds me I visited Avebury and its remarkable stone circles, where New Age drummers and druids were dancing. This year, I was on top of Primrose Hill, lately the site of a murder, pondering the monument to Iolo Morganwg, the 18th-century Welsh bard who founded his gorseddau, or gathering of druids, there in 1792. Morganwg’s was another time when the country seemed in national peril. What was this Britain, intellectuals were asking themselves.
To me, it’s all a reminder of our yearning for roots and ancient origins, and our credulity for stories we want to believe are true. Today, DNA research provides an equivalent connection with ancient times. I remember being delighted to discover that “my people” – one long matrilineal line – were holed up in the Pyrenees during the Ice Age before trekking north to Ireland and, mainly, to Finland. Meaningless, in one way, and yet strangely reassuring.
[Further reading: Should Keir Starmer resign?]
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This article appears in the 22 Apr 2026 issue of the New Statesman, All alone
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