“Our air is not for sale”. It was these words that earned shadow transport secretary Andrew Smith rapt applause at the 1996 Labour Party conference as he inveighed against the privatisation of air traffic control.  But Britain’s air did turn out to be for sale. Only a year after entering office in 1997, Labour announced that half of National Air Traffic Services would be privatised (despite the opposition of 76 per cent of voters). The move exemplified an era in which the market was regarded as inherently superior to the state. Between 1980 and 1996, the UK accounted for 40 per cent of the total value of all assets privatised across the OECD. Such was Gordon Brown’s aversion to public ownership that he ...

When Russia invaded Ukraine almost two and a half years ago, British energy prices shot up. But beyond the conflict itself, the sudden crisis was a product of our reliance on natural gas, and our exposure to a volatile international energy market. Our continued dependence on imported fossil fuels leaves the UK vulnerable to this happening again, and the effects of 2022 been felt ever since - prices remain almost 40 per cent higher than they were in 2021. But today, we gained a greater sense of how the new Labour government will guard against such threats in the future: the ambition of making the UK energy independent through Great British Energy and its newly announced partnership with the Crown ...

Politics is a Darwinian game, and you know you’ve reached somewhere near the top when you earn the epithet “big beast”. Some of these mighty power brokers are on the prowl at the moment, with the Tory leadership contest now underway. But they’re also in short supply. The Mirror counted no fewer than 23 “Tory big beasts” who were culled at the election, while the Telegraph questioned how many of the voracious predators who once stalked the plains of Westminster will end up on Strictly, presumably as dancing bears. Do all those "big beasts" vacating the zoo that is Westminster truly earn the title? Are there really two dozen who qualify? Any definition that includes Grant Shapps must be flawed. So ...

Taylor Swift has quietly created a cultural monopoly. Reissues of her albums dominate the charts. Her concerts are major events. Now the Hachette-owned Headline Publishing Group has announced Invisible Strings, a Swift-themed poetry anthology. Contributing poets include Ilya Kaminsky, Richard Siken, and Pulitzer winner Diane Seuss. Each featured work correlates to one of 113 songs from Swift’s discography; the reader is asked to “match each poem to the song it is a response to.” It might be jarring to some that the anthology’s editor is referred to in promotional material as a “genuine Swiftie,” or that the book’s release date is in early December - optimal timing for Christmas shoppers. But the Swift sceptics should look past this and focus ...

French politics had descended into a Gallic War of the Roses. Instead of English royal dynasties, our factions are the political parties competing for control of parliament, and our pretenders to the throne are the warring leaders of the French left. But, oddly enough, one English knight of the realm has crossed the Channel to take a starring role: Sir Keir Starmer. Some backstory: On 7 July, the left came out on top in France’s parliamentary elections. The New Popular Front (NFP), a leftist alliance that ranges from anti-capitalists to social democrats, bagged 178 seats. Although they had fallen short of winning a majority, NFP chieftains were triumphant. They went on TV and declared they would form the next government. The ...

The Labour Party is warily watching the nationalist surge across Europe and America. In his most forthright comments on the topic so far, Keir Starmer told the New Statesman’s summer party that Britain “is not immune from that populism and nationalism”. Here’s his quote in full: You only have to look across the Channel at Europe and you see nationalism and populism in all its forms and all its strengths. And do not think for a minute that that could never happen here. It could and it might if we fail in our project of delivering change, and our project of being a government of service, which carries with it being a government that restores faith in the idea that politics can ...

British politics is defined by jarringly sudden transformations. The big one was evident on 5 July, when Keir Starmer gave his first speech as prime minister outside No 10 Downing Street before the final seats had even been declared. The following week saw hoards of new MPs wandering bewilderedly around the labyrinthine Palace of Westminster, while their defeated predecessors rushed to clear out their desks before their parliamentary passes expired. If you wanted a visual metaphor for the seismic change in the political weather we’ve just experienced, you could not do better than the gaggle of previously prominent “Tory rebels” loitering in the courtyard holding carboard boxes of office supplies. Rishi Sunak may have kept his seat, but the reversal of ...

Five years ago, one hot spring night in the Canaries, my partner and I stared at our phones in a hotel restaurant and awaited the result of Meaningful Vote 2. We were talking about what we were watching, and occasionally read out particularly funny tweets to each other. Nonetheless, we chose to give up a night of our holiday to watch events in Westminster, 1,800 miles away, just in case the government fell. I can’t remember at this distance what the point of Meaningful Vote 2 actually was, but I do know it’s not consequential enough to make it worth bothering to check. The government did not, on that occasion, fall. The last few years have been full of nights like that ...