Last weekend (9-10 August), the Metropolitan Police arrested more than 500 people on Parliament Square for displaying signs supportive of Palestine Action, a group the government has recently categorised as a proscribed terror organisation. One of the things that has led coverage of these mass arrests is the average age of those involved: of the 519 people who provided the police with a date of birth, just under half were over 60, with 15 octogenarians detained. On my Instagram feed, among the blur of holiday pictures, a video of a woman in her sixties or seventies being carried across the grass plays again and again. “That could be your grandma,” an offscreen voice tells the police who are carrying her. The ...

A large majority of the British public are concerned about the potential for political violence according to new polling conducted by Looking for Growth and Merlin Strategy. A survey of 2000 adults between 25 and 27 July found that 7 in 10 (70 per cent) are concerned about the potential for political violence. A further 1 in 5 (21 per cent) say that political violence in the UK is acceptable in some conditions. A similar number (18 per cent) say they would consider participating in violent protests as the state of Britain declines. Broken down by party affilation, the survey found that 1 in 3 (32 per cent) of Reform UK voters say political violence is acceptable in some conditions. The ...

Jeremy Corbyn knows what he’s doing. Writing for the Daily Telegraph (an unusual slot for the left-wing independent MP for Islington North), Corbyn declared war on his former comrade Angela Rayner over her decision to allow councils to sell off allotments to raise money. Corbyn disagrees: he thinks these precious plots of land should be protected at all costs. Rayner’s new policy is a “nail in the coffin” of community allotments, Corbyn writes, speaking out to the many, green-fingered readers of the Telegraph’s pages. “Once lost, they never return,” Corbyn warns. There is a personal angle to Corbyn’s rage. He is devoted to his allotment in north London and has been tending to it for the past 22 years. (“I like a good marrow,” he ...

In a video shared widely on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook in April, the shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick referred to data on sexual offences, which he claimed show “Afghans and Eritreans are more than 20 times more likely to be convicted of sexual offences than British citizens” and overall, “foreign nationals were 71 per cent more likely than Britons to be convicted for sex crimes”. These stats have been repeated in the Telegraph, and by the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and one of the party’s MPs Sarah Pochin. The suggestion is clear: drawing a link between migration and crime. Adding to the picture is Jenrick’s latest claim that in London, “40 per cent last year of all of the sexual crimes ...

Not predicted, but perhaps predictable. Kate Forbes, a young woman whose politics are unusually values-based, is quitting Holyrood at the tender age of 35. Forbes, by some margin the outstanding SNP talent of her generation, is walking away from the job of deputy first minister and the prospect of succeeding John Swinney in the top post within the next few years. That she is doing so in order to spend more time with her family, particularly her three-year-old daughter Naomi, is entirely in keeping with how she lives her life. Of all the politicians I have known, she is the most fiercely driven by service and faith. Her authenticity, her refusal to hear the cock crow, has cost her at times. ...

On Monday evening (4 August), the pro-Palestine movement unleashed a “siege on Labour”. Located on a side street in south London, its party headquarters is an unassuming, dusty-brown office block. But, surrounded by a mass of keffiyehs, flags and badges organised by the Palestinian Youth Movement, the area became a cacophony of noise – and confrontation. The protesters came bearing two key messages: that Labour is complicit in the destruction wrought on Gaza, and that David Lammy must resign as Foreign Secretary. There was a vengeful mood. Several carried a banner reading, “Labour supports genocide,” decorated with fresh, blood-red handprints. With the parliamentary summer recess in full flow, there was barely anyone affiliated with the party to take notice of the ...

I’ve always been a bit puzzled by the 1956 Suez Crisis. The idea of Britain, France and Israel plotting together but being defeated by the honest, righteous Americans does feel, nearly a lifetime later, a little strange. But the most baffling thing about the Suez Crisis is the idea that it was a crisis. It’s always described as this a great national humiliation which ruined a prime minister, the sort of watershed to inspire national soul-searching, state-of-the-nation plays and a whole library of books. And yet, compared to the sort of thing which literally every other European country had to deal with at some point in the 20th century, it’s nothing. Britain was not invaded or occupied; Britain did not see ...

Britain isn’t working – for different reasons, voters across the political spectrum affirm this view. You don’t need to subscribe to the more dystopian accounts of the country’s state to recognise its validity. Back in January 2008, BBC News ran an article charting how the average British person would soon be better off than their US counterpart for the first time since the 19th century. Today, UK GDP per capita at $54,950 is more than a third lower than the US’s ($89,678). Here is one illustration of why, ever since the financial crisis, Britain has felt like a poorer country than it expected to be. A No 10 aide speaks of how “we don’t have the country of the 1990s” and of a “profound ...