Hope is, famously, one of the most powerful words in politics. Every party lays claim to offering it. It helped get Barack Obama elected. It’s rarely far from the lips of any politician with something to sell you. So it proved on Wednesday evening, when John Swinney and Anas Sarwar took part in a live event for the Holyrood Sources podcast. The First Minister said he would put independence at the heart of his devolved election campaign, as this was where “hope” could be found for Scotland. The Labour leader talked of bringing “hopefulness” back to the nation if he wins in May. A powerful word, but sadly not much more than a word these days. There’s not much of it around ...

This week’s Westminster main character is Morgan McSweeney – a high-risk position for any political figure to be in, but particularly dangerous for an unelected adviser. Keir Starmer’s election coordinator turned chief of staff has become a target for Labour MPs’ anger at the welfare reform bill – on which the government now faces a rebellion that is veering on existential – and their general frustration at how quickly last July’s triumph has turned to ashes. The Times front page on Thursday (26 June) led with demands for “regime change”, for which we can read “McSweeney’s head on a platter”, served with a healthy side dish of humble pie. Criticisms of McSweeney include that he is arrogant, beset with tunnel vision, detached ...

Next week marks the first anniversary of Labour entering government – though you could be forgiven for forgetting. Not just because of the distracting spectre of World War Three but because this now bears little resemblance to a one-year administration. The mood is instead reminiscent of the dark days of Rishi Sunak’s government – when the prime minister struggled to impose his will on a quarrelsome party – or of late-era Tony Blair when three-figure rebellions became the norm. Despite frantic phone calls by cabinet ministers, 126 Labour MPs have signed a wrecking amendment to the welfare bill (including 71 of the new intake, once depicted as comically loyal “Starmtroopers”). Threats of deselection have proven no deterrent to MPs who already ...

A More in Common poll shared with my colleague George Eaton this week considers how a hypothetical Jeremy Corbyn-led party would perform at the polls. It suggests the “JC Party” would receive 10 per cent of the vote in an election held today, cutting into Labour by three points, and the Greens by four. Labour is four points behind Reform right now, but with the new JC Party on the scene Labour would end up seven points behind. In 2018-19 I commissioned a lot of hypothetical surveys about Brexit. I drafted scenarios and put them to the public. How would you vote if Brexit was delayed? How would you feel if Theresa May was still prime minister and delayed Brexit? How would ...

For once, money has not prevailed in American politics. The social democrat Zohran Mamdani is set to become the Democratic candidate for New York mayor after beating the former governor Andrew Cuomo by over seven points in the primary. It is the most pivotal progressive victory since Trump returned to power, one that could steer the party to the left and catalyse its populist instincts. This was a match-up between stale and new, young and old, establishment and outsider. After the current Democratic mayor Eric Adams flirted with Trump and was outed as corrupt, he gave up the nomination and is running as an independent. Cuomo, the aged insider who previously resigned as governor over alleged sexual harassment, became the frontrunner ...

“Vote against this bill and we will call an election and lose to Reform, or vote for the bill and lose the next election to Reform." That is the gambit reportedly being pushed in front of Labour MPs by the whip’s office this week; with Liz Kendall’s disability benefit slashing bill heading towards its second reading on 1 July. With the brave resignation as a whip by the former shadow disability minister, Vicky Foxcroft, the Parliamentary Labour Party might finally wake up to the implications of what it’s being asked to do. Like a gangster dangled over the edge of a bridge, coming-to as the river flows below, discovering that Kendall has doused their shoes in cement, Labour MPs have found a terrible realisation setting ...

One should not get too excited about individual opinion polls. If a poll result is surprising or otherwise remarkable, it is probably wrong. Best to wait for other samples to confirm it before drawing any conclusions.    For this reason – plus the fact that other things in the world were happening over the weekend – Saturday’s Ipsos poll, showing Reform on 34 per cent and the Conservatives on just 15 per cent, has created less excitement than it might. Caution here is sensible – it might turn out to be an outlier – but it does highlight the fact that even the less surprising, less remarkable polls – in which the Tories poll in the high teens and Reform polls in ...

On Thursday, Donald Trump said he would make a decision on direct US involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict within two weeks. In the end, it was a little over two days. On Saturday night (21 June), the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites, directly inserting America into the conflict in the Middle East. These events have ramped up the pressure on Keir Starmer. The UK and the US are close allies; Starmer’s rapport with Trump is something he is likely keen to protect (in the photo call for the signing of the US-UK trade deal, Trump said: “The UK is very well protected. You know why? Because I like them”). In a statement on Sunday morning, the Prime Minister tacitly backed the ...