You would be forgiven for thinking that Keir Starmer had restored the “special relationship” of legend. He’d just finished his remarks in the White House’s grand East Room, when Donald Trump turned to him and praised his “beautiful accent”. It was already going well and then Trump made warm noises about a UK-US trade deal – Boris Johnson’s great chimera. The threat of tariffs was talked down, and Trump blessed Starmer’s return of the Chagos Islands. He had only belittled the Prime Minister once by saying Starmer earned his keep when negotiating hard over lunch. An invitation from King Charles for an unprecedented second state visit had left Trump cooing. He even genuinely seemed to like the Labour leader. The British ...

To govern is to choose. Keir Starmer’s decision to raise defence spending and cut foreign aid was a politically defining one. It exemplified No 10’s willingness to demolish liberal-left shibboleths – on immigration and much else – as it adapts to a new era. Though Starmer announced the reduction in development spending from 0.5 per cent of GDP to 0.3 per cent with regret, this Downing Street knows that few voters will mourn it (64 per cent believe the UK spends too much on aid). Starmer’s policy reflects contemporary factors: the darkening geopolitical landscape and Donald Trump’s second victory. But it has echoes in Labour history. Government aides recall Clement Attlee’s rearmament for the Korean War which prompted the introduction of ...

What does it mean to be English? Konstantin Kisin knows. He showed his working in a recent interview with the former editor of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson, on Kisin’s Triggernometry podcast. In a viral 20-second clip discussing the identity of Rishi Sunak, Nelson said: “He is absolutely English – he was born and bred here.” Kisin demurred: “He’s a brown Hindu; how is he English?” His comments have ignited a furore from all quarters. The journalist Sangita Myska said that Kisin’s comments were “either ignorance or thinly veiled racism”. Dan Hodges of the Mail on Sunday insisted that “Rishi Sunak is English... that’s where the debate begins and ends”. The pollster James Johnson found it “deeply worrying”. David Aaronovitch challenged Kisin: ...

My comedy moment of the week came courtesy of Scottish Labour. In a post on X, the party declared that it would “protect” all the freebies currently offered by the SNP government. Bus passes, university tuition, NHS prescriptions and the baby box given to new parents will all survive – more, these are “the successes of devolution”. Underneath this pledge was the legend: “a new direction for Scotland”. Quite what is new about this direction, I find hard to put my finger on. It is, surely – what am I missing? – the same tired old path. A total cost amounting to billions every year in a punishing fiscal climate; a universalist approach to public provision that is in effect a ...

Rumours of Blue Labour’s death have proved greatly exaggerated. Having been out in the political cold for the past decade, on 1 February it was reported that the label was being revived as a parliamentary caucus by four Labour MPs – Dan Carden, Jonathan Hinder, Jonathan Brash and David Smith. And on Monday (10 February), the political theorist, Labour peer and architect of Blue Labour, Maurice Glasman, told the New Statesman that Attorney General Richard Hermer KC was “the absolute archetype of an arrogant, progressive fool”, who needed to be removed from his position. His comments have dominated coverage of the party over the past few days. The fate of Hermer, a human rights lawyer and close friend of the ...

Next week, a centre-left leader will face electoral oblivion despite delivering an agenda of housebuilding, green economic transition and growth. His social democratic party has been ravaged by the populist hard right in its former industrial heartlands and is losing ground to the left in urban areas. Immigration dominates the political discourse and the governing party is now polling in third place with less than 20 per cent of the vote.  Although direct parallels between the imminent German election and the challenge for our relatively new Labour government should be treated with care, the result will provoke reflection. And so it should. We recently spent time with Social Democratic Party (SPD) colleagues and found a movement facing existential questions, bereft of ...

Kemi Badenoch is worried about me. More generally, she’s worried about Gen Z. She thinks we’re consumed by national self-loathing, that we see racism on every street corner, and that we’re filled with a “nihilistic rage”, whispered into our ears by “loony-left voices”, including from within our government. She wants to help me. In fact she wants to treat me like an immigrant to this country, teach me to feel valued again, to feel pride again, to “integrate” me back into the society that I’ve become so alienated from. She was writing in this morning’s Times (11 February) in response to a series of sweaty headlines from our newspaper of record, which has chosen this week to deploy a “landmark” generational ...

In Margaret Thatcher’s final TV interview with Brian Walden – newly dramatised by Channel 4 – she remarks at one point: “Let us get down to the success we have had, the way in which people now copy ‘Thatcherism’, as they call it, the world over.” Keir Starmer, if we take him at his word, has no ambition to repeat this boast. “There is no such thing as Starmerism, and there never will be!” he declares in Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund’s illuminating new book Get In. Starmer duly used his first speech as Prime Minister to vow to lead a government “unburdened by doctrine”. Yet governing without an overarching philosophy, as Starmer has found, is hard. Civil servants and ministers lack ...