On Sunday, the first day of Labour Party conference, an angry crowd gathered outside the ACC Liverpool venue. They had streamed across the bridges after a day-long march around the city centre bearing Union flags, St George’s crosses, the occasional Welsh dragon and a multitude of grievances. Their printed signs read “No to Digital ID” and “With our farmers”.  On the green opposite, perched on folding camping chairs and sheltered under the boughs of willow trees, was a group of primarily pensioners, who had come equipped with marker pens and sheets of paper on which they scribbled: “I support Palestine Action.” “Stick your Palestine up your arse,” the flag-wavers called. This is Starmer’s welcome to Liverpool. On one hand, furious right-wingers: draped in flags ...

Somewhere in Westminster, there’s a round red plastic box mounted on a wall. Its single pane of glass is embossed with the words “CENTRISTS! BREAK IN CASE OF EMERGENCY!” Inside is an potent idea. And yesterday – sooner than expected, it must be said – Sir Keir Rodney Starmer picked up the hammer.  So we learn today the detail of a digital ID scheme, as trailed in the British media. It is a policy with a long history that goes back to Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair and it runs from him to today’s Downing Street, like the willingness to actively participate in illegal wars. The detail is this: mandatory digital ID if you want to work in the UK, ...

The Prime Minister delivered a two-in-one speech this morning (26 September) at the Global Progressive Action Summit in London. In part one he defended what he called “a multi-ethnic modern nation” under siege from a “politics of predatory grievance”. In part two, he announced a mandatory digital ID policy to tackle illegal migration and fired the starting gun on the biggest civil liberties debate in Britain since the Covid-19 lockdowns. First to part one. It marks his most explicit statement of his centre-left beliefs after months in which the Government fought Reform on the basis of practicality rather than principle (much to the annoyance of Labour MPs). In a week in which President Trump claimed that Mayor Sadiq Khan was trying to introduce ...

Remember the 2019 general election, when Boris Johnson – briefly – redrew the electoral map? The slogan was to “Get Brexit Done”, tempting voters in historically Labour seats to take a punt on the Conservatives. But there was a second promise, too: to “level up up every part of the country” and to “unite and level up, spreading opportunity across the whole United Kingdom”. That levelling-up promise has turned into the most significant betrayal in modern political history. It wasn’t long until voters – expecting investment they could see with their own eyes, wherever they lived – were fed more of the same. A Treasury-flavoured gruel of cancelled rail projects, refusal to take the pressure of social care off councils, and ...

The Labour Party has had fraught conference build-ups before. In 2006, after an internal revolt, Tony Blair was forced to announce that he would stand down as prime minister within 12 months. In 2019, Jeremy Corbyn’s team sought to abolish the post of deputy leader before hastily retreating. But this year will be remembered more than most. Andy Burnham, Labour’s king over the water, has openly declared that MPs are pressing him to challenge Keir Starmer. Then yesterday afternoon Steph Driver, the Prime Minister’s director of communications, announced her resignation, a move that enhances the sense of ravens leaving the tower. “Steph is smart, decisive, respected and liked. The government’s loss,” says one aide of Driver, who had been a near-constant ...

Without most of the country ever having used or heard the word, Reform UK are preparing to reverse the “Boriswave”. On Monday morning (22 September), Nigel Farage announced plans to abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), replacing it with visas that require migrants to reapply every five years. This would affect hundreds of thousands of migrants already living in the UK. Reform presents the policy as a response to mass migration – specifically the surge of migration that occurred under the governments of Boris Johnson – and its perceived impacts on welfare spending and social integration. These are issues that mainstream parties have gradually acknowledged. But while the policy claims to address the wrongs of migration, it risks undermining human ...

If you were once a Conservative, you may soon be hearing from Ed Davey. The Liberal Democrat leader plans to write to more than two million former Tories imploring them to join his party. “The Conservatives under Kemi Badenoch are becoming more extreme and out of touch, chasing Nigel Farage instead of focusing on the issues that really matter to people,” he will say in a version seen by the New Statesman, adding that “Reform UK and the Conservatives want to turn our country into Donald Trump’s America”. Davey, as he told me last week, is "obsessed" with “politically homeless” Tories who he believes the Lib Dems are best-placed to win over. Offended principally by the incompetence of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – ...

Like all the best slang, “geezer” is wonderfully elastic. It could mean, simply, a man, or a man who fulfils some or all of the following traits: old, or at least not young; Cockney, or an Essex resident with Cockney blood; eccentric, slick, a wheeler-dealer, on the make; working class, or at least in possession of the relevant signifiers; white. Geezers walk many paths. “This is the day in the life of a geezer,” raps Mike Skinner on “Has It Come to This”, the lead single from The Streets’ debut album Original Pirate Material. The day involves weed, videogames and “soundsystem bangers”; his boys have “gold teeth, Valentinos, and dreads”, so they’re clearly not uniformly pale. A viral TikTok meme that exploded ...