The Mirror Crack'd

And the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2025 is (drum roll)... not Donald Trump. Like Monty Python's famously misheard beatitude, something has clearly been lost in translation when Trump imagines he has been snubbed by the Nobel committee. While nursing his wounded pride, he wages war on his own people. His aggressive immigration enforcement roadshow (currently visting Chicago) coincides with news that New York Attorney General, Letitia James, is being criminally indicted by a grand jury. Having led a civil fraud investigation against Trump in 2023 she now finds herself subject to bank fraud charges (the phrase 'trumped-up' seems appropriate in this context).  The message is clear: Trump is embarking on a personal vendetta, a campaign of reprisals against anyone he believes had the temerity to seek to expose his own wrongdoing. This is hardly behaviour becoming of a would-be international peacemaker, and the fact that he wants recognition so desperately is a good reason f...

Maybe that should be which crisis because, let's face it, there are currently plenty of crises to choose from. Today, though, having been invited to a Community Conversation by my local Met Engage team as part of its New Met for London consultation, now seems like an appropriate moment to focus on the crisis in policing as the service struggles to grapple with multiple complex institutional and operational issues simultaneously. At the moment it appears to be a challenge it is failing to meet and, while that continues to be the case, it risks losing both public trust and political support. To be frank, politicians (specifically government ministers), are a large part of the problem; heaping ever more rushed, knee-jerk, ill-considered legislation on a service barely able to cope with existing demands after a decade-and-a-half of manpower and funding cuts made by, oh, politicians!. An already under-resourced service is now being asked to respond to a range of new social phenomena wh...

Why has Sir Keir Starmer decided that now is the right time to revive Tony Blair's ill-fated ID scheme? Could it, I wonder, have anything to do with the rise and rise of Nigel Farage's Reform UK party? More than a little, I suspect. Blair managed to get the controversial idea onto the statute book in 2006 but Gordon Brown, who succeeded him as PM the following year, never got round to implementing the Identity Card Act. One assumes he had little enthusiasm for it but it has re-emerged under Starmer as the 'BritCard' - not, despite its name, as a bit of tangible plastic to nestle alongside your bank cards and bus pass, but digitally. Yes, this time it will be on your smartphone, although what happens if, like me, you don't possess one, is unclear. The government is working on it - why am I not reassured? Then again, it will apparently only be compulsory for those seeking work in the UK so, as a pensioner, I assume that precludes me. We are told we'll never be ask...

From royal politesse to realpolitik today, and what a difference a day makes. Yesterday at Windsor Castle was all about formality, hospitality and glad-handing but today, at the Prime Minister's official country residence, Chequers, the real work - that is the grubby business of, well, business - gets underway. But there are also huge geopolitical challenges to discuss, on not all of which the UK and US see eye-to-eye. The King in his banquet address subtly touched on some of these, when he spoke of tyranny once again threatening Europe (code for Vladimir Putin) and namechecked Ukraine. He also alluded to trade and the environment. Big thumbs up from Trump on the first of these (metaphorically speaking - surely even he wouldn't be that vulgar); on the second, hmm, a little awkward. Interestingly, Melania, who had remained in Windsor with the Queen and Princess Catherine while the men talked turkey in Chequers, has expressed her own views on the healing power of nature, especial...

'The Donald' arrived in London for his second bite of the State Visit cherry last night as the clouds loured and rain bespattered the camera lenses. As Air Force One landed on the tarmac at Stansted Airport, actually in Essex - and, let's face it, the visit could only get better from there on - the assembled media jostled for a glimpse of the arriving guests. Unfortunately for the BBC's coverage, their North America political correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue, who is blind and not a small man, blocked the camera as Trump, Melania and entourage were bundled into a US army helicopter (which, we were helpfully informed, was named Marine Two) and whisked away to Central London, leaving the presidential VC-25 standing on the runway. Where are Palestine Action when you need them? I couldn't help wondering. All in all a bit of a waste of effort for the BBC's OB unit. Like most of us finding ourselves at Stansted Airport, I bet they wondered why they'd bothered. Th...

There was a time when Israel was admired in the world - with the exception of the Arab world, where it was feared - but now, how are the mighty fallen. It is still feared among Arab nations, no longer so much for its military might as for its propensity to act as a loose cannon, mounting precision targeted strikes and assassination hits on its neighbours, without warning or any apparent regard to collateral damage. Its recent strike against a group of Hamas leaders in Qatar, a neutral country attempting to use its good offices to broker a ceasefire deal, was a particularly egregious example. Benjamin Netanyahu clearly doesn't care what the world, including Donald Trump, thinks of his actions. For him it is a matter of staying out of jail. But while, from his perspective, that may be understandable, what is much less so is why that sizeable portion of the Israeli population not actively supporting him, doesn't seem willing or able to stop him. Meanwhile, Netanyahu sows the wind,...