The Mirror Crack'd

Andy Burnham has spent the summer making a string of policy announcements - this week he will find out how it's gone down. With the summer recess and August Bank Holiday out of the way, schools and Parliament return for the autumn today and, rather like teachers having an inset day, so MPs will take the day to settle in before the first Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) kicks business off in earnest tomorrow. Burnham may choose to make a statement to the House today but the PMQs set-piece at the despatch box tomorrow will be his first major performance in the Chamber of the House of Commons since becoming Prime Minister on 20th July. To describe it as eagerly-awaited would be an understatement and it will be closely scrutinised and analysed. Therefore, it is essential that Burnham gets the tone right since it will define the rest of his premiership. No pressure there, then. His many pledges over the summer, variously described as a flurry, slew or spate, will certainly provide ...

The UK Government Resilence Action Plan (RAP) 2026 was published on 14th July so why are we only hearing about it now? I consider myself fairly switched-on and tuned-in but I don't recall hearing about this before and yet, today, the press and media are full of advice on stocking-up at least 72 hours'-worth of basic essentials such as bottled water, tinned food, a first-ai d kit, candles and battery powered torches and radios in case of a national emergency. Could it be that the month's delay has been due to the changeover of Prime Ministers? I think the game is given away by the strap-line on the Cabinet Office report to be found on the UK.Gov website: "This was published under the 2024 to 2026 Starmer Labour government". So during the past month, while parliament has been in recess and Labour has been rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, we, the British people, have been kept in the dark, effectively left to fend for ourselves as potentially existential in...

After a long, hot summer of urban noise and disturbance I recently sought refuge in the country - it didn't go exactly according to plan... After no-mow May (and - coincidentally, surely? - the local elections) the grass on my East London estate has not been cut by the council. As a consequence, long, tinder-dry grass is now at the mercy of any disposable barbecue (believe me, it happens even on inner-city estates) or thoughtlessly discarded cigarette butt so I expect a conflagration at any moment - just as well we currently have fire wardens - but that's another story, for another time... We have also been plagued recently by late-night/early-morning fireworks exploding noisily and shattering the already fragile nighttime 'calm'. Suffice to say, between heatwaves and antisocial behaviour we have had little sleep these past few months..  So, while news that Prime Minister Burnham (appropriately so-named in this context) has temporarily banned the use of disposable barbe...

Writing my previous piece, Hard truths, shocked me even as I was writing it. I don't know what my small but loyal cohort of readers will have made of it - and, as I haven't enabled comments, I may never find out - but, while thinking the previously unthinkable was an uncomfortable experience, publishing my conclusions was agonising. If my writing goes down to posterity at all (which I very much doubt) I wouldn't want it to be as the ravings of a crypto-fascist. Nevertheless, I stand by what I wrote and was interested, therefore, to read a piece in Engelsberg Ideas by Jack Dickens entitled Europe's Lost Reason of State. This came as a revelation to me and I admit I was initially somewhat alarmed to learn that the concept derives from the writings of Machiavelli. (If one is judged by the company one keeps, what does quoting the godfather of the dark arts of Renaissance political philosophy say about one's moral compass?) To quote Dickens: "Reason of State was for...

On 22 June the EU's three main institutions reached a landmark decision. After twenty years of fierce debate around the handling of irregular migration the European Commission, the European Council and European Parliament reached a political consensus on this highly contentious issue. Driven in part - possibly in large part - by the growth of rightwing politics in many European countries, the change of mood - and therefore of policy - seems to be a response to decades of un- or poorly-controlled migration. Much of the anti-migrant sentiment has undoubtedly been whipped up by hate-fuelled rhetoric from commentators with a clearly xenophobic, and more particularly, Islamophobic axe to grind. However, even those more liberal and sympathetic onlookers now appear to be questioning some of their former assumptions in light of recent highly-publicised events. I count myself amongst them. The EU has given its members the green light to pursue 'return hubs' - third countries to whic...

Of the thousands of young Moroccans who entered Ceuta by sea recently, 72 drowned in the attempt. Just process that statistic for a moment. That's 72 young people who left home in high spirits one day only to be returned in body bags the next; 72 families grieving children lost in a moment of juvenile enthusiasm gone fatally wrong; 72 funerals for mourners to lament a senseless loss of a young life. The repercussions of this will be generational and could become existential for the Moroccan state if, or when, that grief turns to anger. Meanwhile, those opportunist politicians in Europe and the United States who disseminate mis- and disinformation whenever a situation like this arises make mischief with human tragedy in an attempt to stir up xenophobic hatred. Facts are never allowed to get in the way of their hate-filled messaging, or are dismissed as 'fake news'. Admittedly, independently verified facts can be hard to uncover but they are available if you bother to look fo...