The Mirror Crack'd

Fulfilling an election manifesto pledge, the Labour government has announced it will be bringing in voting for sixteen and seventeen year-olds in time for the next UK general election. Sixteen and seventeen year-olds in Scotland and Wales currently enjoy the right to vote for the Assembly and Sennedd, and in local elections, but this does not apply in Northern Ireland or England. According to the Electoral Commission, plans to lower the voting age are unlikely to be implemented in time for the next scheduled Northern Ireland Assembly election in 2027. The first time this cohort will be able to cast its vote, therefore, will be in the general election, which must be held before August 2029. This announcement has caused controversy in some quarters, which is odd considering it was a manifesto commitment by a party that went on to win a landslide majority. Those who find this a disturbing prospect are no doubt the very people arguing that sixteen and seventeen year-olds have an insufficie...

As hosepipe bans come into force across regions of England and Wales questions are being raised as to why no major new reservoirs have been built in over thirty years. I have skin in the game (forgive the Americanism) my father having worked on the construction of two in the late-fifties and early-sixties, the first in Somerset and the other in Yorkshire. Many of my childhood memories relate to being on-site with my dad, something that Health-and-Safety rules would presumably now prohibit. I have a photograph of myself in the driver's seat of a dumper truck on one site and vividly recall a vertiginous trip in a concrete hopper on a cable line over the emerging dam wall on the other, enough to have a site immediately shut down by the H&S Executive these days one imagines. With a rising population, increasing water demands and climate change creating more regular droughts, something clearly has to be done, urgently. With an estimated shortfall of 6.5 million houses in the UK, dwa...

In less than a fortnight British parliamentarians break up for their summer hols having tied up all the loose ends. Er, if only. Sure, their summer recess begins on 22 July and runs until 1 September, and MPs probably can't wait to get away. Unfortunately, though, while they're running for the hills, they're leaving behind them a mountain of problems from which they can run but can't hide. The problems will be waiting for solutions, with increased urgency, when they return to the green benches for the gruelling autumn term. Government MPs will need to brace themselves for the upcoming budget and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has just fired a broadside in the form of its Fiscal Risks and Sustainability Report . The OBR produces this assessment of the state of the nation's finances once a year and it is generally met with a determined collective effort from our political leaders to ignore it as being too problematic. This year, that might not be possible....

The Syrian Arab Republic has just unveiled its new national logo, a golden eagle surmounted by three stars. Just before Christmas ( 2024 - A year to forget, 13/12/24) I pondered the chances for a post-Assad Syria. "Is it possible" I wrote "that, between them, [President] Sharaa and [Prime Minister] Bashir will preside over a national 'truth and reconciliation' process rather than the murderous vengeance that usually follows such upheavals? After the appalling brutality of the Assad regime, and with so many simmering ethnoreligious tensions, it is hard to see how a functioning state, founded on the rule of law, could realistically emerge out of the chaos." Well, seven months on, the emergence of a new symbol for the fledgling state, embodying the aspirations of its pre-Assad past while signposting an inclusive post-Assad future, must give rise to cautious optimism. According to the Arab News report of the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) press release: "th...

One big unholy mess As the US Congress finally (and narrowly) passes Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill into law Archbishop Timothy P Broglio (no, really), president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, lamented "the great harm the bill will cause to many of the most vulnerable in society, making steeper cuts to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits, and adding more to the deficit". He might have gone on to quote Mark 10:25. You know, the one that goes "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle..." etc, etc. Palestine Faction If Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, gets her way, today might be the last chance you get to wear your Palestine Action t-shirt without being picked up by the fuzz - as it were. She wants to proscribe the movement as a terrorist organisation and, although the high court is hearing a case today brought by co-founder, Huda Ammori, seeking a temporary block on the order, she will probably get her way. Time to put on th...

The spectacle of Rachel Reeves in tears and obvious distress throughout yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions was the nadir in a torrid (half) week in British politics. To make matters worse, the fact that her senior colleague, the Prime Minister, seemed not to notice her plight, while the female Leader of the Opposition openly mocked it, made one despair of progressive policies ever emerging from this bearpit. To say it was an unedifying episode would be to grossly understate its impact; it provided a shocking insight into everything that's wrong with Westminster politics - all in real time on live TV.. It is impossible to separate the human from the professional, in politics as in any other walk of life - and why would one want to anyway when we are all human and only too fallible? - nevertheless, we seem to expect sphingine inscrutability from our politicians. So it came as something of a shock to see the holder of the second greatest of the 'Great Offices of State...

As the UK Labour government limps towards its first anniversary in power Sir Keir Starmer must be thankful that this year the date falls on a Friday. Friday is conventionally a quiet day in the House of Commons, with MPs returning to their constituencies for the weekend. With the government facing a significant backbench rebellion later today (Tuesday) on its controversial plans to cut disability benefit payments, Friday probably can't come soon enough for the beleaguered Prime Minister. But he only has himself to blame. Christian May, editor-in-chief of City AM, in his editorial this morning posed the question many of us have been mulling for some time, "why can't Keir Starmer lead?" After so many false starts and U-turns it's a fair question. While fingers point at his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, Starmer is First Lord of the Treasury and, lest he should forget, it's helpfully engraved on the brass letterbox in the front door of his official residence, Number ...