The Mirror Crack'd

Last year I wrote about the Tories' controversial change to voter ID rules and now Sir Keir Starmer has decided to revive Tony Blair's ill-fated national scheme? Could that, 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 his scheme 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 now re-emerged under Starmer as the 'BritCard' - not, despite its name, 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 ...

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,...

These words, spoken in anger by Tybalt Montague in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet , came to mind when reading more about the recent killing of conservative US commentator, Charlie Kirk, while addressing some 3000 MAGA-supporting  (or -curious) students on Utah Valley University campus. The analogy may seem far-fetched but it occurred to me that this assassination, like the Elizabethan drama, was a tragedy involving passionate young men acting on tribal impulse. The Montagues and Capulets would have been teenagers, of course, but Kirk's alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, is only twenty-two years of age, so not much older than Tybalt and Romeo. Kirk himself was thirty-one and his ideological opposite number, Hasan Piker, a left-wing online streamer and influencer, thirty-four. These three young men are among the dramatis personae of an unfolding modern American tragedy.  Both Kirk and Piker, I should make clear, champion non-violence but Kirk's widow, Erika, has now spoken publi...

Yesterday's a dream, I face the morning, Crying on a breeze, the pain is calling. Barry Manilow - Mandy Well , the man who, less than twenty-four hours previously at Prime Minister's Questions at 12pm in the House of Commons, had Sir Keir Starmer's full support and endorsement, is gone. That had been high noon for the PM and, at 10.45 this morning in the same Chamber, in answer to an Urgent Question granted by the Speaker, the Foreign Office Minister, Stephen Doughty, dropped the bombshell that Lord Peter Mandelson had been sacked as the UK's Ambassador to the USA. Cue gasps and cheers in equal measure from Members who had bothered to turn up. Doughty by name and by nature, the Minister doggedly responded to questions by quoting the same line, that the sacking followed the emergence of further details which had not been revealed when Mandelson was originally vetted for the post. Asked whether the PM had been aware of these details when he gave his answers at PMQs the da...

The trailer for Emerald Fennell's film version of " Wuthering Heights"  (quotation marks hers - or her publicist's) has just appeared, to a storm of social media speculation and criticism. Clearly, this was the intention, a phenomenon known as 'rage bait', and it seems to have worked a treat. Now the movie has to live up - or down - to expectations when it goes on general release on Valentine's Day. Can it sustain this level of feverish speculation for another six months? You bet it can. Though teasing, the trailer reveals enough about Fennell's vision of the melodrama to give some indication of what we can expect from her adaptation. The poster, featuring Catherine (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) in a steamy clinch, sets the tone, as does its invite to audiences to 'come undone'. Based on Fennell's previous outing with Elordi in Saltburn I   think it's fair to expect something smoulderingly erotic. How much relation that ...

Today has been one of those days when, after a period of relative calm in UK politics during the Parliamentary Summer Recess, all the pieces are thrown up in the air. On Monday, Sir Keir Starmer was launching 'Phase 2' of his government after a difficult first year. Today, with the resignation of his Deputy Prime Minister, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Housing Secretary (a three-in-one trinity in the person of Angela Rayner) he has had a full-scale Cabinet reshuffle - of which more anon. Today also saw the opening of Reform UK's party conference in Birmingham, with a bullish Nigel Farage sounding faintly miffed that Angela Rayner's shock (some people are easily shocked) resignation was somehow timed to steal his thunder. With Farage it's always all about him. He's predicting a 2027 general election - in other words two years early - and calling on his members to gird up their loins. (Perhaps I should rephrase that? Actually, I can't be arsed.) He may...

The last time I wrote a poem I was nineteen, Beset, no doubt, by teenage angst and introspection. Age brings wisdom, so they say, and with it recollection. But now, as civilisation collapses about our ears, Where’s the Olympian perspective, the mature reflection? One phrase alone I still recall, one only: ‘woven wall’, a wry perception, Prompted by drystone inclosure of moorland reshaped for wool - and wealth. Now, in a far-off land, similar walls surround me, stirring poignant memories. Ancient, immemorial, impassive they testify to generations of endless toil, Built for patrimony, repaired for posterity, abandoned prematurely. Woven wall is more than mere alliteration, I believe. It speaks of rugged resilience, resistance interweaved with every stone. And walls, much more than territorial boundaries – the warp and weft of hope; Hope for security, for peace and for prosperity, rooted in the earth. All this and more I read into these constructions, elo...