The Mirror Crack'd

The weekend is generally a quiet time for politics, with elected representatives being back in their constituencies, but this one is different. Firstly, we have just had the announcement of Lucy Powell's victory in the contest for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party. Secondly, in the election for the Presidency of Ireland, leftwing Independent candidate, Catherine Connolly, has been declared the winner. Finally, Thursday's shock victory of Plaid Cymru's candidate, Lindsay Whittle, in the Caerphilly by-election for the Senedd is being digested by Welsh Labour, who had been unchallenged there for a century. These three very different electoral outcomes tell an interesting story of the emergence of a potential shift in political momentum in the United Kingdom and Ireland, not perhaps seismic (yet) but significant nonetheless. Coupled with Zack Polanski's recent election as Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales and the announcement of the long-awaited launch ...

On 15 October 2021, Sir David Amess, MP for Southend West, was fatally stabbed at his constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea. The anniversary of this tragic event was marked yesterday at Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons. Unaware of this, I happened to be walking past the Houses of Parliament and was appalled to see the new 3-metre high security fence being erected along the perimeter of the House of Lords' forecourt, extending up to the Soverereign's Entrance of the  Victoria Tower. This latest work adds to the railings, fences, gates and barriers already in place that began to be installed following the death of Airey Neave MP, whose car was blown up by an IRA bomb as he drove out of the Palace of Westminster underground car park in 1979.  Additional works were carried out following the 2017 terrorist attack, when a car was driven into the Victorian railings and the driver ran into New Palace Yard, fatally stabbing a police officer. The resulting works were...

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...