Small boat crossings are falling. They are down around 40% in April 2026 compared to the same month last year, and down roughly 38% so far this year. That makes nearly nine months of sustained decline. More strikingly, the pace of that decline is increasing — from around 30% in the latter part of 2025, … Read more
Starmer has survived a key vote in the House over the Mandelson affair. This isn’t a shock. Contrary to the popular press and the internet, he was never likely to lose. I don’t normally comment on people or events. Normally I stick to rather policies, but this affair does reveal some important things about how … Read more
It’s ten years since the Brexit vote, and over the last few weeks I’ve been visiting towns along the East Coast. Some — Clacton, Great Yarmouth, Skegness — have already elected Reform MPs. Others are targets in the next round of local elections. I worked in Redcar and Cleveland for a decade, in the NHS, … Read more
There are two very different ways of looking at Hartlepool. The first is the lurid headline version — the kind of thing you might find in the Sun, focusing on obesity, ill health, decline. The second is less obvious: Northern Studios, the largest film and television production facility in the North East, part of the … Read more
There is a structural problem in modern politics that we don’t talk about enough. Markets move on information. Governments create information. And in an age of erratic communication, that information is often released in ways that are unpredictable, informal, and badly timed. Take Donald Trump. One of the defining features of his recent presidency has … Read more
I’m going to teach you one of the most powerful sentences in the English language — four words that define what it means to be British: Mind your own business. The sworn enemies of every true Brit are the bossy bureaucrat, the nosy neighbour, the local gossip, and the curtain-twitching nebbisher. The nosy Parker. The … Read more
It’s one year since Keir Starmer became leader of the Labour Party, and newspapers have been full of lengthy profile pieces trying to work out if he is doing badly. I haven’t changed my view that I set out at the start of the year: Starmer has by far and away the biggest problem in … Read more
“Just remember how you felt on that dreadful morning of June 10th, just remember how you felt then, and think to yourselves: June the Ninth, 1983, never ever again will we experience that.’” This was Neil Kinnock’s first speech to Labour Conference as leader. He had started the process of taking the Labour back from … Read more
In all of the excitement about the Labour Manifesto we seem to have forgotten that the LibDems also put their proposals forward too. Which might be a metaphor for a campaign full of sensible proposals but strangely forgettable. The LibDems overall fiscal frameworks is slightly tighter than Labour, but using similar rules. The LibDems want … Read more