Month: February 2026
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Succession is not a strategy! Starmer does not seem to have even tried to stabilise the No. 10 operation, he merely changed the cast list. The resignation cycle that began with Morgan McSweeney continues to read less like renewal and more like a government discovering, in public, in real time, that it does not have…
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Implosion as “Governance.” Last week ended with Morgan McSweeney gone. This week has been about what that departure did not fix. The McSweeney Non-Solution McSweeney’s resignation was supposed to draw a line under the “judgement” critique that had begun to stalk Keir Starmer. It has not. The problem was never merely personnel. It was pattern.…
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After last week’s ‘umble addressing and PM-skewering it was perhaps inevitable that the Chamber would be a little less frenetic as it ran down to the Half Term Recess on Thursday 12th February. Although the bulk of the political comedy continued outside the Chamber, there were some opportunities for further PM-baiting and Labour squirming. Jesse…
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The End is Nigh. Peter Mandelson’s Washington appointment was always a high wire act. It was sold as hard nosed realpolitik: a seasoned operator, a serious network, a Labour government signalling competence to the White House and Wall Street. However, the appointment contained a basic miscalculation of the post-2020 political climate: voters tolerate many things,…
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What a consequential week it was! Winding down to the weekend (who works Fridays after all?) and with the PM kow-towing having bi-lats with President Xi in Peking Bejing, Pat McFadden made a statement to the House on Thursday 29th January setting out the government’s totally unsurprising decision not to pay the WASPI women compensation…
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Overseas: Movement Without Leverage The Prime Minister’s trip to China and Japan was notable less for what it achieved than for what it avoided. Keir Starmer returned with modest diplomatic housekeeping: limited visa facilitation and the reopening of channels with previously frozen parliamentarians. (Rowena Mason, Guardian, 29th January 2026, What agreements have been made during…