Proper Charlies

Who is this Charlie person? The entire entourages of Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelensky were looking for him, and then so was everyone backstage at the Brit Awards. On camera, there was a loud cheer for Danny Dyer's denunciation of Starmer. But if Starmer does not have media London, then who does he have? Tony Blair used to present Brits. He presented David Bowie's Lifetime Achievement Award, no less. Hey, ho, make it look like an accident to have Zelensky meet Charli XCX tomorrow, while King Charlie attended whatever morning-after event would otherwise have been graced with her presence.

How is being that bridge working out for Starmer? His last hope is that Reform UK has no idea what to think about Ukraine, and at this rate we shall be well into war by the time of the next General Election. On this Saint David's Day, ponder that Reform may very well be the largest party in the Senedd next year, when its candidate for First Minister will be David Jones, a former Secretary of State for Wales, and the first former Cabinet Minister to have joined Reform. Reform is also looking at being tied with the Conservatives at Holyrood, as it rolled on to being the largest party in the next House of Commons.

But there is no suggestion of a Reform overall majority, so the Prime Minister would be the Leader of whichever of Labour and the Conservatives were in second place, actively supported by the other one and by the Liberal Democrats, and not actively opposed by anyone apart from Reform, Traditional Unionist Voice if it were still there, and any Workers Party or Independent Left MPs. There is also the serious possibility that Reform's inability to know what to say about Ukraine might be its undoing. Nothing is certain, of course, but it is starting to look as if Reform will either be one of the two largest parties in 2029, or it will lose every seat. First Past the Post does not require a huge difference in votes between those two outcomes.