Reform Schooled

Between 1999 and 2001, there was an outfit called the Pro-Euro Conservative Party, set up to contest the 1999 European elections, the first in which the whole United Kingdom used Proportional Representation. The media insisted on treating the PECP as a serious force and were left as near to dumbstruck as they could ever be when it failed to win a single seat. The PECP of the present is probably Restore Britain, which at Makerfield took fewer votes than the BNP had done in 2010, and less than one third of the Labour margin of victory over Reform UK. Parties have been wound up completely for better showings than that, and Leaders have been removed. As it is, Keir Starmer is being removed because his party won. What times these are.

And what of Nigel Farage? What has Christopher Harborne had for his £22 million to Reform, and for his five million to Farage personally? A policy of cryptocurrency deregulation that Farage and Reform are no nearer than ever to being in any position to implement. Mirroring Harborne’s £27 million is Reform’s 27 per cent in the polls, a figure lower than Labour’s result in 1983. Of five by-elections in this Parliament, Reform has won only the first, and that by all of six votes; even though none of them has been held in Northern Ireland, each of them has been won by a different party, although only Runcorn and Helsby has been won by a majority of 0.0 per cent. Half of Reform’s MPs were returned to this Parliament as Conservatives, including both of the Ministers responsible for Hadi Alodid’s indefinite leave to remain, and 40 per cent of the Reform MPs returned at the General Election have left the party. It is high time for the media to treat one of the two parties with with one in 81 MPs as just one of the two parties with one in 81 MPs. No doubt its previous donors are already doing so.

The Heartlands Tribune

Paul Knaggs writes:

We did not change our name because we changed our politics. We changed it because the name no longer tells the whole truth.

We have chosen this day deliberately. Midsummer is the old turning point, the longest day, the moment the year tips and the light begins its slow return journey toward winter. It is a day for letting go of what has run its course and turning to face what comes next. That is what we are doing.

Labour Heartlands was born in a very particular moment. It came out of the political wreckage after the EU referendum, when millions of working class people across the old industrial towns, mining communities, coastal seats and forgotten regions spoke clearly, only to be treated as fools, racists, dupes or embarrassments by many of the people who claimed to represent them.

That was the gap we stepped into. Labour Heartlands was never created as a house journal for the Labour Party. It was created because the people in the heartlands deserved to be heard in their own voice. Not filtered through Westminster. Not tidied up by think tanks. Not patronised by careerists who only discover the North when there is a by-election to fight.

The name made sense then. It said where we came from. It said whose side we were on. But ten years on, the political ground has shifted.

The Labour Party has not simply lost touch with its old heartlands. It has walked away from them. It has become a party of managers, donors, consultants, lobbyists and professional progressives, more comfortable with corporate boardrooms than working men’s clubs, more interested in policing language than rebuilding towns, more fluent in Davos than Doncaster. 

So keeping “Labour” in the masthead has become misleading. Not because we have abandoned the values that built Labour at its best, but because the party bearing that name has abandoned them.

We still stand for work, wages, industry, public ownership, democracy, civil liberties, peace, national sovereignty and the dignity of the common people. We still stand against the rule of money, the arrogance of Westminster, the hollowing out of our towns and the quiet contempt shown to those who build, care, serve, drive, clean, teach, nurse, fight and graft. That has not changed. What has changed is the banner.

From today, Labour Heartlands becomes The Heartlands Tribune. A tribune was never a courtier. A tribune was not there to flatter power. A tribune was there to speak for the people against power. That is the job, and that is why the name now fits better.

WHY WE ARE EVOLVING

This is not a retreat from our roots. It is a clearer statement of them. 

For ten years we held Labour to account, because Labour was where the betrayal of the working class was most visible and most personal. But the rot was never confined to one party. The hollowing out of the towns that once made things, the contempt for people too far from London to matter, the slow surrender of sovereignty to markets and machines: this is a settlement both main parties built and neither intends to tear up.

A name tied to one party cannot hold all of that to account. It invites the reader to file us under faction and move on, before a word has been read. To go after every centre of power without flinching, our journalism has to owe nothing to any party’s fortunes, least of all the one whose name we carried.

 “A tribune takes no patron. That was the point of the office. Now it is the point of ours.”

WHAT IS CHANGING

The name, chosen with care rather than grabbed off the shelf. Tribune is no neutral word on the British left. It was the title Aneurin Bevan helped give the paper he founded in 1937, the paper George Orwell served as literary editor. Older still, the tribune of the plebs was the office Rome built for one purpose: to stand between ordinary citizens and a patrician class that would otherwise have run the whole arrangement for itself. The man who held it could not lawfully be touched. That is the lineage we step into, and it describes the job.

With the name comes a new look and a wider editorial structure: dedicated room for regional politics, economic development and working class history, the threads that always ran through our work but rarely had a home of their own. You will see the new masthead first. The website address stays the same, and our social channels will follow shortly, so do not be alarmed to see both names in circulation for a while. We would rather get this right than get it fast.

WHAT IS STAYING THE SAME

The mission: holding power to account for people who are spoken for constantly and spoken to rarely. The commitment to writing about working class communities as adults, not as a problem to be managed or a vote to be harvested. None of that has moved an inch.

We are not becoming a different publication. We are taking our name back from a party that no longer deserves to lend it, and handing it to the people it was always about.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

More, not less. The same reporting you trust, with a wider field and nothing tying our hands behind it: deeper investigations, a broader range of targets held to the same standard, a platform that argues for the heartlands nationally instead of refighting one party’s quarrels.

We know a name change can feel like a loss, especially to readers in whom the old name struck something real. We will not pretend it on our side. There is sadness in setting it down, and underneath the sadness, if we are honest, something close to relief: relief at no longer carrying a word that has come to mean the opposite of what we built it to mean. We are not asking you to forget where we came from. We are asking you to see that the party broke faith with that name long before we did, and we are done lending it our credibility.

We are the Tribune of the heartlands. We answer to the people.

Punishment For A Crime That Was Never Charged

Geoffrey Robertson KC writes:

In a London court in 1670, a judge, livid with the jury, locked them away for two days without food, water or even a chamber pot. The jury’s offence? Defying the judge’s direction to convict the Quaker William Penn – the future founder of Pennsylvania – charged with preaching sedition in the City of London. The foreman, Edward Bushell, would not yield and, when the matter reached the chief justice of England, he ruled that no juror could be punished for their refusal to convict, entitling a jury to decide according to its conscience, whatever the bench directed. A plaque honours Bushell at the Old Bailey, so jurors on their way inside may contemplate the man who secured their right to acquit.

The legal principle has held for three and a half centuries and, in my 50 years of practice, I have witnessed many juries bring back “sympathy verdicts”, that is, acquittals, because they think a defendant has been oppressively or unfairly prosecuted. But they are not usually reminded by barristers of their right to do so because of the profession’s concern that they should not be urging juries to lay aside the oath they took to decide according to the evidence.

This right sits at the centre of the case of the Elbit four who last week were sentenced to more than 22 years combined, for their part in a direct action protest. Leona Kamio, 30, a nursery teacher, Samuel Corner, 23, and Fatema Rajwani, 21, both students, and Charlotte Head, 30, a domestic abuse caseworker, broke into a factory owned by Elbit Systems, an Israeli company that manufactures drones. They are among more than two dozen people – “the Filton 25” – being tried for breaking into an arms factory in Filton near Bristol, or in connection with the act. They are now in the process of going to court, spread over four trials.

The first group of defendants underwent not one, but two trials. At their first, they faced several charges, the gravest being aggravated burglary. Their leading counsel, Rajiv Menon KC, took to the floor to remind the jury of their historical right to acquit, and invited them to weigh the use to which the drones were being put. The judge, Mr Justice Johnson, referred Menon to the high court to be tried for the crime of contempt of court for breaching his order not to mention the jury’s right to acquit. The jury, however, went on to acquit the defendants of aggravated burglary. But they could not come to a majority decision on any of the remaining charges.

The prosecution decided that the defendants must face a retrial. This proceeded with the same Mr Justice Johnson presiding on the charges the first jury could not resolve: criminal damage, an offence ordinarily met with a fine or a sentence of 18 months or so. At this point, the four had already spent more than 18 months in pretrial detention. The second jury convicted the Elbit four of criminal damage.

One defendant was also convicted of grievous bodily harm without intent, having injured a female police officer with a sledgehammer. He said, and the jury must have accepted that, disoriented by the Pava pepper spray the officer had just deployed, he had swung the hammer to shield a co-defendant, accidentally hitting the police officer. His sentence nonetheless was seven years and eight months.

How does damaging property earn nearly eight years? At a secret hearing during the first trial, Mr Justice Johnson had ruled that the protest carried a “terrorist connection”. This was unprecedented in the history of direct action trials. His reasoning was that the defendants’ purpose was to “influence” the British government – which is the purpose of almost every political protest ever mounted. The judge’s ruling was kept secret from both the jury and the public, and the UK press was barred from reporting on it.

There was no terrorism in any ordinary sense: no violence meant to kill or maim, only a determination to expose British complicity in the killing of Palestinians. But the Sentencing Act of 2020, passed by the then Conservative government, has significantly widened what counts as terrorism. That fateful act allowed the judge to impose a far heavier sentence. As “terrorists”, they will serve longer times in prison before they are up for parole and 15 years on a list that makes them police suspects for real terrorism crimes.

The Elbit four will be labelled as “terrorists” because they were convicted, in substance, of a quasi-terrorist offence that was never charged, never put to the jury, and never proven by the prosecution. The jurors who found them guilty of criminal damage had no idea their verdict would be treated as a verdict on terrorism. The prosecution was not required to establish the terrorist connection beyond reasonable doubt, or to any standard at all.

It is another foundational principle of English law that no one should be convicted of an offence that has not been charged and proved. In this case, the principle was suspended. The secrecy compounds the injury. The open-justice principle exists, as Jeremy Bentham put it, because “publicity is the very soul of justice; it keeps the judge, while trying, under trial”.

The court of appeal struck down the trial judge’s decision to have Menon tried by the high court for contempt. The better view is that contempt citations should be referred to the attorney general to decide whether the public interest justifies a prosecution. The court ruled that Johnson’s decision was wrong; he apologised, but that did not stop him sentencing Menon’s clients when they were convicted at the second trial.

All of which returns us to Edward Bushell, and to what a jury is for. Juries have always had the power to temper law with mercy. It is among the oldest protections against an overbearing state. The difficulty is that judges seldom tell juries the power exists, leaving counsel to invoke it only obliquely.

Years ago, defending a woman who had killed a man for beating her every day of their life together, the great advocate Edward Marshall Hall closed with the words: “Just look at her, gentlemen of the jury. God never gave her a chance. Won’t you?” They did.

It would be far more transparent to bring the power into the open – to let the judge, where the defence claims it, remind the jury of the right, and let the prosecution argue against its exercise. Instead, the only lawful way to appeal to a jury’s conscience is to tell them to look at a plaque in the Old Bailey lobby.

The Elbit four did not act in ignorance of the consequences. Bentham held that a citizen may disobey a law they believe to be unjust, provided they are willing to accept the punishment. On that view, the protesters who knew very well they were breaking the law against criminal damage should have pleaded guilty. While on trial, they openly acknowledged participating in the factory break-in and damaging the drones. What no defendant should have to face is punishment for a crime of terrorism that was never charged.

Of Sound Mind

The Times editorialises:

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting a different outcome, consider the return of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. That the proposed legislation faced almost 1,300 amendments in the House of Lords is testament to the poor quality of its drafting and strength of criticism. Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill was rightly consigned to the scrapheap in April. Peers did the country a service by exposing the risks inherent in allowing the introduction of state-sanctioned killing. Passing the Labour MP’s bill into law in undiluted form would have probably led to abuses.

Yet even though its flaws were exposed, the assisted dying bill refuses to die. Lauren Edwards, another Labour backbencher, has announced she intends to revive the legislation in order to “finish the job”. Having come second in this year’s private member’s bill ballot, hers will almost certainly receive a hearing in the Commons. This is a regrettable development. As Baroness May of Maidenhead discovered when trying to pass her Brexit legislation, attempting to drive contentious bills through parliament for a second time is highly unlikely to yield the desired result. Dusting off an unimproved bill and hoping it will sail through the Commons and Lords is delusional.

Assisted dying bills have been brought before parliament at regular intervals since the 1960s. But it was the bill proposed by Ms Leadbeater that made most progress, securing the backing of the Commons. Had it become law, it would have allowed an adult with mental capacity whom a doctor judged could reasonably be expected to die within six months to request lethal drugs for self-administration. Notional safeguards included provision of a second assessment by another doctor and final approval by a panel composed of a lawyer, a psychiatrist and a social worker. Some safeguards were eventually watered down.

Criticism of the bill was widespread. The Royal College of Psychiatrists said the bill was not fit for purpose, as did disability charities and hospices. The House of Lords identified a plethora of problems. Mired in objections, many entirely sound, the bill was timed out at the end of the last parliamentary session, a common fate for private member’s bills requiring further work. Supporters of assisted dying are seeking to paint their campaign as a struggle between the elected Commons and the unelected Lords. The truth is that, because assisted dying was not a part of Labour’s manifesto, it enjoys no mandate. Detailed scrutiny is the job of the Lords.

Such is the zealotry of campaigners in favour of state-assisted suicide that they are brandishing the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, typically used to drive government money bills, and occasionally bills based on manifesto commitments, through the Lords. For this to happen the revived bill must be unamended. Kit Malthouse, a Conservative supporter of assisted dying, says the bill does not have to be changed. Other supporters, such as the former cabinet minister Louise Haigh, argue that using the Parliament Acts would be wrong. This is correct: it would be a constitutional outrage to use them in this way. Ms Edwards claims that she does not have to use the acts to railroad her bill into law. But it remains a threat, given MPs are being urged not to amend the bill. If it does return, its myriad defects must be examined by both Houses.

It is remarkable that Sir Keir Starmer, who supports the principle of assisted dying, has said almost nothing about the bill. Andy Burnham, the frontrunner to replace Sir Keir if he wins the Makerfield by-election, has expressed scepticism about it. Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, is adamantly opposed. It is not too late for Ms Edwards to think again. This shoddily constructed bill represents a danger to patients. It belongs in one place: the history books.

And Professor Kathleen Stock writes:

Here we go again. Like Kim Leadbeater before her, Labour MP Lauren Edwards says she is introducing a Private Member’s Bill for an assisted dying service.

The plan, just as before, is to enable doctors to help terminally ill patients to die – that is, help them commit suicide, should they wish to – and Edwards has indicated her wording will not deviate from Leadbeater’s original. This means that, should the new bill pass in the Commons any rejection by the Lords can be overridden and the bill made law nonetheless.

I have recently written a book arguing against the organised deliverance of assisted suicide by NHS doctors, which is what Edwards and her backers are trying to get. As news of her bill was breaking, I was at the Lake District book festival, debating with a Dutch doctor Dr Rob Jonquière who himself has euthanised two people and who is now an influential international advocate for euthanasia legislation.

We had a respectful and friendly discussion; but still, what I heard from him and several others during the session only intensified my concerns.

For Jonquière, a Leadbeater-Edwards style bill doesn’t go far enough, since it confines provision only to people with a prognosis of six months to live or fewer, and not – as he would prefer it – to anyone “intolerably” suffering from a physical or mental disorder, whether terminally ill or not. This is the norm in the Netherlands and Belgium, where they sometimes euthanise physically healthy people with mental illnesses in their 20s and 30s.

My discussions with assisted dying supporters across the country suggest that some would agree with this approach, wishing an easy doctor-delivered death to be available wherever personal suffering is too intense to handle, and with no need for people to be dying first. They see an assisted death service for the terminally ill as the first step in opening up access to other suffering groups: severely disabled people, mentally ill people, people with dementia.

And they seem impervious to the way that, over time, this nihilistic stance inevitably saps energy from other ways of caring for especially vulnerable people; for death is a highly effective way of ending suffering, and also very cheap. If our aim as a society is to be merciful or compassionate to those in physical or mental pain, surely we can do better than this.

But even if we stick to a service aimed only at the terminally ill, there are many reasonable concerns here, reinforced by various people I’ve met over the past few months. This week, a GP told me that, when a commitment to 24/7 palliative support was withdrawn in her area, the system for end-of-life care became much more chaotic.

Like me, she worries about introducing assisted death as an option when alternative means of controlling pain are not widely available; for this will obviously funnel more people towards assisted death instead. A hospice worker also talked of the devastating lack of funding affecting her sector, with a dwindling pot of charity donations trying to cover around 70 per cent of the costs.

And perhaps most strikingly, a woman whose mother died on the notorious Liverpool Care Pathway – a standardised medical protocol for withdrawing treatment that quickly became an inhumane cost-cutting exercise – reminded me of how impersonal NHS systems aimed at ease and efficiency can go very wrong.

In the past few months, I have also met a retired care home manager, keen to convey to me how unscrupulous the relatives of elderly people can be, particularly where money is involved – an aspect of human nature with obvious repercussions for assisted death services. I’ve heard from parents of learning disabled children, frightened of a future in which their highly suggestible daughter or son might meet an over-zealous doctor.

Oncologists have explained how easy it is to get a terminal prognosis wrong, and senior psychiatrists have admitted that they have little idea how to assess the mental capacity of someone intending to end his own life.

In short, I’ve heard from a range of people with professional or personal skin in the game, gravely concerned about the ramifications of introducing state-backed suicide into a health service. Yet according to high-profile supporters of assisted dying, these worries are foolishly panic-mongering. I find this attitude bafflingly irresponsible and naïve.

Parliamentary scrutiny of the Leadbeater bill has revealed many shortfalls yet Edwards says she will be incorporating no amendments.

This means, among other things, there will be no requirement that applicants get a specialist palliative care consultation before proceeding to take their lives; no enhanced scrutiny of applicants’ backgrounds to rule out the possibility of family coercion; no prohibition on doctors suggesting assisted death to a patient unprompted; no exemption for learning disabled people generally; no engagement with the evidence offered by Royal College of Psychiatrists that the Mental Capacity Act is not a good fit.

These are just a few of the red flags that most sensible, conscientious people can see from space. Even amongst voters who support the idea of assisted death in principle, recent polling suggests that most are keen to see proper safeguards built in; and yet the people pushing the process at the top seem disturbingly keen to press on regardless.

Alongside professed compassion for suffering people, an even more popular justification of assisted death services is that they give people “autonomy” and “choice”, and never mind that the choice will hang more heavily over some than others. The attitude was effectively summed up by another person I met this weekend, who asked me why her own personal choice to die exactly as and when she wanted should be impeded by social problems affecting other people.

Rather than shocking, I found her frank expression of self-interest rather refreshing. I tend to suspect her sentiment is more common than usually admitted, and especially amongst politicians. The rest of us just have to make sure – once again – that such cheerfully myopic people do not get the last word.

The Idea of a National Interest

Yesterday saw a roaringly successful International Anti-War Conference in London, complete with Russian and Ukrainian peace activists literally speaking side by side, and a boy from the anti-conscription German school strikes who was notably a member of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, pointing to the potential for the healing of certain schisms. The event was of course organised by the only people who ever did organise that sort of thing, and not unrelatedly there was a very great deal of talk about sovereignty. But broader potential alliances do exist. In the financial year 2024-25, the Government wrote off £6.6 billion of public money, with £1.6 billion of that being mismanagement and cancelled projects at the Ministry of Defence for which every other Department of State has been ordered to make yet further cuts. And as Peter Hitchens writes:

This has been quite a week for warmongers. Moscow has been in flames and I suspect quite a lot of people have been muttering 'serve them right!' And two British oldsters, proudly sailing in the Nelson tradition, have pluckily confronted a sinister Russian warship in the English Channel. Surely it is time for war against Russia?

Or perhaps not. I'll come to that. Yet if I suggest that things are not that bad, or that calls for war are unwise, I am invariably attacked by upstanding patriots who accuse me of being in Kremlin pay, or perhaps of having been hired by Russian spooks during my years in Moscow, 36-odd years ago. Here we go again.

Actually, the KGB believed that I was a British spy. When I lived in the Soviet capital, they shadowed me on trains and on visits to the Soviet interior.

They bugged my flat and my car and installed agents in my home, who worked for me (rather well) as drivers, cleaners and interpreters.

My telephone would repeatedly go dead, as the listeners changed the spools on their clunky old Communist tape recorders. I hated them and still do. But believe what you want.

My concern, I state it once again, is for Britain, my own country. We are deluded about war in Britain because we have watched too many war films and too much Dad's Army.

We think war is a cosy affair in which, safe in our snug island, we drink strong tea and eat nice, thick bully-beef sandwiches as we stare out to sea next to a big gun, ready to repel the distant enemy. Not really.

War is rationing, shortages, power cuts, censorship, rising prices, travel restrictions, jobsworths checking your documents, relentless interference in your private life by authority, family separation – and all this in an atmosphere where complaining is disloyalty and there are no general elections. And that's before they start on conscription and the enemy begins to rocket-bomb our cities, while we bomb theirs, for year after dismal year.

Sure, there are times when you have to fight wars, when you are in genuine danger from a nearby enemy which desires to destroy or subjugate you. But Putin's scrap-metal state cares little about us. It's not that they like us or loathe us, just that they are indifferent to us.

So ponder a few things. Amid all this fuss about defence spending, what is it that we are supposed to be defending ourselves against?

If there is war, it will be like what Nato did to Moscow last week. And be sure it was Nato. Ukraine doesn't have the money, the military intelligence, the equipment, the skills or the ammunition to shower Russian cities with accurate attacks on key installations. Russia knows this. Do you think it possible Moscow might retaliate against Nato cities? I do. And if it does, it will come in the form of drones and missiles.

As the people of Tehran, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Kiev and Moscow can testify, this is the new face of war. If you want a war with Russia, drones and missiles are what you will get, and our cities could be scorched and terrorised with smoke and flame as Moscow was last week.

We are utterly unprepared for this. Why then do our leaders, and many in our media, apparently court and desire such a war? Are they in fact as stupid as I have long thought they were? Give Britain an Iron Dome first. Then, if you really want to, you can talk about war.

In the meantime, a bit of accuracy would be good. Many media have repeatedly stated that the Russian frigate fired at the English yacht. It categorically did not. The shots were aimed away from the yacht. On this, the Russians, the UK Ministry of Defence and the yachting couple are all agreed. So why keep saying something that is not true?

Also, you may patriotically call the place where this happened 'the English Channel' if you like – but it is in international waters where the Russians are legally allowed to be.

I wouldn't wander near anybody's warship in a small boat. All captains are trained to be touchy when this happens. Why? In October 2000 the US Navy destroyer USS Cole had a huge hole blown in its side by a suicide bomb packed into a small boat, which came alongside it in Aden. The bomb murdered 17 men and wounded nearly 40 more.

The people in the boat were making friendly gestures to the Cole's crew just before they touched off their explosives. See what I mean?

Calm down, and carry on, and build that Iron Dome.

While Professor Jeremy Black reminds us:

Frames of reference vary by culture, country and group, and political parties are no exception. A Conservative Party that draws pride and purpose from Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher naturally emphasises an active, even interventionist, approach to foreign policy and employs “appeasement” negatively. But what is the “deep history” of Tory attitudes to foreign policy? That offers a perspective on the Conservative position today, one that can be incorporated into analyses of changes in attitude, or seen as part of a continuing breach with pre-1939 attitudes. If the latter, did these earlier attitudes have merit and retain value?

From its origins in the late 17th century, the Tory Party tended towards opposition in word and deed to allegedly feckless interventionism.

This promotion of the “national interest”, caution and prudence lasted across the centuries. The characteristic features of 18th century Tory foreign policy are generally regarded as insularity, a focus on maritime power in defence of trade routes and Empire, an aversion to Continental commitments and a marked lack of enthusiasm for Whig calls for international intervention. It thus embraced doubts about grand European alliances, opposition to external international projects which impaired Britain’s freedom of manoeuvre, scepticism about the idea of the balance of power, and an non-ideological pragmatism in approach and practice. It opposed what was later seen as “regime change”.

In whole or part, these themes and attitudes can be identified as a typical Tory stance. They were linked to the Tory concern about an over-expanded and expensive state, as well as avoidance of the burden of taxation necessary to maintain a large army and Continental commitments, the last including subsidy treaties to allies and the hiring of foreign units to fight in the British army.

In contrast, the Whig tradition was one of collective security, a system of mutual guarantees that required continual oversight and frequent intervention. The Whigs referred back to historical justifications in terms of Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell.

However, in practice, Elizabeth had been cautious about making a full commitment on behalf of the Dutch rebels and war with Spain had not begun until 1585. The Cromwellian republic had been an atypical British government, with an unusually strong army and navy. The Tories in the 18th century drove home the idea that Continental interventionism was linked to corruption and the money interest. In 1771, Samuel Johnson asked “how we can be recompensed for the death of multitudes, and the expense of millions, but by contemplating the sudden glories of paymasters and agents, contractors and commissioners, these harmless vultures of the field”.

From that perspective, the present zeal to increase military expenditure would have been seen as misplaced, whilst the Tory criticism of confrontation with Russia in 1718–21 contrasts greatly with current attitudes towards the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

There was also a climbdown from confrontation with Russia in the Ochakov Crisis of 1791, in which many “Independent” MPs deserted the interventionist line, leading William Pitt the Younger to abandon the policy and its foundation, an alliance with Prussia, and to turn instead to isolationism, refusing to join the Austro-Prussian attack on France in 1792.

The Ochakov Crisis, however, underlines the problems sometimes involved in defining the Tory stance, as in 1791 both the Independent MPs and Pitt can be seen as Tories whilst the formal Opposition was Whig, led in the Commons by Charles James Fox. Thus, alongside long-term continuities in attitude and policy, there were also essentially political responses in specific circumstances, responses in which the faces of government and opposition played a major role.

There was also an important psychological element. An underlying Tory pessimism affected Conservative domestic thinking and was extended to foreign policy, with a marked lack of confidence about the ability of governments to fix outcomes, and therefore caution about alliances and commitments.

Tories drew on experience showing human effort could not produce a perfect society, domestic or international. Traditional Tory refrains focused on the impermanence of human actions and achievements, and on the risks of moralism, not least its threat to a balanced assessment of risks and opportunities.

Furthermore, the idea that a system based on the views and interests of others was inherently flawed constituted a major theme in Tory thought. The emphasis on the uncertainty of human affairs reflected a distinct religious, moral and intellectual position. Tories prided themselves on realism, an appreciation of an international anarchy in which there was no reason to assume that allies would act well.

Mist’s Weekly Journal, the leading London Tory newspaper, in its issue of 4 June 1726, claimed, “We are not to depend upon being always in friendship with any Prince, those people who well consider the different interests of two nations will be of opinion that a true and lasting amity is not to be expected.” Tory patriotism thus proposed a self-sufficiency, an emphasis on nation rather than on government.

At the outset of Tory ministerial politics, Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham, a secretary of state from 1689 to 1693 and from 1702 to 1704, proved particularly significant in that he encouraged the development of “Blue Water” policies with their focus on maritime strength and activity. This contribution was taken forward during the 1710–14 Tory ministry by Viscount Bolingbroke and Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and their example set the tone of Tory thought on foreign policy.

The critique of Whiggery for unnecessary wars and excessive taxes looked forward to William Pitt the Younger’s support for peace, imperial preference and low taxes in the 1780s. Pitt’s peacetime stance, in turn, was seen as an inspiration for 19th century Tories, such as Benjamin Disraeli. He presented the Tories as a national party, offering a contrast with what was depicted as the cosmopolitan rootlessness of other political groups, notably Whigs, Liberals and those Tories who were led astray, which was how Sir Robert Peel was described.

Seeking economy, notably in the early 1870s when he pressed the need for caution about expensive expansionist projects, Disraeli, nevertheless, was no isolationist. He argued that it was necessary to preserve the appropriate system and situation in Europe as well as Britain and in the late 1870s employed deterrence as a response to Russian expansionism.

This was in line with a foreign policy tradition emphasising the pragmatic defence of national interests in which both Empire and Europe took a part, each interpreted with reference to particular conjunctures. Earlier, with the Revolutionary French threatening to reject the international order and take over the Low Countries, Pitt the Younger had perforce become a war prime minister in 1793, and the Tories mobilised the nation for a battle of survival.

Then, in the face of repeated defeats from 1794, pragmatic issues surfaced in the shape of how far it was possible to maintain ideological purity in terms of non-recognition of the Revolution. Indeed, to the horror of Edmund Burke, negotiations were soon pursued by the Pitt government, in 1796 and 1797, only for the option to be closed by the French until terms were agreed in 1802 by the Tory ministry of Henry Addington.

Nevertheless, alongside the more complex issue of tactics, the Tories offered an ideological cohesion in their hostile response to Revolutionary France. However, unlike the Second World War, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars did not lead to large-scale post-war interventionism. Indeed, the difference between the situation in 1815 and 1945 helped direct contrasting post-war stances.

It would not be really appropriate to use the term “Splendid Isolation” for the period from 1815 to the Anglo-French entente of 1904, as there was a willingness to engage with other powers, for example in support of the Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman (Turkish) rule, and with the international coalition involved in the Crimean War (1854–56) as later in the First World War.

Yet, there was a Tory scepticism with Liberal engagement towards freedom, notably for High Tories, such as the Duke of Wellington. In other words, there were, as always, exogenous pressures and the related domestic perceptions and politics. These caused divisions within as well as between political movements.

The need for the containment of international disruption was outlined in 1858 in a circular from James, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury, the talented foreign secretary in the new Conservative government. He argued that as peace “cannot be disturbed in any quarter without the risk of the disturbance becoming more general”, Britain would therefore “always be ready, by her good offices, to contribute to moderating angry discussion, to avert hostile collisions, or to remove entanglements which may threaten to alienate nations from one another”.

At the same time, there was a political inclination toward caution that was seen in a deliberate strategic rebalancing away from the idea of a “Concert of Europe”. There was caution about the pressure on British resources, military, financial and economic, not least in the aftermath of debt-accelerating wars, particularly from 1763, 1783, 1815 and 1856.

There was also a particular response to specific circumstances and events at the time, especially the wish to avoid the commitments involved in alliances and guarantees. These commitments included domestically the costs, notably the burdens of taxation, the increase of debt, and curtailment of individual liberty, that conflict often begins.

This caution was also in part a product of the Royal Navy’s interest in “Blue Water” primacy and the political acceptance of a leading navy but not of a large army. This was a political theme dear to Tories, notably in reaction to Oliver Cromwell, William III and others associated with such an army. This antipathy, however, was not an attitude that survived the world wars when, indeed, the Conservatives were close to the army and largely abandoned earlier navalist views.

When did the Conservatives change? Was there a ruling Euro-isolationist doctrine that collapsed and if so, when and why? Or was there, instead, largely a succession of responses by very different administrations to European (and sometimes European colonial) events, one that mostly (but not always) conformed to minimising Britain’s European engagement?

Whichever approach is taken, how best to place Disraeli’s central role in the Congress of Berlin (1878) and the 1904 entente with France? Furthermore, after the activism of 1918–20, notably in the Russian Civil War, and the stance of Austen Chamberlain as foreign secretary (1924–9), particularly the diplomacy underlying the Locarno Pact of 1925, there was a more cautious stance by the Conservative-dominated National Government, as in the support for the Hoare-Laval Pact of 1935, which was seen as a way to defuse the Italo-Ethiopian War.

From this perspective, it was Hitler that forced a change of direction by pushing Churchill to the fore. Neville Chamberlain had guaranteed Poland and Romania, but lacked the fervour of interventionism seen with Churchill (a Liberal from 1904 to 1924). His crossing the floor in 1904 was to a great extent a consequence of his belief in free trade and unwillingness to back Conservative protectionism.

He subsequently backed other international positions that scarcely matched prudence. This was particularly so during the Russian Civil War and in the Chanak Crisis of 1922 with Turkey. Each represented a serious failure of assessment concerning the international, military and domestic political contexts.

Both crises ended in what can be seen as appeasement but, more properly, compromise, and the bulk of Conservative MPs opposed the risk of war with Turkey, the crisis helping provoke their rejection of the coalition with the Lloyd George Liberals, despite that enjoying the support of the leadership.

Yet, modern conservatism’s direction of travel is set by an avoidance of prudence, and, indeed, a continuing rejection of the particular and popular instance of prudence at Munich in 1938.

Arguments can of course be made for or against sabre-rattling in particular modern crises, and for or against a more general attempt at a great-power role with the accompanying costs. What, however, is less convincing is an attempt to present recent and present-day interventionism as in accord with fundamental Tory principles.

Of course, to electioneer on the basis of prudence and conservatism would not readily accord with the modern assumption that parties ought to be able to promise improvement, nor with the tendency of parties to define themselves in terms of aspirations and policies presented in idealistic terms and a moralistic tone. The Conservatives, in their search since the mid-20th century for a politically usable past, have been captured by Whiggish progressivism and Liberal interventionism.

At the same time, this search reflects not only an ability to draw on varied aspects of the national past, notably in terms of the battle for survival, but also one made distinctive for the Conservatives by their emphasis on the nation state, rather than any kind of internationalism.

The emphasis has been on the politics of patriotism and nationalism, and these provide a convincing account of the idea of a national interest even if its implementation is scarcely free from debates about content.

Resigned To His Fate

When will Keir Starmer resign? As soon as possible, of course. For sheer poetry, though, I am hoping for next Saturday, the tenth anniversary of his resignation from Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench. But it is going to be sooner than that. Or not at all.

For Starmer to force a contest by endorsing Wes Streeting would be to endorse Streeting’s critique of Starmer’s Leadership, thereby rendering that first endorsement worthless. Happy days.

And what form will be taken by the customary and ceremonial departure of the Prime Ministerial family from Downing Street? It ought to be a veritable carnival of baby mommas, sugar daddies, rent boys, and one shudders to think what else. I can hardly wait.

Through Casements Darted Their Desiring Eyes

Truly, this is the land of Shakespeare. A faction at court has laid the groundwork for a pretender long banished to the provinces, where he has become a mighty warlord, to ride into the capital city and seize power. In Britain. In 2026.

What if Andy Burnham made Ed Miliband Chancellor of the Exchequer, and nothing happened? No Liz Truss meltdown, nothing? What would the City failures and the perpetual mediocre Economics undergraduates of the right-wing media and their parties say to that?

Like Burnham, Miliband was in the Cabinet of Gordon Brown. He is no John McDonnell, with whom again the City and the markets would have coped without difficulty, having always wargamed the outside chance of a Left Labour Government. It was Tufton Street that they could not even begin to accommodate, or vice versa.

In any case, as he prepares to become the First Lord of the Treasury, Burnham is taking the advice of Andy Haldane, former Chief Economist of the Bank of England; of Richard Hughes, former Chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility; and of Jim O’Neill, former Chair of Goldman Sachs. Make of that what you will, but here we are. A former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, indeed.

Keir Starmer’s remaining bodyguards are Steve Reed, who is up to his neck in the rigging of at least one parliamentary selection that will now be going to a criminal trial, and Peter Kyle, who is up to his neck in a whole lot worse. Knowing that there were not the numbers for a Starmer continuity candidate such as Darren Jones, Starmer’s ultras are saying that the Opposition would have a point if it called for a General Election because Burnham was implementing policies that had not been in the 2024 Labour manifesto.

Well, what about the things that were? This Government was elected to abolish leasehold, to make employment rights begin with employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked, and to equalise the national minimum wage regardless of age. When are those going to happen? When is anyone going to resign because they had not?

Instead, the Government has delivered fiscal drag, falling growth, galloping inflation, mass unemployment, a 50 per cent increase in workers’ bus fares, an increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions so as to destroy charities and small businesses while making it impossible for big businesses to take on staff or to increase wages, a measure to force working farmers of many decades’ standing who formally inherited their parents’ farms to sell them to giant American agribusinesses, a proposal to restrict trial by jury and to end the automatic right of appeal from the Magistrates’ Court to the Crown Court, an impending social media ban that would necessitate universal digital ID, and attempts to remove the Winter Fuel Payment from almost all pensioners, to persecute the disabled to death through the benefits system, to retain the two-child benefit cap, and to cancel the local elections of 4.6 million people.

Behind The Curtain

“King of the North” sounds like “Wicked Witch of the West”, so here, between the Tin Man (“If I only had a heart”) and the Lion (“If I only had courage”) stands the Scarecrow (“If I only had a brain”). Foxes are the bane of the binman, but Andy Burnham did not dress like this on these occasions when he was in the Cabinet. This is pure affectation.

It is “King of the North”, from Daniel 11. Not everything is from Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. But most of the North is north of Manchester, and almost all of it is either north of Manchester, or east of Manchester, or both. Burnham has done nothing for us, and as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, why should he have done?

The Greens want that Mayoralty, and at the moment it looks as if their candidate will be Geraldine Coggins, their Group Leader on Trafford Council. But they lost their deposit at Makerfield while taking less than a third of the votes for the Workers Party at yesterday’s local by-election in Bury. The Workers Party should never have stood aside for the Greens at Gorton and Denton, but the least that they should do would be to stand aside this time for its candidate, George Galloway, whom Starmer should now guarantee would not be detained as a terrorist on his return to Britain. Starmer will not, nor will the Greens.

The Greens’ opposition to the very New Labour desire for even more gambling, and Burnham was a researcher for Tessa Jowell, is fatally undermined by their support for drug legalisation, just as their opposition to the medically unnecessary circumcision of children is fatally undermined by their support for chemical or surgical castration in the name of gender identity. From 1 August, researchers at King’s College London will be permitted to use experimental puberty blockers on boys from the age of 12 and on girls from the age of 11. Clearly, they know the difference. Those thus experimented upon would be deemed incapable of messaging their peers on social media, but capable of this.

A week after circumcision became a live issue in Britain, we have still heard nothing from the School of Christopher Hitchens, headed by Oliver Kamm. That question also presents itself to Restore Britain, with its desire to ban kosher and halal slaughter. Far from being the kingmaker at Makerfield, Restore took fewer votes and a lower share than had been managed in 2010 by the BNP, and as the party of remigration that comparison is apt. Even if every Restore voter had voted for Reform UK, then Reform would still have lost. “Stop Farage” is now the single most powerful message in British politics.

And people are joining the Labour Party to support Starmer, but they are angry that they will have no vote until they had been six months in. Yet that rule was established by Starmer to prevent anything like the influx of support for Jeremy Corbyn. Would it take a heart of stone not to laugh? I famously have a heart of stone, and I am still laughing.

Easily Bought?

As Roman Lavrynovych and Stanislav Carpiuc go down, whatever happened to the fourth man who, on 2 June 2025, was arrested in relation to the arson attacks on Keir Starmer’s former homes and former car? Carpiuc is suddenly now a Romanian without complication, even though his origins in Ukraine are more than pertinent. Keep a protective eye on the acquitted Petro Pochynok. And notice that, while anything may now be sentenced as terrorism at the whim of the judge, Mr Justice Garnham felt no such urge in relation to arson against properties connected to the Prime Minister, attacks ostensibly carried out on behalf of a nuclear-armed foreign power. 

Lavrynovych had been declared mentally disabled, having scored 66 on the general ability index, with anything below 70 being considered “intellectual disability”. Yet he is the sole director of the construction and roofing company that bears his name. And not that I wish death on Lavrynovych or Carpiuc, but if that did happen, then our rulers would blame it on the Russians, which would announce that the Russians were capable of hitting people inside His Majesty’s Prisons. Mercifully for the Government, the “Opposition” would not point that out.

Never forget that you are a traitor, a crank, a conspiracy theorist, and all the rest of it, if you do not recite that the 23-year-old son of a Russian diplomat had the codename El Money, spoke fluent Ukrainian (in the real world, while almost all Ukrainians speak Russian, almost no Russians speak Ukrainian), was in a position to dole out Russian passports, was astroturfing both Islamist and neo-Nazi activities on the streets of London, and was hiring Ukrainian rent boys to execute incompetent arson attacks on Keir Starmer’s old car, his flat from long ago, and the house that he owned but which was inhabited by his sister-in-law, all properties known to the rent boys? Of course, our betters do not expect us to believe that. Rather, and as so often, their assertion of dominance is in making us pretend that we did. Resist.

A New Dawn Has Broken, Has It Not?

A storming victory for the Conservatives at Aberdeen South. A Labour collapse at Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, from a close second to a distant fourth. And what of Makerfield?

Standing against the Prime Minister by standing for the Prime Minister's party, more votes for Andy Burnham than for all 13 other candidates put together. A Restore Britain total that was less than one third of the Labour majority over Reform UK. A lost Conservative deposit. 10 candidates with less than one per cent apiece, including both the Green and the Liberal Democrat. Precisely 18 votes for each of the Libertarian Party candidate, the Climate Party candidate, and Robert Pownall, an Independent dressed as a fox.

Count Binface and Howling Laud Hope in seventh and eighth place, ahead of Rejoin EU, the Libertarian Party, the Climate Party, and all three Independents, six candidates whose combined vote was lower than the combined vote for the Official Monster Raving Loony Party and for the leader of the Recyclons from the planet Sigma IX.

And campaigning against a CO2 pipeline from the Peak District to Morecambe Bay, nowhere near Wigan, an Independent called Paul Gould took eight votes, fewer than the number of signatures that he had needed to make it onto the ballot paper, signatures that he had collected door-to-door a good hour away from his own door.

All in all, it makes you proud to be British.

Step On?

Keir Starmer is said to have raised £100,000 for a Leadership campaign. That is considered an achievement. In 2020, Robert Latham QC alone gave Starmer's Leadership campaign £100,000.

According to Nigel Farage, Andy Burnham is using Makerfield as a stepping stone to the Premiership. Quite unlike Farage at Clacton, of course. Or Starmer at Holborn and St Pancras. Imagine someone who sought to enter the House of Commons with a view to becoming Prime Minister. Where would it all end?

Contribute To Volatility

Created by the previous Government that now dominated both the Conservative Party and Reform UK, PIP is an in-work benefit with the clue in its name. Yet John Pring writes:

The proportion of disabled people who are successful in their claim for the main disability benefit has plunged by nearly a quarter since Labour came to power two years ago, new figures have revealed.

The figures, released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) this week, suggest the department may have been engaged in a secret programme to cut the number of new claimants awarded personal independence payment (PIP).

Even though PIP spending and claimant numbers were rising sharply under the last Conservative government, the opposition has used figures showing increasing numbers of PIP claimants as a key point of attack against Labour in recent months.

But this week’s figures show that, for the first quarter of 2026, the award rate for all cleared new claims (excluding withdrawn claims and claimants using the “special rules for end of life”) shows just 37 per cent of claims led to any kind of PIP award, down from 43 per cent in 2025, and 48 per cent in the first quarter of 2024.

This means there has been a drop of 11 percentage points, a fall of 23 per cent in just two years.

Previous figures had shown a rise in successful claims from 44 per cent in 2023 to 48 per cent in the first quarter of 2024.

For those new claims where a PIP assessment had been completed (excluding withdrawn claims and claimants using the “special rules for end of life”), 44 per cent of claims led to a PIP award, down from 50 per cent in the same quarter of 2025, and 54 per cent in 2024.

This was a drop of 10 percentage points, and a fall of 19 per cent in two years.

Previous figures had shown a rise in successful new claims from 51 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 to 54 per cent in 2024, shortly before Labour came to power.

These figures show that, before Labour took control of DWP in July 2024, the proportion of new PIP claims receiving an award was increasing – although figures from the second quarter of 2024 suggest it may have fallen slightly just before the election – but that it has plunged dramatically in the last two years.

The sharp rise in the proportion of disabled people having their PIP claims rejected might also help to explain why the number of PIP appeals received by the social security tribunal increased by 24 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, compared with the same quarter in 2025.

Yesterday (Wednesday), DWP refused to say if the new government had taken steps in 2024 to ensure that a higher proportion of new PIP claims would be rejected.

But it said that timescales for different parts of the PIP process can contribute to volatility in its official figures.

It pointed to figures for the five-year period from August 2019 to July 2024, which show 42 per cent of applicants received an award for normal rules new claims.

A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “Award rates can vary over time because the number of awards being made changes, and because the number of cases that are withdrawn or disallowed varies.

“For the latest five-year period ending April 2026, 43 per cent received an award for new claims under normal rules.”

Caroline Richardson, a former statistician and part of the Spartacus network of disabled researchers, said: “Obviously disabled people will be concerned with the figures.

“We are keen that people take a deeper look into these figures to ascertain if indeed this is just down to fluctuations, or if circumstances such as population trends and reactions to these trends are influencing the DWP and the awards.

“This isn’t a straightforward data set and has to be interrogated further to draw concrete conclusions beyond what we are seeing, and into why we are seeing it.”

Media attention this week focused on the increase in the number of PIP recipients to four million, a rise of two per cent in three months.

Of these four million, 3.3 million (83 per cent) were of working-age and 680,000 (17 per cent) were of state pension age, with the Resolution Foundation thinktank pointing out that the proportion of claimants who were of state pension age had risen from 14 per cent in 2019.

The Ultimate Outcome

While there are grey areas, if something would obviously have to be rescued by the State rather than allowed to go bust, then it belongs in public ownership, just as if something obviously would not, then it does not. Corner shops? Obviously not. But water? Obviously, as is the case everywhere apart from England and Chile. Renationalisation, which ought to lead to the National Grid that was proposed by Labour in 1979, would not be difficult, as Gill Plimmer writes:

Thames Water, the UK’s biggest water and sewerage company, has been teetering on the brink of collapse for more than two years as it struggles under its £20bn debt pile.

The utility, which serves about 16mn people in and around London, has been in the hands of its lenders since 2024. They include the US funds Silver Point Capital and Elliott Management. The lenders have proposed an emergency deal for Thames Water as a last-ditch solution after KKR, the private equity firm, walked away from a rescue a year ago. The lenders’ most recent recapitalisation deal has awaited regulatory sign-off from Ofwat since March.

The government wants to avoid Thames Water being taken into state hands. But this week environment secretary Emma Reynolds said the lenders’ plan was not “good enough” and that “we stand by for any outcome”, raising the prospect that the government could take over Thames Water. But what would that look like?

What is the Special Administration Regime?

The government’s Special Administration Regime, or SAR, is a form of temporary nationalisation and is widely viewed as the most likely pathway for a “renationalisation” of Thames Water.

A JPMorgan Chase credit note circulated after Reynolds’ comments assessed that the “risk of special administration at Thames Water is as high as it’s ever been”.

Under the regime, a court appoints an administrator, a qualified insolvency practitioner, to run the company in the public interest. The administrator ensures that services keep running and that suppliers and employees are paid on time. The debt interest and repayments could be frozen, freeing up additional cash for infrastructure.

The company could continue to receive income from customers under the SAR, and Thames Water could even be “cash flow positive in that window”, lawyers said. If the government did need to provide interim funding, it would likely be repaid first in any restructuring, either during SAR or when the business is sold.

A recent example is Bulb Energy, which collapsed in 2021 and was placed in a comparable SAR. The energy supplier was sold to Octopus Energy one year later and the government recouped all the costs.

What are the political considerations?

An added dimension to Thames Water’s future is who the prime minister will be come October. On Thursday, voters will decide whether Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, will become the MP for Makerfield; the first step on his putative journey to replace Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister. Burnham, who is on the left of the Labour Party, has said there is a “very strong case for public ownership for Thames Water”.

If Thames Water were to be taken into public ownership through special administration, creditors of the water company would have a right to “appropriate value”, a figure set in the “public interest” under legislation introduced in 2024, lawyers said. This figure would take into account the company’s financial and environmental failings, which may reduce creditors’ claims to compensation.

British Steel is in the process of being compulsorily renationalised and it is unclear how much will be paid to the Chinese owners. Nationalisation of the entire water sector is also popular; more than 80 per cent of the public support it, according to a YouGov poll last month.

Estimates of the costs of nationalising the sector vary wildly. The government last year estimated it to be about £100bn. Others disputed this figure, pointing out that the “appropriate value” is not the same as market value, and can take into account the cost of repairing infrastructure that should have been fixed.

The government’s borrowing costs would also typically be at a lower rate than a private company’s.

Since water is organised by regional water basins, a more left-leaning government may look at local public ownership if it were to renationalise the entire industry.

Why is it crunch time now?

Even before Reynolds’ intervention, the clock was ticking. Thames Water is expected to run out of cash in October. It has already spent £2.25bn of a £3bn emergency loan it agreed with creditors last year, which carries a 9.75 per cent interest rate.

Even if Ofwat signs off the creditors’ latest proposal, it must then pass to a public consultation and be approved by the courts.

The creditors have proposed writing down £9.6bn of debt, injecting a further £3.35bn of equity and lending the business £6.55bn if Ofwat agrees a deal.

But the deal also will cost about £750mn, including legal and advisory fees, on top of the £800mn already paid for the first emergency loan.

There are other pressures. Thames Water needs to produce its accounts by July 16 but if Ofwat has not agreed a deal, auditors may struggle to sign off the accounts as a “going concern”.

Thames Water’s bills are expected to rise by about 54 per cent by 2030, taking the average water and sewerage bill to approximately £727 a year. From 2030 there will be further bill rises — hard for consumers to swallow if there is no visible sign of improvement.

If the creditor deal goes ahead, the company is planning to seek a stock market listing as soon as 2030 and needs time to improve the business.

What are the risks?

The government is concerned that state intervention will leave it taking responsibility for water company failures and deter much-needed investment in the UK.

The creditors’ provision of more debt and equity also relies on leniency on environmental targets such as pollution and leakage. The consortium argues that any more regulatory fines would wipe out cash that could otherwise be invested to improve the company’s creaking infrastructure.

This proposal also carries political risk and moral hazard: if the government agrees to those demands, other water companies could rebel against special treatment and see regulatory penalties as optional.

JPMorgan analysts estimate “the ultimate outcome likely close to a coin toss at present” for Thames Water. Reynolds’ letter may be a forerunner of a government policy more in favour of state ownership — or it could just mean she is positioning herself for a role in a Burnham cabinet.

Determined Never To Go Away

Conor Coyle writes:

Some of the children and young people who took to the streets during racist disorder in Belfast last week were there to clear debts for drugs and loans to paramilitaries, according to the Commissioner for Children and Young People.

Chris Quinn told the Irish News he was on the ground during the race hate disorder in Glengormley last Wednesday, and said he was made aware of one young person who had been encouraged to riot to clear a debt of £500.

Trouble flared last week after a man in his 40s suffered serious injuries to his face, neck and back in a frenzied knife attack in a nationalist area of north Belfast.

A 30-year-old Sudanese man, Hadi Alodid, has been charged with attempted murder and possessing a bladed article in public.

During subsequent violence, immigrant families were forced to flee their homes in loyalist areas after they were set alight by race-hate mobs.

Figures from the PSNI this week show that of the 35 arrests it has made in connection with the race hate disorder, 10 were children aged 16 and under, with the youngest of those aged just 12.

“I was down in Glengormley last week, I live very close to where that was happening and I was checking on elderly friends and young families,” Mr Quinn said.

“We have been informed by reliable people working with these young people, that some of those were brought there to clear debts. “I heard an account of one young person who was told to go and partake in this, and it would wipe £500 off their debt.

“Those debts could be drug debts, they could be loans. These things have been happening for a long time, children and young people getting coerced and groomed by criminal gangs and sometimes taking the rap.

“We know where your mummy lives, we know where your house is, your mum owes such and such money, you need to get down there and partake in this.

“I think it’s really clear that this has been orchestrated.”

While the PSNI says it has “no evidence” that the violence had been coordinated by loyalist paramilitaries, there have been reports of senior paramilitaries present on the streets during last week’s disorder.

Mr Quinn said it was clear that there had been coordination and that the riots were not sporadic, but added that coercion of children and young people into criminal acts is not solely confined to those on the loyalist side.

“We know in east Belfast there were paramilitaries on the streets and what I saw with my eyes was masked people, young people and lots of not so young people,” he said.

“It looked to me like there was instructions being given, and in Glengormley at a certain time, everyone was stood down. It was like a switch was clicked. Everyone started jumping in their cars and disappearing. No one involved in that violence was from the area.

“I’m mindful of putting myself in danger and my family in danger, because we are talking about very dangerous people.

“It’s vile. It’s almost like we’re on repeat, we’re seeing time and time again that children are being coerced. We saw in Derry this past few years, shocking pictures of very young children with petrol bombs in their hands. Someone has given that child a petrol bomb, someone has told them how to make a petrol bomb.

“It’s happening over and over again, and it’s child abuse.”

On Wednesday, SDLP leader Claire Hanna said there had been a “failure” on the part of the UK government to tackle paramilitary gangs and that that had contributed to the disorder seen in the north last week.

“Loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the racism fuelled disorder that we saw on the streets of Northern Ireland last week,” Ms Hanna said.

“These shadowy figures remain in the background, getting young people to do their bidding, risking a criminal record and diminished future prospects, while they skulk off into the night.

“There has been a failure to get a grip on paramilitarism. We haven’t dealt with issues around flags, murals and organised crime legislation and these groups are still allowed to prey on communities. Some seem determined never to go away.

“We need to see a full review of the funding given to paramilitary linked groups, enhanced organised crime focus and a commitment to tackle those inciting hatred both on and offline so that people, of whatever background or ethnicity, no longer have to live in fear from these groups.”

The Genuinely Progressive Position

Rhoda Grant writes:

My Labour colleague Lauren Edwards MP announced over the weekend, to the surprise of many, that she would be resurrecting the “assisted dying” bill in parliament this term. Bringing back the Bill risks fuelling tensions within the Labour Party at a particularly sensitive political moment. Several Labour MPs have already voiced opposition, warning that reviving the issue now would create unnecessary division. Others, including a number of MPs who previously supported the Bill, have indicated they do not support attempts to force it through via the Parliament Acts.

When I, along with 16 of the other 19 Scottish Labour MSPs, who voted recently against assisted dying in Holyrood, it was because of – rather than contrary to – our left-wing values. Too often, the assisted dying debate has been framed lazily as a contest between compassionate progressives and socially conservative opponents. That caricature bears little resemblance to the debate we had in Scotland. Some of the strongest opposition to assisted dying came from people deeply shaped by the traditions of the Labour movement: concern for solidarity, equality, disability rights, and the protection of vulnerable people from economic and social pressures.

Assisted dying proposals force us to ask an uncomfortable question: what happens when the state begins offering death amidst a society that already struggles to offer dignity in life?

For those of us on the Left, that question cannot be ignored.

The Labour movement was built on a belief that people are not truly free or equal when crushed by poverty, insecurity, isolation or structural disadvantage. That belief is the cornerstone of the welfare state. The creation of the NHS was a moral declaration that human dignity and basic rights should never depend upon wealth, position or productivity.

Assisted dying risks undermining that principle.

Supporters often present these laws as empowering choice, but choice does not exist in a vacuum. A choice made by a person with access to excellent care is not the same as a ‘choice’ forced on someone who feels like a burden, cannot access adequate social support, fears loneliness, or believes their care needs are exhausting their family.

This is why so many disability campaigners remain deeply uneasy about assisted dying legislation. They understand something that the Bill fails to account for: in unequal societies, the absence of “choice” is frequently shaped by economic and cultural pressure rather than overt coercion.

During Scotland’s debate, many of us became increasingly concerned that assisted dying was being presented as progressive simply because it expanded autonomy in theory. However, the Left has always maintained that freedoms mean little without protection behind them. Telling vulnerable people they are free to choose death while failing to guarantee care, housing, mental health support and social security is not progress.

International evidence only deepens those concerns. In Canada, stories have emerged involving disabled people and vulnerable citizens seeking assisted death amid poverty or inadequate support. Cases involving veterans and people struggling with housing insecurity have horrified observers across the political spectrum. Even where safeguards formally exist, the broader message – that some lives are too costly or lacking in dignity to save – is clear. Once assisted dying becomes embedded within public systems, economics inevitably enter the conversation. If the state finds assisted death cheaper than long-term care (as it surely will), what signal does that send to the poor, the elderly and the disabled? How might social norms and expectations change?

Marie Curie Scotland published a report, Dying in the Margins, that shows the reality of terminal illness and poverty. We must ensure that everyone has a right to life, to live their final days in dignity, rather than death. These final days are precious, to the person and their loved ones, but people must have adequate support to live every day, regardless of their personal wealth.

The genuinely progressive position here is to insist that no citizen should ever feel that death is their best option because society failed to provide sufficient care or support. The answer to suffering should not be to make death more accessible while leaving the conditions that create despair unresolved.

During the pandemic we also saw elderly and disabled people being encouraged to sign Do Not Resuscitate declarations due to the fear that the NHS would become overwhelmed. Which leads me to believe, as a society, we cannot provide the right governance for this issue.

I understand that many of those calling for this option want their own autonomy to decide how they live and die. Many of them have the financial certainty to make that a real choice. However, many in our society do not have these choices. When making law we must make it for the whole of society, rather than the fortunate few.

Before Westminster rushes to revive this legislation, Labour MPs in particular should note that 85% of their Scottish colleagues opposed assisted dying and reflect carefully on the lessons from Scotland. Many of us concluded that assisted dying sat uneasily, even irreconcilably, beside the founding values of the welfare state. A society committed to equality and collective care should be very wary of introducing laws that may, however unintentionally, place pressure upon vulnerable people to end their lives. Those of us who truly want to see a society of equals should support legislation that promotes life and hope rather than death and despair. I urge Labour colleagues in Westminster to follow our lead in Scotland and resist waving this dangerous bill into law.