Slipping the Leash

"I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no Air Force." So said Donald Trump, during an interview with CBS. The reason for the war has never been set out, because neither Trump, his office, nor the Israeli government have a justification. Judging by their commentary, they don't think one is even needed. This is aggression for aggression's sake, an effort to bedazzle and distract from domestic issues. But hard realities are biting. Far from being a bloodless affair, Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Tel Aviv to repeated missile strikes as stores of interceptor supplies remain depleted from last year's exchange with Iran. Meanwhile, despite suffering heavy damage and political decapitation the Iranian regime and military remain robust and have shown a capacity to fight back. Something the US and Israel are not accustomed to. And there is the small matter of Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the heart attack this has sent through oil and energy markets. The knock on consequences won't do Trump any political favours, and we'll see how much of his base are willing to stump up for this pay-per-view none of them asked for.

Unusually for a US war of aggression, the UK have proven extremely reluctant to get involved. Keir Starmer tried his best to be accommodating without actually committing British forces. After the initial raids over Tehran he was quick to call on Iran to show restraint, and was equally quick to condemn when their missiles and drones found their targets in reply. When British bases and Gulf "partners"/clients were hit, he announced that the US Air Force were welcome to use British facilities for "defensive strikes". Which is so much evasive lawyer babble to avoid admitting his government's complicity in something that, in theory, should see its instigators in the dock at The Hague. Not that this has impressed Trump, who branded Starmer "no Churchill", and downplayed belated UK efforts to move aircraft carriers in sortie distance from Iran. Trump's cheerleaders in this country couldn't help themselves either. The Tory/Reform press have been attacking Starmer ever since the bombs started falling for not joining in, with preposterous stories that the nature of Labour's voting coalition has stayed his hand. Oh yes, the same party so concerned with Muslim voters that they gave Israel a free hand in massacring Palestinians in Gaza. Kemi Badenoch has dived in, saying Starmer can find plenty of money for social security instead of bullets and bombs. Laughable. Nigel Farage said the UK should be dropping ordinance alongside the US. Both have received backing from Tony Blair. He, unsurprisingly, thinks Britain should follow whenever the White House says heel. Once a poodle, always a poodle.

Starmer's effort to keep Britain to a limited role has little to do with the niceties of international law, and even less to do with electoral embarrassment. On paper, the UK's interests in the Middle East and the Gulf are practically identical to the Americans. They want friendly, preferably autocratic regimes, and Israel's role in this set up is the quick-to-anger gendarme. Iran is the destabilising element who, through its own regional strength and networks of irregular allies and semi-state actors were checks on Israel's aggressive posture and, by extension, the challenger to Western hegemony. This suffered severe setbacks with the obliteration of Gaza, incursions into Lebanon, the bombing of the Houthis in Yemen, and missile exchanges between Israel and Iran over the last 18 months. From Britain and, by extension, Western Europe's perspective Iran had largely been put back in its box. There was now no real threat to Israel. Everything was fine.

Until Netanyahu and Trump started their war of aggression. Britain is not concerned about civilian deaths, be they Iranian, from the Gulf states, or fiercely patriotic tax exiles. It is worried about the consequences of destabilisation. As far as the government and the foreign office are concerned, the war is utterly reckless. The disruption to energy supplies, air travel, shipping, and the sloshing of Gulf money into and through the City are unwelcome costs with a range of politically undesirable consequences. Being at odds with the US is a rarity thanks to establishment slavishness - as typified by the repugnant axis of Badenoch, Farage, and Blair - but remaining separate and disengaged reduces political costs and keeps material costs to a minimum. The price shock and mess of Trump's war is not worth it when the overall outcome will largely be no different to when the bombing started, despite White House hyperbole. The special relationship has proven to be anything but since the razzmatazz of the second state visit, and it appears Starmer, David Lammy, and friends have - rightly - calculated that nothing would be gained from joining this criminal enterprise. All of which helps explain why, for once, we're not being dragged into an unwanted war by the government at America's behest.

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A Strategic Catastrophe

Excellent discussion this.

On Anti-Green Hysteria

Maybe I have a weird sense of humour, but I found Tuesday morning's YouGov poll putting the Greens in second and Labour a distant joint third hilarious. Reform on 23%, Greens 21%, and Labour and the Tories both on 16%. As the world can see, Labour's attempts to bounce back after the the Gorton and Denton drubbing have not proven successful. Who could have guessed that the Prime Minister's decision to equate Reform and the Greens would not go down well with the voters he's losing? Meanwhile, things aren't looking fantastic for Reform either. A weekend spent telegraphing what sore losers they are, Moreincommon finds Reform topping its negative poll tracker on 38%, with Labour on 34%. Its looking like the crisis in establishment politics has taken a turn for the worse.

The reasons why Labour are sinking are well rehearsed, and doesn't bear repeating. But the steady evaporation of the party under Keir Starmer is a problem. Labourism from its earliest manifestations was always a means of reconciling the organised working class with the social order, of aligning the industrial incrementalism of trade union struggle with the coalition-building and proceduralism of constitutional politics. It was and, in its best moments, remains less a moral crusade and more a means of integrating the working class into the politics and (sensible) management of British capitalism. For it to do this, Labour needs to keep its base among the popular layers. However, it's been evident since Starmer became party leader that he either does not understand this or doesn't care. Because his approach to politics is both managerialist and obsequiously deferential to business, above all the City. Yet hollowing out the party before it even took office is to undermine Labour and Labourism's utility to British capital. Apart from its hyper class conscious and, therefore, paranoid elements, capital likes Labour because of its historic role in dampening down aspirations and movements from below. They appreciate Rachel Reeves's orthodox approach to state finances, but that's a nice to have. Labour is supposed to manage and police the class relations of British capitalism for capital's benefit from within the organised workers' movement. Something it cannot do if the mass support has vanished and has gone, in the main, to a radical upstart.

This is where the hysteria seen across the Tory press since Thursday's result comes in. It has been occasionally noted that the collapse of the Tories hasn't occasioned much soul searching or panic on the right. The reason being that Reform are available to articulate the interests that have hitherto animated the Conservatives, and that despite occasional argy-bargy between Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch, it's clear that should the situation demand some kind of electoral arrangement or governing coalition deal could be struck. With Reform leading the polls, the right are intensely relaxed about the vestigal status of the Tories. But, having driven all before it, if they weren't expecting Reform to win in Manchester they too believed the polls about how close the contest was. Instead they were handily seen off. This shouldn't be too much of a concern considering the character of the constituency, but have inhaled their own fumes. They - like the Labour right - caricature the working class as racists moved by the same oddball concerns as they. Having had their reality impinged upon, and seeing green left populism crowding out their tired old shtick, all of a sudden they're worried. Farage's cache is anti-political establishment, of being the "change" candidate. That the Greens have successfully contested these claims on one occasion, the right are now worried that they were getting high on their supply, and that we could be back in 2017 again. A fear reinforced by Reform's stalling in most national polls.

Here then is the problem. Labour are no longer suitable as a vehicle for mass politics, and therefore cannot be a reliable pacifier. Meanwhile, the great white hope of the right is not as popular as they thought it was. Centrism is, once again, a dead letter. And the right might not be strong enough to win an election, be it a Reform government or a coalition with the Tories. At the same time, as far as both parties are concerned the insurgent Green Party has come from nowhere and threatens to drag politics as a whole into confrontation with property, work, income, living standards, and why the rich have prospered at everyone else's expense. I.e. The class concerns politics normally works hard to obfuscate, smother, and deny. It follows that the press will try everything to shove hope back in its box - character assassinations, gossip mongering, smears, scare mongering, whipping up new scapegoat campaigns. But ultimately, these efforts are doomed. Since the final defeat of Corbynism in 2019, the Tories, Reform, and especially Labour have done everything possible to keep the left out of politics. And yet here we are - the Greens are becoming the new vehicle for working class interests and is mounting a renewed challenge to the establishment's class compact. No wonder so many of them are panicked.

Five Most Popular Posts in February

A loud month in politics, but a comparatively quiet one posting-wise around these parts. As is customary, here are the most popular posts this February.

1. A Farewell to Morgan McSweeney
2. Why Labour Can't Argue with the Left
3. What is the Point of Keir Starmer?
4. The Unmaking of Mandelson
5. Labour after Gorton and Denton

February 2026 is a month to savour. All the worst things happened to the worst people in Labour Party politics. And joyful moments weren't confined to seeing others taken down a peg or two. Leading, unsurprisingly, was the overdue fall of Morgan McSweeney. The man partly responsible for the topic of the number two post - Labour's inability to square off against anything to its left. With the mastermind behind Starmerism out the door, the question then arises concerning the point Starmer now has - the topic of the third placed post. In at four was the public disgrace of Peter Mandelson, and fifth is the political culmination of all their works: the loss of one of Labour's safest seats to the Greens.

What for the second chance saloon? As I was a member for all of three months, I'll give my temporary political accommodation a shout out. Your Party's leadership elections finally coughed up a result after some bilious mudslinging, so here's my take on what comes next.

And there we are for the shortest month. As Trump and Netanyahu have unleashed hell against Iran, one can't expect too many political highpoints in March. And, undoubtedly, the government will disgrace itself again bending over backwards to support the latest criminal venture. But as the reverberations of Gorton and Denton work their way through domestic politics, perhaps there will be some nice surprises.

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Council By-Elections February 2026

This month saw 18,325 votes cast in 10 local authority contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. Six council seats changed hands. For comparison with January's results, see here.

Party	Number of Candidates	Total Vote	%	+/- Jan	+/- Feb 25	Avge/ Contest	+/- Seats
Conservative	8	3,316	18.1%	+3.0	-5.9	415	0
Labour	9	3,817	20.8%	+5.9	-3.4	424	-5
Lib Dem	8	1,,897	10.4%	-7.5	-8.8	237	+1
Reform	9	3,666	20.0%	-5.3	+1.5	407	+2
Green	7	2,888	15.6%	+1.5	+8.6	413	+1
SNP*	0						0
PC**	3	970	5.3%	+5.3	+5.3	323	+1
Ind***	15	1,117	6.1%	+4.5	+4.4	74	0
Other****	2	654	3.6%	+1.7	+2.8	327	0

* There were no by-elections in Scotland
** There were three by-elections in Wale
*** There were three Independent clashe
**** Others this month consisted of One Leicester (638) and TUSC (16)

What an interesting month. Labour still handed out seats to all and sundry, and yet for the first time in a year it came out on top of the popular vote! A somewhat lame consolation for the drubbing it got in Gorton and Denton. Butthat also means something else, and that's Reform didn't top the polls either. In fact, you'd have to go back to April last year to find their popular vote tally in the runner up spot. Obviously, by-election aggregates coem with a skip load of caveats. They reflect local conditions. Concentrated strength in one area can inflate vote totals. And so on. Nevertheless, it's interesting that as Reform are beginning to falter in the polls their by-election hauls have also plateaued and declined slightly. Something to keep an eye on.

Also, a new month records another high where the Greens are concerned, and something of a low for the Liberal Democrats. We've awaited the Green surge to show up in council votes, so perhaps this is sign that following the membership surge and now the triumph in Manchester its by-election totals will start looking like the party's polling figures.

Next month is a slightly busier time with 15 contests to look forward to - four Independent, four Lib Dem, two Labour, two Green, two Conservative, and one Reform defences.

5 February
City of London, Coleman Street, Ind hold
North Somerset, Clevedon South, Lab hold
Ynys Mon, Ynys Gybi, Ref gain from PC

10 February
Pembrokeshire, Fishguard North East, PC gain from Lab

12 February
Bradford, Worth Valley, Con hold
Peterborough, Fletton & Woodston, Ref gain from Lab

19 February
Caerphilly, Van, PC gain from Lab
Leicester, Stoneygate, Grn gain from Lab
Redcar & Cleveland, Zetland, LDem gain from Lab

26 February
Southampton, Shirley (2027), LDem hold

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Labour after Gorton and Denton

It wasn't even close. While the pollsters kept coughing up the Gorton and Denton numbers that put the three parties inches from one another, the outcome was the Greens 12 points clear on 41%. Reform managed 29%, and Labour mustered a poor third on 25%. Also, shout out to the Tories for losing their deposit and managing their worst ever parliamentary by-election result. Behind this survey of the scores after the doors is a profound shift in British politics - the first time since the war when neither of the two main parties of government came first nor second, the first time the momentum behind Reform has been stymied despite receiving their customary flattery, hype, and media over-exposure. And, for the Greens, its first ever parliamentary by-election win. A day for the history books, and more signs that the Greens are becoming the new party of working class Britain.

It was also, without a shadow of a doubt, a catastrophe for Labour. They threw the kitchen sink at Gorton and Denton. Campaigning by the Prime Minister, virtually every available MP timetabled for door knocking, huge events that scraped together thousand-strong campaign days. Dodgy leaflets, off-the-scale negative messaging, all of it came to nought. The margin of victory between the Greens on the one hand and Labour on the other, while Reform cornered the constituency's right wing vote, had something more than tactical voting behind it. Like Caerphilly, Labour's traditional backers wanted change and in Hannah Spencer elected a working class woman on a socialist platform. The size of the win was also an endorsement of a different kind of politics instead of the miserabilism with dashings of racism offered by the other parties.

The cope though, the Labour Party cope, it's been a pitiful sight. Doing the rounds on breakfast TV this morning Heidi Alexander put the rejection of her candidate down to "impatience". This is the narrative that has emerged over the last six months to explain electoral reversals. After 14 ruinous years of Tory government, the punters want to see change for the better and are impatient for it. The implication being that once Labour delivers Beijing-levels of annual economic growth, wages go up, new workers' rights are bedded down, and parents feel the benefit of breakfast clubs the polling numbers will recover, delivering a renaissance at the ballot box when 2029 swings around. What poppycock. People aren't fed up with Labour because they want to see a better world yesterday, they're disgusted because the government made decisions that made life worse. Scrapping winter fuel payments for everyone bar pensioners on the lowest incomes, stupid. Relishing the opportunity to cut £5bn worth of social security support to disabled people. Stupid. And getting caught with their muzzles in the freebie trough, and then defending it. Utterly, utterly stupid. Throw in their support for the genocide in Gaza, its Farage cosplay, and the unforced error of appointing Peter Mandelson, is it any wonder that Labour's base is splintering?

Going by the commentary offered by sundry Labour MPs on social media after the by-election, it's telling that those closest to the realities of working class life understand the issues. Clive Lewis's criticisms were particularly blunt and spot on. But what chances does Labour have of learning from this disaster? The track record is not looking good. When the SNP annihilated Scottish Labour in 2015, did the party pause and reflect? Did it think about who its voters are, or ask why so much of its working class base demonstrated little loyalty to the party's unionist shibboleth and switched from voting for an anti-independence to a pro-independence party? It did not. There was scant movement for the next nine years, hoping that the vote would return without changing much. And, as it happened, enough voters were cheesed off with the SNP in government to give Labour another go. And as polls now show, most of them now have buyer's remorse. That's the record, and in his leader's letter to MPs, Keir Starmer has argued that carrying out "change" means not changing anything at all.

It's an entirely predictable epistle. There's the retread of Alexander argument that it's all "impatience", and the woe today will surely be followed by jam tomorrow. And that the Greens' win is a one off. They "simply do not have the resources, the activist base or the local knowledge to replicate this victory across the country". Brave words from a campaign that spectacularly misread the constituency's mood in what was, before yesterday, Labour's 34th safest seat. He goes on and blames the "endorsement from George Galloway" and "sectarian" politics. This latter charge is typical of a party that is just itching to attack Muslims if they have the temerity to vote for anyone else. As plenty of people have pointed out, how sectarian is a vote that has endorsed a white women standing for a party led by a gay, Jewish man? Labour think they have the Greens bang to rights because the party issued a leaflet in Urdu that pictured David Lammy with Benjamin Netanyahu and Starmer with Narendra Modi. Proof that the Greens are in the gutter of communalist politics? Only someone utterly ignorant could make such an argument in good faith. Netanyahu is on there because his government has murdered over 100,000 Muslims, with the support of Labour. Modi is on there because under his premiership, he has encouraged Hindu extremism and anti-Muslim pogroms, all the while subjecting Muslim-majority Kashmir to brutal occupation. How dare British Muslims care about their friends and relatives and be disgusted at Starmer's efforts to cosy up with the BJP. If Starmer wants to lecture others about division, he might want to reconsider his own policies first.

Starmer's letter pledges to carry on regardless. Just as his campaign tried to ignore the Greens by pitching the by-election as Labour Vs Reform, he's as intent on ignoring the reasons for Labour's defeat. An obviously suicidal attitude to take, but one typical of Labourism. Nevertheless, most Labour MPs quite like being Labour MPs and will be drawing their own conclusions. For every Clive Lewis or Nadia Whittome prepared to break ranks, there are scores of others who, quietly, know what the issues are. Yet, paradoxically, despite a humiliating defeat Starmer's position is probably strengthened in the short term. His reason for existing, to absorb the body blows of the coming meltdowns in Wales, Scotland, and the English local elections remains the case - ahead of the party selecting a new leader. Meanwhile, the Green insurgency continues. A new MP, 200,000 members, a confidence that left wing politics can see off Reform, whoever comes after Starmer it's hard to see how Labour can win back the activists, supporters, and voters it has so carelessly and needlessly shed. On the occasion of Labour's 126th birthday, Starmer's gift to the party has been a new historic low. One that, on its current trajectory, could be the first of many.

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Where Now for Your Party?

It's been one of the most bad tempered elections seen in many a year. Opponents accused opponents of all manner of things as the contest itself descended into mudslinging and skulduggery. No, this is not the Gorton and Denton by-election but the vote for Your Party's Central Executive Committee, the results of which were announced on Thursday morning. The Jeremy Corbyn faction, For the Many, won 14 seats. The Zarah Sultana-backed Grassroots Left took seven seats, and the remainder went to independent candidacies. Corbyn and Sultana are also two of the four elected public office holders under the collective leadership arrangements, with Corbyn set to be YP's parliamentary leader.

Following the results, Corbyn released a mom and apple pie statement that said he wanted to build a "positive and inclusive party" and congratulated members on voting for a "mass socialist party that takes the fight to Starmer and Farage." Sultana likewise put out an emollient piece that emphasised the need to work together, but that calls for accountability and transparency "need to be respected". After the heat, may there be light?

Unfortunately for YP, it's likely this leadership election is going to leave lingering bad feeling. As late as yesterday Laura Alvarez, Corbyn's famously combative significant other, was absurdly musing about infiltration from Labour Together into YP. Which invited supportive comments that, in terms of tone, one might expect of a frothing conspiracy theory Facebook group. And this was typical of the standard of debate that raged across social media. There was precious little discussion about strategic direction, and a great deal of questioning the motives of those unwilling to extend Corbyn saintly status. Those supportive of the Grassroots Left were little better, as false character assassination and boilerplate Trot denunciations were flung in the opposite direction.

It might be possible to overcome the entrenching of divisions in YP this election has thrown up, but there remains significant obstacles to internal harmony. The first is the propensity of the nascent bureaucracy to trample over membership decisions. For instance, the instruction from conference was to allow dual membership with other parties (i.e. keeping YP open to other far left organisations), but it was down to the CEC to sort that out. This was ignored as "known" and "suspected" members of said outfits were barred from standing in these elections. A case of starting as they mean to go on? And then there was the edict that suggested people who served as officers in active unofficial YP branches would be ineligible to run for lay positions when they're finally inaugurated. A right recipe for the "inclusion" Corbyn waxed about in his statement.

And this is before we get to the main problem: how YP has spectacularly wasted its opportunity, and in so doing allowed the Greens to almost triple in size, become a true mass party and is now the vehicle for the political recomposition of the working class. A prize that was in front of YP's leadership cadre, but decided to pass it up for criminally petty reasons. That said, politics buzzes with volatility. If YP is able to stabilise, set aside its internal nonsenses, and start facing outwards it could build up a presence through consistent community, workplace, and street campaigning. And if it does, this would be a good thing for British politics. A small but viable presence could, in the spirit of socialist competition, act as a means of keeping the Greens honest. It could threaten swathes of inner city Labour-held seats where the Green presence is hitherto patchy, and a second strong radical force could work to tilt British politics as a whole further left. Cue a return to 2015-2020 levels of mainstream media hysteria and howls of outrage from politicians who treat their Commons sinecures as private property.

This is where YP can go. But it's now up to them - is this where they want to go, or is further recrimination and needless bloodletting more its style?

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Why Labour Can't Argue with the Left

Desperation. The word that, seen from afar, sums up Labour's campaign in Gorton and Denton. And the source of their fear is not the prospect of losing yet another seat to Reform, but conceding ground to the resurgent Greens. Having nixed Andy Burnham, the candidacies say everything about the two parties' respective trajectories. The Greens' Hannah Spencer, a plumber drawn to the party out of disgust with the political establishment. And Labour's Angeliki Stogia, a corporate lobbyist trudging a path into the parliamentary party beaten by so many others. Please tell me which is the pro-capitalist, petit bourgeois party and who is the organisation standing up for the working class in this by-election?

There have been two phases to Labour's campaign. It started with a studied failure to acknowledge the Green Party's existence. This is a fight between Labour and Reform, goes the party line, and progressive voters must get behind Angeliki to keep Reform out. The party even provided a Liberal Democrat-style bar chart putting the Greens in third place, which was hung from the property neighbouring Green campaign HQ. The problem, however, is that constituency polling - such as it is - have the Greens out in front and Labour in third. The betting markets, not that they have any special insight, also favour this outcome. Having decided pretending the Greens don't exist isn't working, they've moved on to gutter politics.

You might have thought that Reform's Matthew Goodwin, former pol prof and full-time far right grifter would have attracted Labour's ire. He's provided enough targets. He, after all, has called for a system of punitive taxation against women who do not have children. In Labour land, if it is between them and Reform then surely, surely their fiercest attacks should be turned toward the right. Instead, we get Keir Starmer calling the Green Party's public health-led approach to drugs "disgusting", and Sarah Jones, his policing minister, saying Zak Polanski wants to turn Britain's playgrounds "into crack dens". Brave considering the fondness several highly placed Labour figures have now or formerly had for the old nose powder. Labour's attitude is best summed up by Mike Tapp, the part-time home office minister and full-time clown from Dover and Deal. His vitriolic attack on the Greens stands out on his Twitter feed in sharp relief against a series of mild admonitions, at best, of Reform.

Writing in the New Statesman, John Elledge argues that Labour's hostility to the Greens, and bracketing them alongside Reform is only going to hurt Labour. What's left of their support knows there's no equivalence between the two parties. One party wants to welcome refugees, the other wants to deport Britons who don't meet their arbitrary criteria of national purity. One wants to help renters, the other wants to give landlords carte blanche to rinse tenants. You get the picture. And so do most Labour MPs, even those who performatively affect otherwise. They also know that the party's coalition has cracked and supporters are streaming to the Greens. It's not Reform that is Labour's biggest headache.

Which begs an interesting question. Labour's pandering to Reform and its attempt to outflank them from the right was and is justified by needing to win over Nigel Farage's fans. But this never applies in the opposite direction. Why doesn't Labour go harder on renters' rights, wages, workplaces, etc. to keep existing support on board? To my mind, there are two answers, both of which are baked into the party's politics. Firstly, according to the wisdom passed down from the disgraced Peter Mandelson, the electorate respond favourably to ... the spectacle of Labour attacking the interests of working class people. In this way, the stupid mistakes Starmer and Rachel Reeves made shortly after entering Downing Street - taking away winter fuel payments from "better off" pensioners, then threatening to cut support to disabled people - makes sense. They, or at least the dearly departed Morgan McSweeney, thought this would win plaudits with the press and therefore admiration among the punters. Imagine their confusion when this article of Blairist faith turned out not to be.

And the other? An inability to combat left wing critiques politically. Or, to be more accurate, offering convincing counter-arguments. The right won back control of Labour by lying its head off, and then using the bureaucracy to chase out the left. During the Corbyn years, it was the smears, the cry-bullying, and using remainerism as a proxy. None of them came up with an alternative programme that could persuade and convince. And the same is true today. Compromised by the government's support for a genocide, its scapegoating of the powerless, and a programme of weak and meek changes, Labour's biting back at Green Party criticisms would be a vain effort at gumming them to death. This is a consequence of the managerialist cadres Labour selects for its parliamentarians, typified by the man at the helm. These people are unaccustomed to hearing the word "no". But this comes on top of the Labourist tradition that, for over a century, had a political monopoly on the most organised and conscious sections of the working class. When its opponents to its left were the official Communist Party or the extra-Labour Trotskyist left, they could be ignored. When it was internal, as per Militant, they could be excluded. And on occasions when a left wing challenge pushed through, such as George Galloway's trio of election victories, or when Jeremy Corbyn and the so-called Gaza Independents won their seats, it could be put down to local circumstances. Labour has serious difficulties facing a mass left wing challenger party because it's never had to.

The result of all this is what we see today, peddling smears against the Greens that wouldn't be out of place in a Sun editorial or, for that matter, a Reform leaflet. If by some fluke Labour hold on to Gorton and Denton on Thursday, or if they somehow come ahead of the Greens, these points remain. Labour is unsuited and unprepared for a challenge from its left flank, and there's no sign, at least under this leadership and its heirs apparent, that it ever will be.

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Reform's Toryism

There are fewer people in politics worse than Robert Jenrick. So a plague on Nigel Farage for accepting his defection to Reform, and then installing him as their economics spox. Because the party is still ahead in the polls, when Jenrick now gives a speech we have to have some awareness of what he has to say. And on Wednesday it was Reform budget time. What would Farage in Number 10 mean for economics and public spending? And the answer is ... we've seen it all before.

Top of Jenrick's pops was the restoration of the two child benefit cap. This had already been trailed by Farage, with him suggesting earlier in the month that he wants the cap brought back so punters can save 5p a pint down at Spoons. Performative cruelty for pocket change? The most spiteful sections of Reform's support would lap it up. But how this sits with Matthew Goodwin's view that women should be fined/taxed punitively if they don't have children, and the generalised panic on the right about birthrates is anyone's guess.

Also on Jenrick's agenda was a pledge to keep the OBR, and the supremacy of the Treasury in state spending matters. And with that, the continued "independence" of the Bank of England. Something the establishment would be happy about, seeing as the symbiotic and interpenetrating relationships these institutions have with each other and the City of London are a crucial nexus of class power in this country. He also committed Reform to a low inflation strategy, which - as per previous governments - would be wheeled out as a technocratic wonky argument against increasing public spending. Which, funnily enough, never applies to splashing out on the military.

There wasn’t much else to Jenrick's speech, but as with such things it's the silences that are pregnant with meaning. Wanting to force hundreds of thousands of children back into poverty, dressed up as instilling "some realism into this business" could have come from any speech of George Osborne's during his time as chancellor. Indeed, one might expect Reform to go down the path of the Tories' 'austerity populism'. The arguments the Tories deployed in the run up to the 2010 general election that successfully persuaded enough people that the crisis in state finances was caused by public spending and social security commitments, and not the global response - largely led by the British government - to bail out the banks. Blaming the poorest for Britain's woes would be right up Jenrick's street. There has never been a group of vulnerable people he didn't want to punch.

This also definitively kills any suggestion of a "left turn" on Reform's part, which was always a stretch, despite Farage toying such a position for a bit of attention-seeking. Likewise, combine Suella Braverman's rants as their education spox against universities and mickey mouse courses. This is the completion of a movement back into the Reform leadership's preferred policy diet, a menu of foul tasting warm ups from the last decade. As the party's position as the main political force on the right is consolidated, making an offering that looks like traditional Tory fare might, they hope, extend Reform's reach into what is left of the Tory coalition. And perhaps those softer, more liberal-inclined elements that might otherwise go Liberal Democrat because the liberalism they care about is more of the economic than the political kind.

On the other hand, this comes with a set of difficulties. Reform's success derives from its distance from the Tories, of being the owners of Brexit in our post-Boris Johnson politics and the scapegoaters du jour of a range of powerless people. Reform aren't about to drop their racism, their anti-environmentalism, nor their soft anti-vaxism and conspiracy theory dog whistles, but sounding identical to the Tories on economic matters and getting former Tories from the last, failed government to front it? That's like exposing a swathe of ankle and renaming themselves Achilles. The populist posturing starts looking just like that, a poor cover for a programme that made life more difficult for significant sections of Reform's volatile voter coalition when the Tories were last in charge. There are political costs to positioning Reform as a racist mk II Conservative Party, and it could be a move that is already starting to depress their polling numbers.

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On Andrew's Arrest

The former Prince Andrew arrested on his birthday? It's certainly one he won't forget in a hurry. His being taken into police custody and questioned all day over misconduct in public office allegations at least offers a suggestion that powerful people can be held to account for their activities. In this case, it regards correspondence in the Esptein files that purport to show Mountbatten-Windsor passing on documents to the world's most notorious paedophile. Allegations very similar to those levelled at the disgraced Peter Mandelson.

Obviously, as there's now an investigation with the possibility of charges, this corner of the internet won't be making further comment about the substance of this case. But the politics? That's a different matter. The establishment have spent the last couple of years disentangling itself from Mountbatten-Windsor. On several occasions, Keir Starmer has gone on the record to say he should submit himself to questioning. The press, naturally, have taken a prurient interest in the sex abuse allegations against him, diminishing his already poor standing further in the public's eyes. And the King has moved with some haste to put clear distance between the playboy prince and the family firm.

Where our most gracious sovereign is concerned, dealing with Andrew efficiently and ruthlessly was the only option available to him. For too long, Andrew enjoyed the late Queen's favour, and that preferment undoubtedly shielded him from proper accountability. The police didn't want to go there, knowing that the upset caused might have discomfited the increasingly frail Elizabeth II to expire. And with obvious ramifications for any senior officer in charge of such a probe. Instead, it was the audience with Liz Truss that saw her off. But for the King, this is a headache. Despite his strong statement on the matter. If the investigation strays into who in the Palace knew what and when, there is a possibility of major embarrassment. And if the Queen is directly implicated, which even the dogs in the street know she would be, this has ramifications for the legitimacy of the monarchy itself. Which has taken a few knocks of late.

With politics dropping to bits before our eyes, Starmer's ratings in the toilet, and a widespread impression given by the government itself that it can't affect basic levels of competence, the corrosion of the British state's major legitimating institution is very bad news for the establishment. And this is only the beginning of what will be an excruciating spectacle.

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