United kingdom

Darren Jones has become the UK government’s Walter Model, the general known during World War Two as "the Führer’s fireman" for his deployment to shore up any position which appeared lost. In that capacity, Britain’s first Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister had the thankless task of presenting the government’s case to the House of Commons on Monday following the publication of 1,500 pages of documents relating to Peter Mandelson. Jones himself was spared direct embarrassment because none of his exchanges with the disgraced peer came to light in the trawl of memos, emails and WhatsApp exchanges.

While Britain is still reeling from the horrific murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, an astonishing article has appeared in El País, Spain’s largest national newspaper. Rather than focus on the failures of the police officers, or the institutional bias within the force, the headline steers its readers away from the case and towards the outlet’s own obsessions. The headline translates as "Farage’s far right stirs up hatred in the UK after a young man is stabbed to death by a Sikh man." As Alejo Schapire (an Argentine journalist based in France) has pointed out, this is the first and only article produced by El País on the subject of the Nowak killing. Instead of an image of the victim, the newspaper has opted for a photograph of Nigel Farage.

The Andrew formerly known as "Prince" was always supposedly his mother’s favorite child. He had a degree of indulgence paid to him that his (far more deserving) siblings never received. Newly released files suggest that this indulgence went far beyond any kind of explicable or appropriate fashion. Correspondence between Sir David Wright, chief executive of British Trade International, and then-foreign secretary Robin Cook from 2000 suggests that the late Queen was "very keen" for the former Duke of York to take on a "prominent role in the promotion of national interests." This, in turn, led to the creation of "Air Miles Andy," with Mountbatten-Windsor acting as a roving trade envoy.

The Metropolitan Police were braced for one of the "busiest days for policing in London in recent years" on Saturday, with both a Unite the Kingdom rally organized by Tommy Robinson and a pro-Palestinian Nakba day rally taking place. Some 4,000 officers were deployed, along with helicopters, drones, Sandcat armored vehicles, dogs, horses and live facial recognition systems. The last Unite the Kingdom rally, in September, drew a crowd of 150,000 according to the police, three times what the Met expected – and organizers said this one would be "the biggest patriotic rally to grace this planet." Addressing the crowd at the event, Robinson said "we are here in our millions" and that attendees were at the "biggest event in British history.

What is the greatest threat to British democracy? Zack Polanski’s call for “building a society” that “doesn’t include” people who “identify as right-wing?” Labour’s efforts to flood the Upper House with party apparatchiks? Islamist extremism? The correct answer is Reform UK. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new book called What If Reform Wins by the Times reporter Peter Chappell. Before I get to its flaws, I should acknowledge it’s an enjoyable read, with plenty of deft, comic touches. It imagines that Reform wins a majority in June 2029, and then gives a blow-by-blow account of the constitutional crisis that follows, with the informal rules and conventions underpinning our democracy being stress-tested and found wanting.

The recent horrific attack in Golders Green has generated much anger and despair at this latest in a series of concerted, violent assaults currently aimed primarily at the Jewish community, but with a clear lineage to earlier Islamist outrages such as the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby and the London Bridge attacks of 2017 and 2019. The UK terrorism threat level was raised to "severe" following the attack on Thursday. But terrorism, "an action or threat designed to influence the government or intimidate the public," is an inadequate descriptor of what we face in Britain. Instead, I believe we face a different problem: a full-blown insurgency.

There are few stranger public careers than that of Russell Brand, the former "comedian" turned MAGA cheerleader-in-chief. He has given an interview to Tucker Carlson, another figure who has been on his own peculiar journey, and has announced his intention of running for Mayor of London in 2028, on a vaguely defined but somehow sinister platform that includes "pragmatic" democracy for "people who live in London, who love London." He is the strutting, peacocking representation of all that is wrong in contemporary society Brand has railed against most of Sadiq Khan’s innovations, asking: "Do you want ULEZ cameras? Do you want congestion charges? Do you want this type of policing where people are arrested for Facebook posts? Do you want us to focus on contemporary rape gangs?

Keir Starmer is enduring perhaps his most uncomfortable afternoon in the House Commons since being elected Britain's Prime Minister. He promised in his opening remarks that he would set out the full timeline of Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador, which ended in Olly Robbins’s dismissal last Thursday. Carefully worded and legally precise, his statement contained another revelation: Chris Wormald, the ex-cabinet secretary, was not told Mandelson had failed the UK Security Vetting interview (UKSV), despite leading an official review. Starmer’s tone was one of scorned hurt and anger. He remarked repeatedly how various facts of the case were "staggering.