Eliot Wilson

When the agenda for this week's Nato summit in Washington DC was announced, one of the items on it was funding for the alliance. This was no surprise: the need to financially supporting Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2022 and the possibility of a second Trump presidency leading to a lower US commitment have brought the issue of money into sharp focus. It transpires that the new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is urging his fellow Nato leaders to increase their levels of defence spending, but he may find that his moral authority is shaky. The subject of defence spending is one which has bedevilled the alliance for years.

Next summer, David Lammy will celebrate 25 years as a Member of Parliament. At 51, he has just been appointed Foreign Secretary after three years shadowing the role. Despite rare and valuable ministerial experience, he is an unlikely candidate for Britain’s chief diplomat. His first pronouncements as foreign secretary stress change: ‘a reset on Europe, a reset on our relationships with the global south, and a reset on climate’. We will have not only resets but ‘gear shifts’, whatever that might mean: ‘gear shifts on European security and on global security, given all the problems that we’re seeing in the Middle East’. It is very Starmerist to treat change as a destination rather than a journey.

When Rishi Sunak stood in the rain in Downing Street to announce a general election on 4 July, he made a speech which was unusually personal. Looking back on his steep rise to power – five years ago he was not even a cabinet minister – he spoke of the challenges the country has faced and how they have affected him. Seeing how people responded to the pandemic, he said: 'I have never been prouder to be British'. The Prime Minister knows this is a weak point for him The Prime Minister knows moments like this are a weak point for him.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky's five-year term is up, but he's staying put. Unsurprisingly, some of Zelensky's critics – and the Kremlin – have questioned his legitimacy. But Zelensky, who marked five years in office on 20 May, is right not to step down. The idea that, as a result, there has been some unprecedented outrage against democracy simply doesn’t stand up. It is impossible to conduct a free, fair and representative presidential election The practical problem in holding an election is obvious. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its occupation of parts of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014 gave it control of 16,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory.

Sometimes life comes at you fast. Barely 18 months ago, Sir Keir Starmer, beginning to scent general election victory in his future, pledged to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected chamber as part of a project to 'restore trust in politics'. By Tuesday this week, the Labour leader in the upper house, Baroness Smith of Basildon, could make no firmer a commitment than keeping an 'open mind' to the possibility of phasing out the remaining 92 hereditary peers. That seems like quite a journey. Labour’s plans have gradually diminished since 2022 House of Lords reform is in some ways the ultimate parlour game for constitutional obsessives. It has a familiar and well-worn charm: it is, after all, more than 100 years since H.H.

Even on the most optimistic reading, Rishi Sunak is drinking in the last-chance saloon. Today the Prime Minister is delivering a speech which is supposed to kick-start the general election campaign. Sunak wants to demonstrate that the Conservative party has the vision and policies to guide the country through a dangerous and uncertain future. But Sunak's speech seems to be striking the wrong note: one of doom and gloom rather than optimism. Sunak's speech has been rapidly dismissed as a bungled relaunch It's no surprise that Sunak's speech has been rapidly dismissed as a bungled relaunch. The PM’s thesis is that the next few years will see more change than the preceding few decades, and that we are in a dangerous era.

David Lammy has never been much of a diplomat. The veteran Labour MP is fond of lashing out at his critics, but now, as shadow foreign secretary, he has travelled to the United States to lay the groundwork for a future Labour government’s foreign policy. He may find that some of his earlier oratorical fury comes back to haunt him. He called Trump 'a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser' Lammy has compared Conservative MPs in the European Research Group to Nazis and supporters of apartheid South Africa.

Andy Street was a political outsider when he was chosen as the Conservative party’s candidate for mayor of the new West Midlands Combined Authority in 2016. He was 53 and had enjoyed a successful career in retail, latterly as managing director of John Lewis and Partners. This weekend, after seven years as mayor, he was narrowly defeated by Labour’s Richard Parker, the margin just 1,508 votes out of a total of 600,000. Street has become a considerable figure in Conservative politics Street has become a considerable figure in Conservative politics, seen as straightforward and practical, an effective champion for his region. Partly this has been a result of his status as an outsider, someone who is not in hock to the party machine.

The election for the first North East of England mayor should have been a gift to the Labour party. Its candidate Kim McGuinness has duly won the role, but her tally of 41 per cent is superficially modest. This region is one of the Labour movement’s heartlands, steeped in coal-mining, shipbuilding and steel-making. It gave birth to the Jarrow March and the Durham Miners’ Gala. Ramsay MacDonald, Hugh Dalton and Manny Shinwell all represented Durham seats. The culture of the region is steeped in working-class pride and struggle. But, last year, something odd happened. For weeks there have been anxieties in the Labour leadership that Driscoll might win Labour began the process of choosing its candidate for the mayoral election over the summer.