John Power

I asked the novelist and dissident Boualem Sansal, recently released from Algerian prison, how he would like to be remembered. He did not hesitate. Not as the French Salman Rushdie – to whom he is often compared – but as the Algerian George Orwell. Orwell was not just a novelist but a prophet, who saw how a peaceful society could morph into a system of oppression. ‘Every day in Algeria,’ Sansal told me, ‘is like Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ Sansal was speaking to me after he had just given a speech in London, at the Policy Exchange think tank – his first public interventions in Britain since leaving prison in Algeria, where he had been jailed after a sham trial, where there were no witnesses or legal defence.

When the grooming gang crisis came under renewed scrutiny at the beginning of this year, the former Tory mayoral candidate Susan Hall asked Sadiq Khan eight times during mayor’s questions whether or not grooming gangs were operating in the capital. His response was odd, to say the least.  Instead of directly answering the question, Khan repeatedly asked Hall to ‘define what she means by that’, and accused her of being nervous about speaking clearly. After some back and forth, Khan stated that there were issues in London with young girls being groomed in county line drug gangs, for which there was already a plethora of programmes and ‘hubs’. A month later, on 25 February, the London Conservatives brought forward an amendment proposing a £4.

The case of George Abaraonye, the incoming Oxford Union president who rejoiced in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, has provoked fierce debate about free speech at Oxford. Abaraonye considered the murder of the 31-year-old father of two, whom he had met at an Oxford Union debate, to be a cause for celebration. On a WhatsApp group he posted several messages cheering the assassination and on Instagram he crowed: ‘Charlie Kirk got shot loool.’ Now messages from student group chats linked to the Oxford Union reveal that those who objected to Abaraonye’s conduct have themselves been subjected to threats and intimidation designed to silence them.

The Department for Health has published new performance league tables today which show that four in five NHS hospital trusts are failing, either because they are running substantial deficits or they are not meeting their performance targets. The real reason that NHS trusts in cities like London perform better is the same reason that accountancy firms and legal practices perform better in London – they attract the highest quality staff These league tables are the first of their kind to be published and were brought in by Wes Streeting with the aim of improving performance. Trusts which do well will be rewarded with bonuses and more freedom to decide how to spend their resources, whilst leaders of trusts which consistently fail to improve will have their salaries frozen.

Senior Labour figures have given up hope of beating Nigel Farage in 2029. There are two causes for this pessimism. One is the economy. Forecasts suggest living standards will continue to decline over the next four years. The other is illegal immigration, which Keir Starmer will continue to make noises against, but which his human-rights-lawyer instincts prevent him from tackling. Faced with such a grim future, some Labour advisers are speaking about leaving the government to avoid having their reputations tainted by what comes next. Others are more ruthless. They point to another tool: the practice called ‘opposition research’ but known better as the ‘dark arts’.

Helping Afghan refugees escape Taliban retribution has not proved easy; ensuring their integration into their host countries more challenging still. In September 2021, a month after the United States completed its mass evacuation of refugees from Afghanistan, a serving female soldier was reportedly assaulted by a group of Afghan men at Fort Bliss in New Mexico. The incident caused a brief scandal but that was swiftly contained. Within six months, 76,000 Afghan evacuees had been processed and resettled into American communities. The UK has taken a different approach. As part of the Afghan resettlement programme, around 39,000 refugees have been brought here since the fall of Kabul.

When Suella Braverman wrote in April 2023 that 'the perpetrators [of group-based child sexual exploitation] are groups of men, almost all British-Pakistani,' the then-Home Secretary was roundly condemned. ‘Hacked Off’, a lobby group which seeks to tighten regulation of the press, said her article in the Mail on Sunday was part of a ‘toxic libel’. Guardian columnist Owen Jones went on to describe her ‘claims’ as ‘designed to foment racist division and hate’. Lewis Goodall of LBC confronted her live on air, saying that she was chastised 'entirely rightly' for her 'false claim'. Last week, Suella Braverman wrote to Ipso to demand a retraction of that ruling. She is right to do so One entity went further than words.

Westminster council has announced that every single social housing tenant in the borough will receive lifetime tenancies. No test of need. No review of income. No incentive to move on. Once you’ve been awarded a property, you can stay as long as you like. When you die, your adult children may be eligible to inherit the lifetime tenancy too. Social housing tenants in Westminster pay around a fifth of what renters on the open market spend. They also have access to more than one in four properties in the borough, from flats in postwar estates to £1 million terraced houses. The council says it’s bringing stability to people’s lives but for many young professionals dreaming of their own home, it looks like something else: a bribe.