John Power

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.

“I’ll never insult or belittle someone who votes Reform,” Mike Tapp, the Labour MP for Dover and Deal, tells me. “We need to deliver.” It’s a message Labour is increasingly keen to project – but Tapp sound like he really means it. Where others Labour MPs prevaricate on immigration, Tapp supports “return hubs” (for failed asylum seekers). He finds merit in Denmark’s deportation model, arguably the most hardline in Europe. It includes the confiscation of asylum seeker’s cash or jewellery over a value of 10,000 Danish Kroner (around £1,100) to pay for their stay in the country. Tapp doesn’t want to leave the ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights), but he does acknowledge public impatience with Britain's immigration policies. “It takes time,” he says.

The ‘eradication of structural racism would be a defining cause’ of Labour’s time in power. That’s what Keir Starmer said in 2020, a few months after the death of George Floyd. In the party’s election manifesto last year, it promised to introduce a Race Equality Act to root out racial inequalities as part of a broader racial justice agenda. This included addressing the treatment of black people under the Mental Health Act, appointing a ‘Windrush Commissioner’ and making big businesses publish ethnicity pay gap data. Labour is betting that ethnic minority voters will remain loyal, even as their priorities are quietly shelved But now, with Keir Starmer in No.10, much of this racial justice mission appears to have been forgotten.

Sir Keir Starmer wants you to believe he’s serious about bringing immigration down. Faced with the political threat of Reform and growing anger over record levels of both illegal and legal migration, Labour has finally begun to talk the talk. But ‘Restoring Control Over the Immigration System’, the white paper in which the government details its borders crackdown, is flawed. The threat to the border doesn’t always arrive in rubber dinghies. Sometimes it comes buried on page 76 of a white paper For all the tough-sounding language about control and fairness, the document is shot through with proposals that quietly liberalise the system and could incentivise more illegal immigration.