Rory Hanrahan

Labour's almost messianic embrace of Andy Burnham, the near-crazed glint in the eyes of the party's backbenchers when they whisper his name, is how I imagine fans of the Beatles in their heyday looked. It is the final proof, if proof were needed, of the clown world that is politics in the Labour party. Of course, the weight of expectation being put on a man who would barely qualify as a fourth rater will make the inevitable bloodbath all the more vicious and amusing when Burnham inevitably fails – and fails spectacularly. Burnham is now being presented as some steady, statesmanlike, experienced figure waiting in the wings to ride in and rescue us Yes, Burnham won the Makerfield by-election by a considerable amount. Yes, it was potentially a tough seat for Labour to win.

Those endless days of an English summer are nearly upon us. The smell of freshly-cut grass drifts across the village green. Cricket is returning to hundreds of villages across the country. Saturday afternoons spent lazing in the sun watching the lads run back and forth. Longer, warmer evenings mean pints down the local with friends. A thousand little beer-and-music festivals spring up every weekend: steam trains, cider, bad rock music and burnt sausages. Pub gardens start to fill up. England feels alive. Nowhere is the gamble sharper than with cask ale And the World Cup is almost upon us. England are among the favourites to win the tournament, which starts tonight. A warm summer lies ahead, huge crowds ready to gather and watch the Three Lions progress.

Henry Nowak was an 18-year-old student who was stabbed five times in Southampton and left bleeding out while police handcuffed him and cautioned him. This happened because his killer made a false claim of racism and the police believed it. The bodycam footage is unbearable. Henry said, 'I have been stabbed' and 'I can’t breathe'. The officers dismissed him. His family has said, heartbreakingly, that he did not die with dignity. This is a failure of policing, born of decades of ideology that puts community tensions above evidence, above humanity, and above a dying young man’s blood. Two voices have stood out to me so far.

Picture Gerry Adams in a dimly lit courtroom, one hand raised in statesmanlike denial, the other twitching like Dr. Strangelove's infamous Nazi salute, struggling to contain the contradictions of his many roles. Peacemaker? Politician? Bearded bard? Or something darker, as my late father always insisted: the architect of republican violence, a figurehead for the IRA and Sinn Féin, like 'two cheeks of the same arse', to borrow George Galloway's colourful phrase? Adams has always denied involvement with the IRA. Starting today, Adams will face a civil trial in London's High Court accusing him of IRA membership and involvement in bombings that scarred innocents between the 1970s and 1990s. This could be Adams's last chance to fully confront the past.

Good morning from behind the bar, where the beer is still pouring – just. So far this year I have been involved in the sad, and probably permanent, closure of three family-owned pubs. The choice was stark in each case: bankruptcy or fold up. Three families almost ruined, three perfectly good business that employed over a dozen staff and three villages that had already lost their churches, their post offices and – the final nail in the coffin – their pubs. I watched Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson, pint in hand, holding a live-streamed conference from behind a pub bar on Wednesday.

To a landlord in a draughty Victorian boozer staring at his latest business rates bill, it will read more like a ransom note from the mafia than a letter from HMRC. In 2026, under Keir Starmer’s ‘growth-first’ regime, this chap’s rates have rocketed. While Starmer is strutting the stage at Davos or waxing lyrical or at some CBI luncheon about ‘unleashing Britain’s potential’ and ‘building a brighter future’, delivering drivel so vacuous that it would make even Tony Blair blush, his government is unleashing policies that are throttling the engines of economic growth. The changes to business rates are exhibit A, a perfect storm of outdated valuations, inflationary hikes and half-hearted reform.

You don’t need to be a fervent admirer of Donald Trump to recognise that, on matters of national security and cultural cohesion, he hits the bullseye our establishment prefers to evade. His administration’s recent proposal – requiring travellers from visa-waiver countries, including Britain, to disclose five years of social media history as part of the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) – has drawn the usual transatlantic sneers: an assault on privacy, a chilling of free expression, another Maga excess. Yet recent events show social media vetting can expose troubling views. If Britain wants to protect its Jewish citizens – especially young scholars besieged on university campuses – it should follow suit without delay.

In Britain's public houses, a rebellion is brewing. Landlords, hit hard by the Labour government's fiscal measures – higher employer National Insurance, slashed business rates relief, and policies that threaten closures – have started discussing boycotts. The plan: bar Labour MPs from the premises as a protest against the erosion of the hospitality sector. As a pub manager approached to join this effort, I've considered it carefully. Yet I must reject it. Such a ban, however appealing in frustration, is anti-conservative and undermines the pub's role as a neutral space. The plan: bar Labour MPs from the premises as a protest against the erosion of the hospitality sector The facts are stark. This government's policies risk catastrophe for pubs.

The sun had barely set over Sydney’s Bondi Beach, when horror unfolded at the Hanukkah celebration. A father and son, armed with licensed firearms, opened fire on a crowd of hundreds gathered for the Jewish holiday, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than 40 others. The perpetrators have been identified as Sajid Akram, 50, who was killed by police at the scene, and his 24-year-old son Naveed Akram, who remains in a critical condition in hospital after being shot by police. The father-son dynamic here is no coincidence; it speaks to how hatred is often inherited The attack is Australia’s deadliest mass shooting in nearly three decades, a stark anomaly in a nation with stringent gun laws.

Dublin's councillors have seen sense – for now. They were due to vote today on a proposal to rename the city's Herzog Park. Chaim Herzog – the Belfast-born, Dublin-raised, British officer who helped liberate Bergen-Belsen, and became the sixth president of Israel – was set to be be airbrushed away in a ritual of performative righteousness. Some even proposed 'Free Palestine Park', a slogan as empty as it is vicious, as its new name. But late last night, Dublin City Council boss Richard Shakespeare said he was proposing to withdraw the report that could have led to the renaming of Herzog Park, on a point of legislative technicality. He apologised for 'administrative oversight'. This will offer little reassurance to Dublin's worried Jews. This is not about a park.

At times, I still hear my late father, Sean O’Callaghan’s, voice echoing in my mind. Sean died in 2017 but there's no doubt what he'd make of Britain today: that the sepsis of sectarianism is slowly, but surely, poisoning our bloodstream. We're entrenching extremes and sidelining moderates. Northern Ireland’s lesson is stark: entrench extremes, and moderation dies; let sectarianism fester, and democracy becomes zero-sum The ugly scenes outside Villa Park this week as pro-Palestinian and Israeli protesters faced off are a shameful reminder of how British politics is changing for the worse. Britain's new Islamo-socialist alliance is gaining ground: from Corbyn's Your Party, to pro-Gaza independents.

The tale of the death of the British pub has been well told. Around eight boozers a week are serving last orders for the final time. But some pubs are bucking the trend, the most famous of which is The Farmer’s Dog in Oxfordshire, Jeremy Clarkson’s latest success story. What is its secret? Running a pub, Clarkson says, is harder than farming. He's right It's not hard to see the appeal of this pub, a welcoming brick building with a spacious terrace overlooking the rolling Cotswold hills. When I visited a few weeks ago, the pub felt alive, bustling without descending into chaos. It's a far cry from the boarded-up boozers I’ve lamented in these pages.

As with so many political assassinations across the Atlantic – the Kennedys, Martin Luther King –Charlie Kirk's killer is likely to be some deranged individual, a lone wolf driven by fevered delusions, perhaps, or a sick, mentally ill person. His murder, though, is anything but mundane. Kirk was not just another talking head; he was a phenomenon, a young firebrand, a brilliant, charismatic, honourable man who believed in discourse over violence, who repeatedly warned us that, when we stop talking with those we disagree with, civil wars start. That he was also a young husband and father, whose children will never get to know their dad, is heartbreaking.

Norman Tebbit, who died this week at the age of 94, embodied a sterner Britain. His political career was remarkable but it paled in comparison with his unyielding love for his wife Margaret, whom he wheeled through life for four decades after the IRA’s Brighton bomb paralysed her body in 1984. Tebbit never forgave those who nearly killed him and left his beloved wife in pain for the rest of her days. My dad met Tebbit several times, earning his 'hero of the week' nod in his Sun column for exposing the IRA My father, Sean O’Callaghan, was an IRA bomber who turned against his comrades and, in doing so, saved countless lives. He thwarted a bomb plot in 1983 aimed at Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Takings were falling. Regulars were drifting away. Our pub was in a bad way. It was clear that things needed to change. But, paralysed by fear of an employment tribunal in a legal system tilted against employers, we felt trapped. If we sacked the managers and replaced them, we could find ourselves embroiled in a messy legal case that could cost us everything. So, drowning in paperwork, warnings, hearings, improvement plans, and risk assessments, we endured. Running a pub felt less like hospitality than surviving a siege of bureaucracy. That was when I saw it. This wasn’t just one bad incident. Our beloved pub was being strangled in red tape. We're not alone. It's as if publicans can't be trusted to behave like adults. No wonder so many pubs are closing.

It was a drizzly Tuesday evening in the 17th-century Oxford village pub I manage, the kind of night when regulars huddle close to the bar, pints glowing amber under low lights. An old chap in a flat cap, nursing his third ale, grumbled about the council’s latest parking scheme. The village curate, leaning on the bar, sparred with the local councillor over the steep cost of saving the church roof. A young couple, new to the area, weighed London against Oxford, sneaking glances at the football on the telly. For a moment, the pub hummed with life – a microcosm of England, where strangers turn mates and the day’s weight lifts in shared chatter. At their best, pubs are living rooms for the nation.