For those who prefer an old-fashioned podcast, you can download it here.
We also talked about the UK's position on Iran, accusations of "sectarian" politics, and how Labour should respond the the "bitterly disappointing" loss in Gorton and Denton
shows.acast.com/newstatesman...
It's crunch time for jury trials. On Tuesday, MPs will debate what could be the biggest shakeup of the justice system since the 1970s.
Ahead of the debate, I spoke to Courts Minister Sarah Sackman about the controversial reforms and what they mean for justice
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCOE...
Given how voters usually respond instinctively negatively towards anything Starmer does, these seem like pretty good numbers for him
The strange thing is when I spoke to people who worked with her at DIT, they said the opposite: that she listened to advice and could be persuaded when presented with new evidence.
One theory is that on topics which bore her, she'll just go with what she's told. Laziness masked as consideration
That is pretty terrifying - especially given what we heard in module 1 on of the inquiry
Moving piece from @rmcunliffe.bsky.social.
As someone who is often sceptical of the £200m cost of official inquiries, this was an important reminder to me that, whether or not that is the best way to do it, it is important that we do not forget those years.
www.newstatesman.com/politics/hea...
Thank you Iain!
Anyway, I don't have an answer. Except that we keep in mind when we talk about society fracturing - community tension, distrust in politicians, a sense of gloom and suspcion - that we went through something seismic six years ago that did serious longterm damage
www.newstatesman.com/politics/hea...
I don't know if a 4-year inquiry costing over £200m is worth it. Having sat through a lot of it, I'm not confident what lessons have been learned. At times, it felt more like group therapy and political revenge.
But I do think these stories are important if we want to understand society now
"To take a story at random as an example: one woman, when she asked for PPE to see her dying father, was asked if she really wanted to take that PPE away from a nurse."
I shouldn't have been shocked by the testimony this week. We heard similar stories at the time. But then, as a naton, we moved on
"The scars of the Covid pandemic run deep, a rupture in the relationship hundreds of thousands of citizens have with the state that has never fully healed."
Reflections on the final week of the Covid Inquiry - on what we have learned, and what we try to forget
www.newstatesman.com/politics/hea...
It had one objectively brilliant song, the rest is just musically meh
Still reeling from a very realistic anxiety dream that my husband thought it would be a great idea for us to go on holiday to Iran. Apparently “there is an excellent river cruise”.
This is fascinating, and reminds me of Jilly Cooper's observation that British people specifically detest the class immediately above and below them (eg middle to upper and vice versa) but are fine with a bigger gab (working to upper).
As the class system get flattened, everyone hates everyone else
Jim, Charles and Roscoe, photographed just after the recording of their difficult third album.
... Chilling out with his bandmates.
Polling from More in Common shows that Greens and Reform win a higher share of voters who struggle to make ends meet, while Labour and the Conservatives win those who are most financially comfortable
Reform UK and the Greens are hoovering up financially insecure voters. My piece this week looks at the return of Britain's class politics (with a twist) www.economist.com/britain/2026...
I liked the idea to change it to a pajama day - because who doesnt love reading in their pajamas? Kids still get the heady excitement of a non-uniform day, but no costumes needed and the focus remains on the actual reading
Cool, and that’s totally your choice. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with someone drawing attention to their own work. If people don’t want to pay for it, that’s up to them. The outrage is weird.
And I’ve done lots of pro bono gigs too. But people on BlueSky are not charities
Genuinely didn’t realise the concept of paying for a service was so controversial to some people, or that they have apparently never seen journalists on social media post links to their articles (which, having taken the time to write them, might be paywalled) for discussion. Consider me enlightened
I’m curious, do you do your job for free? Do you expect other professions to provide services or products at no cost, or is it just journalists?
I didn’t tell anyone to read anything. I just pointed out the thing someone was annoyed about after reading a two-line post was covered in the link
Pretty timely ahead of the elections in May, I think!
Oooh may I take this opportunity to point you in the direction of this interview I did with the new Liberal Democrat president Josh Babarinde all about the Lib Dems and their strategy and how they are using their 72 MPs? Feel it deserves more readers!
www.newstatesman.com/politics/pol...
Okay so you watched it, you saw the Davey question on energy bills, but you couldn't work out why energy might be relevant to the PMQs session you just watched? Got it.
As for the link, again, it was in the post. Which you commented on. Did you think it was there for decoration? Whaever, you do you
Sacrilege
I don't think it does? The link is right there? But okay, sure, it's my fault for not making it clear that the post was in relation to the link I had included in the same post.
Incidentally, if you'd watched PMQs you'd have known about Davey's question on energy bills even without clicking the link
No, but there is a link to the article I wrote, which the post is obviously flagging. That's what journalists do: we post our articles on social media with a short summary in the hope people might read them
It did, because Ed Davey asked Starmer if he would guarantee that energy bills wouldn't rise by £500 a year as is reportedly going to happen with no action, and Starmer didn't. Which, again, is talked about in the piece
??? In the piece I am very clear that Badenoch was a disaster today, and that Starmer was good.
But a strong PMQs performance doesn't take away from the fact that if energy prices soar, the government is in real trouble. Voters will expect action, like with Ukraine in 2022
Classic
PMQs review: pretty astonishing for Kemi Badenoch to be quite so blatantly disinterested in evacuated British nationals stranded in the Middle East, but there we go
A strong performance from Starmer - but energy bills are coming for him
www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...
