There are ways to address the lack of faith. And unless Starmer, Burnham or Streeting do that, the issue of who is PM is moot What happens next? Will Andy Burnham win the Makerfield byelection ? Will Keir Starmer fight on? Will Wes Streeting run? After that, can Reform win the next general election? Is the Green bounce real? The politics-as-sports predictions rumble on. One newspaper editor texted...
There are ways to address the lack of faith. And unless Starmer, Burnham or Streeting do that, the issue of who is PM is moot What happens next? Will Andy Burnham win the Makerfield byelection ? Will Keir Starmer fight on? Will Wes Streeting run? After that, can Reform win the next general election? Is the Green bounce real? The politics-as-sports predictions rumble on. One newspaper editor texted me the other day asking who would be prime minister come Christmas, apparently because I was on his “clever list”. “Dunno” I said. “You’re off the list,” he replied. My fear is that whoever is prime minister by the end of the year, a lot of attention will have been distracted from the underlying problem. Voters are not just giving up on this government, but on democracy itself. This weary, cold scepticism comes through in the polls, the focus groups, and it’s in the look in the electorate’s eyes. Politicians know it and it’s making the country ungovernable. Polly Curtis is chief executive of Demos. Her latest paper, The New Deal : How to repair the broken relationship between state and citizen, is published today Continue reading...
With Graham Potter at the helm and Viktor Gyökeres finding form, hopes are high after playoff success This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network , a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June. Continu...
With Graham Potter at the helm and Viktor Gyökeres finding form, hopes are high after playoff success This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network , a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June. Continue reading...
Policy forum lays out ‘prolonged disruption’ scenario in which world’s GDP falls to 2.1% this year from 3.4% in 2025 Rural UK ‘particularly at risk’ of diesel shortages If the Middle East conflict drags on into next year it would hit global growth hard, driving some economies into recession and causing energy shortages, according to forecasts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Dev...
Policy forum lays out ‘prolonged disruption’ scenario in which world’s GDP falls to 2.1% this year from 3.4% in 2025 Rural UK ‘particularly at risk’ of diesel shortages If the Middle East conflict drags on into next year it would hit global growth hard, driving some economies into recession and causing energy shortages, according to forecasts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In its latest Economic Outlook, the Paris-based club of industrialised countries lays out a “prolonged disruption” scenario, in which there is no agreement between the US and Iran until 2027. Continue reading...