Benefits bill won’t improve without an NHS turnaround

How much can Mel Stride really do to cut the benefits bill? In the Commons today, the Work and Pensions Secretary argued that the ‘disability benefit system for adults of working age is not consistently providing support in the way that was intended’, and that it was now time for a ‘new conversation’ about how the system should work. He spoke in much more compassionate terms than on some of the media rounds that he and Rishi Sunak have done.

But repeated questions from across the House, including from one of his Conservative predecessors in the Work and Pensions department underlined that one of the most-trailed aims of this green paper – getting people with mental illnesses back into work – might not have as much to do with the DWP as it does with the NHS. Chloe Smith did a lot of thinking on the link between worklessness and ill health when she was in the brief, and today asked whether he could be ‘comprehensive in delivering on those measures, across government?’ She asked:

Can he give us assurances about the way that he is setting up for the work that will need to be done if this is to be a success, including with the NHS and local authorities, for those who need support with their disability or ill health? It is my understanding that the NHS perhaps knows less than it could about how to help people, holistically and individually, to move back into work, or with the things that they need and care about.

Stride described her comments as ‘very astute’, and said he would ‘continue to work very closely with my colleagues in the National Health Service and the Department of Health and Social Care.’ He pointed to WorkWell, which is a joint DWP and DHSC programme aiming to get 60,000 people with long-term illness or disability to get back into and remain in work for two years. 

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Did Nicola Sturgeon kill Humza Yousaf’s Alba deal?

Smith wasn’t the only Conservative to sound cautious. Ruth Edwards, the Tory MP for Rushcliffe, asked a moving question where she spoke about how she was ‘extremely ill’ with an anxiety disorder in the spring of 2019, before the was first elected. ‘I know for myself how debilitating that can be’, she said, her voice wobbling a little. ‘But I also know that with treatment and support, you can lead a fulfilling career and a normal life that is extremely rewarding. I would have been devastated to have been out of the workforce for the long term. How will the reforms in the Green Paper help anxiety sufferers to get the treatment and support that they need to return to work, and also to take back their life?’ 

Stride thanked her for her ‘powerful and moving contribution’, and said ‘those whom she described may well be better served by receiving treatment, rather than cash transfer benefits’.  The green paper itself says that minister want to ‘consider how we could better align the support offered by PIP with local NHS health and social care provision’, but the truth is that there is insufficient NHS provision to get people back into work, and one of the drivers of the ballooning benefits list is that there is a ballooning NHS waiting list for mental health treatment.

The NHS is not meeting even its modest targets on providing access to psychological therapies, and despite it being a decade since the NHS committed the health service to treating mental and physical conditions with the same esteem, this has still not yet been happened. 

So the bind Stride will find himself in as he develops these proposals is that one of the foundations of getting people off sickness benefit and into work – proper treatment – isn’t there. Insufficient attention has been paid to ensuring it is there over the past decade and a bit, which is why one of the questions that surely has to be asked of the sickness benefits bill is not just why people aren’t turning up to work, but also why ministers have failed to do so for more than ten years.

Did Nicola Sturgeon kill Humza Yousaf’s Alba deal?

After the tears, the recriminations. Just who scuppered the putative deal between Humza Yousaf and Ash Regan MSP that could have saved Yousaf’s bacon? The Alba leader, Alex Salmond, told the BBC’s World at One that Humza Yousaf had been on the phone to him at 7.30 a.m. this morning to say that Regan’s terms were ‘very reasonable’. It was, Salmond implied, a done deal. 

Clearly, others in the SNP thought differently, and five hours later, Humza Yousaf was making a tearful farewell to Bute House.

In his resignation statement, Yousaf insisted that he’d made the decision to resign at the weekend after he realised he could not retain the support of the Scottish Green MSPs. They were, he said, ‘hurt and upset’ at the manner in which he had ended the coalition agreement.

Mind you, their hurt feelings had been made abundantly clear to him last Thursday. The Green co-leader Lorna Slater was almost hysterical in her accusations of ‘betrayal’, saying Yousaf was ‘selling out future generations to appease the most reactionary forces in the country’ Can the First Minister (Yousaf remains FM until he tenders his formal resignation) really have been so naïve as to think that the Greens would just turn around and support him in the confidence motion this week? 

What seems more credible is that Yousaf had indeed assumed that an arrangement with the sole Alba MSP, Ash Regan, would be acceptable to the SNP parliamentary group. Surely, he thought, they’d want to save the Scottish government against the Tories. Big mistake. He reckoned without the old guard, by which I mean the former first minster, Nicola Sturgeon, and her confederates. These include the net zero secretary, Mairi McAllan, and the education secretary, Jenny Gilruth, both potential leadership contenders. 

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The final tragedy of ‘Humza the Brief’

Sturgeon has been a deadly enemy of Alex Salmond since 2019 when he defeated her Scottish government in the Court of Session over sexual harassment allegations. She was not going to be content with any kind of deal that gave Salmond indirect influence over the fate of the Scottish National party. Nor were the women she had promoted when she was leader. 

We will probably never know what direct pressure was placed on Yousaf to make him decline the Alba offer. Would the Sturgeonites have voted with the Tories and Labour in the motion of no confidence this week? Hardly. Perhaps there were other more subtle inducements and/or threats.

At any rate, the only way Yousaf could have survived was if he’d accepted Ash Regan’s terms, which were drafted in such a way as he could hardly reject them. Regan’s demands were laughably undemanding. In her letter to Yousaf she called for ‘competence in government’ prioritising ‘the rights of women and children’ and placing independence ‘front and centre’ of the Scottish government’s agenda. Yousaf implied that he could not accept these terms without ‘trading my values and principles… simply for retaining power.’ That makes no sense.

And so the SNP continues onward and downward to probable electoral disaster in the UK general election. Nicola Sturgeon’s stalwart political groundskeeper, John Swinney is, we’re told, being press-ganged into standing for leader. He’s the only figure remotely acceptable to more or less everyone. But he has been leader before, from 2000 to 2004, and was an unmitigated disaster. He can surely not be in post for long. 

What is clear is that the SNP is now disastrously divided. The most capable candidate is clearly the former finance secretary, Kate Forbes, who ran Humza Yousaf very close in last year’s leadership race. But the Green co-leader, Patrick Harvie, told BBC Radio again yesterday that he could not tolerate her ‘socially conservative’ values. He’ll want the more ‘woke’ candidate, Jenny Gilruth who is biddable and speaks fluent trans. That’s the only obvious candidate the Greens can do business with.

But there are powerful voices in the SNP in and out of Holyrood who will find this situation intolerable and they won’t stay silent for long. After being thrown out of the Scottish government, the Greens have landed back in the driving seat and are being allowed to decide who can be first minister of Scotland. That is never going to work. 

Netanyahu is in a bind over invading Rafah

When Israel responded to Iran’s unprecedented missile and drone attack in a measured military fashion on 19 April, some believed that Israeli prime minister BenjaminNetanyahu had agreed to show restraint in return for Joe Biden’s support for a military operation in Rafah. These rumours were dispelled this weekend when the US president reiterated his objection to a major military operation in the city during a call with Netanyahu.

This leaves Netanyahu between a rock and the hard place. Rafah, located in the southern end of the Gaza strip, is near the border with Egypt and close to Israel itself. It is the last and most significant of Hamas’s strongholds and as such is crucial to the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) goal of removing the terror group from power and crippling its military capabilities.

The problem for Netanyahu is, however, that a large scale operation in Rafah will almost certainly trigger widespread international condemnation, including from Israel’s allies. Biden could even restrict American military aid to Israel in response. Critics are worried about the humanitarian conditions in Gaza and civilian casualties among the one million refugees who escaped to Rafah since the war started.

Abandoning plans for an invasion into Rafah could, however, spell the end for Netanyahu’s time in power. The two most hawkish ministers in his coalition, national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, have threatened to resign if Israel doesn’t invade the city. Their resignation would increase the changes of Netanyahu’s coalition collapsing, forcing an election in which Netanyahu’s unpopular Likud party would likely incur a humiliating defeat.

Netanyahu has been trying to use the threat of a major operation in Rafah as the stick with which to negotiate a deal with Hamas. Should the terror group reject the deal, a large-scale Israeli operation in Gaza would commence. However, the threat is undermined by international opposition to the operation, which at the moment seems to be encouraging Hamas to hold its ground. The group’s leaders are hoping that Israel will be pressured into agreeing to a deal to bring an end to the war before its goals have been achieved, thereby saving them.

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Did Nicola Sturgeon kill Humza Yousaf’s Alba deal?

A new deal brokered by Egypt is currently being considered by both sides. It includes the release of 33 Israeli hostages in return for a temporary ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners from prisons in Israel, including convicted terrorists. At a later stage, a deal could be struck to include the release of the remaining hostages, while Hamas may well demand a permanent ceasefire. A permanent ceasefire and the removal of all troops from Gaza remain Israel’s red lines, and so are unlikely to be agreed to, but the country has made major concessions in other areas.

The last few weeks have seen mass demonstrations in Israel against the government. Demonstrators criticise Netanyahu for obstructing negotiations with Hamas for the return of hostages, which he has done at the demand of Ben Gvir and Smotrich. This reignited the mass movement against the Israeli prime minister that existed before the war.

Things are not looking good for Israel. Netanyahu’s hesitancy and failure to manoeuvre between personal interests – governed by his relenting efforts to stay in power, and the resulting urge to bow to the demands of extremists – and national interests, have placed Israel in a very difficult position. 

Despite Israel’s military successes, Hamas still holds 133 Israeli hostages, many of whom are believed to have died in captivity. Netanyahu’s reluctance to suggesting an alternative ruler for Gaza means that Hamas is still in charge. In some areas they have even managed to regroup after Israel has pulled significant forces out of the strip. 

Rafah, along with the other major cities in Gaza that were hubs of Hamas activities, should have been dealt with in the early weeks of the war while Israel still enjoyed international support. Instead, Netanyahu chose a gradual deployment of forces starting from Northern Gaza, that made its way south very slowly. All the while international patience was running out. The result is that slow and hesitant decision making at the top of government may well have compromised the IDF’s military achievements. 

Israel’s next moves will be determined by Hamas’s response to this new deal suggested by Egypt. A positive reply from the terror group will delay any operation in Rafah, but it could collapse Israel’s government. A negative reply means that Netanyahu will face the difficult decision of whether to launch an operation into Rafah despite American reservations. The first option is bad for Netanyahu. The second is bad for Israel.

Will Vaughan Gething be the next First Minister to go?

A First Minister on the ropes, facing questions about his judgement? No, it’s not hapless Hamza Yousaf this time. Instead, the latest legislator in the firing line is none other than Vaughan Gething, the recently-selected head of the Welsh government at Cardiff Bay. Gething has been in the job for less than six weeks but is already facing a storm of criticism about the way in which he got it.

The former economy minister narrowly triumphed in last month’s Labour leadership contest by 51.7 per cent of the vote to Jeremy Miles’ 48.3 per cent. But Gething’s subsequent tenure has been dominated by questions about the £200,000 his campaign accepted from a company whose owner was twice convicted of environmental offences. David Neal of the firm Dauson Environmental Group was given a suspended prison sentence in 2013 for illegally dumping waste on a conservation site. Four years later he was prosecuted again for not removing it.

Since news of the £200,000 donation broke, Nation.Cymru has revealed that Dauson Environmental Group Ltd last year owed £400,000 to the Development Bank of Wales, a bank wholly owned by the Welsh Government. That loan was awarded to the company when – you guessed it – Vaughan Gething was economy minister. In that role, Gething also lobbied Natural Resources Wales on behalf of Dauson, encouraging it to reconsider its call for work a DEG site to be paused. Gething insists that there is ‘no conflict of interest’ and that all rules have been followed.

But that blanket insistence has, unsurprisingly, not stopped questions from being asked in the Senedd, amid reports that Gething’s Welsh Labour group is split over the matter. Indeed, the real surprise at last First Minister’s Questions on Tuesday was not that he faced hostile questions from both the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru but rather the total lack of vocal support from Gething’s own Members of the Senedd. The Welsh Conservatives’ motion demanding an investigation will be debated in the Senedd on Wednesday. Someone get the popcorn in…

With the crucial vote now fast approaching, Gething will just be hoping he fares better than poor hapless Humza north of the border.

Why hasn’t Pedro Sanchez resigned as Spain’s prime minister?

Pedro Sanchez has decided to stay on as Spain’s Socialist prime minister, despite announcing last week that he was considering resigning. Sanchez suspended his official duties for a few days to make the decision, following the launch of a judicial investigation into his wife, Begoña Gomez, for corruption and influence-peddling. (Sanchez has said the allegations are ‘as scandalous in appearance as they are non-existent.’)

The case against Gomez was brought to a judge by an anti-corruption organisation called Manos Limpias (‘Clean Hands’), which Sanchez has accused of leading a right-wing campaign designed to smear his partner and destroy his leftist coalition. But if the parties on the Spanish right, made up of the Conservative Popular party (PP) and Vox, want to do that, they have already missed several opportunities, over matters far more serious than the Gomez affair.

Sanchez required no such period of anguished reflection when Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled that the lockdown he imposed in 2020 had been illegal; nor when it emerged that an advisor to his former transport secretary was under investigation for fraud, in the so-called Koldo case; nor when he secured a third term with an amnesty for Catalan separatists that led to protests around the country. Despite being reinstalled at such a huge cost to public trust last November (70 per cent of Spaniards opposed the amnesty deal), Sanchez’s coalition is grindingly ineffective. It has already cancelled the 2024 budget, citing difficulty in securing cross-party support. The amnesty deal has made Sanchez’s life harder, not easier, because he will now have to deal with Catalan separatists’ renewed demands for a state-backed independence referendum, as well as secure their support for every piece of legislation he passes.

It was also mystifying to see Sanchez surprised at the fact that his wife had been targeted. Accusations of corruption against political opponents and their relatives (the more, the better) has become a standard method of warfare in the Spanish political arena, in which insults and personal attacks always trump reasoned discussion. It is a method that Sanchez himself has deployed, most recently against his most outspoken Conservative critic, the PP president of Madrid, Isabel Ayuso. This is, however, the first time Sanchez has been on the receiving end of such tactics. 

Since Sanchez teased his critics with the prospect of his resignation last Wednesday, only to cruelly disappoint them this morning, most Spanish media outlets have focused on how upset he is at the allegations against his wife. This obscures the most important question: namely, are these allegations well-founded, and if so, is Sanchez himself in any way implicated? The flimsiness of the evidence brought to the judge by Manos Limpias doesn’t inspire confidence in the allegations. So far, the organisation has only presented to the court a selection of media reports, one of which has already been proven false. Nevertheless, Sanchez’s decision to stay on is hardly something to celebrate. 

Still, many of the Socialist leader’s fans seem to be almost unconditional in their admiration of him. Despite the relative impotency of his government, the hugely unpopular deal by which it returned to power and the ongoing Koldo corruption case, thousands of pro-Sanchez demonstrators took to the streets of Madrid last week, urging him not to resign. They were presumably heartened by his announcement this morning – but why would anyone want four more years of the Sanchez Show? His supporters often respond to that by repeating what has become one of the biggest cliches in European political discourse: to prevent ‘the threat of a far-right government’ becoming reality. 

This argument rests on a complete misapprehension of the facts. While it’s true that Vox has several policies that even centre-right voters find extreme, this doesn’t make them a ‘threat’ to Spanish democracy, any more than Spain’s far-left parties are. A flagrant double standard is being applied by Sanchez’s supporters, because it’s precisely for undermining democracy and the rule of law that the Spanish judiciary, EU and even some members of his own party have criticised his amnesty deal with Catalan separatists. 

One demonstrator in Madrid last week said that she was frightened that a centre-right government would take over if Sanchez quit, and that ‘this will mean a step backwards for our rights and liberties’. This was said in defence of a prime minister who suspended the population’s most fundamental rights and liberties in March 2020, for a period of several weeks. Forget the supposed ‘threat’ represented by a potential PP-Vox partnership. The government that Spaniards should really be worrying about is the one led by Sanchez, who has once again refused to relinquish his tenuous grip on power. 

Humza Yousaf’s legacy in eight graphs

Humza Yousaf has announced his resignation as First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party. His time was short, but he’s overseen a dramatic change in the party he’ll now cease to lead: a discipline once revered by opponents has given way to a party in open dissent.

As he prepares to leave the political stage what can Scotland remember him for?

1. Yousaf, who became an MSP in 2011, rose quickly to the top job in Scottish politics. He first served as a minister under Alex Salmond within a year of his election. He was subsequently transport minister in 2017 when Nicola Sturgeon launched the Glen Sannox ferry onto the Clyde with no interior and painted on windows. But Yousaf will be out of office before the Sannox completes her sea trials making him Scotland’s second shortest First Minister in terms of time in office. Salmond has already described him as ‘Humza the Brief’.

2. For the first time in 17 years of power the SNP’s policy failures and political mishaps are catching up with them in the polls. Yousaf’s predecessor Sturgeon saw near limitless success for herself and her party before the police came knocking on her and her husband’s door. Now Labour have overtaken the nationalists in some polls for the first time since the 2014 referendum. Perhaps more remarkable than this dip though is how resilient the core SNP vote has remained, with most surveys suggesting they’ll still take the most votes in a future Holyrood election. Support for independence remains fairly high too. Whether that's because of, or despite, his leadership is open to debate. 

3. Yousaf served nearly two years in the Health brief before taking on the leadership and it’s fair to say it wasn’t a happy time. The pandemic and the SNP government’s response certainly hasn’t helped with huge rises in long A&E waits, worsening cancer waiting times and a growing treatment backlog now endemic in Scotland’s health service. A poorly performing NHS is hardly unique to Scotland or the SNP given the equally dire health system presided over by Labour in Wales and the Conservatives in England, but it’s harder to stomach when nearly £300 more is spent on health per Scot compared with England. During Yousaf’s stretch as Health Secretary, Health Board CEOs warned the Scottish NHS was at risk of ‘falling over’ too. 

4. Scotland’s terrible record on drug deaths – worse than anywhere else in the UK or Europe – is something more associated with Nicola Sturgeon given how long she had to tackle the problem. But a report from the World Health Organisation released last week showed Scottish teenagers were more likely to smoke cannabis than any other country surveyed. There’s no signs Yousaf has done anything to tackle Scotland’s drug problem during his time in office.

5. The Hate Crime and Public Order Act will be what most remember Humza Yousaf’s time in the Scottish government for. The Act was shepherded through Holyrood by Yousaf as justice secretary and finally implemented by the police just weeks ago. It’s already been ridiculed around the world and has been widely abused putting unprecedented pressure on Scotland’s already stretched police force. Over 9,500 alleged hate crimes have been reported to police so far this year and it’s already having a chilling effect. April has seen more ‘Non-Crime Hate Incidents’ recorded than any previous year.

6. If there’s one thing Humza Yousaf deserves credit for it’s his reversal of the 2010 decision to remove the country from the international Timms and Pirls education studies. Removing Scottish schools from these international comparison tables was a cynical attempt to hide the problems faced by what was once an education system the world envied. Still, Yousaf refused to apologise for the latest PISA results which showed Scots pupils fell the equivalent of one year of learning behind their English counterparts, something described at the time as ‘catastrophic’ by the country's leading educationalist.

7. Ditching the Greens has cost Yousaf the keys to Bute House but the agreement with Scotland’s hard-left party was cheered on for much of his premiership. Green policies that he supported included extending the rent cap and bringing forward legislation for future rent freezes. That rent cap was intended to help ease the cost of living but, as all of economic history might predict, the opposite came true. The property listings site Zoopla says it led to rents being set higher at the start of tenancies and as a result Scotland has seen the highest rental inflation in the UK. It’s even worse in suburban Scotland with Midlothian, Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire all seeing rent inflation of over 12 per cent – well above the regional average.

8. The outgoing First Minister’s biggest contribution to Scotland’s economic fortunes has been what he called his ‘progressive income tax’. In practice that meant introducing an ‘advanced rate’ at 45p – bringing the number of bands to six – and increasing the top rate by 1p. But the Scottish Fiscal Commission (McOBR) said most of the increase would be undone by ‘behaviour change’ – people crossing the border to escape higher taxes. Earlier tax changes under Sturgeon led to more than 1,000 higher rate tax payers moving out of Scotland according to a Treasury analysis released last week. Kate Forbes, a possible successor, has questioned whether this approach to tax is right, calling continual tax raising: ‘counter-productive over the long term’. Could she be about to take Scotland’s economy in a different direction?

As Scotland approaches a quarter of a century of devolution it’s striking how hard it has been to hold its to account. The Scottish government famously has more press officers than the BBC has reporters, the country is near devoid of think tanks and the third sector is so reliant on government cash that it has become supine. Numbers can change that though and as Scotland enters the next 25 years of devolved government we’ll be tracking policy outcomes, demographic change and economic impacts on a special Scotland section of The Spectator’s Data Hub. Stick it in your bookmarks!

Read: Humza Yousaf’s resignation speech in full

Last week I stood here to announce the ending of the cooperation agreement between the SNP and the Greens: the Bute House Agreement, and that the SNP would seek to govern as a minority government. I made that decision as leader of the SNP because I believed the Bute House Agreement was the right one for the party I lead, and I still do believe that to be the case. But most importantly, I believe it was the right decision for the country.

My hope was to continue working with the Greens, in a less formal arrangement as the SNP moved into a new phase of minority government. Unfortunately, in ending the Bute House Agreement in the manner that I did, I clearly underestimated the level of hurt and upset I caused Green colleagues.

For a minority government to be able to govern effectively and efficiently, trust when working with the opposition is clearly fundamental. And while a route through this week’s motion of no confidence was absolutely possible I am not willing to trade my values and principles, or do deals with whomever, simply for retaining power.

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Did Nicola Sturgeon kill Humza Yousaf’s Alba deal?

Therefore after spending the weekend reflecting on what is best for my party, for the government and for the country I lead, I’ve concluded that repairing our relationship across the political divide can only be done with someone else at the helm. I have therefore informed the SNP’s national secretary of my intention to stand down as party leader and ask that she commences a leadership contest for my replacement as soon as possible. In order to ensure a smooth and orderly transition, it is my intention to continue as first minister until my successor has been elected, particularly as our parliament will be debating some incredibly important legislation in the coming days and the coming weeks.

I cannot tell you what an honour it is being the first minister of the country I love, the country I’m raising my family in, and the only country I will ever call home. As a young boy, born and raised in Scotland, I could never have dreamt that one day I would have the privilege of leading my country. People who looked like me were not in positions of political influence, let alone leading governments when I was younger. But we now live in a UK that has a British-Hindu prime minister, a Muslim mayor of London, a black Welsh first minister and for a little while longer, a Scots Asian first minister of this country. So for those who decry that multiculturalism has failed across the UK, I would suggest that the evidence is quite to the contrary, and that is something we should all celebrate.

I’ve had the honour of serving in government for almost 12 years in a variety of roles. Whatever position I held during my time in politics, I’ve always been guided by my values. As first minister I’m incredibly proud to have a fair tax system, the most progressive in the UK, where those who earn the most contribute the most, and it will always be my core belief that in a country as rich as ours, wealth must be far more evenly distributed. I’ve no doubt at all that whoever takes over from me will continue this Scottish government’s drive to reduce child poverty. I’m proud that through our actions, an estimated 100,000 children are expected to be lifted out of poverty this year. I also hope that as a country, we can be really proud of the strides that we have made to tackle inequality, prejudice and discrimination.

But let’s also acknowledge far too often, in our country hatred continues to rear its ugly head. In a world where every issue, every issue seems to descend into a toxic culture war, it is often the most marginalised in our society who bear the brunt. As politicians of all political parties, we’re afforded, we’re privileged to have a platform. Each and every one of us must resist the temptation of populism at the expense of minorities, particularly in a general election year. I’ve often said that as a minority myself, my rights don’t exist in a vacuum: they’re only protected because the rights of everyone are protected.

And from the backbenches of the Scottish parliament I will continue to champion the voices and the rights of those who are not often heard, be that at home or indeed overseas, such as those suffering and who continue to suffer the most horrific humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the world watches on.

Let me say to my SNP family: I will always be with you, always campaign alongside you. We have had setbacks in our movement but we have overcome them, and we will do so again. Independence feels frustratingly close, and believe me no one, no one feels that frustration more than the leader of the SNP. But the last few miles of the marathon are always the hardest, and we have run this race as a team and I now will prepare to pass the baton to a successor who I’m absolutely certain will lead us over the finish line.

And I will tell you today what I will say to that successor: first ministers get to meet countless inspirational people in communities across Scotland, working to make life better for those around them. First ministers get to see first hand many of the exciting businesses and industries that will power Scotland’s future. And whenever first ministers set foot beyond Scotland’s shores, no matter where they go, in Europe or across the world, they encounter friends and admires of our nation. If only every person in Scotland could be afforded the opportunity of being first minister for just one day. On that very next day, it’s my belief that they would vote for independence with both their head and their heart.

To my fellow MSPs of all political persuasions: next week is a crucial milestone to mark 25 years of devolution. We have an electoral system that is designed for no political party to have an overall majority. Devolution’s founding fathers and mothers, rightly in their wisdom, believed that no one loses out by politicians sharing wisdom, sharing counsel, sharing ideas. But the converse is also true.

That is why I would make an appeal to colleagues across the political spectrum: that while government of course must act in good faith, so must our opposition, and be prepared to collaborate with us, not just oppose for opposition’s sake. The only people who suffer as a result of such an impasse are the very public that we seek to serve.

Politics and politicians, not unreasonably I’m afraid, have often been maligned. However, I truly believe that when we get it right, and for the most part we do, we are a force for good that can transform people’s lives for the better.

To my colleagues in the opposition, regardless of political party, I genuinely do wish you well. I bear no ill will and certainly bear no grudge against anyone. Politics can be a brutal business. It takes its toll on your physical and mental health; your family suffer alongside you. I am in absolute debt to my wonderful wife Nadia, my beautiful children and my wider family for putting up with me over the years, I am afraid you will be seeing a lot more of me from now. You are truly everything to me. And although, of course, I am sad that my time as first minister is ending, I am also grateful and blessed for having the opportunity afforded to so few – to lead my country, and who could ask for a better country to lead than Scotland. Thank you.

Humza Yousaf quits – sparking SNP leadership contest

Humza Yousaf is stepping down as first minister of Scotland. After feverish speculation over the weekend, Yousaf has announced this lunchtime in a press conference at Bute House that he intends to stand down from the role once an SNP leadership contest has taken place to find his successor. Acknowledging the events that had led up to this moment, Yousaf said he had ‘clearly underestimated the level of hurt’ that ending his party’s power-sharing agreement with the Greens caused the SNP’s minority partner. He said trust was ‘fundamental’.

Yousaf went on to say that from his discussions over the weekend with figures in the Scottish Greens and Alba, he had found there was a path through that would allow him to win the two confidence votes this week in his leadership. However, he said he had decided that it was a price not worth paying as he was ‘not willing’ to make deals just to stay in power that would go against his principles:

I have concluded that repairing our relationship across the political divide can only be done with someone else at the helm.

Yousaf went on to try to put a positive spin on his time in the brief – speaking of his pride of being the first politician of Asian and Muslim heritage to hold the role and describing one of his achievements as Scotland having the most progressive tax system in the UK. Yousaf also said on independence that if every Scot could have the opportunity to be first minister for the day, then they would all see why independence is so important. If the SNP keep this level of turmoil up, perhaps most of their MSPs have that chance.

So, what happens next? Yousaf’s comments about how he felt a deal to stay in power would compromise his values appear to be a reference to the demands from Alex Salmond‘s Alba party on independence in order to win their one MSP Ash Regan’s support. Listening to his statement, Yousaf appeared to express regret for burning his relationship with the Greens. His comments appear to suggest that he feels only a new leader can repair them. In keeping with this, the Scottish Greens have put out a conciliatory statement suggesting that the SNP have the right to form a minority government and adding their party has a ‘long track record’ of working ‘constructively from opposition’. This implies they could support the right leader.

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Did Nicola Sturgeon kill Humza Yousaf’s Alba deal?

The favourite to replace Yousaf is John Swinney, who was deputy first minister until last month. Swinney could be the only person to run for the leadership – he is the obvious unity candidate and an experienced pair of hands. But the contest could also spring some surprises. Were Kate Forbes – Yousaf’s former rival – to run again and win, the Scottish Greens would not play ball. There’s also talk over whether Westminster’s Stephen Flynn could throw his hat in the ring. By sparking a leadership contest but staying in post, Yousaf has brought some stability to the situation – it means that the party has time to pick a successor. However, whoever replaces Yousaf will have their work cut out trying to lead a minority government and avoid an early trip to the polls.

Catch up on today’s Coffee House Shots with Lucy Dunn, Katy Balls and Iain Macwhirter:

Humza Yousaf’s biggest mistake

A word of advice for anyone with ambitions to hold high political office: if you think you might ever need the assistance of your opponents, don’t allow your party to repeatedly abuse them. This wisdom comes too late for it to be of use to Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf, who has accepted the inevitable and announced his resignation this afternoon.

Fighting for his career after his decision to tear up the Holyrood power-sharing deal between the SNP and the Scottish Greens blew up in his face, the First Minister spent the weekend reaching out across party lines. His aim was to see off a vote of no confidence, tabled by the Scottish Tories and loudly supported by opposition parties, including those Greens. Unsurprisingly, Yousaf’s attempts to build bridges failed. His opponents’ glee at his misery, however, tells a deeper story about the state of Scottish politics.

‘We might have been a bit more inclined to cooperate with him,’ says one Labour member of the Scottish parliament, ‘if the SNP hadn’t spent the past 20 years telling voters we were all kinds of pieces of rubbish.’

That, I’m afraid, is an entirely accurate description of the SNP’s conduct over a long period. It is never enough for the Scottish nationalists to defeat their opponents, they have to demonise them, too, going out of their way to foment anger against anyone who dares question the wisdom of their separatist plans.

Yousaf’s predecessor, Nicola Sturgeon, famously said she ‘detested’ Tories, while Yousaf has recently been talking about how Conservatives might be driven out of Scotland. Meanwhile, the Nats have caricatured Labour as a pro-Brexit right-wing party, no more than ‘red Tories’.

The hateful, deliberately divisive language of senior nationalist politicians has consequences. I have never witnessed supporters of the UK protest outside an SNP conference, jostling and even spitting on delegates. On the other hand, it is to be expected that angry nationalist mobs will picket meetings of the Scottish Conservative and Labour parties with the intention of intimidating attendees.

When Yousaf – under pressure from moderates in his party concerned about the unwillingness of Green MSPs to accept Dr Hilary Cass’s review of NHS treatment of gender-confused young people as a valid scientific document – ditched the SNP’s junior partners last Thursday, he lost his government’s parliamentary majority. 

Almost immediately, the Tories’ lodged their no confidence motion, illustrating the danger of that new reality. Devastatingly for Yousaf, the co-leaders of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater – furious about being dumped from their ministerial posts – swiftly declared their party would back the Conservatives’ call.

Of the Scottish parliament’s 129 MSPs, 63 represent the SNP. In order to have defeated a vote of no confidence, Yousaf would have required the support of at least one opposition member. That would have created a 64-64 deadlock and the parliament’s 129th member, the Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone, would have been obliged to vote in favour of the status quo.

Though the result of a vote on Yousaf’s First Ministership would not have been binding, defeat would have been unsurvivable. Simply, had he lost and refused to step down, a Labour motion of no confidence in his government – which would have required his resignation – would have followed and would have done for him.

Yousaf might have been able to cling on if he’d been able to agree an accommodation with former SNP MSP Ash Regan, now the sole representative at Holyrood of Alex Salmond’s Alba Party. 

Regan – who defected to Alba shortly after coming third behind Yousaf and former finance secretary Kate Forbes in last year’s contest to succeed Sturgeon – had offered her backing in return for concessions. These included a declared new focus on independence, the acceptance of all aspects of the Cass review, and the agreement of an electoral pact so that only one pro-independence candidate stood in certain constituencies (a deal that would have smoothed Salmond’s return to Holyrood).

But the idea of Yousaf dealing with Alba was always a non-starter. Simply, it would have been absolutely intolerable for a number of his senior colleagues.

It’s a while since Salmond was considered a hero by SNP members. A long period taking the Kremlin’s Ruble as a presenter on Russian propaganda channel RT is, quite rightly, unforgivable for many.

And a high profile court case in 2020, which ended in Salmond being cleared of a number of sex offences, further damaged his reputation. He walked free from court after his QC Gordon Jackson argued that his client could have been a ‘better man’. Jackson was later overheard on a train describing Salmond as ‘an objectionable bully’, ‘a nasty person to work for’, and ‘an arsehole’.

‘There was never any way,’ says one SNP parliamentarian, ‘that he could have done a deal with Ash Regan. Salmond’s been all over the TV, gloating at the whole mess. He was never interested in helping Humza, he just wanted to torment him. If Humza had done a deal with Alba, he’d have needed more supporters to make up for the SNP cabinet secretaries who’d have backed the no confidence vote.’

We now await news of which MSPs might fancy their chances of winning the right to lead the SNP to humiliation in the coming general election. To whoever ends up with the crown, might I humbly suggest they try to get through their victory speech without describing their opponents as the scum of the Earth.

Lucy Dunn, Katy Balls and Iain Macwhirter discuss what happened to Humza Yousaf on SpectatorTV:

Runners and riders for next SNP leader

It’s a day that ends in ‘y’ which means hapless Humza Yousaf is once again having a tough time of it. After ditching the Green coalition and therefore his pro-independence majority in Holyrood, Yousaf left himself vulnerable to no confidence motions – and opposition parties haven’t let the opportunity pass them by. As Yousaf faces one vote in his leadership and another in his government, conversations about the tenability of his position have picked up pace. The SNP has now confirmed he will make a statement at midday today on his future. If hapless Humza decides his time is up, who’s next in line to replace him?

Kate Forbes

What comes around goes around. Hapless Humza’s one-time leadership rival finished in a close second place in last year’s leadership race – and speculation is mounting as to whether she’ll make a bid for the top job again. Forbes is hardly a secret sceptic of the current FM, blasting him during a rather unedifying contest last year for his record in government:

When you were a transport minister the trains were never on time. When you were justice minister the police were strained to breaking point. And now as health minister, we’ve got record high waiting times. What makes you think you can do a better job as first minister?

Ouch...

Forbes has already carved out a faction of supporters within the party, with the backing of prominent backbenchers including Fergus Ewing, Ivan McKee and Christine Grahame. This time she’s leaving nothing to chance, with her allies said to be studiously examining SNP rule books to avoid any kind of ‘stitch up’ that might leave the next leadership vote in the hands of her parliamentary colleagues. Meanwhile, the party establishment is determined not to allow Forbes a clear run. ‘There will definitely be a challenger to Kate,’ one party source told the Times. ‘It’s just a matter of who.’ 

Neil Gray

The SNP’s newest health secretary was promoted to the role after his predecessor Michael Matheson racked up £11,000 of data charges on his iPad and, er, tried to make the taxpayer foot the bill. Charming. A former SNP MP, Gray moved up the road to Holyrood in 2021. His name has been doing the rounds for possible SNP leader for a number of months now, despite Gray having run Yousaf’s own leadership campaign. The Airdrie MSP is viewed as largely unoffensive, has been hailed for his pro-business credentials – and is crucially thought to have minimal ties with Nicola Sturgeon. However, Gray is reportedly hesitant about the gig, and Mr S can’t blame him. With the party expected to lose around half of its Westminster seats at the upcoming general election, describing the top job as a ‘poisoned chalice’ is putting it mildly…

John Swinney

Once Sturgeon’s second-in-command, Swinney returned to the backbenches last year after the Dear Leader relinquished her power. Swinney is a totemic figure in the SNP, serving under both Salmond and Sturgeon, and the BBC reports that senior SNP figures are trying to get him to stand for the leadership. It is thought the Sturgeon ally and veteran politician could help repair relations across the party and the Holyrood Chamber. Asked by reporters if he will stand, Swinney has been coy, saying that it is a very demanding role and will take a lot of thinking about. Watch this space...

Stephen Flynn

The SNP’s Westminster group leader has made a name for himself after some rather smart politicking in the Commons over ceasefire motions. But while Flynn is seen as one of the more competent Nats, his position as a Westminster MP makes him an unlikely candidate to immediately take over. More than that, Flynn’s feather ruffling seems to have crossed a line with some in the party. He is largely credited with pushing Yousaf to end the Green deal – which is the catalyst for the mess the SNP now finds itself in. One SNP politician told the Times that ‘the mood is fairly unanimous amongst everyone I’ve spoken to at Holyrood that Flynn has to be frozen out. He’s getting a lot of the blame for this.’ Oh dear…

Jenny Gilruth

The current education secretary has been touted as a favourite to be next SNP leader, having climbed the ranks of the party since she was elected to Holyrood in 2016. Once a parliamentary aide to the former Deputy First Minister John Swinney, she remains close with the Sturgeon ally. Gilruth was promoted first to culture minister by the former Dear Leader before then taking on the transport portfolio. But there are concerns that the Scottish government minister lacks leadership credentials, and she hasn’t even managed to convince her own wife of the benefits of nationalism. While the former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale admitted she voted SNP in the 2019 European parliament elections, she hasn’t become a fully-fledged Nat quite yet…

Màiri McAllan

The wellbeing economy and net zero secretary made the announcement of the Scottish government's green target U-turn – which in turn drove the Scottish Greens to announce a membership vote on the future of the Bute House Agreement. At 31 years old, McAllan is the youngest contender for the job – but she brings with her some years of experience, holding positions like transport secretary, environment minister and, er, former special adviser to Nicola Sturgeon. It’s who you know…

Ash Regan

Despite no longer being a member of the SNP, the Alba party’s Ash Regan has somehow made the bookies' list of possible Yousaf successors. In a weird twist of events, the former SNP rebel – who stood in the 2023 leadership race before defecting some months later to Alex Salmond’s pro-independence party – ended up in the position of kingmaker last week, after the Scottish Greens said they would not support Yousaf in the confidence vote. Regan wrote to Yousaf with a list of conditions for her backing, including demands for a new independence strategy and a change of stance on women’s rights issues – prompting concerns within the party about what doing a deal with Alba would mean. Particularly after Regan was widely mocked during last year's SNP leadership race for proposing a full blown installation of an, um, independence thermometer. Talk about hot air…

Fergus Ewing

Descended from SNP royalty (his mother Winnie Ewing became the party's first MP in 1967), the rebel backbencher is a frequent critic of his party and the coalition with those pesky Greens in particular. Never afraid to rock the boat, Ewing made headlines after blasting Patrick Harvie’s barmy army as ‘wine bar revolutionaries’ and ‘fringe extremists’ and his name has cropped up in some bookies' odds for next SNP leader. While Mr S reckons Ewing as First Minister would certainly make Scottish politics more entertaining, the veteran Nat seems to be pretty comfortable on the backbenches…

Plotters set out ‘100 days’ policy plan to rival Sunak

It’s the week of the local elections and the most pivotal of Rishi Sunak’s premiership to date. It’s been clear for some time now that the Prime Minister’s critics will attempt to rally MPs to turn on Sunak if the party faces a drubbing in Thursday’s vote. This is more than the odd unhappy MP: a group of ragtag plotters – including one-time donors and former government advisers – is agitating from outside parliament to destabilise Sunak.

Downing Street has used the past few days to try to shore up Sunak with a series of party-friendly announcements, including a boost to defence spending, a benefits cracking down and the passing of the Safety of Rwanda bill into law. Less helpful for Sunak is the announcement that one of his MPs, Dan Poulter, has defected to Labour. However, as Mr Steerpike’s report from the Tory WhatsApp group shows, few Conservatives are crying into their cornflakes over Poulter’s departure and questions are now being asked of Labour’s decision to recruit him.

In a bid to up the pressure on Sunak ahead of Thursday, the plotters have released a ‘policy blitz outline’ which aims to ‘get the managerialist barnacles off the boat’. It reads as follows:

• End the junior doctors pay dispute with a 10-12 per cent offer (it’s currently at 8.8 per cent)
• On legal migration, announce further cuts to numbers, scrap the much-abused graduate route (government currently kicking can down the road on it) and introduce tougher measures to stop the boats (set up genuine election fight)
• ⁠Defence spending at 3 per cent and hit the target by 2027
• Flip the sentencing bill with measures to lock up prolific offenders. Build rapid detention cells to increase capacity
• ⁠Slash the benefits bill to ensure work pays and particularly target cuts to payments where depression/anxiety are (a) cause of inactivity

It is being billed as a plan for 100 days of a new leader before they go to the polls. As one Tory rebel puts it:

‘No more tinkering, dithering or managerialism – these are policies that can be introduced in a few months and then go to the country for people to make a decision. We’ve got to be clear and bold in our plan, and with the right messenger, to have any chance of winning otherwise it could be two or three terms of Labour’.

Two of the above policies (defence and benefits) are similar to recent announcements by Sunak though go slightly further. Meanwhile, the junior doctor demands are so high it is unclear a 10-12 per cent offer would end the strikes.

The plotters’ policies are also rather similar to what I reported in February for The Spectator on the plotters’ plans. As was the case then, this group still doesn’t have a confirmed candidate or challenger to Sunak. The ongoing rumour is that House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt is the most likely challenger on the grounds that she would probably lose her seat on the current polling so may feel the need to move before the election.

However, Mordaunt has been out this weekend calling on MPs to support Sunak. The other candidate being talked up is Robert Jenrick, who quit the Home Office over the Rwanda bill. This policy platform seems to fit his thinking and recent statements more easily than Mordaunt.

As things stand, most MPs believe that Sunak ought to be able to hold on. He has steadied the ship after one hellish week in which Lee Anderson defected to Reform and there was a racism row over a donor. However, it’s still not impossible that events overtake. In No. 10 and the party, Ben Houchen staying on as Tees Valley Mayor is viewed as key to Sunak’s premiership. As last year’s local council results showed, it’s one thing to talk about bad results being ‘priced in’. Once they arrive, it is hard to predict how MPs months away from an election will respond.

Is the Rwanda plan already working?

It is fashionable within Westminster to criticise the Rwanda plan. The likes of Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick and Reform on the right can often be found echoing Labour’s criticisms on the left that the current scheme is both flawed and unworkable. Yet one place where Rwanda is credited with having a deterrent effect is across the Irish Sea.

Micheál Martin, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, is now explicitly blaming the scheme for an increase in asylum seekers entering his country from Northern Ireland. ‘I believe the Rwanda effect is impacting on Ireland’, he said on Wednesday night. ‘It is having real impact on Ireland now in terms of people being fearful in the UK.’ Helen McEntee, the justice minister, estimates that more than 80 per cent of asylum seekers in Ireland have crossed the open border.

Such comments have been seized upon in London as proof that the scheme is working. Rishi Sunak proudly told Trevor Phillips on Sunday that Martin’s comments showed that the ‘deterrent is already having an impact because people are worried about coming here’. He said that the flow of migrants to Ireland ‘demonstrates exactly what I’m saying: if people come to our country illegally, but know that they won’t be able to stay, they’re much less likely to come.’

The Irish High Court did rule four weeks ago that Britain is not a safe country for asylum applicants because of the Rwanda plan. It is therefore conceivable that some migrants in Britain thought Ireland would be a safer bet to staking their claims here long-term. But this loophole, which is barely a month old, can scarcely account for the numbers that the Irish government claims arrived before then. McEntee’s ’80 per cent’ figure is also suspect, as Michael Murphy notes here.

The more immediate impact of the Rwanda scheme is that it is enabling the UK government to have the kind of conversations that they want on migration. As one source put it: ‘We won’t accept any asylum returns from the EU via Ireland until the EU accepts that we can send them back to France.’ Under James Cleverly, the Home Office has been more keen to stress the multi-dimensional, pan-European elements of the migration crisis, rather than depicting the UK as being a ‘Perfidious Albion’ rogue-state style-actor. Ireland’s enthusiasm for a returns deal to Britain helps normalise the UK’s demand for a similar agreement with France.

Within Whitehall, there is some wry amusement at the Irish briefing over the weekend. One Dublin insider attacked Sunak’s comments as ‘party political bullshit’ – a charge that equally could be levelled at the actions of the Irish government. Historically, it has been Britain wrestling with both migration crises and entry from the Common Travel Area. Now, it is Ireland which is considering emergency laws and expressing concerns about border crossings.

With migration fast becoming one of Ireland’s most salient political issues, Micheál Martin’s own Fianna Fáil party remains rooted at third in the polls. As both London and Dublin try to play to their domestic political audience, both sides have a vested interest in talking up the impact of the Rwanda scheme – even before a single flight has got off the ground.

The parable of Blackpool’s potholes

I read the news today, oh boy. Four thousand holes in Blackpool, Lancashire. Well, in fact, not quite as many as 4,000. The number of holes in the Lancashire town that the Beatles didn’t sing about was a very precise 2,628 – or, translated into another scale, just over half an Albert Hall’s worth. That’s how many potholes Blackpool Council has filled in over the last year alone.  

In a world where every other bulletin is of swirling climate catastrophe, economic precarity, hot wars, riots, migrant drownings, gusts of online hate and all the jollity of the day-to-day news cycle, this local council has been getting on, patiently and methodically, with the work of filling little holes in the road.

This is a good news story. And it’s also, it seems to me, a little parable. Small things give onto big ones. You’ll remember the ‘broken windows’ theory of policing credited with turning the dingy and crime-ridden New York of the 1970s and 1980s into the shiny and buzzing one of today. The idea, taken up with enthusiasm by the then mayor Rudy Giuliani, was that if you fixed the broken windows and aggressively policed minor crimes the vibe would change. You created an atmosphere of orderliness and good behaviour: graffiti didn’t appear; muggers didn’t imagine that they would lift wallets with impunity; the other windows remained unbroken.

Here is a close parallel, but with a slightly different slant. The lesson with Mended Pothole Theory, as I choose to call it, is less to do with the contagiousness of civic order (though no doubt it contributes to local pride in the area) than to do with the principle that a stitch in time saves nine. A few years back, Blackpool Council was having to pay out £1.5 million every single year in compensation to people injured by accidents involving potholes. Last year, the figure was a pleasingly exact £719. 

Deciding to invest in prevention rather than cure was a move of great sagacity and foresight, It will have taken, too, some cojones. Blackpool is not exactly awash with spare money. This faded seaside town is one of the most deprived areas in the country. In Madeleine Bunting’s melancholy recent book The Seaside: England’s Love Affair, the author reports that Blackpool’s life expectancy is the lowest in the UK. More than a quarter of Blackpool’s under-sixteens live in households on incomes less than two thirds of the national average. The 2021 Chief Medical Officer’s report said of the town’s housing situation that ‘inner Blackpool now houses the single most vulnerable population in the country in the most inappropriate accommodation’.  

The Council had to borrow money – some £30 million – to start repairing the roads. No doubt there will have been those, and still will be, who wondered why potholes were placed ahead of, say, improvements to housing stock or school meals or any of the other vital services for the town. And the answer – vide that astounding drop in compensation claims from £1.5 million to £719 – is that you fix the leak in the bucket before you start bailing. 

Now other town councils up and down the country, it’s reported, are rushing to follow Blackpool’s lead. Wouldn’t it be nice if the principle were extended into all those other areas of policy, not local but national and international, where an ounce of prevention might save us a ton of cure?

To take one example: the care system. Outcomes for looked-after children are societally ruinous. These children are by some way more likely than the general population to grow up physically or mentally ill, criminally recidivist, addicted, unemployed. This matters not just for their own happiness, but for the public purse. Criminals and addicts are very expensive to look after. Children, however troubled, are much less so.

There’s no question that these children enter the system with problems, but many of them leave it in worse shape than they came in. The studies which have been done on this (my wife made a documentary on the subject not long ago) show that a pound invested now saves multiples of that down the line. The MacAlister report said that £2.6 billion was needed over five years to fix the system – and the government responded with proposals to invest just £200 million over two years.

Everywhere you look, there are instances. Chiselling money from education budgets now puts a great dent in the economy of the future. Get in a situation where GP appointments are impossible to obtain, or patients have to wait months for a routine operation, only compounds the costs in lost work, medical complications and expensive visits to A&E.

Another example, a global one. Climate: is it not worth taking a hit to the economy now in order not to take a wallop down the line? And if we’re worrying about the effects of immigration on the public purse, can fighting through the courts to send a few dozen people to Rwanda – at £150,000 per head not including the legal fees involved – really be the most cost-effective way to bring those costs under control? Is it possible, in other words, that cutting foreign aid is a false economy?

Or if you don’t believe there’s anything the matter with the climate, and foreign aid sounds like too wishy-washy-liberal a point, you could make an analogous one about military spending. The savings we made from letting our defence budget wither, as wise analysts point out, are likely to come back and bite us as costs in the long run, and not just in pounds and pence.

‘Longtermism’ has been given a bad name by the ketamine-addled tech-bros who have visions of colonising Mars or uploading our consciousnesses into the cloud, so let’s settle for Mediumtermism: the idea that spending a bit of money today we can avoid spending a lot of money two or three decades into the future. It’s an idea so simple, and so screamingly obvious, that only the perverse incentives of a four-year-election cycle could cause anyone to take a different view.

Yet that’s where we are. The potholes are everywhere underfoot, yet the people in charge have their eyes raised to the bright lights of the ferris wheels. It’s a recipe for a nasty tumble.  

Do we need a Sikh court?

Last week in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, nearly 50 prominent Sikhs gathered to mark the formation of the world’s first specifically Sikh court. When the body opens for business on 1 June, its members will be available essentially to do two things. They can provide what the lawyers call Alternative Dispute Resolution, helping to settle family and community arguments. In addition, on request they will act as arbitrators in property or business disputes, with the power to give determinations which will be legally binding.

Apart from noting the irony that the governing body of Lincoln’s Inn – which last year ostentatiously distanced itself from religion by abolishing its Christian grace before meals – is now welcoming with open arms an explicitly religious but non-Christian legal initiative, what should we say? On balance, we should probably support this new court. On the other hand, the fact that it is being set up in the first place needs to set us thinking and perhaps should give us wider concern. Here’s why.

On the positive side, this is simply an exercise by a group, which happens to be religious, of its freedom to set up its own domestic mechanism to deal with disputes. There is no element of compulsion involved: members of the court can mediate or act as arbiters only where the parties agree. If Sikh businesses prefer to air their disputes before a Sikh court rather than a more traditional London commercial arbitrator from the Temple, that is their right. If it takes pressure off the ordinary courts, so much the better. Furthermore, there are a lot of disputes that are arguably better mediated within the Sikh community than litigated outside it. (One example given was a dispute about who should dictate a child’s hair-style, something that shouldn’t get within a hundred miles of a local court if we can possibly help it.)

In this respect the new court may well be a little like the London Beth Din, which has quietly operated for many years in the background for the resolution of disputes within the Jewish community and has caused few if any problems. Indeed, if anything the Sikh court is even less controversial, since in contrast to the Beth Din, which applies rabbinical law, there is no such thing as Sikh law, and so the new court, in so far as it applies any law, will simply apply the law of the land.

True, you might say that if we encourage this we can hardly complain of efforts by Muslims to divert as much of their business as possible to Islamic courts applying Sharia law. But there is a difference. The difficulty with Islamic courts in Britain is not so much their separation from the legal system, as the aspects of Islamic teaching which are hard to reconcile with acceptance of a non-Islamic government. And the fact that many (not all, but still too many) supporters of such courts are hardline Islamists who frankly despise our democracy. Here we do need to tread carefully. But for better or worse, this does not apply to Sikhs and Jews in the UK, nearly all of whom are perfectly happy to respect our government when it comes to secular matters.

So far so good. What should worry us, however, is that the Sikh community saw the need to set this court up in the first place. Although some suggest that it was a response to the ordinary courts’ lack of expertise in Sikh culture and customs, one suspects this is only a partial truth.

For religious people, the difficulty with the modern British establishment is that it is not so much uneducated about religion as quietly hostile to it. Far from accepting religious institutions and within reason working with them, it adopts an aggressively liberal secularist perspective. It sees religious faith as a slightly tiresome thing that gets in the way of what it sees as enlightened progressive measures. Family and other courts are no exception: anyone with a religious background who encounters them is likely to recognise pretty early on that mantras such as ‘human rights’ and the ‘best interests of the child’ normally mean the side-lining of their own traditions in favour of a kind of aggressive technocratic secularism. In such a situation you can hardly blame the religious for wanting to keep as many disputes as possible away from them.

Put bluntly, the problem in Britain for many adherents of minority religions is not a straitlaced English culture that seemingly excludes them. It is actually the opposite: namely, the refusal by the English establishment to impose moral boundaries, and its vacuous liberal approach which treats all values as equally valid. The Sikh community has quietly recognised this by setting up its own entirely harmless and probably beneficial semi-judicial institution. But the British state needs to watch out. If communities see it as an institution frightened of adopting any serious moral standpoint, more sinister and fissiparous community divisions are likely to grow.

The final tragedy of ‘Humza the Brief’

The resignation of Humza Yousaf as First Minister of Scotland marks not just the beginning of the end for him, nor simply for the 17-year long SNP government, but for any hopes of Scottish independence happening in the lifetime of most SNP members. Yousaf might even take devolution with him since the Scottish public are at their wits’ end with the behaviour of the politicians – all of them – who have occupied the Scottish parliament like student activists taking over the university court.

Yousaf was always a hopeless case politically. Nice guy – shame about the nous. Not for nothing was he called Humza ‘Useless’ even before he was elected. His SNP leadership rival, Kate Forbes, brutally deconstructed his ministerial career in the party’s leadership TV debate last year, leaving Yousaf speechless. 

Now he is lost for words to explain how he can survive this week’s motions of no confidence without handing the fate of his administration to Alex Salmond’s Alba Party. SNP MSPs cannot, it seems, swallow the idea of his administration being saved by the casting vote of Alba’s only MSP Ash Regan. But by rejecting Salmond’s terms, the SNP have placed themselves in the hands of the very Scottish Green Party who have just been shown the door. They, not Salmond, will now effectively be the king makers, since only their votes can install an alternative to Yousaf.

I make no claims of foresight in having forecast last year that Yousaf would be unlikely to last past the next election. Everyone felt the same – even many in the SNP. Yousaf was over promoted by a party that no longer knew what it was in government for and had harnessed itself to a delinquent party of gender zealots. As a member of an ethnic minority, SNP MSPs perhaps thought Yousaf would get an easy ride from the media. Well, that turned out well. 

The ‘continuity candidate’ was elected at precisely the moment when the SNP needed discontinuity from the ‘woke’ progressive authoritarianism that had taken root under Nicola Sturgeon. The irony is that Yousaf has had to fall on his sword for doing the right thing for once: getting rid of the Greens. If only he had done it sooner many of his worst disasters might not have happened. 

The Deposit Return Scheme that collapsed after a boycott by 4,000 small businesses; the Highly Protected Marine Areas rules that caused a Highland rebellion; the bonkers heat-in-buildings plan to scrap a million gas boilers by 2030; and, of course, the endless genuflection to the dogma that transwomen are women. All these, and many more policy failures, not least the hopelessly unrealistic 2030 climate emissions targets, were Green inspired. 

Of course, Humza added his own cock ups to the inventory of misfortune. The illiberal Hate Crime Act, which he promoted so assiduously, has damaged Scotland’s image abroad as a country that values freedom of speech and lively debate. He persevered with Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill – currently stalled by the UK government – after it was obvious to all that it was dead following the scandal of a trans rapist being placed in a women’s prison. He sensibly abandoned Sturgeon’s daft and undemocratic ploy of turning the next general election into a ‘defacto’ referendum on independence. Then he replaced this with an equally daft notion of declaring a majority of seats the ‘trigger’ for Indyref2.

But Yousaf’s biggest failures were in precisely those areas he now says are his priority: health, education and the economy. One in seven Scots is on a hospital waiting list; Scottish education is in steep decline, and his only answer to the black hole in public finances was to increase taxes on every Scot earning over £28,000 and hand out over-generous pay awards to public sector workers without securing any significant productivity gains. Since Yousaf was in government with the Greens who oppose economic growth in principle, it was perhaps unsurprising that the productive economy got lost in the thickets of ‘wellbeing’. 

The final tragedy of ‘Humza the Brief’, as Alex Salmond calls him, was that he has resigned after scrapping the Bute House Agreement. This after Green co-leader Patrick Harvie refused to accept the scientific validly of the Cass report on gender services with its call to pause the prescription of puberty blockers.

Unfortunately, Yousaf didn’t think through the arithmetic. Or at any rate, his MSPs could not accept the risk of letting the hated Alex Salmond hold the SNP government to ransom. Could he really have expected SNP MSPs like Nicola Sturgeon to hand the party back to their nemesis? Mind you, history may judge that the SNP should have held its nose and stuck with Yousaf and the Alba party’s Ash Regan this week – because the alternative is even worse. The SNP government is now effectively hostage to the very Green MSPs who have contributed to the government’s downfall. Regan’s vote in the confidence motion is the only thing keeping the Greens from effectively deciding the next leader of the SNP.

Lorna Slater and co are certainly not going to support the ‘socially conservative’ former finance secretary, Kate Forbes, even though she is arguably the most competent candidate. If Harvie gets his way, it will probably be the education secretary, Jenny Gilruth, who’ll take over after an interregnum in which someone like John Swinney, the former deputy First Minister, acts as caretaker. Gilruth is a Sturgeon clone who supports the Gender Bill and wants a ban on trans ‘conversion therapy’. She also happens to be married to the former Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale. 

So it is back to continuity with the disastrous Sturgeon era. And continuity with electoral decline. Gilruth will not prevent the SNP from crashing even further at the forthcoming general election. But then there is probably no politician alive who could salvage this divided, discredited and directionless political party. The SNP has gone from landslide victory to pariah status in less than a decade. As recently as the 2010 general election, the SNP returned only six seats against Labour’s 41 in Scotland. Who’s to say that history is not about to repeat itself?

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Count Binface just isn’t funny

On British general election nights, I like to watch Dish and Dishonesty, the first episode of the third series of Blackadder. It pokes some gentle fun at the conventions of election night TV, including the tradition of ‘silly’ candidates. In the episode, Ivor ‘Jest Ye Not, Madam’ Biggun of the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid party is among the challengers to replace the late Sir Talbot Buxomly.

Mr Biggun – whose policies of compulsory asparagus for breakfast and free corsets for the under-fives will doubtless be in the next Lib Dem manifesto – is an unsubtle parody of the Monster Raving Loony party and their various imitators and competitors. You see them milling around on the stage at the counts, wearing outlandish costumes and often looking inordinately pleased with themselves. In 2017, a photograph of then-Prime Minister Theresa May standing awkwardly on stage with Lord Buckethead at the Maidenhead council headquarters went viral online and was the occasion of much comment about the glorious eccentricities of British democracy.

Lord Buckethead – originally a character from an obscure 1980s Star Wars spoof, Hyperspace – was the alter ego of a comedian, Jon Harvey. After a complaint from the director of Hyperspace, Harvey reinvented himself as Count Binface (subsequently another crazy funster obtained permission to use Lord Buckethead and used it support the People’s Vote campaign for a second Brexit referendum). Harvey / Count Binface is a candidate for this week’s London mayoral election, having garnered a respectable 20,000 votes in 2021, and recently released a not very side-splitting video outlining his platform.

I’m sure plenty of people find this all very funny, an example of the Great British Sense of Humour. To me, it feels very laboured, the kind of knowingly ‘zany’ performance which you expect from sixth-formers and undergraduates who have watched too much Monty Python. Years ago I went to see the Oxford Revue, and it was agonisingly unfunny – heavily reliant on painfully forced surrealism. It took me a long time to work out why it had fallen on its backside so resoundingly. I eventually realised that it was the self-consciousness of the gags that caused them to fail. Very few things are more fatal to a funny line landing as intended than the sense that the speaker or writer is very impressed with themselves and their own (real or imagined) cleverness. This was part of the reason why the much-lauded 2016 public vote to name a new British Antarctic Survey ship Boaty McBoatface was so unfunny; you just knew that everyone voting for the silly name was congratulating themselves on how unconventional and hilarious they were. The same applies to Count Binface, and all the other men who get up on stage in brightly coloured clothes advocating for free taxi rides to the Moon or turning the M1 into a children’s play area because they are just so incredibly wacky, unlike the rest of us boring squares.  

On top of this, these characters’ self-presentation as subversive outsiders strikes a false note because they rarely have any kind of genuine antagonism towards the status quo. Now the obvious response to that point is that they are jesters, not politicians, they’re here to have a laugh. Other people can tackle the big problems. But this is not quite satisfactory. For one thing, by entering the political arena, even with an obviously comedic platform and persona, they are inviting disagreement and riposte. If their only aim is to expose ‘the system’ as laughable, that is itself a political position on which they can expect pushback.

We are entitled to draw certain conclusions about the ultimate aim of absurdist political gestures, if those gestures always point in a certain direction. Jon Harvey’s 2017 incarnation of Lord Buckethead and 2019’s continuity Lord Buckethead (David Hughes) were both supporters of Remain, a cause very dear to the heart of the British establishment in those strange febrile years after 2016. Buckethead Mk. II planned to stand against Nigel Farage in the 2019 European elections, before withdrawing so as not to split the pro-EU vote. Both Buckethead and Binface stood against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and West Ruislip in 2019. How enormously daring and edgy!

Like the Monster Raving Loonies, these men see themselves as engaged in the noble endeavour of satire, and of course the right to mock those in power is hugely important. Laughter is a strong weapon against pomposity and arbitrary authority. But 60 years on from the satire boom of the 1960s, political comedy is at a low ebb, at least in its traditional forms. The gags and their subjects all feel stale and well-worn. Radio 4 and panel shows are full of the same faces and voices, all making more or less the same student union-level political jokes about the allegedly uptight and bigoted right-wing bourgeoisie and posh Tories grinding the faces of the poor and single mothers.

It all feels very tired. Exhausted, even. The problem for Count Binface and others is that Monty Python and Private Eye and the alternative comedians won. The old Britain they mocked so enthusiastically has indeed vanished under the rubble, and the new breed of comics do not really know what to do next, except bomb the rubble. They are basically happy with the contemporary cultural settlement, so their material has no bite. I would bet anyone any money that if you asked Jon Harvey – the man behind the bin – about his politics, it would be the same blend of progressive orthodoxy and big state Sensibleism as almost every other comedian.

The myth of trauma

Everything is trauma. From Barbie’s Oscars snub (very traumatic) to Taylor Swift’s new album (also deeply traumatic), profound emotional distress appears to be everywhere. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), trauma requires ‘actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence’. A horrific car crash, a terrorist attack, an armed robbery, these all fit the bill. An Oscar snub does not. Why, then, do so many people appear to think of themselves as traumatised?

This raging fire of self pity is being fuelled by unqualified influencers who call themselves ‘trauma coaches’. They preach to their hundreds of thousands of followers, offering them words totally devoid of wisdom. In fact, TikTok has become so synonymous with trauma that some refer to it as TraumaTok. Experiencing difficulty in making minor choices? You could be ‘traumatised’ and in need of assistance from May Chow. Known as @somaticspirit on TikTok, Chow, who has 61,000 followers, describes herself as a somatic trauma healing artist. Quite a mouthful. That’s because it’s a load of New Age nonsense. Last year, Chow went viral after sharing a video demonstrating a trauma-processing technique. After positioning herself on her bed, Chow began trembling and screaming like a crazed banshee. 

On TikTok, trauma appears to be the answer to just about every question imaginable. Why do I procrastinate? It could be a potential trauma response. Do you enjoy watching your favourite shows over and over? Are you a perfectionist? All of these could be potential trauma responses. Spending excessive time scrolling on social media to the extent that you question if it’s becoming problematic? It might be a trauma response. You get the picture.

When discussing the misuse of the word ‘trauma’, one must consider the influence of Gabor Maté. For the uninitiated, Maté is a Canadian doctor and pop psychologist. He is a compelling speaker and regularly appears on major podcasts, including Steven Bartlett’s wildly popular Diary of a CEO. His views on trauma are particularly worrying. In his best-selling book, The Myth of Normal, Maté argues that ‘someone without the marks of trauma’ should be considered ‘an outlier in our society’. In other words, virtually every single one of us is traumatised.

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This is not true, and it’s certainly not a healthy view of society. Maté suggests that there are two types of trauma: Big ‘T’ trauma and little ‘t’ trauma. The former is in line with the DSM definition. The latter is not. Little ‘t’ trauma, according to Maté, is frequently overlooked as it lacks a connection to a catastrophic incident. Non-life threatening injuries, financial concerns, and the loss of relationships are just a few examples of little ‘t’ trauma. It’s certainly a clickbaity concept, but it’s not a scientific one.

Maté’s sweeping definitions are part of a much bigger problem. And that problem is victimhood culture, which encourages individuals to react to even the most minor of offences with a mixture of outrage and despair. Pain and suffering now bestow validation. It is like Darwinism in reverse – allowing the weakest to not just survive, but thrive.

Much of this psychologised language has seeped into our popular culture. GQ recently published a piece revealing the many ways in which ‘therapy-speak’ has ruined pop music. ‘Words like “toxic”, “dysregulation” and “trauma-dumping” – expressions that used to stay in the therapist’s office – have invaded our films, our friends, and now, it’s coming for our pop music’. Ariana Grande’s latest album contains a song which references ‘therapy’, ‘codependency’ and the desire to ‘self-soothe’. The aforementioned Taylor Swift’s describes her new song, ‘Fortnight’, as ‘a traumatic, artistic tragic kind of take on love and loss’. In 2017, Pink, a pop star who has been around for over 20 years, released an album titled ‘Beautiful Trauma’.

What we are witnessing here is semantic satiation. This occurs when a word is repeated continuously, causing it to eventually lose its original meaning. Trauma was once a word used to describe severe bodily injury. Then it became highly distressing circumstances that fall beyond the typical scope of human encounters. Today, however, it means the stresses and strains of everyday life. Soon it will mean nothing at all.

A boomer’s guide to Gen Z slang

I recently had the pleasure of spending some time with my two teenage grandsons, who live in Dorset – 16-year-old Dylan and Isaac, who is 14. Listening to them chatting with their friends, I slowly realised that, half the time, I hadn’t a clue what they were on about. Peculiar words I’d never heard before peppered their ‘convos’. What, I wondered, could be the definitions of ‘leng’ and ‘peng’? What was the meaning behind the mysterious expression ‘SN’? And why did they sometimes exclaim: ‘That’s beg!’ As is the way of the world, a whole new slang vocabulary has been created by their Gen Z.

This was, of course, a case of history repeating itself. When my two sons were teenagers back in the Nineties, I had to familiarise myself with their new buzz words in order to keep up. And so I learnt that when something was ‘wicked’ or ‘bad’, that meant it was good. When something was described as ‘pants’, it was rubbish. And if a person was attractive they were ‘fit’, if decidedly unattractive, a ‘minger’. 

I decided that in the interest of better inter-generational communication, I’d better sit my grandsons down and get to the bottom of their new vocab. So out came my notepad and pen. ‘I’ve heard you reply “Ah, calm” to something one of your mates has said,’ I tell Dylan. ‘What’s that about?’ ‘That just means you agree with them, like “yeah, OK”.’ ‘And if you don’t agree?’ I ask. Isaac pipes up: ‘Then you say “that’s beg!”’ ‘Beg?’ I give him a puzzled look. ‘Why beg?’ He shrugs, grinning. Needless to say, kids don’t know how these odd usages spring up.

Dylan runs through a few other slang terms, for my edification. ‘Let’s say a big bunch of friends are meeting up, in the park or on the beach. Well, that’s called a “motive”.’ ‘How would you use that in a sentence?’ After a moment he says, ‘We had a massive motive down at the beach but the police came and broke it up.’ He continues: ‘When something is really good, well then you’d say “that goes hard”. And if something’s bad, it’s dead.’ ‘Dead?’ ‘Yeah, like, “the food at this café is really dead.’

‘And what about leng and peng?’ I ask. ‘I mean, are those even words?’ ‘When you approve of something you say “that’s peng”,’ explains Dylan. ‘Leng is how you’d describe a really pretty girl.’ He moves quickly on: ‘If you like somebody’s clothes you tell them “that’s a cold fit”.’

By now my head is spinning a little. ‘How on earth does that work?’ ‘Fit. You know, as in outfit.’ ‘Hmm. And your mystifying use of the initials SN?’ Isaac fills me in. ‘Stands for “say nothing”.’ ‘Used in what context?’ He replies: ‘It just means “it’s all good, I understand you, there’s nothing more to say”.’ That’s quite a handy one, I muse.

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Our interview over, I reflect on my own slang lingo from my teenage years in the New York of the 1960s. Back then, when something was good it could be ‘boss’ or ‘far out’ and if it was fun it was ‘a gas’. Something you didn’t care for ‘wasn’t your bag’. If you agreed with someone’s statement you would remark ‘damn straight’. ‘Let’s split’ meant let’s go, and when you were taking it easy, you were ‘hanging loose’. 

Ah, the groovy bygone days so fondly remembered by us hip Baby Boomers. As you can see, I am inclined to get stuck in a sort of verbal time warp, still happily using some of those preferred slang expressions, even though they are woefully outdated. But what should I do? If I start adopting Gen Z’s bizarre terminology, as it is more in tune with the times, I’d just be ridiculed.

Perhaps I could get creative and forge some new slang of my own – words to suit a middle-class, small-c conservative lady of a certain age navigating her way through the 21st century. Let me think. How about, when something is awful I describe it as so Corbyn, and when something has my approval, I say that’s totally Waitrose? And any tips from fellow Boomers would be most welcome. So do have a think. Ya dig? 

Why are men so offended by my hair?

My annus horribilis was 1992. I was in fifth grade (aged ten) and had impulsively cut my hair short over the summer. I turned up to school with auburn ringlets billowing out and up from my head in a wavy sphere. Boy did it get the boys going: constant insults, including ‘Ronald McDonald’ (McDonalds’ clown mascot, known for his garish red hair), and heckling with the curiously racist insult ‘electric Afro woman’, shortened to ‘Zofro’. There was no laughing this off: it was a barrage, which came with volleys of burrs thrown at my hair and other projectiles. Only physical violence, months in, quietened it down: I had to kick a shrimpy but tenacious tormenter to the floor of the school bus.

I had the last laugh. Some of my worst bullies later cultivated curly locks (one became a bouncy-haired mime) while within ten years half were balding. My hair went on to garner compliments from strangers in the street, blessings in India from mothers holding infants and fascination from those I encountered in Africa and Asia. And it was my hair that drew men with lascivious intent – many men’s hands have clawed its thick, slightly matted curls, fascinated and delighted. Most of my boyfriends have said it was my hair that drew them to me. My luxuriant golden-red barnet has put friends and admirers alike in mind of ‘flames’, ‘copper cloud’ and even that delicious word ‘goddess’.

In December, on a solidarity trip to Israel and about six months pregnant, I paid a visit to my Tel Aviv hairdresser, Zohar, whom I have patronised for more than a decade. I told him to do something drastic: I felt encumbered and wanted a sense of cool air and lightness. I thought that by trimming my hair so that my neck was free I could achieve what, in fact, only a rigorous postpartum exercise and diet plan could do.

It was drastic alright, and just like in fifth grade it has also riled the boys. Appearing on TV panels since the haircut, I have been amused to see that old barrage of insults directed at my hair.

If phase one (age ten) was childish ridicule, and phase two (22-41) was attraction and passionate fascination with sexy, unusual and flowing locks (if I may), then phase three seems to be fury. Many older men seem struck by my hair, considering it unkept and therefore rudely insulting to their idea of what a woman ought to look like.

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Have I ever brushed my hair? Ever washed it? Why would anyone want to listen to a woman with such ‘awful’ hair? Do birds live in it? They reminded me of things my mother has said to me over the years – having grown up in an era where women, if they wanted to be seen, let alone heard, had to make sure their hair, like much else, was tamped down and brutally contained. My hair is always clean – I’m a daily washer, which is more than most, but I confess I stopped brushing it about 30 years ago. Brushing creates sheets of frizz, and nobody finds that sexy. Though it might be more soothing, in a mumsy way, for my internet hair haters.

I have other theories for why my hair – in its current awkward, slightly post-natal state – makes men so angry. Of course, for all the loosening in grooming expectations 40 years after feminism, some men still hate what they see as an undergroomed woman. Hair in particular is upsetting. How dare she go out and say things in public when her hair is short and a bit wild?

I fear it is to do with their own follicular insecurity. As Bald: How I Slowly Learned To Not Hate Having No Hair, a new memoir by Stuart Heritage makes clear, male pattern baldness can be a slow and tragic process, pulverising a man’s self-esteem and a spectre he fears his whole adult life. Lose your hair? Lose your virility. Or so many men seem to think. When they see a woman with a shock of hair that she has no chance of losing to baldness genes, it irks them that she’s not forcing it to behave. The world may have moved on since 1992, but the men decrying my short and crooked hair now may have not.

Why Labour won’t be bounced by Sunak’s defence plans

British politics in recent years has sometimes resembled a waltz. Both main parties show little compunction in mirroring each other’s plans, stealing their opponents’ popular policies and playing down the differences which characterised the Corbyn years. So it was striking to see Labour’s reticence this week to sign up to Sunak’s much-vaunted plan to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030.

Both Keir Starmer and John Healey, the Shadow Defence Secretary, have invested much time and effort over the past four years in trying to nullify the Tories’ traditional lead in this area. At the last election barely one in ten voters trusted their party on defence and national security; now polls suggest that Labour leads on this issue. Given the hard-won gains in this area, why not simply go along with Sunak’s announcement, rather than allow the likes of Grant Shapps to claim that their stance on defence amounts to one of ‘delay, disruption and obfuscation’?

For Labour, the answer is twofold. The first is that they simply do not believe the numbers stack up. As Healey told the House on Tuesday ‘If this 2030 plan had been in a Budget, it would have been independently checked, openly costed and fully funded. Where is the additional money coming from?’ The government says that the additional £75 billion needed to meet the 2.5 per cent target will be funded by slashing a total of 72,000 civil service jobs. Yet this was tried before in the 2015 defence review, which promised a Ministry of Defence (MoD) headcount reduction to 41,000, rather than the current number of 63,000.

The second is a reluctance to commit to plans of which they have seen very little detail. This is a common complaint among all opposition frontbenchers, who claim they cannot set out spending plans in detail, without first ‘opening up the books’. But given the level of classified information involved in defence, this seems like a fairer criticism – especially when one considers the MoD’s reluctance to publish even routine information like spending on existing contracts. Even the Tory-led, cross-party Commons Defence Select Committee noted in February how ‘key information that was readily available a decade ago is no longer published for reasons that are unclear.’

There may of course be good reasons to withhold such details – but it means it is harder for opposition MPs to know what is going on in the department from the outside. Shapps mocked the opposition’s calls for yet another defence review, suggesting this was unnecessary after a glut of such reports since 2015. But it is worth noting that the Ministry of Defence is already preparing for such a review, according to a parliamentary question just two weeks ago.

Labour feels confident it can therefore ignore being bounced into matching a spending commitment which they think lacks both detail and credibility. They are happy too to highlight the obvious tension between spending ministers and the Treasury when it comes to defence. Whereas Tom Tugendhat and Grant Shapps both issued public calls in the run-up to this week’s announcement, Healey – a former Financial Secretary – is keen to work with Rachel Reeves and the Shadow Treasury team to try to pick holes in the government’s announcement.

By sticking to their guns, Labour hope to show that they are the more credible of the two main parties when it comes to the nation’s defence.