Politics

Join die Labour jubilation! Keir Starmer, the man who is very likely to be our next prime minister, has just been asked on Classic FM to choose a piece of music that sums up Labour and picked ‘Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the choral Ode to Joy’. Which just happens to be the European Union’s anthem. ‘It has got a sense of destiny and is hugely optimistic,’ Starmer told his radio audience. ‘It’s that sense of moving forward to a better place, [which] is incredibly powerful.’ So a sort of high-brow version of the Blairite D:Ream belter: Things can only get better. Or perhaps a not-so-subtle nod to those Starmer-supporting Remainers who hope

There was little competition for the oddest and most obscure bill to be announced in the King’s Speech: the proposal to licence London’s pedicabs. On the list of the most pressing issues facing the nation, it doesn’t tend to feature very highly. There must be many people in Britain who have never seen a pedicab, let alone ridden in one or come into conflict with these vehicles, which tend to ply a tiny zone of tourist London around Piccadilly Circus. But could the move to regulate pedicabs evolve into something a little more substantial? During a debate on the pedicab bill in the Lords this week, Lord Hogan-Howe, formerly chief

The situation in Dublin yesterday – in which five people were injured in a knife attack in the heart of the city, resulting in a riot and violent clashes with the police – was to the untrained eye reminiscent of Belfast from days gone by. Speculation about the nationality of the attacker fuelled the scenes of violence which took place last night and that has led to condemnatory tutting. After all, Ireland’s national myth is tied into tales of immigration and welcoming. A riot over immigration in its capital city contradicts the stories Ireland tells the world about itself. The instinct, almost reflex reaction of the establishment, was to deploy