In Christmas films, a festive trip to the shops is a magical experience. Cheerful shoppers bustle down snowy streets, to reach the light and warmth of department stores packed with alluring presents. Convincingly real Santas dandle happy children on their knees, next to perfectly dressed trees. Christmas is a commercial business, sure, but it’s also bright and fun. That, though, is a fantasy American past, not the real British present, and a trip to most British high streets this Christmas is likely to present a rather different experience. Half-hearted light displays in concrete post-war shopping precincts. Soggy, grumpy people grumbling their way past derelict retail units and the boarded up ruins that once housed a Debenhams. The shops that are open ...

On 22 December, Kemi Badenoch will have reached a milestone. She will have exceeded the 49 days Liz Truss served as leader of the Conservative Party. Whatever the future holds, Badenoch can claim that she has not had the worst start or been the most short-lived of recent Tory leaders. Badenoch inherited a demoralised party that had suffered the worst election defeat in its history. It had won in 2019 by offering contradictory promises that it could not deliver to a broad coalition of supporters that could not be sustained.  Populist voters preferred the offer of Reform UK – uncontaminated by the experience of government – while pragmatists defected to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Tactical voting and the widespread desire to ...

Eleven years ago, MPs reacted with astonishment as it was announced that they had voted against UK military action in Syria. It was the first time a prime minister had lost a vote on a matter of peace and war since 1782. Yet for Ed Miliband’s Labour, this was something of an accidental victory. Several shadow cabinet ministers told me afterwards that they had not expected David Cameron to rule out intervention (the motion referred only to potential military action and a second vote would have been required). Ever since, the Syria affair has proved reliably combustible in Labour circles. For some, it was one of the high points of Miliband’s leadership (along with his crusade against phone hacking). For others ...

If you cock an ear, that gnashing of teeth you can hear is coming from inside Scottish Labour’s HQ. The party, which had seemed on course to win the next Holyrood election, suddenly finds itself in a much more precarious position. Recent polls suggest the SNP is once again ahead in the race, which is almost unthinkable after 17 years of government and two years of almost relentless bad press and scandal. John Swinney was supposed to be a caretaker First Minister, a reverse Moses guiding his wounded party away from the promised land, out of office and across to the opposition benches. There now seems to be every chance the Nats could win an astonishing fifth straight term. What is happening? ...

In Iceland, the builder of a new house may sometimes bring in a folklorist to check that the planned building will not offend the Huldufólk (hidden folk), or elves. In south-east Asia, “spirit houses” are attached to new buildings to provide dwellings for the unseen entities that may previously have inhabited the land. In Britain, housebuilding is subject to set of arcane, quasi-religious rituals, which even have their own bible: the National Planning Policy Framework.Today (12 December), Angela Rayner announced a rewriting of this strange codex. But to understand its power, we must watch arguably this country’s finest TV programme: Grand Designs. In a recent episode a young couple decided to build their first home in Lincolnshire. They’re successful people ...

Labour, contrary to some reports, never feared Kemi Badenoch. No 10 aides did not dismiss the possibility that she could surprise as Conservative leader but saw nothing to trouble them. In the event, Badenoch has fallen below even these low expectations. Yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions was an apt demonstration. As opposition leader, Badenoch is spoiled for choice. The government has removed winter fuel payments from almost all pensioners (to the unhappiness of Labour MPs). It has announced a rise in employers’ National Insurance, alienating the businesses it worked hard to woo in opposition. And it has vowed to increase inheritance tax on farmland, prompting a revolt in the rural seats Labour won. Badenoch could have led on any of these – but ...

When the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead outside a hotel in New York, the suspect Luigi Mangione would not have foreseen that his own Goodreads list would attract more interest than the blurry CCTV footage of the actual assassination. America has already had two attempts this year by self-mythologising gunmen to enter the pantheon of Lee Harvey Oswald and Ted Kaczynski when two men took aim at Donald Trump. But neither were as good looking or as well read as Mangione. So far these assets have made him popular. Last night (10 December), Mangione’s glib 262-word manifesto leaked online, alongside a video of him being restrained as he shouted, “This is completely unjust,” and “an insult to the intelligence ...

All successful governments need a people. The voters who help define their project and will stand by them even in the toughest times. Think of the aspirational class drawn to Thatcherism by the Right to Buy and share sales, or those whose lives were transformed by New Labour’s tax credits and Sure Start. Who are Keir Starmer’s people? Five months into this Labour government, the answer is not as clear as it should be. Instead, this is an administration that is proving adept at making enemies and less good at making friends (59 per cent of voters now disapprove of the government’s record so far). It started with pensioners. Rachel Reeves’ unexpected means-testing of the winter fuel allowance (a benefit, remember, introduced ...