Five months ago, an anti-migrant riot set Dublin ablaze. The scenes punctured the perception among some UK politicians that Ireland was this cosy, progressive paradise in the face of insurgent nationalism around Europe. That is the context for the rising prominence of immigration in Irish politics. This week the new taoiseach – the young, affable, career politician Simon Harris – called for Ireland’s cabinet to look at ways to send migrants back to the UK after his government said the Rwanda scheme meant more asylum seekers were heading to Ireland. The Irish justice minister Helen McEntee said last week that more than 80 per cent of those applying for asylum in Ireland were thought to have crossed over the border with ...

Cast your mind back to 6 May 2021. The UK was still slowly creeping out of lockdown, with socialising indoors in most settings still banned. The Covid vaccine roll-out was under way, with around half the population having received their first jab. And Boris Johnson was enjoying a bounce in the polls as Keir Starmer struggled to cement his authority (in a critical essay for the New Statesman, Tony Blair warned that Labour was “asking whether Keir is the right leader”). It feels like a different era – one that, perhaps, many of us have tried to forget. But that was the context in which the suite of local council seats up for grabs this Thursday (2 May) was last fought. ...

“Humza the Brief” is Alex Salmond’s brutal epithet for Scotland’s hapless First Minister. Humza Yousaf may not be gone yet – and may still survive a motion of no confidence at Holyrood next week – but he is done. All authority has fled; the mission has failed and needs to be aborted. His senior colleagues in the SNP know this and internal discussions have begun about who should replace him, and when  – either in the coming weeks or after the general election if he can stagger on. Former leadership candidate Kate Forbes is being advised by allies to prepare a smarter campaign than last time, and Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth is said to be on manoeuvres. Will they wait for ...

Labour has announced plans to nationalise the railway operators by folding them into a publicly owned company, Great British Railways, on a rolling basis as the contracts come up for renewal. The idea is that this will allow Labour to take the railways back into public ownership without large compensation bills. As George writes in an excellent interview with Louise Haigh, Labour’s shadow transport secretary: "The Sheffield Heeley MP, 36, who is one of the shadow cabinet’s leading ‘soft left’ members (alongside Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband), is unambiguous about the alternative she would pursue: renationalisation. ‘We will bring those remaining operators – there are ten left on the railway contracts model – back into public ownership,’ she said, 30 years ...

Earlier this week, questioned about the tottering coalition between the SNP and the Scottish Greens, Humza Yousaf said that he “thoroughly enjoyed” the partnership. “We’ve achieved a lot and I hope the cooperation agreement will continue.” This was consistent with all his utterances on the topic since he became First Minister just over a year ago. Humza loved the deal. By today, under intense pressure from his own MSPs and MPs and with his government in open crisis, he had changed his mind. Following an emergency 8.30am cabinet meeting at Bute House, Yousaf announced that the coalition was over and that the SNP would govern as a minority administration until the next Holyrood election in 2026. He told the Green co-leaders ...

Just before midnight the Lords backed down to let the Rwanda bill become law. It aims to protect the scheme from legal challenges by declaring that Rwanda is indeed a safe country to send migrants. Rishi Sunak has said he expects flights to take off throughout the summer. This is the government’s third law to crack down on asylum seekers crossing the Channel. The previous two did not work, and it’s unclear whether this one will produce a different result. The political gamble is that flights leaving the tarmac for Africa will restore the government’s credibility on immigration. In other words, proof-of-concept could get them a hearing from a public that has long stopped listening. At that point, it would try ...

Bristol is not a city that disguises its radicalism. The walls are festooned with street art and graffiti (Banksy is a former resident). The local Patagonia store features placards declaring “Net Zero Is Not Enough”, “Frack Off” and “There’s No Planet B”. Clues that the city may soon elect the UK’s second-ever Green MP surround you. An MRP poll in February by Electoral Calculus projected that the Greens would win the new Bristol Central seat with 52 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 39 per cent. The woman bidding to oust the shadow culture secretary, Thangam Debbonaire, is Carla Denyer, the Greens’ co-leader and one of 25 city councillors (making them the largest party).  “People say, ‘Well, I usually vote Labour,’ ...

When I interviewed Mairi McAllan for the New Statesman recently, it was evident that she had something on her mind. Scotland’s Net Zero Secretary criticised the “fetishisation” of climate targets – not something you normally hear from an SNP government that has long prided itself on setting environmental goals considerably more ambitious than those agreed by Westminster. And her game plan has now become clear. McAllan announced yesterday (18 April) that she is scrapping a commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 75 per cent by 2030. This follows a warning in March by the Climate Change Committee that the 2030 goal was “now beyond what is credible”. In 2021, Scotland missed its annual emissions-reduction target – the eighth such failure in ...