There are many considerations in appointing a cabinet: rewarding loyal supporters, balancing factions, keeping rivals away from the spotlight, and, ideally, competence. They tell you a lot about what new prime ministers are worried about and how they intend to govern.

One thing we learnt from yesterday’s appointments, and some of Burnham’s other early moves, is that he has a much stronger theory of power – a view about how he wants to use the office and what he wants to prioritise – than his recent predecessors.

Throughout his time in office Keir Starmer was strangely passive, waiting for decisions to be presented to him and refusing to settle disputes between ministers. His government looked buffeted by events and u-turns. It is telling that in valedictory interviews he has talked of scrapping the two-child limit as a signature achievement, given it took eighteen months of lobbying by MPs and a mass revolt on welfare to make it happen.

Burnham, though, has indicated not just that he has priorities but that he is willing to make the institutional changes required to make them happen. John Healey’s appointment as Chancellor was part of a wider move to shift the locus of economic policy towards No. 10. I said back in May that I didn’t think Ed Miliband would be Chancellor, not just because of criticism from the right but also because he could create an alternative power base, given support within the party.

Healey isn’t a pushover, and certainly isn’t going to sanction a big increase in borrowing, but he is not going to threaten Burnham. And his views on economic policy are broadly in-line with the prime minister’s. He was responsible for regional economic policy under Gordon Brown, and has since argued that fiscal devolution hasn’t gone far enough. And he pushed for more social housing when he was the minister responsible back in 2009. He is, of course, keen to find more money for defence.

Notably, Healey was appointed after Burnham had given an interview on economic policy, saying that he thought there was flexibility in the fiscal rules and hinting at changes to income tax thresholds. Not the behaviour of someone who plans to sit back and let the Treasury manage the economy. This morning VAT on electricity bills was scrapped. This is the first in what will be a series of “cost of living” announcements that had been lined up by Burnham’s team well before Healey was offered the job (as per my assessment of his policy agenda from a few weeks ago).

In the rest of this post I’ll look at why changes to the No. 10 machine point in the same direction and then at what the rest of the cabinet appointments tell us about Burnham’s likely priorities and concerns, as well as the challenges to come.

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After a brief respite the Iran war is back on. The question at the heart of the latest exchanges of fire is who is to control the Strait of Hormuz, to which the current answer is ‘nobody’ because both sides can deny control to the other and it is not obvious how either can change the situation solely through military action. Iran is betting that Trump’s concerns about the midterms and inflation will lead him to agree to almost anything to make the war go away, as he appeared ready to do when the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two sides was signed on 17 June. The US is betting that by denying Iran the economic benefits that came with the MOU, and by battering it with waves of air raids, it will be coerced into a more accommodating position.

Trying to work out how this will unfold is challenging because on the one hand there is a hubristic regime in Iran, pushing its luck, and on the other an erratic one in the US that sends a different message every day.

Some of what Donald Trump says can be dismissed easily. When he suddenly had the bright idea on 12 July that the US would not only control the Strait of Hormuz but charge a 20 percent fee on all cargo shipped, it was obvious that this was unlikely to last for more than a few hours. So it proved. It is only because he is president that the media felt obliged to treat this as if it was a serious proposition. It did not require the ‘shipping operators and logistics experts’ the New York Times consulted to know that the fee ‘would significantly increase the cost of transporting oil and other products through the crucial waterway.’

This article noted that ‘Mr. Trump did not explain exactly how the 20 percent fee would be calculated’ as if he had made a calculation rather than pulled a number out of the air because it sounded like an appropriate rake off for almost any deal in which he might have been engaged.

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Four things determine whether prime ministers are successful. Three are about them. Do they have the requisite character and public presence for the job? Is there a clear guiding purpose to their administration? Can they put together a team to run a functioning operation? The fourth is context. What are the specific challenges they face and are they prepared to meet them?

There’s been a lot of speculation about Burnham’s character and his likely appointments to senior roles. I’ve written about some of the ideas that could provide a clearer animating purpose to his government than Keir Starmer managed. It’s time to turn to the context.

It is, of course, not possible to predict all the events that will shape Burnham’s premiership. In summer 2019 no one though Boris Johnson’s time in office would be defined by a global pandemic. Equally there are some challenges so broad and universal that they should be on the list for any leader around the globe: climate change; the threats and opportunities of AI; foreign policy in an increasingly multipolar and transactional world; and how to secure economic growth given our complex, volatile and interconnected financial system.

But I want to focus on a set of more tightly defined problems that we know are coming over the next year, and will lead to the prime minister having to make a series of difficult trade-offs. They are a mostly a consequence of decisions already taken, or delayed, by this government. And how Burnham manages them will tell us a lot about whether he will outperform his recent predecessors.

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Smoke rises from Gazprom Neft’s oil refinery in Moscow

I have focused on the siege of Crimea in recent posts because the Kremlin seems to have no idea how to deal with the peninsula’s loss of supplies and energy. This remains the case. The position continues to worsen.

In the past week we have seen a further remarkable development with the success of Ukrainian uncrewed systems targeting Russian tankers and cargo ships in the Kerch strait, which links ​the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Since the Black Sea fleet left the area the Russians have been trying to control the passage of ships into the Sea of Azov, allowing them through one at a time after checks. This mean that they had to queue to get through, and it is this queue of tankers and cargo ships, all needed in Crimea with growing urgency, that Ukrainian drones have been targeting on a daily basis.

No new protective measures appeared to have been take as the Ukrainian attacks built up: two tankers hit on 6 July; ten tankers plus one cargo ship and one ferry on 7 July; nine tankers on 8 July: and 14 tankers on 9 July. According to Stefan Korshak of the Kyiv Post, video shows about 80 percent of the vessels hit set on fire, with claims that about half were rendered inoperable and around one quarter burnt out and ruined. In some cases when fires were put out the vessels may have been hit again.

According to Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Ukrainian drones hit 21 tankers, four tugboats, two dry cargo vessels, and one specialized vessel, overnight on 11 July. He observed that not only was the ‘shadow tanker fleet … noticeably shrinking,’ but that, apparently, ‘traffic through the Kerch Strait has been stopped.’ Brovdi added that 53 targets in Crimea and southern Russian-occupied territories were also hit, including energy infrastructure, as part of the ongoing ‘Crimean Switch Off’ campaign.

Reuters also reported that shipping companies have been notified that all requests for passage through the Kerch Strait would not be accepted from ​6:10 p.m. local time on Friday. This affects Russia’s leading grain-producing regions, Rostov and Krasnodar, which lie along the Sea of Azov through which a quarter of Russia’s agricultural exports pass.

Ukraine has been striking roads, railways and ferries to sustain the siege of Crimea. The aim is not just to make the peninsula ungovernable, and humiliate the Kremlin in the process, but to stop it being used for attacks into Ukraine, including the land operations in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. That is why the port of Sevastopol continues to be struck, although what was left of the Black Sea fleet scampered away to safety some time ago, and could provide no protection to the tankers recently attacked, along with airfields used for strikes against Ukrainian towns and cities. The Russians are now reduced to smuggling fuel into the annexed territory using any vehicle available, including passenger cars.

I have paid less attention to the developing fuel shortages in the rest of Russia because I assumed that Vladimir Putin was going to find a way to ease the pressure. But he has yet to do so. In the rest of this post I will focus on this challenge, how Ukraine has managed to step up the pressure, the serious problems it is causing, and whether Russia has the capability to adapt.

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When I wrote last week that Nigel Farage was struggling under the pressure of scrutiny, I didn’t expect it to manifest so quickly.

Yesterday, in a somewhat panicked attempt to recapture the initiative he triggered a by-election in his Clacton constituency. Even had the other parties played along it was unlikely to work, as media and parliamentary investigations into his finances would continue anyway. Only the truly credulous would take a victory in his own seat, with its unusual demographics, as proof of national support.

But as the other parties have decided not to stand, the whole thing is now an embarrassment. The by-election will attract little media attention, as the result is not in doubt (no, sorry, as amusing as it would be Count Binface isn’t going to win). Any journalists who do make the trip to Clacton will have to spend their time interviewing novelty candidates and vox popping baffled voters.

Meanwhile, the stories about Farage’s finances keep coming. Just yesterday the Guardian revealed his £5 million donation from Thailand-based Crypto-billionaire Christpher Harborne was reported to the National Crime Agency as a potential case of money laundering. And the Sunday Times journalist Gabriel Pogrund posted new details about the tangled web of donations from shady aristocrat George Cottrell and his family.

Farage’s self-pitying monologue that preceded his announcement about the by-election was not put on for effect. He is genuinely aggrieved at the level of attention his finances are getting, and has always felt his decision to forgo earnings to participate in politics is a sacrifice that he doesn’t get credit for. Perhaps the most revealing line in his speech was when he said:

“I thought over the weekend, what shall I do? I could go out and try and make some real big money. I could go to the USA, where I’ve got plenty of offers.”

This isn’t rhetorical. It is, and always has been, a real option for him. It’s why he relinquished the leadership of Reform to Richard Tice in 2021 and only took it back during the 2024 election campaign after Harborne had given him the £5 million. There were already plenty of rumours about his commitment to the role before this week’s gambit. His tetchy, graceless, performance only adds to the sense he’s going to struggle to make it through another three years. Especially, as he’s failed to kill the Tory party, which makes a majority extremely hard to achieve.

In the rest of the post I’ll look at why an early exit is increasingly plausible, and how it could be triggered. Followed by what might happen to Reform, and British politics, if he were to go.

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The eventual publication of the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) was bound to be somewhat anti-climactic. It came after months of wrangling between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury, including the resignation of the Secretary of State for Defence and a junior minister. While some more money had been found after the resignations it was bound not to be enough and so the attack lines were ready to go. It was too late and too little, in keeping with the tradition of British defence reviews which combine great ambition with insufficient funds. With Andy Burnham about to become Prime Minister much commentary focused on the questions he would be left to answer: how were these investments to be paid for and did he appreciate that more would be required?

Behind these questions is a more fundamental one of how do we assess how much is enough? We do not expect to be fighting Russia all by ourselves so our contributions are to a wider alliance effort. Our contribution might be judged by some specific roles – nuclear deterrence, patrolling the North Atlantic, special forces. Or NATO targets for spending – looking for 3.5% of GDP though for now we are only going to be getting to 2.7%. Or our desire to play a leadership role in NATO or retain what we can of the ‘special relationship’.

There is no objective answer to this question of how much is enough. The military could always spend more. It has to be answered by reference to the political context as well as the military balance of power. While the DIP has been largely discussed in terms of domestic UK politics it is also part of wider debates about managing the transition away from a US-dominated alliance as well as coping with a belligerent Russia. NATO has been going for over three quarters of a century, so these debates have a history. Looking back on that history can provide some context to the current challenges the UK, and the rest of NATO, currently face, and help us to think through whether the DIP is adequate.

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Here are three things that are all true:

• Kemi Badenoch’s personal ratings have improved significantly since last year. On Opinium’s job approval question she’s gone from -27% in May 2025 to -8% this month. Ipsos had her favourability below Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage in June 2025, but she’s now well ahead of both. As recently as last August, Farage beat her on a YouGov forced choice question about who would be the best prime minister, now she’s leading him by 38% to 17%.

• Reform has become less popular since last summer. Their polling average peaked at 31% in August 2025 and is now 26%. Farage’s approval ratings are also falling. Opinium had him at -5% in September 2025 and he’s now at -23%.

• The Conservatives’ polling has barely moved at all. In July 2025 they averaged 18% and now it’s 19%. They remain level with Labour and some distance behind Reform. These numbers were validated in the local elections when they lost more than 40% of their councillors and all their large county councils.

If, last year, you had told people that Badenoch would get significantly more popular, while Reform slipped back, they would reasonably have assumed the Tories would be doing better. But they aren’t.

Understanding why is critical to thinking through how British politics will play out over the next few years. If Badenoch’s improving ratings are a leading indicator for a Conservative resurgence then that puts Reform in serious jeopardy, and could lead to a revival in traditional two-party politics (at least temporarily).

The media interest that sustains Farage is dependent on him being the main challenger on the right. It also drives pro-Reform tactical voting by Conservatives, as we saw in Makerfield and in places like Sunderland during the local elections.

But if it’s not a leading indicator then that’s bad news for the Tories. Partly as a result of her improved ratings Badenoch is under no threat as leader, and looks likely to take the Conservatives into the next election despite their dire polling. If she’s not capable of turning it around then the party could find itself on the verge of extinction.

So what’s going on?

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The big story in the Russo-Ukraine War remains the siege of Crimea. Ukraine has been systematically preventing supplies getting into the peninsula – attacking road, train, and ferry links. Putin’s prestige project, the Kerch Bridge, is still standing but it has been weakened and cannot take the weight of traffic for which it was intended. Fuel tankers and other heavy goods traffic are prohibited from using the bridge lest there be a repeat of the first Ukrainian attack, in October 2022. Then enormous damage was done by a truck bomb detonating alongside a railway tanker loaded with fuel oil. Most of the vehicles currently using it are seeking to flee Crimea.

There is now no spare fuel for civilians. There are power outages after strikes on energy infrastructure on 23 June left approximately half of the peninsula without electricity. Air defences are now practically non-existent and military assets are being attacked. The holiday trade has shut down. Crimea has been a vital base for Russia’s military operations against Ukraine. Now it provides a major headache for the high command. If they cannot get fuel to the peninsula then it will become progressively ungovernable. A state of emergency was declared on 26 June.

On the same day Ukraine mounted its biggest drone attack ever on Russia, including Moscow, with one of the main targets apparently the Azot chemical plant in Novomoskovsk. Targets relevant to Russian arms production have been hit regularly. The most visible effects of the Ukrainian campaign, however, are the chronic fuel shortages evident in the occupied territories and in many parts of Russia. Most refineries within range (and more are coming into range) have been struck, some a number of times.

The big refinery in Moscow hit on 18 June (pictured above) is now expected to be out of action until next year. NORSI, Russia's fourth-largest oil refinery and second-largest gasoline producer, suspended operations on 24 June after it was struck by drones. Petrol output now covers only about 80% of domestic demand. As the queues at garages lengthen, fuel sales are being restricted while prices have as much as doubled. Exports are banned and even imports are being considered. Flights are being cancelled. For an energy superpower this is, if nothing else, humiliating.

If Ukrainian strikes can keeping attacking the infrastructure faster than it can be repaired, then the Kremlin will face hard choices on priorities. Will air defences and fuel be taken away from front line forces to save Crimea and spare Moscow?

Now think back to the debates of the summer of 2022 when the Biden administration fretted that a Ukrainian assault on Crimea or long-range strikes deep into Russia, especially if supported by Western supplied systems, carried heavy risks of escalation. If they made Putin desperate or cross enough there was even a plausible route to nuclear war. Yet those red lines have long been passed. In the Russian blogosphere the failure to respond vigorously as each was breached is now blamed by hardliners for the current predicament. The ever more brazen Ukrainian attacks are prompting demands for retaliation – not only against Ukraine but against the West. There are mutterings once again about tactical nuclear weapons. A nuclear strike against London is a favoured option.

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The end of Keir Starmer’s premiership had become so inevitable that his decision to go caused little excitement in Westminster. Thoughts turned some time ago to what a Burnham administration will look like. The jostling for jobs and lobbying by special interests was already well underway. It’s not a sentimental place.

Last month I looked at what the new Downing Street set up might be, some of the big decisions Burnham will face on arrival, and gave a high-level overview of potential policies. In this post I’m going to zoom in on the third of these themes and look in more detail at the emerging policy agenda.

There is plenty of scepticism about Burnham (including from within the Labour party). Those who’ve reported on his time as Greater Manchester Mayor note his tendency to say what people want to hear, duck difficult decisions and change his mind under pressure. He’s not a policy wonk and isn’t always on top of the detail, as we saw from various missteps during the by-election. He can wear his views lightly.

But those who say he will just be Starmer with a northern accent and better dress sense are missing that Burnham has developed a network of policy thinkers around him who do have a clear sense of what they think needs to happen. The same themes keep reappearing in his interviews and statements and will be repeated in a series of speeches over the next fortnight. There is an ideology there even if it’s flexible. Much of this has been written up in think-tank reports or provided the basis for policies Burnham has pursued as Mayor.

This programme is being studied in the Treasury and cabinet office and will form the basis of an agenda. So it’s worth analysing in more detail both to understand the likely animating principles of a new government and how much of it will survive given fiscal constraints and political realities. Especially given the degree to which Burnham has already boxed himself in with commitments made during the by-election. I’ll start with the economy, then look at potential reforms to the political system (including PR and devolution), and finish with public services.

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Since Russia’s full-scale invasion he has lectured and written about the challenges his country faces. Three Years on Fire (published by Open Borders Press, available from the Guardian Bookshop) is the third of his collections of diary entries and commentaries on the war and has been short-listed for the Orwell Political Writing Book Prize (winner to be announced on 25 June). I was one of this year’s judges for the prize.

There’s a short extract from the book below followed by an interview. It was a privilege to be able to talk to Andrey about the state of the war and the issues facing Ukraine. We spoke on 15 June, as news came though of attacks on cultural sites across Ukraine.

‘As the War ranges on, in universities and schools Ukrainian youth study the tragic history of the writers and poets of the first “Executed Renaissance”: 250 young and active Ukrainian poets and writers who were detained by the Soviet authorities and then shot between 1937 and 1938. The works that that these murdered writers did not manage to write and publish remain in our minds as a kind of phantom of Ukrainian literature – cultural riches that we can only imagine.

In the same way, we can imagine the phantom of Ukrainian architecture – hundreds of buildings that were never built because their potential creators were repressed. The phantom of Ukrainian fine art also looms over us in the thousands of murdered artists’ unrealised canvases.

This phantom element of Ukrainian culture grows larger with each day of the Russian aggression. Unrealised Ukrainian culture is beginning to outweigh created works as the list of cultural figures killed by Russian weapons grows longer – a list which bears the names of more than a thousand writers, musicians, artist, film directors and actors.

….

Authors who survive will have to write books on behalf of their fallen colleagues as well as for themselves. We will all have to work much harder to fill, at least partially, the jagged empty space gouged into Ukrainian culture by Russia’s bombs and missiles over the last three years.’

Extract from “Three Years on Fire”

Lawrence: We must start on a rather sombre note. You say at the end of Three Years of Fire, that ‘the destruction of Ukrainian cultural monuments has felt like an axe chopping away at my roots’. You must be feeling that quite a bit today.

Andrey: Of course. I didn’t sleep, I’m in London, my family is in Kyiv, so my kids, who are adult, they didn’t sleep at all, and I was following all night what was happening. And of course I was shocked by the fact that there was part of Uspensky Cathedral destroyed, and then the Arsenal Exhibition Centre, where I actually gave a talk during Kyiv Book Fair two weeks ago, was on fire. And several other institutions. The concert hall of organ music in Dnipro, in Kharkov, the state arts museum targeted, so it’s a dozen buildings, historic buildings. It was like specifically cultural objects were targeted.

This is another step in the war against national identity, because if you have historical monuments destroyed when you rebuild them, they are not originals, they are not witnesses of the time, they are not proof of your history, they are remakes, they are decorations.

I don’t think it is accidental. It was not a coincidence. It’s somehow in my head connected with a discussion a couple of days ago on Russian TV that Russia should send four nuclear missiles to the Western Ukraine and create a radiation buffer zone between European Union and Ukraine. Then Ukrainians will have no access to Europe, and they will have to join Russian Federation.

Lawrence: Is this a response to Ukrainian successes? Ukraine is hurting Russia at the moment.

Andrey: Definitely. The war is escalating to such a level. With this intensity, the answer to the war should be given by the end of the year or beginning of the next year.

Russia is spending huge resources, economical and human resources. They don’t now have logistics around Crimea. They cannot sell oil from the Black Sea ports. They have two thirds of their refineries damaged or stopped working. But at the same time they are producing these ballistic missiles and sending them immediately to the front line, so I mean it’s like a conveyor for the war.

Lawrence: The book ends in early 2025 with Trump humiliating Zelensky and no obvious end to the war in sight. So in quite a pessimistic place. Would you say that the Ukrainian are much more optimistic now that they will get a better outcome of this war than it seemed a year ago?

Andrey: It’s very strange, because there is no despair and there is no optimism. There is a quiet happy smile every time another refinery is hit and on fire, but I think people understand that Russia still has the last argument, the nuclear weapon, and maybe this somehow stops people from being over optimistic. Trump is not mentioned at all now in Ukraine. He forgot about Ukraine. But Europe has became much more close and much more cooperative. Negotiations have now begun about EU membership. This is what makes people happy and optimistic. So, when they think about Europe, they hope that Europe somehow will help to stop the war.

Lawrence: Though Putin shows no interest in talking to Europeans.

Andrey: Of course. The only real possibility for the war to stop is a crisis in Russia or the death of Putin.

Lawrence: This is your third volume of diaries on the war. Presumably you’re writing a fourth. Why did you choose this approach to addressing the war? I know you’re writing fiction again now, but for a while you didn’t. You concentrated on this.

Andrey: I still write the diary and then essays based on my diary, and I’m trying to collect and to retell small stories, which wouldn’t happen if there were no war. So because everything else is written by journalists, I’m just looking for how life changed, how Ukraine changed, how I changed, and my family. I will be writing a big essay about traveling from the beginning of the war, how the conception of travel and how the mechanics of travel and its logic changed. I think I will be very happy when I stop doing this, but I feel like it is a mission and duty to write about the war until the moment when it is over.

Lawrence: Looking again at the first volume in this series. It starts well before the full-scale invasion with Covid and the speculation about a war. You were writing a diary anyway. Have you always done this?

Andrey: Yes. But I will take a break after the war. I will write only fiction, probably for a year or so.

Lawrence: We should look forward to that. I’m quite struck reading the essays, just how informed they are. You are obviously following every detail of the conflict, not only within Ukraine but internationally. You are providing stories of everyday life in Kyiv but also an account of the wider context of the war.

Andrey: In 2022-23 probably I gave more than 100 talks about the situation in Ukraine in different countries. I met lots of politicians and military and other people and refugees and displaced people. And I was crossing the border two, three times every month. So it was very dynamic, and somehow I became part of this process in a way. Now, when there is less demand for the talks, because people who are interested understand what is happening, there is more time to think, maybe more deeply about the situation, about the future. It’s probably that I have now a slightly different approach. I am less involved in small stories, and I’m trying to see the big story on the horizon.

Lawrence: You’ve mentioned part of that, which is hopefully eventual membership of the EU. But there are big issues that will face Ukraine when the war ends, such as the return of refugees. Do you think the country is prepared for what will come next?

Andrey: No, no, definitely not. And actually, there are lots of aspects that will make life very difficult in Ukraine, governing Ukraine very difficult. This starts from finances, because the Ukrainian budget now is filled with money from International Monetary Fund, from European Union, and from other organizations. And so the debt is accumulating, and the economy is going down. Of course the military economy, the war economy, is going up. There are lots of joint ventures, there are lots of new half-secret factories on German territory, I think, in Lithuania and in Poland. But at the same time the Ukrainian economy on Ukrainian soil has been physically destroyed.

The stability of Ukrainian currency is very important, but it is artificial. And once the war is over, I think the rate will collapse, and then the standard of living will just plummet. It will be very difficult for many who are now in Ukraine. But it will also be a demotivation for some refugees to return. Those mothers who left with half a million of our children – their children are already in the schools, in the kindergartens, in the universities in Europe, and outside, They are already integrated in these societies. Their mothers will not want to take them from this Western society. For themselves, they probably they would like to go back, but if they see that economic life is very unpredictable in Ukraine, they will have second thoughts about this.

Lawrence: Is there a debate in Ukraine about this?

Andrey: No, there is no debate. Nobody talks about this. There are some predictions, what percentage of refugees will return, but it’s not based on anything, because they have not asked the refugees. Because I meet lots of refugees, I note that if you ask them privately, they give you one answer, if you ask them as a journalist or as a researcher, they will give you the correct patriotic answer. So those who are not planning to return will say to journalists that they will definitely come back.

Lawrence: One of the features of the book is your of candour about the situation and the tensions within Ukraine. Another example includes mobilization and enlistment, and the number of young men who’ve done everything possible not to join the army. The government is trying to do something about that. Can they succeed?

Andrey: The only way to change the situation is to reform the enlistment office, and I don’t think it is realistic in a time of war. The problem is that a lot of the officers from this office are corrupt. They were taking money from people in order not to call them up, not to mobilize them. Many of these officers were dismissed or sent to the front line. But the reputation of the office is already very damaged.

What is on offer now is like a contract for one year, two or three, and then once the time finishes, a soldier has a right to have a rest, depending on how many days he spent on the front line or how many days he was away from the front line. Anyway, it sounds already a much better system than no hope.

We had, and maybe still have, 200,000 deserters. But they were deserters because they could see no future. They were not promised any demobilization date. They joined the army voluntarily, and then they were in despair. For example if they were wounded, and went to hospital, they would not go back. So officially they were deserters. But in order not to create stigma for these people in Ukraine, another notion was invented, not desertion, but ‘illegal leave’ - disappearance from the detachment. It sounds softer so these people are not stigmatized. They can return to their detachments without being punished if they do it within one month or two months. So there is some creativity around this.

Everybody understands that it is not really just to keep the same people for five years on the front and to allow lots of young people not to go to the army because they have connections, because for example they’re the children of members of the parliament. So I would say that this reform of the introduction of the contracts is a positive thing, but still, if we don’t change the enlistment office, the problem will continue. Just yesterday in Kyiv there was a street fight between ordinary citizens and the officers from the enlistment office who were trying to take one person from the street to mobilize.

Lawrence: These enlistment officers and people’s fear of them comes up quite a lot in the book. Even with the reforms will that continue?

Andrey: I think so. We lack people on the front, we lack people in the army. Every day several hundred people are killed or wounded and they have to be replaced. And then they are replaced by the same people who have had no rest. We have had soldiers who spent a year on the front line holding positions, with food delivered by drones and water delivered by drones, and this is not really a professional military approach.

Lawrence: How much is this issue connected to the shake-up in the Ukrainian government, following the scandal that led to Andrey Yermak [former head of Zelensky’s office] being dismissed and now indicted? [The scandal concerns embezzlement of funds from the Energoatom, the nuclear energy company]. Has that led to a stronger leadership group now around Zelensky?

Andrey: Well, it’s difficult to say, because the people around Zelensky now don’t look strong. They don’t behave in a traditional dictatorial manner. They are soft spoken, they are not very visible, they don’t like being very public. So in this sense they are making a good neutral background for Zelensky. Maybe it is positive because obviously he has no whispers now in his ears from Yermak and from Timur Mindich [a former associate of Zelensky who fled the country] . But the fact is that he lost all his entourage with which he came to power, so I don’t know. He looks self-confident, but as an actor he can play self-confidence. So I don’t know if he is really self-confident now and better positioned to deal with the war or not, or maybe he feels abandoned and not supported enough. He was supported by very powerful personalities, I wouldn’t say positive, but powerful.

Lawrence: Yet he is still hanging in there after all this time. And in a more positive mood now, teasing Putin over the 9 May victory parade, listing all of Russia’s failures in his letter asking for a ceasefire. He appears more confident, at least in his international role.

Andrey: In international politics he is brilliant. He looks like he has 100% support from European leaders and from European Union. So this is a positive. Definitely.

Lawrence: And one way that Ukraine has managed to make progress is drones, doing all sorts of tasks that were once done by humans. Interestingly, on the first page of your book, an entry from 3 April 2024, you write ‘President Zelensky confidently declared that Ukrainian drones will ensure our victory’. That might have seemed optimistic then but now seems more plausible.

Andrey: Yes. This is the first war in the history where drones are playing such an important role. Although Russia sends probably two times, sometimes three times, more drones against Ukraine than Ukraine does against Russia. But we hit the refineries and factories and plants with much higher precision than Russian drones. Russian drones are programmed to terrorize civil population. First of all, they’re terrorizing the cities. We had several highrises hit this morning with people becoming homeless, but Russia is increasing production of drones, and Ukraine is increasing production of drones, and there is a technological competition, of course, so where will it end? I don’t know, but obviously missiles, comparing to drones, are extremely expensive, and they need much more sort of ground support, technical support.

Lawrence: In addition to the attacks on refineries and factories, you’ve now got the attacks on logistics which is cutting off Crimea. How does Russia deals with an embarrassing situation, because this whole thing started in March 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and now it lacks fuel and there have been runs on the supermarkets?

Andrey: This is probably the biggest achievement of Ukraine in the last four and a half years. What happens is that Putin doesn’t get real information. He is fed false reports about successes. In his meetings, which are televised, he assures everybody that the Russian army is advancing everywhere, and the war will finish soon with a Russian victory. Well, obviously, on the ground, people are very unhappy, and there are lots of critical Russians actually against Putin on YouTube, which is dangerous, because they are in Russia and they are in Crimea. And they got so angry that they started recording videos criticizing the authorities. Which is a good sign for Ukraine, bad sign for Russia.

Lawrence: Are you in contact with Russians?

Andrey: In Russia? No, not with anybody. I am with some Russian writers who are in Europe, including Boris Akunin, who lives in London, and Vladimir Sorokin in Berlin, and Mikhail Shishkin in Switzerland, but we don’t see each other regularly.

Lawrence: Do you still write in Russian?

Andrey: I do. I write fiction in Russian and my diaries I write now either in Russian or in English, and I started writing poems in Ukrainian, which I did until the age of 24. I wrote poetry in three languages as a teenager and a student, in Russian, Ukrainian, and English. I continue to write fiction in Russian, but of course I don’t publish books in Russian, because it doesn’t make much sense. It is not banned, it’s possible, but bookshops don’t want to sell them. They don’t take books in Russian for sale, so you can sell them only online, and it doesn’t make any kind of sense. So, the books are published in Ukrainian translation.

Lawrence: That’s interesting. A lot of Ukrainians I know are very deliberately refusing to use the Russian language.

Andrey: Most intellectuals, if they are Ukrainian speaking, would not speak Russian. No, the Russian language intellectuals, they are bilingual. They will speak Russian and Ukrainian.

Lawrence: Do you envisage a point whether the Ukrainian and Russian people can reestablish relations, can talk to each other again?

Andrey: Maybe 40 years after the end of the war. I mean, like Dutch people still don’t like Germans, French don’t mind, so I mean, but the Dutch are very stubborn.

Lawrence: Without looking forward 40 years, what’s your prognosis for the coming year?

Andrey: Well, I think if the dynamics remain the same or become even more intensive, then by the end of the year I think Russia will be exhausted, Ukraine would be exhausted, if not for Europe. So, in this sense, I am more or less optimistic. The question is whether that will lead to change of power in Russia or not, because without a change of power there might be another frozen front line, frozen situation for several months, or maybe for two years or three years, and then another war with the same enemy. The Americans report that there are politicians in Russia who are against the war now and who are very worried about the economic prospects of the Russian Federation.

Lawrence: We started our conversation with the attacks on Kyiv. You must also be thinking about the next winter. It seems extraordinary that Ukrainians manged to cope with the previous winter.

Andrey: Well, it was the worst winter ever in independent Ukraine, and we had first time cases of people dying from cold in their apartments, lonely people, retired people. We have a two-story apartment in Central Kyiv. It was two degrees Celsius upstairs and eight downstairs, and it was practically impossible to function with this temperature. Because we also had no electricity we couldn’t use electric heaters. The only thing we could do was to use gas. We have a gas stove. In the new apartment blocks, they have electrical stoves. Those who have gas stoves, they get bricks, red bricks, and they would put bricks on the fire on the flame, and these bricks would create some kind of warm area, maybe 10 square meters.

Ukrainians are very creative and very inventive also. So, in this sense, I think those who were afraid, who couldn’t cope, they became refugees. It’s a huge number of people. It’s 8 million at least. Those who remained, they knew what to expect. They were learning lots of new things. They were changing the boilers in the village houses. They were buying village houses cheaply, because they would usually have a wood burning stove, so they would go from the city to a village hut and buy wood and spend winter there. We spent half of winter actually in the countryside. We have a gas boiler and the gas supply was not interrupted. So we had a very good situation there.

Lawrence: But you still have these regular air raids, and the losses that come with them. How do you cope with that, including the lack of sleep?

Andrey: In Kyiv most people cannot sleep in the night because we have alerts from seven, from eight o’clock in the evening till ten in the morning. It’s interesting that the teenagers ignore this. Like my youngest son - he is not a teenager, he’s 22 - but he refuses to leave the bed, even if there are explosions over the house. We go into the corridor always. There is a rule that you should be two walls away from windows. But he refuses. So I assume lots of young people are used to this. They are playing Russian roulette in a way.

Lawrence: You’ve got a whole generation now who’s just grown up with this as the backdrop to their teenage years.

Andrey: And children who were born around 2014. They are now 12 or 13. They have not lived through a single peaceful day in Ukraine. So for them, actually, war is a normality.

Lawrence: Well, that is a sobering thought with which to conclude. Thanks very much for talking to me.

Israel’s approach to ceasefires — and it has been involved in many - follows a pattern. The starting point is normally that they don’t want a ceasefire because they have unfinished business. They also wish it to be known that they will always do what is necessary as an independent sovereign power to protect their security whatever anyone, including the US, tells them to do. This requires fighting at least one day after the demand for a ceasefire if only to make the point that they can. But they also have a keen sense of how far they dare go before they will be put under real pressure, so, having made their point, they agree. Once the ceasefire comes into effect they will claim that it is being violated by the other side. Eventually things are patched up and while skirmishes may continue the ceasefire can be considered in place.

This familiar pattern was followed after the US-Iran MOU had been published. Despite a ceasefire being agreed on Friday, however, the subsequent fighting was significant. Hezbollah claimed to have struck Israeli forces on the move inside Lebanon and Israel responded. On Saturday there were reports from Iran that the Strait of Hormuz was being closed again though the situation remains unclear, as does the status of the various negotiations that are now taking place in Switzerland to implement the MOU.

This time the situation feels different for other reasons. The Trump Administration’s exasperation with Israel for subverting its peace deal with Iran was not hidden and was expressed in vivid terms, reminding Israel of its dependence on the US. The Iranian regime has noted this fault line and has sought to exploit it by emphasising how much the MOU depends on the US getting Israel to comply (without it being wholly clear what it is doing to get Hezbollah to comply). This confirms the Israeli government in its view that the MOU represents an effective capitulation to Tehran.

They were not only not part of the negotiations but were not even shown the MOU before it was signed. Once they saw it they were unimpressed, unconvinced that Iranian nuclear ambitions will be stemmed, while claiming that two more weeks of pressure would have brought the regime down. If the MOU survives the coming days, they will be stuck with an even harder line regime benefitting from a financial lifeline as fund are released. The methodology for dealing with the nuclear threat remains tentative at best.

Israel is not alone in being appalled by the MOU. Trump is being vigorously attacked by Republican hawks while Democrats ask why this war was fought at all, given that its consequences were all negative. Trump’s brazen inconsistency while he embraces positions he once denounced and plays down matters previously described as vital makes it worse.

Even as Israeli leaders were being belittled Trump described Iran’s leaders as ‘very rational people … nice to deal with …. not radicalized and … looking to help their country.’ They should be allowed some ballistic missiles (‘if other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some’), despite eliminating the missile threat being one of the original war aims. If Iran violates the promise to not ‘procure or develop nuclear weapons’, ‘ [w]e’re gonna bomb the hell out of them’, even though the first paragraph of the MOU contains an unconditional commitment not to ‘initiate any war or any military operation against each other.’ Iran will only receive funds ‘if they’re doing things right,’ but the US has already issued a waiver allowing Iran to export oil and Trump described the frozen asset that Iran expects to be returned as ‘their own money.’

Drawing attention to these statements is not just to demonstrate Trump’s hunt for arguments, however random and dubious, to rationalise his retreat but to underline how much these aggravate the differences with his erstwhile Israeli partners. His reasons for ending the war - the risk of using up reserves of weapons and of yet more economic damage if the conflict continued with the Strait of Hormuz closed - have little to do with the original war aims.

There are many uncertainties about how this MOU will be implemented. Much depends on how Tehran plays it. At the moment it is relishing American embarrassment and insisting it has achieved a great victory. But the situation inside Iran remains harsh and desperate so they will need to sort out their priorities and there are already reports of disagreements in the ruing group. The question I’m addressing in this post, however, is not the fate of the MOU or of Iran but instead the future of the US-Israel relationship, which has long been one of the most consequential in the Middle East.

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We have a bumper post this morning to reflect on what it all means. First I look at some of the big questions that follow. How quickly will there be a leadership challenge and how could it play out? Exactly how bad a result is this for Reform? What should we make of a strange night for the Tories, losing their deposit in Makerfield but winning impressively in Aberdeen South against the SNP? Has the Greens’ momentum been snuffed out completely?

Then we have a guest article from Professor Jane Green, Co-Director of the British Election Study, Director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre, and President of the British Polling Council with Marta Miori, a research fellow at Nuffield College. Jane and Marta look at what we can learn from the result and whether it’s replicable nationwide.

How quickly will there be a leadership challenge and what are the scenarios for how things could play out?

Burnham’s team have made it clear that there won’t be an immediate challenge over the weekend. They are hoping Starmer quits without a fight, so there can be a quick and painless transition.

But the PM has said he wants to force a contest, which would mean Burnham would have to formally challenge in the next week or two. By all accounts Starmer is serious about wanting to stay, believing that Burnham isn’t up to the job and that views of his premiership will turn around once people notice improvements in waiting lists and migration numbers. He is a deeply proud and competitive person, and nobody who has the job wants to give it up without a fight. Apparently he’s raised £100k for a campaign. There will be people around him advising him that he should leave with dignity. But as Stephen Bush astutely noted, Starmer phoning up Morgan McSweeney for advice suggests someone shopping around for someone who will tell him what he wants to hear.

Either way, it’s not entirely in his control. Should he try and fight, ministers will not be able to back Burnham’s challenge without resigning. If a cabinet delegation were to let Starmer know that they would have no choice but to quit in these circumstances, he may accept he has to go. The same would be true if he does force the issue and waves of ministers resign. The scale of Burnham’s win makes it more likely that they’ll be a concerted effort to get the PM to accept the inevitable.

If he refuses to go it would put a lot of ministers in a tricky position.

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Today’s post is an interview with Jack Watling who was in Ukraine just before the full-scale invasion and has been back many times since where he has got to know many key military figures. He is now recognised as one of the most authoritative commentators on the war and developments at the front line. Jack recently published Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World, which contains not only some fascinating accounts of the Russo-Ukraine War but also observations drawn from many other conflict zones, including in the Middle East and Africa.

Jack is a Senior Research Fellow for Applied Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute. He works closely with the British military on the development of concepts of operation, assessments of the future operating environment, and conducts operational analysis of contemporary conflicts.

He has worked extensively with the Ukrainian Armed Forces during Russia’s full-scale invasion, across NATO, and in Iraq, Mali, Rwanda, on Yemen and further afield.

Lawrence: You open the book with you in Ukraine days before the full-scale invasion. It’s a poignant story, because you’re convinced that the war is coming and the Ukrainians are not, until almost the last minute they realize this is for real. You give the explanations for their scepticism. Not all intelligence agencies agreed with the Americans and British. It seemed a foolish thing for the Russians to do, which was my view at the time as well. If they were going to do it, there were other ways of doing it, perhaps concentrating on the Donbas, and so on. What was the key thing that made them realize, actually, this was serious?

Jack: There had always been people in the Ukrainian system who did share our view, but they were a minority at a senior level. The assessment changed at the point where the Russians received their orders. Once the Russian units were told this is what you are going to do, and started to pack up their equipment and get ready, the Ukrainians had to take it very seriously. But you’re talking about 72 hours before, and even then Zelenskyy personally was not immediately convinced. So really you’re talking about 48 hours of decision time.

Lawrence: They did quite a bit in that 48 hours.

Jack: Absolutely. Firstly, the Ukrainians had been at war for eight years, and they had a lot of military capacity and a lot of reserves, including reservists who were not committed. There was a lot of latent potential, which they were able to draw upon. The second thing is that their own military assessment was that the Russian forces were inadequate in size for the task they had been given, which was correct. The third thing is that the Russians performed so badly that they gave the Ukrainians time to mobilize. They wouldn’t have had to have been much faster to overrun the process of mobilization in parts north of Kyiv. It was much closer than some people like to think.

I’ll give you an example. Whether the Russians made it through Mykolaiv and into Odesa came down to whether a Russian brigade was prepared to attack across a causeway, and they were en route to do it. The Ukrainian force defending that causeway was 15 people, which the Russians didn’t know. The Ukrainians dispersed across the village and started talking on their radios about where they were going to deploy the Javelin teams, and the Russians were listening to this communication, and stopped because they thought that there were 30 or so Javelin teams in front of them. There weren’t any. But just the fact that the Russians slowed down meant that all of a sudden there was 24 hours in which the population could mobilize, equipment could be moved south. The numbers started to change.

There was one Ukrainian air defence unit that found itself on the wrong side of the front lines and drove out of its base and actually ended up driving alongside a Russian column for a period of time, asking them for spare tires at one point, then drove across the front line, set up, and started to engage Russian aircraft. So, Russian execution let them down.

Lawrence: You discuss a number of times in the book how the Russians don’t make the most of their advantages, such as with the attacks on critical infrastructure. They don’t quite follow through with as sustained and directed a campaign as much as they could have done.

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The best way for Labour to take on Reform is to run a highly successful government that leads to rising wages and improved public services. But, while they try to do that, it’s worth considering what other strategies will help to limit Nigel Farage’s chances of becoming Prime Minister.

After all, Farage and his party are hardly popular. His approval ratings has gone even more negative in recent months thanks to a series of scandals from childhood racism to taking personal donations from billionaires. While a good chunk of his voters are enthusiastic supporters, there are a lot of people considering Reform out of frustration, who aren’t big fans and are nervous about what it might mean. There are also plenty of Green and Lib Dem voters increasingly worried about a radical right government and open to tactical switching if Labour is clearly the best choice in their constituency to prevent that happening.

Figuring out how to maximise these factors isn’t just about the next general election which, though it’s weighing heavily on the minds of a lot of Labour MPs, could still be three years away.

If Andy Burnham wins in Makerfield, as seems likely, there will be an immediate by-election for the mayoralty in Greater Manchester, on the 30^th July, which Reform will target. Tactical voting will be extremely important here because it will be run under the supplementary vote system, allowing people to choose a second preference. Ensuring Green and Lib Dem voters are motivated enough to put Labour second will be critical. As will limiting enthusaism about Reform. They are also plenty of important mayoral and council elections coming up next year.

So, to understand the different ways the Reform vote can be reduced, I’ve used exclusive data from various pieces of work done by polling company Persuasion UK to look at what messages are most effective at depressing their vote share, as well as the potential for tactical voting. (Persuasion UK is doing some of the most interesting and innovative public opinion research around; their Director, Steve Akehurst, has his own substack that’s well worth following).

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On the 4^th June President Zelenskyy made a direct appeal to President Putin to agree a ceasefire. The context was the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), often described as the Russian Davos, then in session.

He proposed a face-to-face meeting in Switzerland, Turkey or an Arab country, backed by a ‘full ceasefire.’ Mocking Putin’s hope of 2022 that Europeans would eventually give up on Ukraine, he told Putin that the world was ‘not tired of Ukraine’ but was ‘tired of Russia.’

‘Whatever you say about NATO, geopolitics, or the Russian language, this war is your personal choice – a war without a real cause. That is how history will remember it. This time could have unfolded entirely differently.’

To underline his point Ukraine had managed to give the delegates to SPIEF a memorable spectacle as they arrived to see smoke billowing from the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal which had just suffered hits from Ukrainian drones, demonstrating that the war was not going well and that Ukrainians were able to strike critical targets with impunity, barely bothered by depleted Russian air defences. At the same time another drone hit the corvette Boykiy of the Black Sea Fleet, in drydock on the island of Kronshtadt offshore of St. Petersburg. Three days later, on the final day of the forum, more Ukrainian drones hit Russian naval arsenals and bases in Kronstadt.

Unsurprisingly Zelenskyy’s offer was dismissed by the Kremlin, with Putin complaining about the letter’s ‘elements of rudeness.’ All this allowed Kyiv to make the point that Zelenskyy, unlike Putin, was the one interested in peace. Trump had backed the proposal for direct talks – ‘I think it would be great if they met. They should get it done.’ On 7 June the leaders of the UK, France and Germany joined Zelenskyy in urging ‘an immediate and complete ceasefire’ based on ‘the current line of contact.’

For Putin the idea that he could talk to Zelenskyy as an equal is anathema. He only wants to see him as a supplicant who has already accepted that he must hand over the territory that Putin annexed somewhat prematurely four years ago.

The focus on a ceasefire is understandable, given that a full peace treaty would take months to negotiate. It recognises that neither side is sufficiently on top to impose their conditions, though Putin acts as if Russia can do so. Once agreed, so long as it was durable, a ceasefire would give people respite from the violence and upheaval of a long war. Ukraine’s political and military effort is geared to getting Putin to accept the logic. In the rest of this post I’ll explain why Putin still rejects a ceasefire and why this may mean that, should he eventually embrace one, the terms will be even less to his liking.

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None of it worked.

Which is not to say it was all worthless. The overall quality of education has improved, one of the few policy success stories in England in recent decades. But as per the chart above from the IFS, the gap remains stubbornly persistent. (And since 2020 has widened a little).

In line with all recent governments, the current one has set targets to try and close the gap, and proposed various initiatives, but they won’t work either. The problem isn’t the policies, the effort from teachers and school leaders, or even funding. It’s the structure of the system itself, which is why a similar gap exists in almost every country. Ours isn’t even particularly bad by global standards.

Politicians like to talk about school systems as if their sole purpose was to give all young people the necessary skills and knowledge to succeed in life. This is a universal goal that, in theory, everyone can benefit equally from. But in reality much of the system is focused on ranking children to help sixth forms, universities, and employers select recruits. By definition, the benefits here cannot be universal as the aim is to create a hierarchy. Because this ranking process is so critical to future income and status, wealthier parents will, rationally, invest huge sums to ensure their children do well. That means however much the average performance in the system improves, the gap will always be sustained.

Yet because politicians never want to talk about this aspect of the system, most of their policy suggestions miss the point. If we’re serious about reducing inequality we need to start thinking differently about what that would really take.

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It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing.

Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call, whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military — someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.

It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?

This is the text of Hillary Clinton’s famous attack ad on Barrack Obama as they fought for the 2008 Democrat Party nomination. (Watch it here). The ad picked up on a regular theme of presidential campaigns: has the candidate the character, the nerve, the resolve to manage the great international crises, can they ‘lead in a dangerous world’? Just like John F Kennedy in October 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis they must be able to secure the country’s most vital interests while controlling any tendencies to escalation to major war. This requires a cool head, a grasp of the stakes, an ability to convey strength while keeping open lines of communication to allow for a diplomatic outcome.

Well anyone knocking on Donald Trump’s door at 3 am would probably find him awake, perhaps posting images of himself on TruthSocial as a super-hero, dressed to take on the world’s greatest villains. And we can be sure that he considers himself the greatest crisis manager, as tough as they come when facing down the nation’s enemies and also the acknowledged master of the deal. Yet in the most important crisis of his presidency - the confrontation with Iran - he seems to be at a loss about what to do next, paralysed by indecision, aware that the best deal currently on offer looks suspiciously like a defeat for him and his country. He has only kept the prospect of a deal alive by coming down hard on Israel, his supposed ally in this great enterprise.

In previous posts I have looked at how Trump got into this mess. In this one I want to consider why he is finding it so difficult to get out of it. We have been told regularly that a deal is imminent, with just a few matters to be finalised, only for the the agreement to be lost. In some cases the deal apparently existed only in Trump’s imagination; in other cases the Iranians also thought one was close and point to Trump’s reluctance to accept the terms. Among the reasons for this failure we can point to the inadequate negotiating team of Witkoff/Kushner, along with the lack of engagement of the Secretary of State and the Vice-President. But in the end the responsibility lies with the President. Why is it that a man who claims to know, above all else, how to make deals, has failed to conclude one?

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One of the most important questions in British politics over the next few years is whether the ongoing and substantial fall in immigration leads to a drop in public concern about the issue.

In 2025 net migration fell to 171,000 from a peak of 944,000 in 2023. As I wrote last year, we can already see in the data that it will keep falling and possibly go negative for the first time since 1993.

Small boat crossings are down 37% this year. The number of asylum seekers in hotels has fallen 32% since December. These numbers are also likely to keep dropping given that migration into Europe is well down and the government is now processing those in the system faster.

Yet in Ipsos’s long-running poll series, immigration remains the number one issue for the British public.

One possible explanation is that people just haven’t noticed it’s falling yet. According to British Futures immigration tracker, only 16% think numbers went down last year, compared to 49% who believe they increased. 62% of voters considering Reform say numbers are rising and 67% that they will go up again next year.

So perhaps there’s just a lag and the salience of the issue will fall over time, especially if net migration gets close to zero and channel crossings keep falling. As you can see from the charts below there is, historically, a reasonably close relationship between changes to net migration and how much people care about the issue. There is also some indication in the Ipsos data that concern has peaked (51% said it was a top issue last autumn, and it’s down to 41% now).

But there are big differences with previous bouts of angst about migration. For a start it is now a much more polarised issue. Back in September 2015, when concern was last peaking, 52% of Tories said it was a top issue. But so did 35% of Labour voters. A gap but not a huge one. Now 83% of Reform voters put it in their top three, compared to just 17% of Labour supporters and 16% of Greens.

This changes the political dynamic a lot. Reform isn’t quite a one-issue party but it’s not far off. On economics and public services there’s not much alignment between their voters and the leadership. It’s concern about immigration that drives their support, which is why they talk about it all the time. They, and their allied media, have an extremely strong incentive not to let the salience of the issue drop. While it has, in the past, risen and fallen with net migration that’s partly because the media have covered the issue less when numbers were dropping.

The emergence of Restore as a threat to Reform from the far right has only exacerbated this. Before Rupert Lowe’s breakaway party started picking up support Farage’s team were trying to broaden their base by focusing on some other topics. But they’re now terrified of being outflanked.

In the rest of the post I’ll look at how Reform is trying to keep migration at the top of the political agenda, and why it’s a strategy that I think will, ultimately, fail.

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When I wrote in April about how Ukraine had been able to take the lead in the ‘drone race’ I mentioned a new system that had been bothering the Russians because it appeared to be AI-enabled. They called it Martian. Its official name is ‘Hornet’ (pictured above) and it is now making an impact.

Hornet is produced by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Perennial Autonomy company. The aim from the start has been to develop a suite of drones that employs the most advanced technology yet can also be mass produced. Last July Ukraine officially announced cooperation with the company and a plan to produce hundreds of thousands of drones of various types.

The Hornet has a take-off weight of about 15 kg, including a warhead of up to 5kg. It can fly up to 150 kilometres at a cruising speed of between 100-120 km/k though it can go as fast as 200 km/h. It carries cameras, one of which is a course camera, the other is directed downwards which supports visual navigation. This enables it to be independent of satellite navigation. The Ukrainians have also attached miniaturised Starlink terminals so that they can be controlled over the distance and are impervious to Russian electronic warfare. Each costs between $5,000 to $10,000. The Kyiv Post reports Ukrainian drone pilots describing it as ‘easy to fly, resistant to jamming, and reliably able to stop and set afire any vehicle operated by Russia smaller than a tank.’

They began to be tested last year but have only been deployed in numbers since this spring and are already attracting attention. They are quite distinct from the FPV short-range systems that make the front-lines so hazardous or the long-range systems that are now regularly hitting targets well into Russia.

Critics have complained for some time about Ukraine’s deficiencies in medium-range systems. Front-line operators might be adept at taking out individual soldiers and vehicles but it is far better to attack depots, command posts, and supply lines to the enemy’s rear. This is the gap that the Hornet is now filling.

Because direct hits can be scored on trucks and tankers on major roads, they are now being used methodically against some key Russian supply lines, including those into occupied Crimea. At the end of May Defence Minister Fedorov announced this as a new stage in the Ukrainian campaign:

‘We are launching a “logistics lockdown” for the Russian army. We are scaling middle-strike operations to systematically destroy enemy logistics and supply lines, stripping them of their capacity to mount offensive actions. ….. The enemy’s rear is no longer a safe haven. We are seizing the initiative—using technology and the cold math of war to paralyze their operations.’

This campaign takes advantage of recent advances in drone technology but it is also the latest stage in an effort that began not long after the invasion, using whatever long-range systems were available, to attack vital targets behind the front lines as a means of disrupting Russian operations (as described in this excellent report by the Tochnyi group). Mick Ryan has underlined its significance:

‘What began as a covert operational experiment has now been formalised into a declared strategic programme. The mid-range strike campaign represents a maturation of Ukrainian drone doctrine. These are sustained, systematic efforts to degrade the operational capacity of Russian forces along the most important ground supply corridor of the war. The strikes hit at the connective tissue between Russia’s strategic industries and the Russian units on the front line.’

This can be seen in a number of sectors, but in this post I want to concentrate on the threat posed to the Russian position in Crimea. This is not because immediate problems with supply are going to force the Russians to withdraw but as a way of showing just how much has changed in our assumptions and expectations about what this war is about and how it can be fought since the invasion of February 2022.

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In the run up to the 1997 election, Tony Blair’s Labour had a clear political strategy: winning over aspirational middle class voters in marginal constituencies. They could focus on that because their existing seats were genuinely safe. Neither the Tories or Lib Dems were going to threaten in city centres, northern industrial heartlands, Scotland or Wales.

In 2026 things look very different. There are no safe seats. Those city centres are shifting Green and the northern heartlands Reform. Nationalists are winning in Scotland and Wales.

Which is one reason many Labour MPs were somewhat frustrated by Blair’s latest intervention. His much discussed 6,000 word essay didn’t acknowledge this change in context at all. As party leader he was able to pursue a centrist platform (albeit one to the left of his new manifesto) because it fit with a viable political strategy. The challenge now is far harder. Asserting that the party just needs to identify “the right answer” and then persuade people of it is disingenuous because it assumes agreement on underlying values between voters with different worldviews. Governing reactively, without any guiding principles, is a terrible idea. But so is ignoring the interests of the people you need to vote for you.

The challenge for whoever leads Labour next will be to pursue a coherent governing project that also acknowledges this very different political context. To help them do that I teamed up with Convergent Opinion to poll 10,000 people about how they voted in the local elections and why. This allowed them to build an MRP looking at the shift in voting behaviour between 2024 and 2026 in every council that held elections, down to ward level. Unlike most MRPs this isn’t trying to predict the future but looks back at something that’s happened, so it can be calibrated against actual results.

As well as looking at how people voted compared to 2024, we asked why those who switched party did so, which other parties they considered, and what would make former Labour voters switch back. It’s the most comprehensive dataset available on voter shifts between parties and the reasons for them.

I’m going to start by looking at three very different councils Labour lost. Doing so makes it clear that simply trying to appeal to one type of lost voter isn’t going to work. But it also shows that there are ways to frame an agenda that would deal with real problems facing the country, while also appealing to different groups of defectors. In the second half of the post I set out what that might look like.

At the end of the post is a link to a dashboard which lets you look at detailed voter movement analysis for every council and ward that held elections.

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