It is indeed a better response than those we’ve heard elsewhere. But if the UK has managed being a multiethnic, multicultural society better than many others (and I agree it has), then why is Shabana going full steam ahead with shifting our approach towards the old West German Gastarbeiter model?

This is the bonkers thing. We’re not talking about sharp differences of opinion on immigration here. The “no one from an ethnic minority should be an MP” position has been restricted to swivel-eyed racist loons for many years. Why are some journalists trying to turn it into an actual talking point?

I increasingly think the best test of serious commitment to any policy objective by any government is “Has the Prime Minister told the Treasury to shut up and pay up and that they’re not looking for opinions on the subject?”

Maybe I’m being unfair, but this sounds like a not especially subtle translation of “Wes should basically do whatever the BMA tells him to do for the sake of peace.” My sympathy for the BMA is extremely limited right now, so I’m not inclined to agree!

I understand that part of the point of this stuff is to make liberals angry so they can be repeatedly “owned”. But dear Lord … if only the Western world had so few foreign-policy problems that the US Secretary of State could justifiably get personally fixated on this.

Does Keir really think the people who hate the ECHR will change their minds if he secures some technocratic change, which lets you off the hook of some cases then deemed borderline between torture and not-torture, but no-one normal understands?

I usually lean towards "Unfortunately we depend on the Mad, Bad Orange King for our security and have to play nice until that changes." But implying that his guff about European "civilisational decay" is why we need to "return control to our asylum system" outright legitimises a racist narrative.

Explaining Labour's 1980s civil war to my Greek teacher: «Φαντάσου ότι ο Βαρουφάκης προσπαθούσε να πάρει τον ελέκχο του ΠΑΣΟΚ και θα έχεις καταλάβει τη κατάσταση.» ("Imagine that Varoufakis was trying to take control of PASOK and you'll have understood the situation.")

Yes, I know this will be superficially popular, but a) it won't just be applicable to 'migrants' (my best friend's son is a US-UK national and was born here) and b) it's another nail in the coffin of any idea that British citizens are equally citizens irrespective of their backgrounds.

Having moaned a lot about this government, fair’s fair: the child poverty strategy gives me heart. Two (non-new) things leap out at me: - just how much poverty reduction happens by lifting the two-child limit - the fact that it was New Labour’s fiscally-straitened first term which cut poverty most.

I rather feel that Robert Jenrick is best - or at least partially - explained by watching Boris Johnson and concluding that you really can say anything you think will work with the relevant audience, without truly believing in anything yourself, can do the job.

You know, you could challenge her on things like the inadequacy of her growth agenda (trying to make up for big structural problems plus no single market by harrying small-scale savers via the tax system, etc etc etc) rather than this tedious attempted character assassination.

I could happily live with increasing magistrates’ sentencing powers so they can hear more cases (not the same as asking them to give longer sentences to current offences), while preserving the right to elect. Removing that right and creating a new court with no lay element are very different.

We are putting up a Christmas tree, largely because I like them and my partner is indulging me. But unfortunately, ‘O, Tannenbaum’ is still ‘The Red Flag’ in my head, and probably always will be.

More broadly, the idea that a political party having ideological preferences is somehow illegitimate, as opposed to a principal reason we don't just have the civil servants run the country, is an absurd conceit to which the World at One shouldn't give even implicit houseroom.

On a mildly cheery note, the Government is doing a sensible thing in scrapping Police and Crime Commissioners. The whole notion was obviously bonkers in the first place and has been a perverse experiment in how low-turnout, low-awareness a set of elections you can possibly devise.

I choose to believe this means I am still a young adult, and none of you can tell me otherwise. Don’t tell me otherwise. I didn’t ask to be born [in 1986].

It strikes me that the combination of giving the OBR so much political centrality with the world’s most cack-handed attempt to circumvent this has created a situation where forecasting tweaks often have a deeply unhealthy effect on public policy, but changing this is untenably risky for now.

Extending summary courts’ jurisdiction is one thing, but removing the right to jury trial for the vast majority of cases, and not even having a lay element for increasingly serious cases, is quite another. This really is a deeply illiberal government in all sorts of ways.

It's a pity that there isn't a sensible Green Party, either in England and Wales or in Scotland. They'd be a useful contribution to the political ecosystem if they weren't completely bonkers.

This is a good example of how quite similar political instincts work well if 15% would be a stunning GE triumph for you and appallingly if you need 33-38% to be a success. Though I do wonder how the NATO stuff goes down with their Home Counties Lib Dem as opposed to their urban Corbynista vote.

It is deeply depressing to think that the last Tory government was better at drawing some basic anti-racist lines in terms of public rhetoric than the current Labour government, but that actually is where we are.

From an EU plus European NATO perspective, the lesson of the Trump-Witkoff plan is the one we should have absorbed in 2016-21 and again in November 2024. We cannot trust, but remain dependent on, the US. Until the dependency changes, when push comes to shove, we will have to do as we’re told.

I find it remarkable how the UK, whose integration record is in relative terms actually pretty good, is effectively throwing the whole notion of focusing on integration to the winds in favour of a glorified, far less successful Gastarbeiter model.

I am torn between thinking ‘screw them, they bloody well deserve it’ and thinking ‘but it’s a disaster if they just open the policy floodgates and the hard right still ride high’. Thanks for the Zugzwang moment (as well as the hideous and cruel policy), Labour.

The UK is unusual in European terms in how low its direct taxes on most people are, not really in how much tax the wealthy pay. By all means aim to make them pay more (without endorsing this particular way of doing it), but pretending you can deliver Scandinavia just by doing that is empty populism.

This is good - and brave, given his constituency. He strikes me as an MP worthy of considerable personal respect.

Honestly, I'm not interested in Mahmood's performative disdain for Farage. Not even he proposed taking desperate people's few remaining valuables away before keeping them waiting for 20 years, if we do decide they merit our protection, to pay exorbitant amounts to just possibly feel secure again.

This is really excellent on the damage done by, and the essential cheapness of, Labour’s approach to both immigration policy and race relations.

There comes a point beyond which you have to conclude the Home Secretary is deliberately fanning the flames in a vain attempt to get credit for (she claims) getting the fire extinguisher out.

If the Labour Party is planning to tell people that even if the authorities accept they are fleeing persecution, they will never by default feel safe again, I am really going to struggle to vote for it. Though I admittedly live in a seat where no one cares, so I can easily make a point if I want.

Re the WASPI women: I am all for taxes going up on 26 November and I think I am in a group which should be hit more than most. I emphatically do not think any of that extra tax should go on payouts to women whose state pension age was equalised with men's and never checked their state pension age.

Indeed. Many of our political elites haven’t just given up on political gatekeeping, but seem to be actively trying to blow the gate off its hinges.

UK Labour will no doubt ignore the more useful lesson here - that it’s probably healthier to allow a more plural party spectrum to express itself via the voting system and then negotiate on the basis of popular support rather than trying and failing to force us all into a two-party straitjacket.

I still can’t get my head around the fact that he had so little shame he agreed to come back as Foreign Secretary. The prime author of the worst blow to Britain’s global position since the fall of Singapore thought he’d done so very well that he’d show us all how to do foreign policy again.

It is deeply irritating to see one part of the UK Government trumpet a reset with the EU and a return to the constructive part of the world stage while another part hammers yet another nail into the coffin of modern language learning in England.

While also demanding (rightly) an immediate end to the two-child cap. She’s not doing anything to make me revise my view that she’s essentially vacuous.

Assuming this exchange took place as reported, it should really be a sacking offence.

In FIFA news: the 'beautiful game' is in fact just as cut-throat and cynical as basically any other multimillion-dollar entertainment industry, probably has been ever since it got big, and this provokes lots of angst from people who put said 'beautiful game' on a pedestal it never really deserved.

I am always struck by how UK commentary zeroes in on the horror of US immigration policy - rightly so in all kinds of ways - while failing to recognise how different the starting point is. There is no parallel to 19 US states making driver’s licenses available to undocumented migrants, for instance.

Labelling the SNP a ‘national security threat’ crosses the line from attacking its positions - which are indeed very bad for national security - into implying that its leaders are personally compromised. It also lets the SNP deflect from their policy incoherence by whipping up righteous outrage.

Raising income tax (yes, including the basic rate) would clearly be the right *policy*. I do wonder if they've spent too much political capital to get away with it, via both their manifesto and their time in power. But if they can't claim an improved public realm by 2029, they're stuffed anyway.

I think MPs get far too scared about the public’s inherently unreasonable attitude to support services for politicians. The public will always be unreasonable about this, but it’s not a priority issue for them, and when things go wrong unreasonable ire is focused on a particular politician. 1/

Does Labour not understand that if a) the two largest opposition parties back leaving the ECHR and b) it is going to play fast and loose with reforming the ECHR itself, it can’t then just take a ‘nothing to see here’ approach?

I would be enormously admiring if Torsten just said, “The media may be happy to treat its employees like pack animals, but I have higher standards as an employer. I hope my critics will eventually follow suit.”

In which case, Philp is either a racist or an amoral appeaser of racism. I’ll let the armchair psychologists work out which.

The unwillingness of a great many people to call racism racism because doing so is seen as rude or uncivil is hugely problematic.

Without any hard evidence, I very much doubt she or Starmer will dare. But it was a stupid promise to make in the first place, and if they actually raised the most progressive of the big three taxes which reliably raise cash, I would applaud them. (Though they deserve flak for said stupid promise.)

Καλησπέρα από την Αθήνα. A visit to the relatively new Acropolis Museum is one of the most convincing arguments, at least to my mind, for returning the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum (and their less numerous companions in the Louvre, Vienna et al). It is so clearly better as a setting. 1/

I see Your Party has just discovered that the Scottish Greens are a) the more left-wing variety of nationalists first and foremost and b) absolutely not going to tolerate the policy consequences of their partial accommodation with social conservatism or range of views on gender politics.