4 min read28 min

For the first time since the UK government announced its drastic aid cuts – the steepest of any G7 country – we’ve heard how it plans to spend what’s left of the overseas aid budget. Amid sweeping changes, we’re hearing that the flagship global health and water programme, WASH FOR Health (HS4H), has been axed, cancelling work across multiple countries with only 3 months’ notice.

Last week, I had the privilege of being elected as the new Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in parliament. Water runs through every priority area in international development, from prioritising women and girls, to building resilience to the climate crisis, and reducing the spread of deadly diseases, yet we’re seeing critical programmes like WASH4Health being cut.

This sidelines one of the public’s top issues, with new polling showing that clean water tops the public’s priority for UK aid spending for the third year in a row. In a new More in Common poll, almost half of respondents (48 per cent) say access to clean water and sanitation is the most important area for investment in foreign aid, with health the second most selected option (35 per cent). Regardless of voting preferences, of geography or gender, across different viewpoints and core beliefs, water comes out on top.

Furthermore, the data shows that the public believes clean water to be the area which receives the most money from UK aid spend, second only to disaster relief, when in reality it’s one of the lowest areas of spend. Funding for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) has been reduced by over 60 per cent since 2018. With nearly three-quarters of the public supporting increased investment into WASH in healthcare centres to support maternal and newborn health, cuts like WASH4Health clearly fly directly in the face of public support.

Looking at conflicts around the world, we’re increasingly seeing that water security is global security, elevating the risk of instability, the spread of diseases that don’t respect borders, and climate pressures that make us all more vulnerable, at home and abroad.

The sweep of global aid cuts calls for much sharper thinking on how to make the most of a scarce resource. If the UK wants to be an investor, it should be prioritising water – an overlooked tool that saves lives, creates long-term change and underpins global health, food, energy and national security. 

And the public agrees. WASH is ranked as the best value for money intervention and the best way to build self-sufficiency in developing countries. If the government is serious about moving from paternalism to partnership, the answer is clear: change starts with water. 

It’s not just about smart investment. It’s also about the lives of millions around the world.

Every two seconds, a mother gives birth in a health centre without clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene. That means wards or delivery rooms which are unclean, where midwives are unable to deliver babies with clean hands and new mothers are unable to clean themselves after giving birth. Over three-quarters of births in Sub-Saharan Africa take place in unsafe delivery rooms like this, contributing to 1 in 9 mothers developing sepsis each year.

WaterAid’s new Time to Deliver campaign joins the demands of women around the world, calling for every health centre to have clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene.

At the campaign launch in Parliament last week, I had the privilege of hearing from Patience Emmanuel, a former midwife now working as a WASH Manager for WaterAid Nigeria. When asked what having funding for water would mean for women giving birth in health centres right now, she became emotional. She told us that if governments took action this year, the difference that mothers would feel first is dignity. Their child would be born into a place that is safe.

It’s testimony like Patience’s that should be in the minds of decision makers at the moment. Water, sanitation and hygiene are simple, inexpensive tools that have the power to create long-term change for low- and middle-income countries, while transforming the lives of women and girls, protecting global health, and boosting economies.

Lee Pitcher is Labour MP for Doncaster East & the Isle of Axholme and Chair of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene All-Party Parliamentary Group

On 25 March, LBC host Tom Swarbrick retweeted a clearly Islamophobic post:

Tom Swarbrick from LBC and now a guest on Good Morning Britain retweeted this tweet calling Muslims in the West dirty. pic.twitter.com/AV7mkJFe1d

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) March 25, 2026

To make matters worse, the post was from a known liar and propagandist.

“I hope you all cry forever”

As we reported in 2018, Swarbrick is an establishment hack with zero integrity. James Wright reported for us at the time:

Text messages leaked to BuzzFeed show that an LBC presenter tried to stage-manage an interview with a Conservative cabinet minister.

LBC‘s Tom Swarbrick was trying to bag an interview with the unnamed government figure. In the process, he sent the minister the interviewing questions and promised to be gentle. In the end, the interview didn’t go ahead.

The fact that he’s still at LBC shows they’ve got about as much integrity as him.

Here’s how people responded to his retweet:

Why is LBC presenter Tom Swarbrick endorsing a comment that Muslims are “smelly”? pic.twitter.com/eLZBMZs3LQ

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) March 25, 2026

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Tom Swarbrick will post about “dirty Muslims” before delivering a solemn monologue on LBC about why “from the river to the sea” is chilling antisemitism. https://t.co/O06W22fPcm

— Karl Hansen (@karl_fh) March 25, 2026

Swarbrick was retweeting a post from Nioh Berg.

Berg is one of many Twitter users who are widely believed to be an international citizen posing as someone else to get hate clicks from reactionary right-wingers:

Many are quoting @NiohBerg as the voice of the oppressed Iranian, the one we must free, the truth of their people, and what they want and need.

What they forget is Nioh isn’t Iranian.

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He’s Chandresh. An Indian paid by Israel, to pretend, but who forgot to delete. pic.twitter.com/cSTy8ZeiDM

— Ewan MacKenna (@EwanMacKenna) March 1, 2026

Berg notoriously posted the following in early March, and was retweeted by every moron online as a result (we now know definitively that it was the Americans who bombed the school):

🔴 BREAKING:

The regime in Iran has now confessed that the IRGC mistakenly bombed an Iranian school yesterday, killing many children.

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To all the legacy media and pro regime influencers who peddled your fake news:

RETRACT and DELETE. pic.twitter.com/MNBdIcmvkG

— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 🇮🇷 ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) March 1, 2026

The above should have been a ‘fool me once’ moment for those who follow Berg. However, it looks like there’s no limit to how many times you can fool a guy like Swarbrick.

Following considerable backlash, Swarbrick has now deleted his retweet.

Establishment hacks

This is the last thing Swarbrick posted himself:

https://t.co/OGYJBjfpQ9 pic.twitter.com/VS9iyVwpbx

— Tom Swarbrick (@TomSwarbrick1) February 28, 2026

The image is from when the US announced the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003. This was treated like a the final victory at the time, but of course the disastrous Invasion of Iraq raged on for another eight years, and still impact the country until today. This is fitting, given that the disastrous attack on Iran has gone very poorly for the Yanks since they assassinated the Supreme Leader.

Potentially this was the point Swarbrick was making—that history repeats itself in increasingly farcical ways—but given his other posts, it’s more likely he’s just another media ghoul with zero memory for how badly these things turn out.

Featured image via LBC

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Rabbi Jonathan Guttentag is a UK representative of the Coalition for Jewish Values and a communal rabbi based in Manchester.

When a European government sends soldiers onto its streets to protect synagogues and Jewish schools, it is tempting to describe the move as a tough law-and-order response.

It is not.

It marks a more serious shift: from policing a society to defending it.

That distinction matters.

Police operate within a functioning civic order. Their presence assumes that public life, however imperfect, is broadly governed by law, consent, and deterrence.

Soldiers are different. Armies are not instruments of civic management; they are instruments of defence. They are deployed when the threat is no longer simply criminal, but organised, ideological, and resistant to the normal authority of the law.

When soldiers stand guard outside synagogues, a line has already been crossed.

I have seen this before.

In France, following the attacks on a kosher supermarket and the murders at a Jewish school in Toulouse, troops were deployed to protect Jewish institutions. I encountered this directly a year later, attending a gathering of the Conference of European Rabbis in Toulouse. The synagogue and community buildings were guarded by young soldiers, barely out of training, cradling automatic weapons.

It was, in one sense, reassuring.

But it also raised a more troubling question: how had things reached the point where even armed police were no longer sufficient, and the state had to reach for the army?

For decades, attending such gatherings across Europe, security had always been present — police outriders on motorcycles, flashing blue lights, traffic briefly halted, the visible choreography of the state in control. But that was policing. This is something else.

For years, rising antisemitism across Europe has been treated as a social problem to be managed rather than a threat to be confronted. The response has been familiar: statements of concern, educational initiatives, intermittent enforcement — accompanied by a marked reluctance to address the sources of hostility directly.

The result is a recognisable pattern: hesitation, escalation, and then emergency measures.

We are now seeing elements of this closer to home.

In recent days, even Hatzola ambulances — volunteer emergency responders whose sole purpose is to save life — have come under attack. When those providing medical assistance become targets, it is no longer credible to describe the problem as marginal.

Last Yom Kippur in Manchester, my colleague Rabbi Daniel Walker was forced to defend his synagogue from a violent attacker. The outer gates had already been rammed and breached before the confrontation reached the entrance itself. This was not a distant or abstract threat. It was immediate and physical.

In the days that followed, King Charles III visited the site and later became patron of the Community Security Trust — a welcome and important signal of national support.

But it also reflects a harder truth: that protection is increasingly required where once it was assumed.

The lesson for policymakers should be clear.

If threats of this kind are treated merely as issues of community relations or low-level disorder, the response will always lag behind reality. By the time soldiers are required, the failure has already occurred.

The task is not only to respond at the point of crisis, but to restore the conditions in which ordinary policing is sufficient.

That means:

• enforcing the law decisively
• confronting sources of incitement without hesitation
• and reasserting that public space in Britain is governed by law, not intimidation

A society in which people can worship freely without armed protection is not a luxury. It is a basic test of civic health.

Once that assumption begins to fail, restoring it is far harder than preserving it.

4 min read2 hr

In 2018, there was a consultation on whether a handful of walkers could pass through a small ground in Lancashire for two hours every Sunday. In 2023, it was decided there was a need for the same consultation again.

The full machinery of government was marshalled in a similar way as it would for policies worth billions.

If you log on to GOV.UK right now, you will find a never-ending list of other government consultations. Many of these are a great way to gather feedback and the views of the public on important issues affecting them and their communities.

Some of them are more questionable.

Taken in the round, they tell a compelling but concerning story. Of good intentions, probably sound individual decisions, spiralling into something else. Layers of bureaucracy that successive governments have allowed to accumulate, each intended to safeguard fairness, yet have instead created a jungle of delay, confusion, and frustration.

And not just from ministers. The civil service is full of dynamic, committed people driven by a deep sense of public service. But they are being slowly suffocated by the system around them, causing stagnation. The previous government introduced an eyewatering number of new legal duties, regulations, and statutory requirements – ironically under the banner of deregulation.

That is absurd, but what is worse is that this absurdity has real consequences: ordinary people feeling that the state is distant, immovable, or worse, not serving their interests.

I came into law not because I thought its purpose was to preserve the status quo, but because I have seen how it can enable change. I came into government to drive forward that work. And I know the Prime Minister did so, too.

We cannot leave the defence of effective government to those who would dismantle it

That is why Nick Thomas Symonds and I have been tasked with helping create a more modern, agile state, working with the new Cabinet Secretary, Antonia Romeo, whom the Prime Minister has tasked with rewiring the state to turbocharge delivery.

Nick and I are lawyers by training, recognising that governing through the law does not mean blindly following endless procedures. Governing through the law means assessing these duties, asking whether they still serve us, and, where they don’t, changing them.

The reforms we are announcing today (Thursday) are about doing exactly that. About ensuring we properly rationalise how government works, and for whom.

We cannot leave the defence of effective government to those who would dismantle it. Those who have a vested interest in talking down the state’s ability to change people’s lives for the better, who want to tear away safeguards for working people.

Good governance is about delivering for the public because the public elected us on a mandate for change.

So, part of this is ending the culture of automatic consultations. Since the start of this year, 122 consultations have been launched – around two a day. Consultations are vital when they are genuine exercises in engagement: testing assumptions, gathering evidence, shaping policy. At their best, they save the public purse, but at their worst, deployed without thought or proportionality, they cease to be tools of democracy and instead become obstacles to it.

We have repeatedly seen the consequences; process overwhelms purpose, and momentum is lost. It’s like setting out to mow the lawn, only to find yourself hacking through a jungle.

We are using the latest advances in AI to assist with identifying and reviewing legal consultation requirements that clog up the system.

But there are many other areas where we will be taking this approach.

Decision-making will be modernised and reviewed to see where routine decisions can be made without excessively burdensome processes that take weeks. New accountability measures for Permanent Secretaries will be introduced to focus on delivering the PM’s priorities, hold civil servants to account for doing so, and ensure change is lasting.

Ultimately, the machinery of government should help ministers make good, effective decisions. Sometimes that means deliberation; sometimes it means acting quickly, within the law, to deliver what people need.

The state must not be slowed by its own procedures. Its purpose is to make decisions that matter for the public we serve.

If trust depends on delivery, and delivery depends on action, then our priority is clear:

cut through the unnecessary thickets, restore the capacity to act, and ensure the state can uphold principle without suffocating under its own processes.

This isn’t the sum of our ambition — it is barely base camp — but it is the first step in a radical climb to rewire the state.

Lord Hermer is the Attorney General

Chico Khan-Gandapur is a managing partner at Metrica Consulting.

In the 2019 U.K. general election “Big Dog” Boris Johnson won by a landslide: 365 seats, an 80 seat majority, with 43.6 per cent of the votes cast.

Fast forward to today, and despite Kemi Badenoch’s regular excoriation of Keir Starmer at weekly PMQ’s, a great Conference, and a policy suite that is Conservative through and through, the Party’s vote share is anchored at just 16 -18 per cent (Politico’s Poll of Polls).  13.96 million voted Conservative in 2019, yet current polling would suggest just 5.4 million voters would now, nothing short of a collapse.

I addressed this in an earlier article for ConservativeHome, The Conservative Party Brand Must Shift With Behavioural Science, back in December:

 “…The wholesale abandonment and ongoing voter indifference to the Conservative brand is not simply a, ‘we are fed up’ moment, or a ‘protest’ vote; rather, it reflects deeper, more structural issues.  Traditional attempts to understand this challenge and turn it around have floundered.  The breakthrough lies in analysing this situation through the lens of behavioural science…”

This second essay expands on these themes, and encouragingly finds the Party employing several of the strategies needed to improve its standings, but it still needs to go much further and deeper.

The subject Behavioural Political Science distinguishes between Policy‑Based support, agreement with specific positions, and Affective Partisanship, the sense of emotional loyalty or identification with a specific Party.  Extensive research shows these two dimensions of support, while related, are actually distinct psychologically.  Individuals may like a party’s ideas but without feeling it represents their group identity, and similarly, may stick with a party they feel close to despite disagreeing with several of its policies.

Neuroscientific studies of political engagement reinforce this distinction, demonstrating that perceptions of leaders and party brands activate emotional and social‑cognitive circuits, not just rational policy evaluation.  This evidence supports the view that voters respond to cues about Trust, Competence and Identity at least as much as they do to detailed policy platforms.  Indeed, some studies argue Trust, Respect and Like together drive 75 per cent of voter intentions, leaving just 25 per cent for policy evaluation – a huge relative difference.

Analysis of the 2024 election suggests Conservatives lost its 2019 voters over perceptions of incompetence, and a loss of trust in the Party as a consequence.  But where these voters subsequently went to was shaped by their values.  Many of those defecting to Labour cited a desire for stability, integrity and competent management of public services (which has obviously backfired) while those moving to Reform placed greater weight on immigration, cultural issues and a sense of voice for People Like Us.  The latter is classic affective politics: voters searching for a party that feels like it’s on their side.

For the Conservatives to turn these challenges around, Behavioural Analysis suggests three interlocking approaches.

First, they must re‑establish visible competence and reliability.  Voters frequently use heuristics (mental short-cuts)  and simple stories to cope with political complexity, such as, ‘they’re useless, they never do what they say’.  Once these negative labels are attached to a party, they are hard to shake-off and negatively impact subsequent information with voters discounting new promises.

The party therefore needs a period of disciplined, almost boring delivery on a small number of salient promises, chosen to be easily observable and personally relevant.  The aim is to replace the prevailing dominant heuristic with a different one: this party now does what it says, consistently and competently.  This requires internal restraint – fewer headline‑grabbing but undelivered pledges, and quieter follow‑through, highlighting a distinction and contrast between those in office.  The Stronger Economy, Stronger Country promises to align with this approach

Second, the Conservatives must rebuild Identity and Belonging.  Behavioural research shows people are strongly motivated by social identity and group attachment.  When voters feel that a party comprises people like me, they are more willing to engage, forgive missteps and tolerate policy disagreements.  When they feel looked down on, ignored or taken for granted, they become open to alternatives which recognise their status and concerns.

For Conservatives this means addressing messages and local engagement that underpin we are for people like you to distinct groups of electorates: older homeowners anxious about crime and disorder; younger families worrying about housing and childcare; small‑business owners struggling with regulation and costs; aspirational working‑class voters who care about order, fairness and tangible opportunities.  Recent messaging from Harrogate, the Party of Common Sense and the Common Ground, acknowledges this requirement.

But it also implies investing in local presence – councillors, associations, community campaigns – as attachment is often and more effectively forged through repeated, face‑to‑face interactions rather than national broadcasts alone.  This is an area which Conservatives need to expand significantly in their attempts to reconnect with nearly 8.5mln lost voters.

Third, they must restore Stable Narratives and Messengers.  Frequent leadership changes and visible factional conflict have repeatedly broken this vital attachment process by resetting and changing cues about what being a Conservative actually means.  Each change of leader and slogan has required voters to ask whether the party has truly changed, or whether it remains the same fractious organisation, but just behind new branding.  In this respect, several defections from the Conservatives to Reform will likely prove beneficial, and might even work to pollute the reputation of the destination Party.

Behavioural and neuroscientific work emphasises the importance of the perceptions of the leader.  Images serve as powerful proxies for party brands, with voters responding to the characteristics they perceive in a leader – steady or chaotic, sincere or cynical, like them or out of touch – and then generalise that to the party.  Conservatives therefore need leaders and local representatives who embody a coherent story about order, opportunity and stewardship over time, rather than a sequence of conflicting personas and narratives.  This breadth of leadership, especially locally, is wanting currently.

Taken together, these behavioural insights point to the need for a broader strategic shift.  The party should approach politics less as a marketplace for policy products and more as a long‑term relationship in which attachment is built through Reliability, Respect and Recognition.

Intellectual policy work remains necessary, but is not by itself sufficient: it must be accompanied by a deliberate attachment strategy that treats trust, identity and emotional resonance as core design prerequisites rather than as optional extras.  Conservatives must demonstrate visible delivery alongside competence in everyday, tangible ways, re‑anchoring the party in the lived identities of key voter groups.

While progress has been made, there is still much more work to be done, especially at the local level.  Upcoming local authority elections in May will be the acid test of just how far the Party has progressed.

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