The former Chancellor Sajid Javid said progress on social cohesion in the UK could be lost (Alamy)

4 min read25 min

Javid, a former Conservative MP of 14 years who served in six secretary of state roles, told PoliticsHome that debates about whether non-white politicians like him and former prime minister Rishi Sunak are British were not taking place a decade ago.

Last month, Sunak described himself as “British, English and British Asian” after right-wing podcaster Konstantin Kisin said last year that the senior Conservative MP was not English because he is a “brown-skinned Hindu”.

Sunak, who was the country’s first British Asian prime minister, warned that the UK was at risk of “slipping back” to a time of more undisguised racism.

Speaking on this week’s episode of The Rundown podcast from PoliticsHome, Javid said the fact that this sort of talking point was going viral online in the present day demonstrated how the UK was at risk of going backwards when it comes to social cohesion.

Asked whether he was surprised by it, the former chancellor said: “In a way, yes, because no one was asking questions like that, even a decade ago…

“Take Rishi as a great example. He became prime minister of our country, and someone dares question whether he’s British or not?”

“Obviously, it’s complete nonsense,” Javid added, “and I think questions like that often come from a divisive place, and that’s just the kind of division I think the vast majority of British people don’t have time for. 

“But one of the challenges that we’re having in today’s world, and especially how people consume or get their news is that, if you’re only getting news from your echo chambers on your social media channels, and those channels are inevitably pushing out divisive content because that’s what gets the clicks, then that is one of the features of today’s society.”

In his new memoir, The Colour of Home, Javid explains how his parents came to the UK from Pakistan with little money and “became proudly British”.

Speaking on the podcast, the former Tory MP reiterated his belief that “Britain is the most successful multiracial democracy in the world”, but called on ministers to do more to protect the progress made since the racism he faced in his own childhood in 1970s Bristol.

One of the roles he has taken on since leaving Parliament in 2024 is heading up The Independent Commission on Community & Cohesion, along with Jon Cruddas, the former Labour MP for Dagenham.

“A good friend, but someone on a different side politically, but I think what we definitely agree on is the division, sadly, in the UK, broadly put, has been on the rise, as it has been in many countries,” he told PoliticsHome.

He said it will be looking at “what more can we do to bring people together to have less segregation, more integration”, but admits he could have done more during his time in office.

As communities secretary in 2016, Javid commissioned a report from Dame Louise Casey, which said there were “worrying levels of segregation” in the UK, leading him to publish a government green paper and integration strategy. 

“I was just sort of getting going with it, and then Brexit happened”, Javid told PoliticsHome, bemoaning the fact that many priorities were jettisoned in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, adding: “We basically lost focus on many things.”

Earlier this month, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Steve Reed, announced a new social cohesion strategy, which included a new anti-Muslim hostility definition designed to help tackle rising abuse towards Muslims, as well as new government powers to close extremist charities and an additional £5m for the Common Ground Resilience Fund.

“Cohesion underpins our economic strength, our democratic freedom and our national security. It is a fundamental part of the Britain we love. We have made our choice in place of division, we choose unity, and we know the people of Britain have made the same choice,” Reed said.

The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, and is produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot

• Click here to listen to the latest episode of The Rundown, or search for ‘PoliticsHome’ wherever you get your podcasts.

What does the data actually say?

Misdiagnosis can occur, but experts don’t think that’s the main issue here

Phil Woolas: 11 December 1959 – 14 March 2026 | Image by: PA Images / Alamy

4 min read14 min

Phil Woolas, who battled stoically for a year with brain cancer never stopped talking politics and political philosophy.

Having cut his teeth at Nelson and Colne Further Education College, he emerged as one of the great political campaigners.

His political heroes were the gasworkers union leader JR Clynes and John Smith, both Labour leaders and, like Phil, people whose sense of purpose and everyday reality made the GMB union their natural home. This was where Phil enjoyed his working life the most.

Phil was the one politician of his generation who preferred the company of journalists to his political peers. With a television background, he commanded respect among the media – but no one else built as many friendships, as opposed to contacts, as Phil. He understood what a good story was and he had a knack for how to deliver the pictures that made a journalist’s life so much easier. Phil was a teller, not a spinner, of stories.

Phil was also an exceptional raconteur. Once, he recalled, he was to be interviewed by a local Co-op Party while seeking their approval as a parliamentary nominee. He travelled back to his home region for the selection meeting.

The six candidates were sent up a wooden ladder into the attic of the Co-op secretary’s home, a terraced house. As the meeting started, the elderly Co-op host appeared at the top of the ladder with six mugs of hot drinks. “I’ve brought you a drink,” he chimed, “five teas and a coffee for the southerner.”

Phil would roar with laughter at the brutality of his initiation into parliamentary politics. He had already emerged as a Labour student leader, but the many current Labour MPs who have followed in his path know nothing about how much they owe him.

He fought to the very end because he had more to give

Phil understood that the mass of students in his era studied at FE, in technical colleges and in English polytechnics, and ran an entire campaign going out into uncharted territory to bring people in. It worked brilliantly and his strategising, with a tiny group of others, established the Labour Party hegemony in the student movement that was to last nearly three decades.

When I was elected as an MP after Phil, he came up to me in the Commons with one piece of wisdom. “Never forget that they treat people like you and me as the oiks in here.” And it wasn’t the mandarins or Commons staff he was talking about.

Phil was a good minister, and a brilliant MP. He saw his job as to empower those who needed someone to be on their side. He relished winning justice where it was being denied. While some scorn the minutiae of politics, he saw it as fundamental that he was there for his constituents and that he won for them. For Phil, it was the definition of leadership.

And he was at his happiest and most brilliant when given the freedom to campaign for the GMB union. Which other politician would have dared to entrust ex-coalminers from Worksop and Bolsover to march around London with Cedric the Pig to expose corporate guilt?

Clynes used to quote Shakespeare and Milton. Phil graduated in philosophy and had that rarity of a photographic memory. He painted pictures through his words, using philosophy as his guide. He didn’t see himself or anyone else as special or gifted. His essence was to reach out and draw in. For Phil, there were no ordinary people, no common people. Just a mass of extraordinary human beings, none more worthy than others. Like the rest of us, he had plenty of faults, but his Parliament and his party need his philosophy more than ever.

He fought to the very end because he had more to give. But he leaves us with his wisdom. More will miss you, my friend, than you could have ever dared imagine. 

Lord Mann is a Labour peer

Darren Millar MS is the leader of the Conservative Party in Wales.

It has been less than two years since Keir Starmer became Prime Minister and voters elected a UK Labour Government, yet his personal ratings are already at record lows and it’s clear that people are fed up.

Just imagine being lumbered with a Labour Government for more than quarter of a century. Because that is precisely the situation for us here in Wales, where we have endured 27 years of Welsh Labour, propped up by Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats.

The impact has been devastating.

Amongst other things, the Welsh Government is entirely responsible for running and funding the NHS, education, transport, economic development and local government.

Welsh Labour like to portray themselves as the architects of the National Health Service, although this is not entirely accurate (the NHS developed from the Emergency Medical Service established under Winston Churchill’s wartime government). But what matters is the situation today. And I am afraid that it is a sad fact that patients in Wales currently wait longer in emergency departments, longer for ambulances, and longer for tests and treatment than patients elsewhere in the UK. With patients here being hundreds of times more likely to be waiting two years plus for treatment than over the border in England.

And Labour’s record on education in Wales is equally woeful.

Wales’ most famous political figure, David Lloyd George, apparently described our nation as a land of “teachers and preachers.” But no matter how hard individual teachers work, our educational standards have plummeted. In the 1990s, GCSE pass rates suggested that education standards in Wales were broadly in line with the rest of the UK. Twenty-seven years later, the independent PISA tests show that Wales’ standards are the worst in the UK and ranking below former Soviet bloc countries.

The failure to get to grips with health and education standards are mirrored by Labour’s stewardship of the Welsh economy.

Wales has the lowest employment rate in the UK and the lowest pay packets in Great Britain. Small businesses such as pubs and post office pay higher business rates than in England. Tourists are threatened with an overnight tax, and major investors are put off by the slow planning system, Labour’s failure to invest in building new roads, and an unnecessary default 20mph speed limit that has slowed our motorists and economy down.

The results of Labour’s mismanagement of our economy and public services are plain to see. Just last week an IFS report found Wales has been receiving around 15 per cent more funding per head for public services than England, yet has delivered far worse outcomes.

But there is hope. Because on 7th May, the people of Wales will go to the polls.

The Welsh Conservatives have produced a manifesto with a clear plan to fix Wales and get Wales working.

On day one of a Welsh Conservative Government, we would declare a health emergency to  get every part of government focused on addressing the crisis in our NHS by surging bed numbers to end corridor care and free up ambulances stuck outside our hospitals.

We will restore discipline in schools, ban mobile phones, and back teachers by automatically expelling pupils who bring knives into schools; something which, amazingly, Labour has refused to do.

We have set out a range of measures to kick-start the Welsh economy. With an income tax cut of 1p in the pound to put £450 back into the pockets of the average hardworking family in Wales. And by scrapping Welsh Stamp Duty (known as Land Transaction Tax) on people’s main homes, to help people realise their dream of home ownership, move up and down the housing ladder, and support the many small businesses that depend on the housing market – plumbers, electricians, decorators and many others.

“But how would this be paid for?” cry the interviewers.

It is a pleasure to answer.

We would start by cutting back on the mountains of Labour waste.

For example, we would reverse the outrageous decision to spend £120 million increasing the number of Senedd Members from 60 to 96. We would make real efficiency savings in civil service costs which have increased by more than £150 million over the past few years.

We’d also scrap spending on matters for which the Welsh Government is not responsible, such as aviation, immigration, international development and foreign affairs.

The Welsh Labour is spending £200m on grants for the nationalised Cardiff Airport, millions on a ‘Nation of Sanctuary Plan’, a small fortune on tree planting in Africa and solar panelled canoes in the Amazon, and millions more of taxpayers’ money on overseas ‘embassies’ in a range of exotic cities. All this will face the axe.

Closer to home, Wales is dotted with empty Welsh Government offices, set up for civil servants who now largely work from home. We would end this waste.

We will also scrap business rates for small businesses such as pubs, cafes and post offices and axe Labour and Plaid’s toxic tourism tax.

We will expand free access to free childcare, which is vital for enabling new parents to return to work. Mums and dads here have been denied the 30 hours of free childcare available for parents in England, even though the funding has been made available to Wales as a result of the extension of childcare by the previous UK Conservative Government.

We will make sure this cash is spent to support families in Wales, so that working parents here have the same rights as those in England, and we will also pioneer a policy allowing new parents to choose to nominate a grandparent to care for their children instead of using a traditional childcare placement.

Under our proposals, a grandparent could receive a payment of up to £4,800, to recognise their role in supporting their families. Our plans would cost less than formal childcare provision and enable families to choose what works best for them.

Where Labour cancelled new road building because of their anti-motorist agenda, we are committed to investing in our economic arteries, including delivering an M4 relief road, upgrading the A55 and dualling the A40 to Fishguard in west Wales.

We will stand up for the rights and safety of women and girls, by respecting the ruling of the Supreme Court on women-only spaces, and commissioning a Wales-wide grooming gangs inquiry.

We will fight for our farmers and rural Wales, by boosting the farming budget, ditching unnecessary regulations, and promoting Welsh produce and honest labelling.

We will also honour our heroes. We are committed to establishing a National Military Museum for Wales to celebrate the enormous contribution Wales has made to the armed forces of the United Kingdom. And we will back our military veterans by increasing funding for Veterans NHS Wales, and extending free bus travel to all who have served in our armed forces.

Finally, we will stop the obsession with trying to grab more powers for the Senedd. Defence, immigration and policing are reserved matters, and rightly so. Only the Conservatives will respect the devolution settlement and promote the benefits of being part of the UK to the people of Wales.

This is a fully costed and authentically conservative manifesto.

After 27 years of falling standards and economic decline under Labour, this is an offer of a better future: lower taxes, better public services, and a growing economy.

After nearly three decades of Labour rule, we are offering real and credible change.

Which women authors did Austen love?

Did they affect Jane Austen’s writing?

Which lesser-known authors should I read next if I loved Jane Austen?

Dr Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.

A narrow waterway in the Middle East. Vital for global trade, especially for transporting oil, it is threatened with closure.  A global power needs to take military action to reassert control, with Israel playing a key role … Not Iran 2026, but Suez 1956.

The Suez Crisis of 70 years ago humiliated Britain.

The post-Second World War comfort blanket of great power status was ripped away. The recent global hegemon with the largest Empire in history, the country finally realised it had been usurped by the United States.

Linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal cuts through Egypt. Like the Strait of Hormuz, it is a major strategic artery. Until July 1956, the Suez Canal Company, backed by the French and British governments, ran the waterway. Then Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s charismatic leader, nationalised it and took control of the Canal.

Denouncing Nasser as a “Muslim Mussolini”, Prime Minister Anthony Eden was determined to take it back and overthrow the Egyptian leader. British tonnage accounted for 28 per cent of the traffic using the waterway: two-thirds of oils imports came via it. He declared: “The industrial life of Western Europe literally depends upon the continuing free navigation of the Canal.”

While military plans were drawn up in mid-August, nothing was done until early November. Newsreels of British warships sailing for the eastern Mediterranean and the call-up of 20,000 reservists escalated the sense of crisis. Weeks, then months, passed. The military plan to re-take the Canal was constantly revised and public backing waned.  In contrast, across the Arab world, there was huge support for Nasser.

Meanwhile, it was business-as-usual for the Canal under new Egyptian management.  An enterprising MP Frank Bowles visited twice, stating in October he  found “no difficulty at all about transit north or south.”

The British case for taking military action against Egypt became increasingly flimsy.

It would be neither legal nor legitimate. It went ahead anyway, but only after a pretext for intervention was secretly cooked up between the governments of Britain, France and Israel. This involved Israeli forces invading Egypt on 29 October, with the other two nations stepping in to “separate the belligerents”. Even 70 years on, the chicanery defies belief.

Operation Musketeer can be judged a military success. It was also, however, a political disaster.

Fearing the intervention would lead to closer alignment between Egypt and other Arab nations with Moscow, the Eisenhower administration in Washington led international condemnation. In the UN General Assembly, nation after nation demanded a ceasefire.

The US used Britain’s financial weakness as leverage.  The British asked for a loan – or rather, yet another post-1945 bail-out – which Washington refused until a ceasefire was agreed. The US also threatened to sell its sterling reserves, offering the unpalatable prospect of the pound devaluing and possible bankruptcy.

Operation Musketeer had provoked what it had intended to avert: the closure of the Canal. Soldiers returned home to a country polarised by Suez, with petrol rationing and, in January 1957, PM Eden’s resignation.

Britain’s prestige was irrevocably harmed. Suez 1956 highlighted that the country was a second rank power and that any future British military operation would need US support. Iran 2026 reflects Britain’s strategic incoherence and weakness in defence capability.

One lesson was learned by Musketeer’s commander, General Sir Charles Keightley: “World public opinion is a most important weapon of war.” It is doubtful that the Trump administration considered this ahead of Operation Epic Fury.

If Labour believes that opposing controversial military action brings political success at home, Suez is a warning. By rights, the Conservatives should have been punished for the botched misadventure, but in the 1959 General Election, Eden’s successor Harold Macmillan won with a landslide majority.

Is the Starmer government betting that American forces get bested by Iran, ensuring the Trump administration is forced into a Suez-like humiliating retreat? It is the only explanation for its strategic shortsightedness in jeopardising Britain’s “Rolls Royce of allies” status.

The UK is arguably more dependent on Washington today than it was 70 years ago. Back then, Britain’s defence sector was credible: Armed Forces’ strength was 804,000 personnel in 1955. Since then, like NATO’s other European members, we have mostly outsourced defence to the Pentagon.

The US was Britain’s largest export market in 2024, accounting for £210 billion, or 22 per cent of exports. American LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) was perhaps 15 per cent of this country’s total gas supply last year. Opponents of Epic Fury could always boycott US firms, such as Google and Meta.

Despite the PM’s overwrought claims, the US did not expect the UK to “join the war”, merely give permission to use two air bases. Washington had leverage in 1956, it has leverage today.

While Britain has let down allies across the Gulf who have been loyal customers of UK defence companies, France has sent its Forces to the region, as President Macron showcases French defence capability on X.

Just like Suez, seven decades later Iran is revealing the reality of Britain’s place in the world.